Tomorrow would have been my mom’s 74th birthday and while not a day goes by that I don’t miss her, I am grateful for the life I was allowed to share with her. She was generous, compassionate, and the most unconditionally loving person I have ever met. She always encouraged me to embrace the quirky, creative side of myself and insisted that following my passion meant not holding back and always giving 100%. As a child, my mom was a dancer—she and her brother Jerry even appeared on The Jack Parr Show together. A few years later, Jerry decided that “dancing was for sissies,” then life ultimately got in the way and my mom eventually gave it up too. While a life as a professional dancer was not to be, music was still an important part of her life. Even after I came along, our house was always filled with music—mostly Motown. I grew up on a steady musical diet of artists like Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye, and the Jackson 5. But when she wasn’t grooving to the sounds coming out of Hitsville USA, she was listening to Elvis.

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Here’s a link to the 1999 Charlie Rose Interview with Richard Avedon that I referenced in this episode.If you enjoy that, you may also like this terrific documentary about Avedon called Darkness and Light.

The artist Christo has just unveiled his latest installation, called The London Mastaba—a 600 ton pyramid made of brightly painted 55-gallon drums. The whole gigantic thing is floating in Serpentine Lake in London.

I know I’m a little late to the game on this, but if you want to either deepen or broaden your musical knowledge, check out allmusic.com. It’s an incredible resource that has not only album reviews, but also shows connections to similar artists and recommendations for the best albums within a given artist’s discography . The site even offers suggestions for albums based on your current mood. For example, feeling ironic? Check out Elvis Costello’s Trust, Blur’s Modern Life is Rubbish, or David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane – terrific record by the way.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0