I watch music stations on television too much these days..

Not VH1 or MTV or any of those shitty stations that used to actually play music but now play trashy TV. I'm Talking Ovation TV when I'm home and Palladia HD when I have the chance, as I did this past weekend. And this past weekend Palladia HD did not disappoint. Caught an previously aired CMT Crossroads featuring Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. This amused me a little bit because Crossroads usually brings together two sort-of unrelated acts (Think Taylor Swift and...Def Leppard?), and while Robert Plant and Alison Krauss certainly qualify as sort-of unrelated (to say the least..) at the time of filming they had already won an album of the year Grammy for Raising Sand. It seemed kind of lazy to me, but whatever. They still make great music and this performance was no different. This opportunity allowed them to collaborate on more than just their Raising Sand material and included this super-duper version of "Black Dog:"

I was very impressed. Word on the street is a second album is in the works, too.

For awhile back in college, sophomore year especially, I got the Led out fairly frequently when I fell in love with a big Led Zeppelin fan (she, however, was little) in November then when she graduated in December (honestly, who pulls that shit at a school like Bates..?) I continued listening when I'd cry myself to sleep. You've all been there, I'm sure. Anyways I'm excited because T-Bone Burnett is producing Grace Potter & the Nocturnals' forthcoming album, due out this fall. I know nothing about T-Bone Burnett other than he produced Raising Sand and that album was/is/will always be very good (and actually he's playing guitar between Robert and Alison with a ridiculously awful haircut in the above video). I also expect the GP&theN's new album to be very good. Coincidence? Probably.

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Palladia is also nice because when they have gaps in airtime due to show lengths they just play videos. So when they popped on Ben Harper's "Diamonds on the Inside" it got me smiley. I've mentioned before on here that I'm pro-Ben Harper (WHICH REMINDS ME! One of these days I'm going to get around to labeling all of my previous posts. I'm an all or nothing kind of a person. I'm sure it won't take me too long to label 175 posts, right? And I have no idea what it actually accomplishes but my hope is I'll be able to search more quickly so when I said "I'm pro-Ben Harper I could immediately pull up my old Ben Harper mention and link back to it. Stay tuned..). I'm also a good-sized fan of this song especially but I had never seen the video. And if you'd like to see the video you'll have to click here because Capitol Music, like most record companies, sucks and doesn't let you embed their youtube content. Jerks.

Harper's album of the same name is probably my favorite of his albums, not just because it's the only one I have in my vehicle. "With My Own Two Hands" is a great track, too, but again I cannot post the video directly due to aforementioned reasons. Don't go clicking anywhere, there's no link here. Today is about Diamonds, not Hands, you could say. Had I seen the latter on Saturday this would all be reversed and I would have retarded my more specific praise for "Diamonds" instead of retarding my more specific praise for "Hands". Life is just crazy sometimes, isn't it?

"Daimonds" also includes my favorite Ben Harper lyric and one of my favorite lyrics I can remember:

Make sure the fortune that you seek
is the fortune that you need.

Words to live by, I suppose.. Cheers.