My family has a long tradition of being musicians and I have a deep appreciation for music. Everyone in my family has, at the very least, a piano in the house. With my uncles and cousins bringing their musical instruments, we could have a full fledged orchestra.

I still love to listen to piano instrumentals and am a Jim Brickman fan. I like Yanni, too, but a lot of his music is over produced and too complicated. I recently discovered another pianist that I like, David Lanz. I bought a two CD set from Amazon, The Ultimate David Lanz Narada Collection, that just came and I’ve been listening to it. There are only two songs on it that I skip over – the rest is really good and easy on the ears.

One of my birthday presents was the new Eagles album, “Long Road Out of Eden.” I’ve heard one of the cuts on the radio, “Just Too Busy Being Fabulous,” which is a good song and an interesting commentary to people of my generation. So I cuoldn’t wait to hear the other songs on the double CD.

First time all the way through, my first impression was that the whole album sounded very typically Eagles. There were a couple songs that were easy on the ears and a couple that sounded a little edgey, and an instrumental that was absolutely haunting.

I had to listen to it a second time before I could say that I really like it. Now I am really starting to like a couple of the songs, especially “Waiting in the Weeds.” Now, I don’t really know what the song is totally about, but the tune is very catchy and I find myself humming along to it. I just need to listen for the words a little harder and figure it out. But overall, I like this album a lot.

They say, “a cat has nine lives.”

They call musicians, “cats.”

I wonder if musicians have nine lives?

Or is there some other meaning to Steve Winwood’s newest album, “Nine Lives”? Has Steve gone through 8 of them already and this is his last? Scary thought, especially if he believes that. There is nothing in the liner notes – yes, I read all the liner notes in every album – to explain the title of this album. I don’t get it – so I’m going to have to dig deeper.

Steve Winwood and his songwriting partner, Godwin, wrote every song on the album. There’s only 9 songs on the album – a little light on the load for today’s typical CD. On the other CDs that I bought today, there are 13 on Willie’s, 11 on John’s, and 14 on Tom’s. (Can you guess the last names of these 3? I’ll talk about those in other posts, so read on, my friends. Heh heh.) So I guess Steve is having us pay for quality – not quantity.

On the first track, Steve plays all the instruments himself. But the reason I bought the album, unheard, is that I know his good friend, Eric Clapton plays a kick ass guitar solo on the song, “Dirty City.” This is depressing look at a working man’s life with an odd upbeat, and it lasts 7 minutes 44 seconds. Another great bathroom break song for the radio DJs, and my favorite of all the tracks.