I bought this CD for my mother after seeing Dolly Parton perform at Radio City Music Hall.

The day of that show, I bought a ticket, raced out of work, onto the subway and up to 6th Avenue and 50th Street. I sat in the second to last row of the uppermost balcony of that magnificent hall, literally on the edge of my seat, rapt.

I found the CD in the glove compartment of my mother's car while driving through Wyoming last week. I was driving alone. My husband and sister were in a second car. On the road from the jackalope capital of the world to the small town I grew up in, I listened to Dolly. And again, she brought tears to my eyes.

It's her voice, the way she balances showmanship with genuineness, the way she emphasizes the r's, how she stops just short of overdoing the ornamentation.

We'd fight but never lose!

Dolly Parton made me cry on the prairie. I was homesick. I wanted to be 8 years old, trying to catch grasshoppers while wading through tumbleweeds.

Still, I would love to hear her remake this album without the complex arrangements. Just Dolly's voice and her guitar.

I think of these things but don't post them because, well, this is a blog, not a job. Also I've been working a job and a half because sometimes I like to overachieve. On to the music:

Why doesn't oldies radio play music from the 50s? No bubble gum. Barely a Phil Spector 'little symphony'. No doo-wop. Why does oldies radio play U2?

Why do I know every note of every melismatic run in Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know"?

Does working on non-mainstream music all day feed my addiction to Gwen Stefani and Justin Timberlake, that oasis of slick, easy, danceable pop?

Will Willie Nelson have a Johnny Cash-style comeback?

What if Phil Spector made an album with Michael Jackson?

1) The edits in the radio version of Christina Aguilera's Beautiful are astonishingly clumsy. Why, program directors and record label execs? The album version is only 3:58.

2) Turns out, I am embarassed by my deep-seated love of the band Chicago. Peter, Bjorn and John comes on the radio, and I'll slowly cruise down crowded streets with the windows down, whistling along. But scan to "Hard Habit To Break," (a Billboard #3 hit in 1984!) and, oh yes, I will turn it up and listen, but I'll roll up the windows and do it incognito. Check out Peter Cetera double exposed, elementary school picture-style, in the video.

3) Speaking of hearing Peter, Bjorn and John on the radio, what I love about this song is how it sounds like a mix with half the tracks muted. We will hear many more versions of "Young Folks."