Musicians...

Just found out that an old classmate of mine Rachael Yamagata -- we went to girls prep school from hell together -- has just finished a recording with RCA and opened for David Gray at Madison Square Garden this past January. She was a singer for the funky Chicago band Bumpus.

Jay, my honey bun, has also finished with his recording finally -- Norah Jones and Gregg Allmann, who he plays horn with during the year, plus others have written some things for him. A Mose Alison-meets-John Coltrane-meets Bob Dylan... hard to describe. Great socio-political lyrics as well -- not overdone at all. Check this out:

"The old world starts to crumble, and the poets speak in rhyme; the poor ones' feeling humble, and the junkie feels sublime; the young ones' starting trouble, and the old ones' got no time... but you go on and on, big business man."*

He's shopping for labels too. He goes through so much. Don't know if I could ever do the artist life. It's rough.

Another friend of Jay's, Richard Julian, is going to be opening for Norah this month. Jay has opened for Jesse Harris at the Living Room, who is also fantastic.

Money geniuses...

By the way, wanna thrill? Thought dotcom trading was dead? My brilliant younger bro, Ted has been making serious money in a bear market by tracking the waves of a stock based on elliott wave theory, which utilizes natural patterns such as fibonacci number sequences. His last profit was about $18K last Friday (THIS IS FOR REAL, I SWEAR... he's family) after selling SINA.

He explains it on his site, Gemxwave, which is basically his concise analyses of the market throughout the day, along some random maniacal ramblings (that goes along with genius, I guess). You can sign up for a 10-day trial with no credit card required -- he just gives you the password. Check it out.

*Lyrics - Big Business Man, © Jay Collins 2002