On Monday night, October 22, an amazing cast of roots music singers and players will appear at a concert benefiting Butch Baldassari, a mandolin great who is fighting cancer. The concert takes place in Ingram Hall at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music. I’ve mentioned Butch on this blog before, as he mentored for several years my family’s mandolin player known on this blog as “the 17-year-old.” I sat in on nearly every one of those lessons and took notes and recorded “licks” on my PowerBook. Butch’s collection of instructional DVDs, CDs and books bring back great memories of Butch’s teaching skills.

Performers at the concert will include: Dierks Bentley, Shawn Camp, Kathy Chiavola, John Cowan, Bela Fleck, The Grascals, Tony McManus, the Nashville Bluegrass Band, the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble, Maura O’Connell with John Mock, Mark O’Connor, Ricky Skaggs and Three Ring Circle.

That, my friends, is a lineup to write home about.

The concert begins at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $50 and patron tickets will be sold for $125. All proceeds will go to Baldassari and his family.

via the NYTimes.com’s DealBook comes this from the Red Herring:

“A startup coming out of stealth mode is hoping to upend the market for digital products in the same way eBay did for all types of physical products.

First, let me say this time-warped story is weirding me out. Really, we’re talking an episode of the Twilight Zone where someone turns on their computer in 2007 and The Red Herring is reporting a startup hopes to be the eBay for digital content. Pure Rod Serling: the startup’s name is Zipidee. Geez, why not Pets.com?

According to the Red Herring, Zipidee wants to be like eBay, however it’s not an auction site, it’s more “like (the) Apple iTunes” Store in that it has set prices. Which would make it the iTunes Store of digital content, but, well, the iTunes Store is already the iTunes Store of digital content.

How many startups in the past decade have said they wanted to be the eBay of something? Half.com and Stubhub.com both became the eBay of something on the way to being purchased by eBay?

I want pick on them anymore, but I’ve mentioned several times about a startup that wanted to be the eBay of podcasting.

However, just look at this Google search for the phrase “The Google of*.” At one time or another, there have been companies described as the eBay of: loans, swap, money management, stock photography, fast food, web services, digital content (long before Zipidee), social capital, steel, science, ridesharing, etc., etc.

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