I'm planning a longer post this weekend about Chrissie Hynde's great journey into Akron. I was lucky enough to be at her 11-song-plus-banter acoustic performance Friday night for a small crowd, and it was definitely one of those "this is a cool job" moment.

But that show, as well as tonight's big concert at the Akron Civic, has me asking this question: Why do people go to concerts and then talk through the performances? It happened Friday night, and again Saturday. Granted that Saturday's show had more of a festival atmosphere, with lots of socializing in the lobbies. Still, why would you sit — like the people behind us — and gab through act after act?

Don't people play music to be heard?

You may have seen this gadget, a toilet paper holder that also includes an iPod dock. But here's the big question: What songs would you want to listen to while you're, uh, communing?

Would it really help to hear Green Day's "Waiting" ("I've been waiting for a lifetime .. I'm so much closer than I have ever known"), or is that just more pressure? Speaking of which, what about the Seeds' "Pushing Too Hard"? (Thanks to Bob Sherwin for the suggestion). Or, for sheer titular simplicity, the President of the United States of America's "Lump"?

The comment section is open.

Selected Bob Marley tunes are now available as ringtones. Announcement after the jump, including a list of the songs Verizon is offering. Which leads to this question: If you were trying to match a given Marley ringtone with someone, what would be a good match?

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Well, a hum-along, anyway, since the world is better off when I do not put voice to tune. Still, I've been giggling through a preview disc of "The Simpsons: Testify: A Whole Lot More Original Music From the Television Series," which collects songs from the last nine seasons. It's due in stores on Sept. 18.

We're talking "O Pruny Night." "Homer and Marge." Shawn Colvin singing "He's the Man." "Everybody Hates Ned Flanders." Ricky Gervais's tongue-twisting "Lady." And many, many others. Announcement and song list after the jump.

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Little things can feel like big worries. Nice to see Molly Shannon on a good "30 Rock" on Thursday, but she looked alarmingly thin. Then there's the way Newsweek's Joshua Alston wrote about Amy Winehouse …

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Live blogging during "American Idol," after the jump ….

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In a previous posting ("The Music of Vincent Chase") I mentioned an upcoming "Independent Lens" documentary, "Parliament Funkadelic: One Nation Under A Groove." It's due to air Oct. 11 here; check with your local PBS station for date and time — and don't take no for an answer. I have now seen the documentary and it's great stuff: interviews, great video footage and, of course, the music of Parliament, Funkadelic, P-Funk .. whatever name you attach to George Clinton's musical coalition.

I'll be writing more about the show in Sunday's Beacon Journal, including from an interview with Yvonne Smith, the maker of the film. We had a great chat on Friday, and it made me decide to do a bigger story than I at first planned. I had wanted to talk to Smith because, when I interviewed her about another documentary, she mentioned that she was working on a piece about George Clinton.

That was about 12 years ago.

She said just raising the money for the show took six years. That should tell you a good deal about public-television budgets, and about how few people in public television understand what P-Funk meant to music.

Public TV has a place for oldies specials, with toupeed performers singing songs they made famous 40 years ago, because people who were young at the same time as the performers will open their wallets at fund-raising time. But there's a multigenerational audience out there that will appreciate the Clinton special, and Clinton is still a lively, unpredictable presence. Viewers would probably be generous if asked for money around a Clinton show. (Wait a minute. I'm thinking about the thank-you gifts that would accompany a P-Funk-related pledge. Heh heh. OK, I'm back.)

Still, as good as "One Nation" is, I was ready to get on board just from hearing the subject. I saw Funkadelic about 30 years ago, as a down-the-bill act with Earth, Wind and Fire. I didn't like them, but they were way ahead of my ears; the sound grew on me. About 25 years ago I caught the whole P-Funk mob, and that was fun as music and as spectacle. Years after that, I caught Talking Heads when they were borrowing liberally from P-Funk (both riffs and personnel); loved it.

But last week was a trip down musical memory lane. I saw P-Funk and Talking Heads in and around Albany, N.Y., where I lived from the late '70s to early '90s. And in a column last week about an Akron music documentary, I mentioned the days of Blotto, the Units/Fear of Strangers and the A.D.'s in Albany. (You can find the column here .) That led to an e-mail from one of the Blottos, and some back-and-forth that yielded the news that the Units/FoS compiled a CD of their work, and it might still be available. Since the stuff I have is on LP and 45, I was pretty pumped to hear that; I've since e-mailed with one of the Units/FoS, and ordered a copy of the CD.

This is not only good for me, but for my 16-year-old, whose Ramones/punk/new wave appetite drew him to the Units and the A.D.'s. Great music doesn't fade.

As a big fan of both HBO's "Entourage" and public radio's "World Cafe" (See www.worldcafe.org ), I got a double dose of fun this morning while driving to work and listening to "Cafe" on WAPS (91.3-FM).

Adrian Grenier, who plays Vincent Chase on the HBO show, was a guest on a "Cafe" replay, offering up a list of five songs he especially likes. Grenier, who is also a musician, admitted to agonizing over the list. But he came up with an electic list.

Here it is: Funkadelic, "Can You Get To That"; Ween, "The Mollusk"; Johnny Cash and June Carter, "Jackson"; Nina Simone, "Suzanne," and Weezer, "Say It Ain’t So."

Can't say I agree with all his choices. Nina Simone was very good on some things, but "Suzanne" isn't one of them. On the other hand, "Jackson" always makes me smile (love the way June Carter roars in it). And the inclusion of a Funkadelic cut just demonstrates the ongoing appeal of the George Clinton-Parliament-Funkadelic body of music.

I'll be talking more about that sometime before Oct. 11, when "Independent Lens" airs the documentary "Parliament Funkadelic: One Nation Under a Groove." (Check your local listings. If it's not there, call your local PBS station. Play them "One Nation" or "Flashlight" or "Maggot Brain." Send them videos of "P.C.U." Remind them what happens when you free your mind.)

A reader of my online mailbag recently asked about the song playing at the end of the second-season finale of "Nip/Tuck." It wasn't that surprising — I get a fair number of queries about songs in TV shows — but it was tidily coincidental. Last week, I had seen that scene as the setup for a "Nip/Tuck" press conference in Hollywood.

"Is that Art Garfunkel?" I asked the critic sitting next to me. He wasn't sure, suspecting it was more likely some more recent artist. (TV soundtracks are more often than not slaves to the hip — especially hip artists who happen to be on labels that are corporate siblings to the makers of the TV show.) In any case, the song was hauntingly paired with the images onscreen — especially effective to me, since I'm not a fan of "Nip/Tuck." I'll be writing more about it sometime before the third season begins on Sept. 20, but that will be a function of readers' admiration for it instead of my own enthusiasm.

The song, it turned out, was indeed by Garfunkell; called "All I Know," it has been included on several Garfunkel albums. I found it on a cassette at the Akron library, and played it several times over the weekend. It's still a good song — in fact, the surrounding cuts made me appreciate Garfunkel anew — but hearing it on its own was not the same as hearing it along with the images from "Nip/Tuck." The song made the show better, but the show also improved the song.

I'm waiting for the day when a television series comes out on DVD first, then makes its way to cable or broadcast. That day is closer than you might think.

Already television producers are well aware of the importance of DVD to their revenues; shows like "Family Guy" and "Chappelle's Show" have proven their worth via video sales more than by the audience their telecasts have attracted.

And, while "Lost" is seen as a demonstration that audiences will sit through a season-long unresolved storyline, some observers are pointing to DVD as fueling that appetite, too. If you can sit down and watch a whole season of "24" on DVD, then you know the plot digressions along the way are taking you somewhere.

Anecdotal evidence suggests people wait for serialized shows to arrive on DVD — or they record the whole season's episodes before watching one, so they can follow the whole arc. Even a show people know, like "Lost," has viewers going back over reruns and recordings of the first season in search of clues; the DVD release in September will just encourage more of that. The commercial-free aspect of DVD is also appealing, to audiences and producers, because it creates an uninterrupted narrative that can be more involving for the audience.

We're already seeing very narrow gaps between series telecast and their DVD release. I know of some cases, with documentaries and children's shows at least, of DVDs preceding the actual telecast. So why shouldn't some enterprising producer make an entire comedy or drama series for immediate release on DVD, then sell it to a network? Word of mouth about the DVD might even give a boost to the later broadcast.

At least, I've been thinking about that some lately. But that's not the only thing. Lots of mental ping-pong lately.

– I see that CNN has finally suspended Bob Novak. Not for his role in the Valerie Plame nightmare. For swearing on the air and walking off a show. Here's a link to a story about the incident: Naughty Novak. (Note: Contains a strong word Novak used.)

You can draw your own conclusions from that about what's acceptable at the network and what isn't. Smearing, OK. Swearing, not OK. It also indicates that Novak is buckling some under the ongoing pressure to come clean about his role in the Plame case. And considering the pressure he has put on other people, I don't feel sorry for him.

– The great singer Little Milton has died. His version of "Grits Ain't Groceries" has been one of those songs stuck in my head ever since I heard a band do a cover of it when I was in college. Maybe you know the key lyric: "If I don't love you baby, grits ain't groceries/Eggs ain't poultry/And Mona Lisa was a man." How could you not love a song with lines like that? I did, anyway.

– Looking at the baseball standings, I've been wishing once again that all leagues instituted a .500-or-better rule, which simply says that any team has to have at least a .500 record to make the playoffs. If, say, a division leader has a sub-.500 record, then it still could not go. Instead, another team in the same conference with an over-.500 record that is not otherwise playoff-eligible would be chosen; if there are no such teams, then the playoffs are restructured with the eligible teams.

I have a hard time accepting the idea that a team incapable of winning half its regular-season games is somehow allowed into the playoffs. And I'd be a lot more likely to watch a playoff game on TV if it wasn't a horrible mismatch.