I've wanted "Pop Life," my weekly online column at OffBeat.com to be a blog so that it can function as a conversation instead of a pronouncement. Since changes to our Web site are unlikely to happen before Jazz Fest, I've decided to set up a blog here as an interim home for "Pop Life."

Coolest new CD to cross my desk: Don't Stop: Recording Tap (Numero). Numero doesn't simply champion rock and soul's underdogs; the celebrates the never weres, and nowhere more than on this collectio...