Doc Watson

I got my Martin in 1963. I actually got two that year, but the first, a little OO-18, had to go to help bankroll the D-18 I found hanging on the wall at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. The affordable price--$240--was due in part to a bad stain job on the top soundboard, but that didn't really matter to a high school baby boomer and hard-core folkie. The instrument had that tonal balance that Martin boosters rhapsodize about.

CAN we get a little "Remember When" background music, please? Just the right note for "A Celebration of Oscar Fashion," held Jan. 30 at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills. Fashion show producer Laura Ziskin enlisted 1. "Vogue" editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley to curate the first runway show of classic gowns worn by past Oscar winners and presenters. Talley, the voice of Oscar fashion for the "Road to the Oscar" pre-show Feb.

Beginning early next year, North Hollywood's FM Station may play host to a weekly television show showcasing local bands, said owner Filthy McNasty. McNasty would not say which network would broadcast the show--"FM Station Live." He said each week would feature four bands, playing anything from hard rock to country. "It will be an event each week," McNasty said. "There will be no judging, no comments. We'll just let them play."

Anthony Wilson is an easy swinging, open-minded guitarist who offers a rich, compelling sound. He's also a distinctive, appealing composer and arranger who mostly plies his work and his guitar artistry with his A-1 nine-piece band, whose latest album is "Adult Themes." Unfortunately, the band doesn't work that much--it has an engagement scheduled April 14 at the USC Jazz Festival. To pay the rent, Wilson performs with small groups. One of his combo projects is his trio with organist Joe Bagg.

Dionne Warwick, Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder were honored Tuesday for the year's best vocal group performance for their collaboration on "That's What Friends Are For" during the early portion of the 29th annual Grammy Awards ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium. That got "Friends," which was recorded to raise money for AIDS research, off to a promising start in its bid to become the second charity-related recording in a row to win a Grammy for best record of the year.

On this year's release entitled "Lone Soldier" (Rounder), bluegrass picker David Grier surrounds himself with some pretty fine company, including Stuart Duncan, Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Adam Steffey and Craig Smith. His preceding album, 1992's "Climbing the Walls," was a duet with respected mandolinist Mike Compton. And in between his own projects, Grier backed up Tony Trischka, Tony Furtado and Tom Adams on last year's critically praised Rounder "Banjo Extravaganza" album and tour.

If there's one term used to describe a music genre that needs reworking, it's "folk." Even Nanci Griffith, one of the headliners of the Newport Folk Festival tour that comes to the Greek Theatre on Sunday, has a lot of problems with the narrow way the term is often applied. "Pete Seeger defines folk as simply being songs for the people," the Texas native says. "I agree with this. I consider rap music to be folk music, and jazz and country blues to be folk music.

What a ferocious movie "Manhunter" is. In the hands of director Michael Mann, it's a dark locomotive of a film, roaring straight ahead, dragging its audience with it. A psychological detective story, its most lingering characters are its twin sadistic killers. The more diabolically brilliant one is behind bars in a hospital for the criminally insane; the second is still free, killing entire young families in apparently random fashion.

Gillian Welch is clearly a young woman who adapts easily to strange, unfamiliar surroundings. Having been stuck in traffic all day en route to a gig at Manhattan's Irving Plaza, the singer is more than happy to plunk herself down on an old sofa in the club's ladies' lounge--the only room in the venue that's relatively free of noise and chaos--and chat for a few minutes.

With their banjo/guitar/stand-up bass lineup, earnest vocal harmonies, and back story growing up on a North Carolina farm, the Avett Brothers seem like the kind of old-time folk band that emerges almost literally out of the soil. But Scott Avett, who's got a scraggly beard and pronounced Piedmont accent he came about honestly, was not handed his banjo as a toddler while out raking hay. "I'm absolutely blown away by how many 15- and 16-year-olds are playing the banjo," he says of today's surge in interest in Appalachian and acoustic music.