Music

Tom McCauley didn't plan on making house calls when he started in the music business. As a recording engineer, McCauley made a good living working out of the many commercial studios that had grown up throughout the Los Angeles area to serve the music, film and television industries. But with the advent of software that allows high-end recording from a personal computer, the 53-year-old Sherman Oaks resident has traded the quasi-industrial atmosphere of the commercial studio for his customers' garages or living rooms.

With the lure of every song for 99 cents, Apple Inc.'s iTunes upended the retail establishment to become the nation's top music seller in less than six years. But the digital media powerhouse said Tuesday it would follow one of the oldest tenets of capitalism: The more someone wants something, the more you can charge for it. Apple finally bowed to a long-standing recording industry demand and agreed to sell music downloads at three prices -- 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29.

Science lies at the back of everything real, the world we walk through and breathe in and see and hear. Although there are those who prefer to draw lines between the sensory, the spiritual and the scientific, who regard the investigation and hopeful explanation of phenomena as the end of poetry and mystery, it strikes me as an oddly self-limiting approach, given that science itself is a beautiful thing, and the best scientists are poetical thinkers.

Elvis Costello and Elton John are joining forces for a talk-and-tunes series to air on Sundance Channel. "Spectacle: Elvis Costello With . . ." will be a 13-week series on which Costello plays host to artists and other personalities for an hour of discussion and performance. "This is a wonderful opportunity to talk in complete thoughts about music, movies, art or even vaudeville, then frame it with unique and illustrative performances," Costello said in a statement. John, who also will appear, will be an executive producer of the series, which is scheduled to premiere in December.

Everyone has had the experience of disagreeing with a critic, but do critics ever second-guess themselves? We asked Calendar's critics whether there are any reviews they regret. One in a series of occasional articles. -- Since 1976, I have enjoyed the music of Philip Glass. Before then, I did not. "Einstein on the Beach" changed everything. Experiencing the five-hour opera with its repetitious score performed without a break, no real text and a staging by Robert Wilson full of unforgettable images may not have been the full-blown religious conversion for me that it had been to some.

Barack Obama may have put the spring back in America's step, but Debbie Allen has found a way to give it rhythm. The Emmy-, Golden Globe- and Tony Award-winning choreographer directed the music video -- which made its debut Tuesday on MySpace -- for newly released pop track "Obama Rock." (The video can be seen at www.thenotsosilent majority.com/privatelisten /obamarockvid.html.

The chief songwriter and founder of the band Boston has more than a feeling that he's being ripped off by Mike Huckabee. In a letter to the Republican presidential hopeful, Tom Scholz says that Huckabee is using his 1970s hit "More Than a Feeling" without his permission. A former member of the band, Barry Goudreau, has appeared with Huckabee at events, and they have played the song with Huckabee's band, Capitol Offense.

Newspapers have always written about the nation's disasters -- but so have balladeers, enshrining death and heroism and crime in songs about virtually every newsworthy event: the 1889 Johnstown flood, the last train ride of engineer Casey Jones, the sinking of the Titanic. These songs were popularized in sheet music and phonograph records, and some of the mournful tunes later wound up on the radio.

Whether it's jazz, blues or a bracing Finnish folk song, music may do more than soothe nerves and inspire a little air guitar. It may help stroke victims recover specific verbal and cognitive functions. In a six-month study of 60 recent victims of stroke ages 35 to 75, researchers in Finland found that exposure to music for at least one hour a day improved verbal memory by 60%, compared with an 18% improvement among participants listening to audiobooks.

Seeking to become el grande in the growing U.S. Latin music market, Universal Music Group on Thursday said it had agreed to buy Univision Communications Inc.'s record division. The purchase price was nearly $140 million, according to two people close to the negotiations who asked not to be identified because the financial terms were confidential. The acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval, would more than triple Universal's share of the Latin music market to about 49%.