I spent all day Sunday opening one of my birthday presents, a new CD:  Steve Martin’s new album “The Crow, New Songs for the Five-String Banjo.” It was a birthday gift from Bulbous and St. Todd DeCubville and I love it. Even though I haven’t heard all the tunes.

As a matter of fact, I just heard one: Pritkin County Turnaround.

I love it.

I want to be Steve Martin.

Steph wrote a headline about her post being for people who “hate classical music.” It was the classic (ahem, pun intended) overstatement needed to embed a silly video of Itzhak Perlman fiddling around (*cough*) with the Boston Pops.

I commented that I didn’t “hate” any genre of music. Certain works can make me hit the “next” button very quickly, but Pandora.com has revealed I like a lot of different tunes:

• Rock
• Pop
• Alternative
• Cajun
• Jazz
• Raggae
• zydeco
• Blues
• Bluegrass
• World
• Gospel
• Country Western
• Classical
• R& B
• Folk

Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

Steve Martin has played Banjo for 45 years. Of course, most of us know him as the guy with a banjo around neck and an arrow through his head. The anti-matter version of Itzhak Perlman, who most of us know as the guy on crutches with a violin through his neck.

The Crow features special appearances by Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Mary Black, Tim O’Brien, Earl Scruggs, Pete Wernick and Tony Trischka. Not to shabby, eh? (OK, I never heard of Black, O’Brien, Wernick and Trischka before this, but if they are good enough to play with Steve, then OK by me.)

So I can rant and rave about how great The Crow is, from the liner notes to the music, but Martin sums it up best:

This is the most expensive banjo album in the history of the universe and includes possible alternative universes, too.

Buy this album, poor Steve Martin needs the money and adulation.

I can’t wait to hear the rest of the songs!