From the shallow end of the think tank

I get these ideas lodged in my cranium and they won't go away.

So you know how singers do Tribute to [Extremely Dead Singer] albums? Dawn Upshaw's Jane Bathori thingy, Bartoli helling around with Maria Malibran, Joyce DiDonato's recent...

Wait stop there. Joyce DiDonato, you say? Me, I mean. You probably didn't say it unless you read out loud. Say, what if she were to do another tribute album where, well I'll give you hints and you can guess the theme.

1) She's wearing a white wig on the cover that follows the Texan maxim: the higher the hair, the closer to god.

2) She might also be wearing what one friend of the tribute-object termed "appalling American clothes" if she can be persuaded to doff her habitual good taste in favor of a gamine sense of kitsch.

3) Highlights of the disc might include (oh I'm just giving it away now) Berio's divoon folk song do-ups, a set including Pergolesi's "Ticket to Ride," and perhaps a bonus track of "Surabaya Johnny."

C'mon, you know it'd be great. I can't help it. It's my ipod's fault. You start going down a road of "mezzo...keen intellect...sense of adventure" and where does it get you?







[With all due apologies to the object of this game of vocal paperdolls, which we all like to play.]