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I’m not sure why, but Phil Collins gets a bum rap. I’ve encountered several people within my age group who despise him. And the other night, I heard a college-aged woman comment that Phil Collins was the worst musician on the planet. Why, oh why, does Phil Collins rub people this way?

I guess if you don’t like Phil Collins’ commercial style. OK. I’ll deal with that. Even though he has sold more than 100 million records over a couple of decades as both a solo artist and with the band Genesis.

But don’t be critical of his musicianship. The man can play. He is an incredible drummer spending years as the drummer in Genesis. If you haven’t heard any of the original Genesis psychedelic recordings, check them out. Peter Gabriel brought the theatrics as the original singer, and Phil helped keep it real with his percussion. And after Peter left, Phil stepped out from the drumset shadow to take over lead vocals.

He’s not attractive and he knows it. Yet he puts his face on the cover of every one of his solo albums. He can’t dance; just watch the Sussudio video or his duet with Phillip Bailey for evidence of that. But as I said above: the man can play.

His skills range from 70s progressive rock to commercial solo success with records such as Face Value and No Jacket Require. If you don’t like him, you could still probably name three songs by him. So let’s all pay a little respect.

Ten Essential Phil Collins Songs:

• In The Air Tonight
• Easy Lover (Duet with Phillip Bailey)
• I Missed Again
• I Don’t Care Anymore
• Sussudio
• Separate Lives
• Something Happened on the Way to Heaven
• Both Sides of the Story
• Take Me Home
• Groovy Kind of Love (So, so cheesy, yet I can’t turn it off)

This is the coolest story I’ve heard in a while.

I typically dig the songs from iPod commercials. Except for maybe that Eminem one. And I thought the new iPod Touch commercial followed along nicely with picking something catchy and safe. So, I clicked over to Google to see who the song was by.

What I found surprised me.

Sometime in September, an 18-year-old kid named Nick Haley put together his own iPod Touch commercial using video footage from Apple.com. He found a song he thought was perfect (it is), from Cansei de Ser Sexy named Music is my Hot, Hot Sex. He posted his project on YouTube.

Rather than send this kid a cease and desist letter, Apple emailed him to say they wanted it for their own. They re-cut it, got permission from the band and now you are seeing it five times a day.

His original cut commercial is a little rougher and doesn’t include the Foo Fighters. Check out the final cut.

Here’s what I love about this. This student has an awesome story that will get him laid for a couple of years. But also, this little known Brazilian band, CSS, now has their song featured on national TV, and is currently number 30 on the iTunes top 100 list. I think it is great that an English student has the power to help break an obscure band.

This is all, of course, hinging on whether or not this story is real. I hate being so cynical.

Yeah, I called it. Now I know it’s not that special, but now I’m thinking about buying into satellite radio… maybe.

Variety is reporting that XM and Sirius have agreed to merge. This makes total sense for the reasons I pointed out early last Summer.

>> But the thing holding up satellite radio is the “format” battle.
>> Do you want XM or Sirius. Sirius has Howard Stern and
>> Martha Stewart. XM has Opie & Anthony and Oprah. It
>> may sound like deciding between satellite-TV providers,
>> but it’s not. The difference is Dish Network, DirecTV and
>> Cable all show the same channels (Food Network, Bravo,
>> FX, local affiliates…); subscribers are paying for the content
>> delivery. Satellite radio is both different content and delivery.
>> At some point XM and Sirius are going to get together. One’s
>> going to buy the other, or there’ll be some crazy merger or
>> synergistic alliance where subscribers to either can listen to
>> content from both. Then it’ll work just like the cable TV and
>> we won’t think about it.
– Why Radio will never go away from Fej July 28, 2006.

Now all they have to do is figure out how to get local stations incorporated and we’re cruisin‘.

With 50 million sold and counting, Apple’s iPod is the aspirin of MP3 players. Whether its iPod/iTunes one-two punch will maintain its market dominance in digital music playback and sales is unsure. But don’t bet against them yet.

Apple has made a habit of introducing an iPod update about once a year, just in time for the holiday shopping season. And while all of your music is safe, new iPods have brought you more capacity, color screens, digital image viewing, video capability and lower prices. Supposedly some kind of cell phone or wireless connectivity is on the horizon, but let’s not talk about that until September.

But with all of the advancements, there are occasionally new problems. As with the latest 5th generation iPod and the iPod Nano’s well reported propensity to scratch. Simply putting it in your pocket with say a wallet or mobile phone can result in a series of frustrating and blurring scratches on the front screen and the gleaming silver back. So just as it is important to protect your iPod from serious falls, it is important to protect it from minor bumps and bruises, because these are gadgets aren’t free.

Check out Allsop’s Slick Skins as a way to protect the body of your iPod. These work like a cross between a sticker and a vinyl window cling. It wraps around the player protecting the screen, the face and the backside. And whether you want to use a clear Slick Skin to show off your good taste, Allsop offers a series of images to let you personalize your player. Simply put: you can make your iPod look a little different than the other 49,999,999 other iPods out there.

One of the benefits of the iPod is its portability, and your ability to take it on the road, to the lake or white water rafting for that matter. This desire to take your player on your adventures makes sense. That way you can actually listen to Eye of the Tiger while you’re running up the steps of your local library, instead of just humming the tune to yourself.

But if you’re going to take your iPod or digital camera or cell phone out into the wild, protect it. Allsop’s Splash Pack gives you an airtight place to keep out water, sand, grease or Jell-o. But if you’re going to take it swimming, you’ll need to get some waterproof headphones.

The Splash Pack will let you listen to your favorite music in any atmosphere, while giving you complete access to the clickwheel so you can adjust the volume, browse around your playlists or showoff your iPhoto collection. You can even take pictures with your digital camera while it’s in the Splash Pack.

Someone is actually saying that cassettes are on the way out. Yesterday. Not 10 years ago. In 2006. Really. I think we have all seen this coming for a long while, yet oh, the memories. My first cassette was Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 1984. My last cassette was Duran Duran 2 (The Wedding Album) in 1993. Not quite 10 years, but the formative years of my independent developing music tastes. Bon Jovi, Keith Sweat, De La Soul, Anthrax, King’s X, Seal, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Stanley Jordan, Fugazi, the Chili Peppers…

Oh, the memories and the eaten tapes: The dull, warbled sound and magnetized heads.

Long before I worked at Allsop, I owned several of our audio headcleaners. I only used them when it was too late, for example: after my Subaru stereo ate my Queen Night at the Opera tape. But I used them. And you should, too. I’m sure like me, you have a library of old cassettes. Mine is some 300 tapes strong. They are in these great wall-hanging wood shelves, stuck together, wrapped in duct tape and stuffed in the back of a closet. But they cover a very important time in my musical development. Keep your tapes. And keep a cassette deck cleaner with them. Because when treated correctly, your tapes will always sound just as dull and warbled, but they won’t get eaten by your wretched cassette player.