I suppose this is where I crack wise about my rather unusual status among the bloggers on this project - about how I actually don't look half bad in a pair of red patent leather pumps (don't ask), especially with black stockings and this short, lacy black skirt I borrowed about 10 years ago and never gave back (I said don't ask), but really, I don't care if you don't.

Do you? Let's get a discussion going on this.

If I've learned anything from talking to hundreds of artists male and female over the past five years - and from being in all-male and mixed bands for decades before that - it's that there can be a difference between how and why men and women make and listen to music - not necessarily, but often. I figure there's a dimension to the music of, say, Van Halen or AC/DC that a woman just won't get, even if she enjoys it, just as there is a dimension to the music of Melissa Etheridge or Melissa Ferrick that a man won't get, even if he enjoys it, as quite a few did last Sunday in Newport.

And there's nothing wrong with that. As long as we (by that I guess I mean "I") stay away from privileging the male as universal - the belief, usually unspoken, that if a woman doesn't get Van Halen there's something wrong with her, but if a man doesn't get Melissa Etheridge there's something wrong with Melissa Etheridge - we (I guess I mean "I" again) should be able to recognize, appreciate and contextualize music from whoever.

But I've already talked too much. Here's today's essay question: How many of your favorite artists are women? How big a factor is a performer's gender in how much you like something? Has this changed over the years?

Let's hear it.

"I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You" - The Black Kids

So what's the song of YOUR day?

I presume we've all seen this by now:

And I like it just as much as the next guy. But I've always hated that rendition, and I know that in some corners that's considered sacrilege, but what I can't stand about it is that it is one of the first examples of "slowing things down a little" and "getting serious for a minute" in order to show the supposedly undiscovered depths of a bouncy pop song. Yes, Joe; we actually knew that there was something of substance to that song already. In fact, it's blatantly obvious one could argue that the Beatles' original is all the more powerful for its jaunty musical setting.

And this attitude is only getting stronger. My favorite coffee hangout, Seven Stars on Broadway, is my favorite coffee hangout despite, not because of, their propensity to play (I kid you not) AN ENTIRE SATELLITE RADIO STATION devoted to mournful, "serious" acoustic covers (though some are by the original artists) of pop and rock songs the points of which I TOTALLY GOT before Earnest, Yarly/Chirpy (depending on gender) Guitar-Boy (-Girl) got their oh-so-wizened 22-year-old hands on it, thank you very much. "There She Goes" is the only example that comes to mind right now, but I trust that's enough to give you the idea. I will update with more as I am subjected to them.

UPDATE: "Billie Jean"? "I Melt With You"? Gah!

I loved the Murphys, and while I've never been a big Bosstones fan, I was impressed by their show as well.

But sitting in McCoy Stadium, the same thought occurred to me as at concerts in Gillette Stadium and Fenway Park: I'm old enough to remember when the worlds of sports and music Did. Not. Overlap. Musicians didn't know anything about sports (Steve Smith, our listings guy who sits next to me, is proud and sometimes aggressive in this lack of knowledge); athletes hated musicians and regarded music as a context for rubbing up against girls, and any music that didn't lend itself to that purpose was noise to be turned off. Why did that change?

I asked Peter Gammons from ESPN about that once while I was interviewing him about something else, and he thought it had something to do with the influx of women fans in baseball in the late '80s and early '90s, which partially cleaned up baseball players' acts. It also might have had something to do with a general cleaning-up of the musician's act around the same time.

The old socialist in me says money has something to do with it too - everyone respects a player, no matter what their field. I also can't help thinking there's been a general devaluing of what we used to call the simple, honest, down-home life in the past 30 years, and anyone who breaks out of the cycle of birth-school-work-death is part of some sort of We Did It Our Way club, almost without regard to what they got there for.

I dunno. Am I making any sense? Thoughts?