Days of Wine and Roses

I'm just kidding about the wine; Roses are the subject of this month's issue. Over the years, in just about every western country, roses or the rose has been a recurring theme in popular music. Perhaps it is because the rose is considered the ultimate floral expression of intense love or emotion. Or, perhaps it is also because of the sexual connotation and symbolism of the female that roses seem to carry. I'll leave the explanation of that to the psychiatrists in the audience. Regardless, no one can deny the attraction of the rose as a subject for popular songs.

Songs about roses abound, there are literally thousands of them that have been produced over the last century. The theme is one that many collectors focus on and some people have amassed huge collections of rose related songs. We will bring you only a few, most of which have been rarely heard over the last hundred years till now. As I create the music for our features each month, I am always amazed at the wonderful discoveries I make on hearing these long neglected songs. We have some of those rediscovered songs for you this month and hope you enjoy all of them.

This month, we are adding a new "In Search Of" article about music printing to our archives for you to learn a little more about the history of printing music and a little about the lithographic process that has produced so many of the beautiful sheet music covers we feature..

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Sibelius have created an Active-X Scorch player that works with MSIE. In March we implemented the Active-X version and MSIE users who click on a scorch link or cover are automatically directed to a download and registration. Once done, you will not have to go through the download again and all MSIE users will have Scorch functionality. It will only take a minute and you'll be glad you did it! We hope you don't find it to be annoying.

Netscape and Opera users may continue to use the Scorch 2 plug-in player available from Sibelius at the Sibelius download site The Scorch player allows you to fully experience the music at our site. Scorch is a plug in for your browser (or an Active-x player) that will allow you to not only listen to our songs but to view the playing, real time on sheet music WITH LYRICS! Though we often find plug-ins to be annoying, this is one that we guarantee will be well worth the time to download and install. If you are not automatically directed to the Active-x version, download the Scorch player from Sibelius right now, then enjoy an astounding musical experience! The player is available for Mac and PC. Just click on the button below to go to the Sibelius site and get your free plug-in.

WEB-TV USERS! We know that the Scorch player will not work with WEB-TV and will continue to provide midi versions of our songs for you. For your added enjoyment we have now added viewable lyrics to our feature. Simply click the "Lyrics" link to see the full lyrics for the song you are listening to.

As with most of our features, this month's is covered on two separate pages to speed your downloads and to avoid a mile-long page. Be sure to see them BOTH to fully enjoy all of this month's music!