This weekend rednoW will be hanging out at Calvin College's Festival of Faith & Music. We're pumped for the David Bazan show tonight & Lupe Fiasco tomorrow. We'll be sharing some thoughts here on the shows and workshops as the weekend goes on . Feel free to share your thoughts and comments as well [let us know how The Hold Steady show went!]. You can follow us on our twitter feed at twitter.com/rednow. We'll let you know where we are grabing beers after the shows if you want to come and talk about what is going down.

Maybe you don't find your hands sweating as much at work as an NBA star, but it would still be cool to start off each work day by pouring talcum powder into your hands and ceremoniously throwing it into the air. Not to mention doing so over top of a pretty cool riff.

This is the idea behind Nike's ad hocking their Zoom LeBron VI sneakers. But it's something more than just hyping LeBron James' already great mythology. Sure, the spot begins and ends with LeBron, but the images in between capture the beauty and the question of this ad: Are we all little LeBron's in our own spheres?

The barber, the baker, the street-baller, the student, the 12 year old girl who's been banned from playing in the boy's league because she's too good... and everyone else who is at the game simply watching LeBron... They all chalk up in the same way the NBA's greatest player today does (I don't want to get into an MJ-LeBron debate here).

My wife and I once spent a week in Ireland.  After days full of hiking and exploring we'd spend our evenings in warm neighborhood pubs sipping from pint glasses, making small talk and waiting for the music to begin.  At some point during the evening a few men and women would set down their glasses, pick up instruments, and begin playing.  The musicians and singers were ordinary seeming people whose beautiful and sad songs helped us understand more about the country we were visiting.  Having spent a few weeks listening to Lisa Hannigan's new album, Sea Sew, I have to imagine that she grew up listening to this same music, perhaps playing her first songs at the local pub.

While the merit of things done in the name of social justice are debated elsewhere on rednoW, allow us to point towards another example of it. Dark Was The Night is a two disc compilation that boasts a jaw dropping list of contributors [see below]. Compiled by RedHot, an international organization dedicated to fighting AIDS through pop culture, DWTN is brimming with great sounds. What is so captivating about DWTN is the overall tone and quality of the album(s). The  vibe of introspection, pain and hope is consistent through out the entire compilatioin. What makes this more than just an AIDS fundraiser is the sense that this music was truly affected by the cause for which is was created. The reality of the AIDS pandemic around our globe is infused in the sounds of DWTN. Those infected affected the art profoundly.