Go Go GoChords

Who is Leslie Chase?

No relation to John Galt, about whom you've probably already heard or read.

	No relation to the Chase Manhattan Bank, any more than I am related to Max Factor.  And yet, as a talented singer and an exquisitely gifted songwriter, she guided the Chase Manhattan Band through several decades of occasional performances in that very same borough.  I attended, I'm happy to say, a good many of them.  I remember most of the songs very well, and not just because I have a tape.  You could hear me yelling "Talk To You" in the audience the way the call "Free Bird" still rings out in concerts today.
	No relation, so far as I know, to Lynne Cassouto, her co-author of Tina, The Teeny Tiny Terrier, which, disguised as a childrens' cartoon book, managed to charm even this crusty old cynic.
No relation to Jerry Yang, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, and others in the crop of internet million- and billionaires.  But there's at least the possibility that she will soon be mentioned in sentences similar to this one because she has just created a web site that is as universally appealing as the ones for which those household names are responsible.
No relation to me, despite this blogitem-encomium which might make it seem that she is.

What Is He Up To?

Just what I seem to be up to.  I am praising Leslie, who, although no relation, is one of my older friends.  She would object to that appellation, so let me clarify that I mean we have been friends for a long time.  Let's also pretend that this picture was taken a couple of weeks ago with my camera that unaccountably still uses "film."

The occasion for this blog'o'praise is blatantly commercial.  The web site alluded to above is being launched this week, and crustily cynical though I often am, I think that she's onto something big.  Her site is for musicians, and songwriters in particular.  Since I am neither, I'll say a few words about my comprehension of it.

It is called GoChords.

It invites you to

In other words, it is a social site for musicians at which they can write and share lyrics, songs, suggestions, and criticism.  I tried it out myself.  I wanted to commemorate the slow dispersion of the heap of mulch, and came up with this:
Bye bye mulch.  Hello parking space. 
I think the Everly Brothers were part of my inspiration.  If you want to collaborate with me on this song at GoChords.com, we can split the proceeds.  The fact that I even tried my hand at lyrics shows how infectious I think this site will be for real performers and writers, not a musician manqué such as myself.

This is what the GoChords home page looks like:

It even has almost enough blue.

Why the Enthusiasm?

I had the opportunity to test the site.  It works smoothly and intuitively.  I suspect that every guitar player on earth could and possibly will benefit from using it.  (It's also ukulele friendly!)  Do you know how many guitar players there are on earth?  I don't either, but I ran out of fingers just counting those in my rather sparse "contacts" list.  Leslie is hoping (and I am expecting) that a goodly number of them, goodly in this case meaning "over a million," will eventually be part of (and contributing to) the GoChords user community. 

Take a look at the site and see if you aren't as sanguine as I am about its possibilities.  If you are inspired to contact Leslie, remind her that she should record "Talk To You" in a professional studio and release it.  Even if you've never heard the song, you can trust me on this.

Oh Yes

She's no relation to Ingmar Bergman, either.

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