On a whim this evening, I typed “Amazing Grace” into the search field on the web page for my Squeezebox Server – and gave a listen to the five songs that came back. Eclectic doesn’t even start to cover it!

Dropkick Murphys from Live on St. Patrick’s Day from Boston MA

From the seminal DM recording, well into the evening’s live performance, we can only assume that much alcohol had already been consumed by the time this track came up on the hand-scrawled, beer-smudged playlist. The audio is horrible. The crowd is in a frenzy. The musicians – each and every one – are in craptastic form. It’s quite frankly a complete bloody mess of a performance! It’s perfect Dropkick Murphys!

Brian Torff from Union

The album is credited to Laurence Hobgood (on piano, plus Paul Wertico on drums), but this piece is a solo bass performance by Torff. It’s really quite impressive. You can catch a piece of the performance via the album link.

Marcus Printup from Unveiled

Trumpet blazing – as if Gabriel himself were blowin’ the horn – Printup and pianist extraordinaire Marcus Roberts put forth a truly worthy rendition of the old tune.

The Lemonheads from Hate Your Friends

Only a few months out of his teens, on the band’s debut LP, Evan Dando makes an effort to rip out a Hüsker’d version of Amazing Grace. It certainly qualifies as ‘amusing’, but perhaps nothing more than that .

Ladysmith Black Mambazo from Long Walk to Freedom

Emmylou Harris joins Joseph Shabalala’s crew in layering two (or three) musical styles – effectively, if not oddly – onto an 18th century hymn. Absolutely distinctive.

For those of you who have been living in a cave of late this week marks the premiere (three shows only) of O.N.C.E. In Hell. From JJ’s blog post:

This is a dinner with a full performance. The menu and the script were written together, as a play, by a really amazingly creative group of women, three of whom are cooking- as Cuisine en Locale. It’s not going to be a goth night, it is going to be an art-for-arts-sake literary interpretation of the text.

Jennifer, the show’s Assistant Head Chef, assures us this is not about spicy food. It’s ten courses of haute cuisine plus Dante – damn – what could be cooler than that?!?!?

The show goes on on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights this week in Cambridge at the American Repertory Theater’s Oberon theatrical club space. Apparently the Thursday show is just about sold out, but there are still some tix available for Tuesday and Wednesday, so have at ‘em!

The boss and I are counting the hours ourselves!!!

Although some folks are renaissance guys or gals who can do everything, the statistical rates of success for sole founders of tech companies are not attractive. TechStars has been helping fledgling tech companies for over three years now, and we’ve found that the magic number of founders seems to be 2.6 or so. Yeah, it sucks to be the .6 guy .

Finding co-founders however is tough. Really tough. These relationships are more like marriages than work relationships. I’ve certainly spent more hours with at least one of my repeat-offender co-founders than I have with my wife!

Recently, a program called Founder Dating emerged in CA. A group of smart folks here in Boston decided we needed something like that in our local ecosystem, and are making it happen. The first event is behing held next week Wednesday 12/16 at 1800 ET at MS N.E.R.D. You can learn more and sign up here.

So if you have a great startup you’re working on and you need a technical co-founder, or a marketing co-founder or a bizdev co-founder, sign up! If you’re co-founder material and are looking for a new startup to sink your teeth into, we want to hear from you!

it’s not about win or lose
‘cuz we all lose when they feed on
the souls of the innocent
blood drenched pavement
keep on moving though the waters stay raging
in this maze you can lose your way
it might drive you crazy
but don’t let it faze you no way

sometimes in my tears I drown
but I never let it get me down
so when negativity surrounds
I know some day it’ll all turn around because
all my life I’ve been waiting for
I’ve been praying for
for the people to say
that we don’t wanna fight no more
they’ll be no more wars
and our children will play

one day one day one day
one day one day one day

- Matisyahu from “One Day” from his latest album Light

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of speaking on a panel at the Foley Emerging Technology Conference entitled “Prospering in a Volatile Market: an Investor Perspective” along with way smarter investors than myself, including Paul Maeder, Nina Saberi, and Michael Skok. If you’d like to listen to the session, it’s archived on that first page/link.

As we were putting the panel discussion together our intrepid moderator Gabor Garai broached the topic of whether economic downturns create particularly more stressful times for entrepreneurs. The question made me stop and think for quite a while.

The topic came up again earlier this week when I was addressing the Northeastern University ACM chapter as we talked about, among other things, “what to expect” when starting a start-up.

Here’s the thing: start-ups are inherently risky, and risk creates stress. There’s no way around those two facts.

Sometimes risk creates fun stress – like when you’re about to bungee jump off a bridge. Mostly though, risk creates garden variety “stress stress”. Are you going to be able to make payroll next week? Is some competitor about to crush your nuts? Are you going to make the quarter’s numbers? Is the product going to work? Is your top engineering team looking to leave? And so on and so forth.

Some things are absolutely “more stressful” in a downturn, such as raising money, and closing sales. QED. However, while I won’t argue it’s a zero-sum game, there is a yin-and-yang as it concerns the stressors created by the economic environment.

Successful technology start-ups usually exist longer than the peak or valley period of most economic cycles. If you were crazy enough to start a newco in the early 90s, you had a tough time raising money and getting going. Once you hit the late 90s, the economic world was nearly inverted. Now you were frustrated you couldn’t hire great people or find decent offices or keep track of the dozens of copy-cat businesses VCs were funding daily! Your stress level didn’t materially change between those two time periods – the types of stress just changed.

The nice thing about economic cycles is that you get to pick when you start your company – you can effectively “pick your poison” .

Start-ups are stressful. No way around it. If you don’t like stress, go find a nice 9-5 at the RMV or something.

Things worthwhile generally don’t just happen. Luck is a fact, but should not be a factor. Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Negligence or indifference are usually reviewed from an unlucky seat. The law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Luck is the residue of design.

- Branch Rickey

Quite possibly one of the finest mash-ups ever constructed. All props due Divide & Kreate FTW! Okay, I guess Willie Nelson and U2 and MARRS deserve some props too .

WELL DONE  > WELL SAID