Since my
Celtic Music: Lenses lens on Squidoo was named a Lens of the Day on March 16, I was pleased to see it get into the top 100 lenses on Squidoo. It got up to number 12 and hovered at 12 and 13 for over a week. While it was great to break the top 100 after almost a year and a half on Squidoo, its position at 12 and 13 tantalized me. Would it break into the top 10?

I decided over…
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Added by MobyD on March 30, 2009 at 17:22 —
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When I got up this morning (which is the middle of the afternoon for you folks on the other side of the pond) I was just expecting to get in a new blog post about a Squidoo lens I'd published yesterday. But when I checked my email, I noticed I had a lot of comments posted somewhere on my Squidoo lenses. It turned out the dozen comments were all on my
Celtic Music: Lenses lens which had been named…
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Added by MobyD on March 16, 2009 at 18:10 —
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For the past couple of weeks I've been pretty busy developing a series of 16 Squidoo lenses for Maggie's Music, an independent label started over 20 years ago by hammered dulcimer player Maggie Sansone. The label specializes in what has been termed "chamber folk." While there are many solo recordings on the label, the artists often get together on each others' recordings as well. The music draws on Celtic traditions of Ireland, Scotland and other areas, with a good dash of American influence…
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Added by MobyD on December 29, 2008 at 15:41 —
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I've been pretty busy over at Squidoo.com in the past few months. I now have 35 lenses (web pages) on Celtic music, plus 15 Celtic music video showcases. The video showcase number has fallen recently as I've decided to incorporate some of the videos into the lenses themselves.
I made a lens for Celtic Christmas music by individual artists or groups and another one for Celtic Christmas music compilations. Working on the first one led me to create a lens for Bonnie Rideout, a…
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Added by MobyD on November 14, 2008 at 19:30 —
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Just about the time I made my last post here almost two months ago, I realized if I worked at it, I could get to 100 lenses (web pages) on Squidoo. I made it, so now I'm not only a Giant Squid since July 1 (50 lenses required and I had that many by late May), but I'm also in the Top 100 club. I created a bunch of Celtic music video showcases, made up of YouTube videos to help get to the 100 goal. I've been really busy updating stuff and trying a few…
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Added by MobyD on October 14, 2008 at 23:50 —
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I completed my second Squidoo lens today (Tuesday), a lens for
Dervish, an Irish traditional music group. I now have a total of 34 lenses on Celtic Music covering 24 artists and groups, two radio stations and eight video showcases.
Lots of lens-building today and I'm running low on things to say, so I'll just ask that you visit my
Danú and Dervish lenses, leave some…
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Added by MobyD on July 17, 2008 at 6:31 —
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Several days ago I added Danú to a list of Celtic music groups I wanted to do a Squidoo lens for, and this morning (which is early afternoon Irish time, btw) I set about to get it done. I had it about 75% complete when it was time to take a break and listen to and watch Louise Molony's show on LI. As she often does, she announces she'll be featuring information about an artist or group. Her choice this week: Danú!
I swear, you can't make this stuff up! As she was giving her…
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Added by MobyD on July 16, 2008 at 23:29 —
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I've finally made a Squidoo lens for
The Chieftains. I kept putting it off because I know they've got a ton of CDs out there and there always seemed to be other artists I wanted to build lenses for. Then I got involved in creating web pages at my own
Have Pun Will Travel website - see my last post for more information about that.
Yesterday I got caught up on making pages for my…
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Added by MobyD on June 30, 2008 at 1:46 —
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I've signed up for Twitter, the social networking site where you can post what they call "tweets" - short messages of 140 characters or less about what you're doing. People can sign up to follow your tweets if they like, just as you can follow others.
I imagine some people spend a lot of time posting tweets. Seems like it would be something teens would get into so their friends can follow their every move. I'll be using it now and then. One reason I signed up is so I can put out…
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Added by MobyD on June 12, 2008 at 3:14 —
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Over the past few days I've added three new lenses to my Squidoo set of Celtic Music lenses. There are now 18 lenses for artists and groups, plus one for
The Thistle & Shamrock,
LiveIreland.com, and the
Celtic Music Lenses lens which lists all the others.
I was a bit surprised that there wasn't more…
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Added by MobyD on May 28, 2008 at 0:07 —
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If I'd set out to do the Celtic Music lenses in any kind of order, the lens for
Planxty might've been among the first. The four original members, Christy Moore, Donal Lunny, Andy Irvine and Liam O'Flynn will be familiar to anyone with much interest in Irish music They helped popularize the bouzouki, a Greek instrument introduced to Irish music by Johnny Moynihan. Moynihan was a member of the group Sweeney's Men when he introduced it, and…
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Added by MobyD on May 20, 2008 at 3:11 —
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I'm glad I continued work on the lens for
Loreena McKennitt, one of the six lenses I'd done basic work on several days ago, early in the day. While it was very warm yesterday, today was downright hot, with temperatures in the mid-90s, well above the average high even in mid-summer. Considering most of our days have had below-average temperatures since last September, it was…
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Added by MobyD on May 17, 2008 at 6:44 —
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I was only going to do one lens today, the one for Enya. But as I was looking up information for her, I realized she hasn't released as many albums as I thought, and somehow I found myself looking at what Amazon offers for Silly Wizard.
I got
Enya's lens done in plenty of time to get to work on
Silly Wizard's. Amazon is offering five of their albums directly from them,…
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Added by MobyD on May 15, 2008 at 6:54 —
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Thanks to the influence of liveIreland.com, I've tended to focus on Irish music for the Celtic music lenses I created first, although I did get the lens for Scotsman Alasdair Fraser in there. Over the past few days, I've created three lenses for the Scottish groups The Tannahill Weavers, Capercaillie, and The Battlefield Band. The page for Celtic Music: Lenses was updated as well of course.
Normally, I'd been creating one lens and seeing it through to publishing before starting on…
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Added by MobyD on May 6, 2008 at 6:19 —
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My Squidoo lens for today is about the Irish/American band
Solas. It's yet another one inspired by music heard on liveIreland.com. The band can play straight Irish traditional music with the best of them, but specializes in giving it their own twist on it. From the start, they've garnered a lot of praise from mainstream media and Irish/American publications. Based in the United States, they give American audiences a chance to hear…
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Added by MobyD on May 2, 2008 at 23:11 —
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My latest Squidoo lens in the Celtic Music series is for the Irish traditional band
Lúnasa, another group I discovered by listening to liveIreland.com. They released their first self-titled album in 1999 and it became an immediate best seller in Ireland, and was named one of the top ten albums of the year by the Irish Echo in the US. With the release of a "best of" album this year, they now have seven to their credit. The band tours…
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Added by MobyD on May 2, 2008 at 4:00 —
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With this latest Squidoo lens, I'm back to focusing on performers.
Alasdair Fraser is a fantastically talented player and teacher of traditional Scottish fiddle music. I learned about him from a coworker around 1989 - he had a tape of The Road North playing in his car while we rode home from work one day. I was impressed, and the next January, we went to a Burns Night celebration at Sanders Theater at Harvard University to see him…
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Added by MobyD on May 1, 2008 at 1:13 —
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My latest Squidoo lens is a natural choice:
liveIreland.com, the site and station that got me inspired to create Celtic music lenses in the first place. Needless to say, I listened to the station throughout the creation of the lens, except when I was checking out the YouTube videos on the page. The first video is Klara McDonnell singing "Ride On." The other five I chose by going through the listings of videos that members of…
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Added by MobyD on April 28, 2008 at 0:43 —
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The following post is a copy of my blog entry on my
Blogspot blog. I had a few links in that post, and have copied the relevant ones here.
Altan
My newest Squidoo lens is Celtic Music: Altan and it can be found
here. I just published it, so changes may occur.
Altan is a great traditional Irish group that began in the 1980s with Belfast flute player…
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Added by MobyD on April 23, 2008 at 21:45 —
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