I was in a local sheet music store for the first time today. It's found down an inconspicuous brick alley, one level below the street. It's poplulated almost entirely by sweet wise-looking little music-teacher women. Being on the tall side, I felt like a vertical phenomenon there in that low-ceilinged room, and was asked several times to help fetch a book from the upper shelves. The amount of music represented in that small space -- and the amount of work it would take to learn a fraction of it -- is staggering.

Looking through piano books, I saw a title that spread a big midwestern grin across my face: The School of Velocity, a classic by Szerny (you pianists are smiling at my naïveté). Naturally it's been taken as a band name, since that was my first thought. Charles Baxter even wrote characters that liked the real-world band.