Pop Music

Inquirer critic Dan DeLuca writes about pop music and culture at .

PLAYING RAGTIME, pianist Max Morath entertains at the Keswick Theater in Glenside. His show on Saturday, titled "Living a Ragtime Life," mixed music and Americana with a slideshow. Morath once called Thomas Edison the biggest name in pop music. His reasoning: Where would pop music be without the phonograph?

@ In the Mix: Dan DeLuca writes about pop music and culture. www.inquirer.com/ inthemix @ On Movies Online: Steven Rea offers short takes, outtakes, information and interviews on films. www.inquirer.com/ onmovies @ ArtsWatch: Peter Dobrin tells you who's making news, noise and splash in the Philadelphia arts world and beyond. www.inquirer.com/ artswatch

Recently rehabbed Demi Lovato is leaving "Sonny With a Chance," the Disney Channel TV series that made her a star. In a statement yesterday, Disney Channel said that it respects Demi's decision to focus on her music and "not immediately" return to acting. Demi told People that returning to the show would be bad for her recovery, and that she wants to make music her priority. After all, nothing breeds normalcy like a pop-music career.

You're going to hear sooner or later, and feel rather old when you do: The Beatles' first single, "Love Me Do," is now in the public domain, at least in Europe. How could that be? Though not the most durable Beatles song, it hardly seems to be from another time, though given the passage of 50 years, it most certainly is. Remember '60s hysteria? The kids who wrote "Beatles" on their contact lenses because they couldn't think about anything else? The girls who saved the Kleenex tissues into which they'd wept at the Shea Stadium concert?

Although The Books draw on elements of avant-garde classical music and sound sculpture, modernist and postmodernist theory, William Burroughs-style cut-and-paste methods, and glitchy electronics, they see themselves as creating folk and pop music. Guitarist and vocalist Nick Zammuto, who grew up outside of Boston and now lives in the Berkshires, and classically trained cellist Paul de Jong, who grew up in Rotterdam and now lives in New York City, blend found sounds (such as a recording of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" or a radio report of Salvador Dali creating a painting)

?uestlove of the Roots with Keren Ann The festival's pop music highlight teams Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, drummer and bandleader of the Philadelphia hip-hop band the Roots, with Keren Ann Zeidel, the Paris- and Tel Aviv-based chanteuse who just released her sleek sixth album 101 . Along with unnamed special guests, ?uesto and Keren Ann will present "Philly-Paris Lockdown," which promises to mash up hip-hop and early-20th-century composers such as Satie, Debussy, and Stravinsky.