Celebrity is a strange thing in this country today. You used to have to be talented to get attention. Now you just have take your top off on MTV or be able to sing a Beatles song reasonably well on American Idol. It’s sad because while all these mediocre idiots are making a shit-ton of money for doing nothing, real talent like J.R. Richards flies under the radar.

I’ve been a fan of J.R. since I booked his band Dishwalla to play Babson College when I was graduate assistant there in 1996. The song “Counting Blue Cars” was starting to break all over the radio and Dishwalla’s career was taking off. I thought they were going to be the next great American rock story.

Since moving to Santa Barbara nine years ago, I’ve seen them perform a half dozen times around town. They’re a hometown band after all, and they often give their local celebrity freely to play benefits and community events. And even though most of the world is asking “what ever happened to…?”, I’ve seen them get better and better as they continued to release amazing records. In fact “Opaline” is probably in my top 10 favorite albums of all time.

Last year J.R. Richards released his debut solo effort called “A Beautiful End.” Hands down it was my favorite record of 2009. If you listen to my radio show you know that the title song became a way for me to cope with the death of Mia the Wonderdog back in December. When music is at it’s best, I believe it has the power to heal. That song definitely helped me get through a tough time.

Why am I writing all this? Good question.

As a fan of music, I’m tired of seeing Justin Bieber occupy Twitter’s trending topics list for the last three months. I mean, really, besides being a good looking kid with dumb hair, what has he actually done? We seem to have lost sight of the fact that being famous doesn’t make you talented. There are so many amazing performers and songwriters out there trying to make a living and it’s just getting impossible to cut through all this noise and find an audience. I decided it was time for me to do my part to try and shine a light on someone that I dig.

Oh, and today is J.R.’s birthday and people should say nice stuff about you on your birthday.