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Friday April 25th, 2003

Should Bruce do Buick? You can vote

Bruce Hornsby is taking the year off from touring after touring 16 of last 17 years - his last break for the road came in 1992. But that doesn't mean he's not staying busy. He's playing the occasional show and working on a new album. And he's also considering an offer from Buick to score a new TV commercial featuring golf superstar Tiger Woods.

Hornsby would like to know how his fans feel about it. A survey on his website, www.brucehornsby.com, asks Should he or shouldn't he?" There's also a space for a comment.

Hornsby fans can also voice their feelings in a survey on his biggest fan site, www.bruuuce.com. The question there: Do you like Hornsby's version of "The Way It Is" - his signature hit - better than 2Pac's version.

For background, 2Pac (Tupac) is the gangsta rapper who lived the life he talked about, spending as much time in jail as he did on the charts. He was killed in a drive-by shooting in 1996. 2Pac took the familiar piano riff and the chorus from "The Way It Is" and used it as the foundation for his song "Changes."

On the Bruuuce site, you can answer:

• Love it!
• Hate it!
• Never heard it.

Hornsby's piano riff has achieved a degree of success that he could never have imagined when he debuted it in 1986. It's now been coded as a ring tone for Nokia and Ericsson cell phones.

Download instructions are available online here. Warning: the cell phone version will not have the beautiful, ringing tone that you may be accustomed to hearing from Hornsby and his Baldwin grand.