FISTFULAYEN

As I wrote in more detail a while back, I’ve been using custom guitar picks as business cards since the late 90s. I have to say, it’s pretty rewarding to hand one of these out at a meeting. Not only do you get a “hey that’s pretty cool” kinda comment, but you often get a genuine “shit, why didn’t I think of that” sort of a-ha moment.

Feel free to steal the idea (with citation would be nice). In the old days I ordered from Legend Picks (and they haven’t changed their site a bit since then) but the last two have been from Steve Clayton and I have to say, the Clayton picks have a much better, more textured, less likely to slip out of your hand when you’re practicing like Dweezil sort of feel.

Special thanks to Peter Brambl for turning these around in record time. Peter rules, btw.

Speaking of shredding, the first person to name both the author of this lyric and explain who K.K. Downing and Glen Tipton are wins an out-of-print CD version of Gregory Isaacs’ (crucial) Cool Ruler and Soon Forward (how’s that for multi-genre?):

Cassius Clay was hated
More than Sonny Liston
Some like K.K. Downing
More than Glenn Tipton
Some like Jim Nabors
Some Bobby Vinton
I like ‘em all

ian

In the back of a cab on the way home from LAX on Friday, I was living an iPhone commercial. I was watching Bad Brains Live @ CBGB’s 1982 on my iPhone when Liz Heller called. While talking to Liz Dave Conway was text messaging me about meeting me at my house to leech my FIOS. Suddenly my wife, Julie, calls. Going from being entertained to flipping around and conversating with three people in different ways all with this one slim little device was very post-modern. I was an embarassing caricature of myself, and I wish I could say that was unusual.

But that wasn’t the point of this post. The point of this post was to get you to buy this Bad Brains DVD. The best hardcore band of all time did three nights at CBGB’s starting on Christmas eve in 1982 and the DVD collects the best of those performances. For example:

I moshed my brains out in the back of the cab watching this. Mouthed every word. Watching this footage it’s really hard to believe this moment in time existed. Thank god it did.

At the same time I bought the Bad Brains DVD, I also bought the Minutemen documentary, “We Jam Econo”, which I haven’t watched yet but I did watch the acoustic jam on the second disc at the urging of Greg Miller:

Also magical moments never to be recreated. D. Boon RIP.

Enjoy.

ian

As if I needed another reason to love my new job or feel like I’m the luckiest CEO on the planet, Peter Gotcher kicked off my first Topspin board meeting by presenting me with a custom Topspin skateboard.

Finally, my own pro model?

Thanks to Tim (throwing the shaka), Shamal, and Peter for making me feel so damn welcome. And love to my entire Topspin crew, y’all are incredible and I’m fortunate to be a part.

ian

Sometimes people ask me, what’s Justin doing?

No one believes me when I tell them the truth: he’s creating his own audio editing suite a la ProTools — he’s written an incredibly flexible piece of software, called REAPER, which is a 3.2MB download (!) and is $50 shareware. When I tell people the reaction is usually that I must be crazy or lying to them, because a) it’s not possible, and b) if it was they’d have heard of it. Well, as it turns out it is possible, Justin is really doing it, and you haven’t heard of it because it’s just him and Christophe spending 100% of their time writing code, playing with the result, and making music, and 0% of the time marketing it.

But don’t take my word for it, read this review in Electronic Musician which was the inspiration for this post.

Download REAPER for free, here.

Thanks Alan for sending me the link to the article.

ian

Holy shit. I can’t believe I’ve never seen this video. Found this evening when looking for a Styx video for Zoe’s playlist.

My dad and I listened to this song over and over when I was little. In junior high Kris Kurtz and I lip sync’d this for the talent show. In wigs, of course. But our wigs didn’t rule half as much as these dudes’ wigs rule. And when I say wigs I mean moustaches.

A house in the country with girls, guitars, and motorcycles? This is my dad’s dream come true. This one’s for you, pops. Dig.

Actually, dad, I have one more for you. Check this shit out. Seger System KILLING it (even though I think he’s lip syncing cuz that’s what they did on TV in those days).

(thanks to Sam Velde for sending me that one)

MAXIMUM R&B FROM THE MOTOR CITY. Don’t front.

ian

I finally put up a months-old episode of Zoe Radio tonight. We were going to record a new one but Zoe’s baby sister Lucinda was throwing up instead of going to bed so this is all we got done. Next week, right, Zoe?

Zoe’s Show, 2-7-2008

Visit www.zoeradio.com.

ian

[photo from Travis Keller’s Flickr stream]

Thanks Trent Reznor for blazing the trail.

Everyone is talking about his latest free download and his previous digital foray, but don’t forget his work with Saul Williams (statistical transparency included) and the marketing of his last record for Universal, which was by far the craziest marketing endeavor in the history of recorded music (if you follow one link in this post, follow that one). As Bob Lefsetz pointed out yesterday, it’s not about a press release, it’s about connecting with your fans and giving them something to believe in. And Trent has the attention to detail to see it all the way through. I’ve never met the guy but he seems driven.

What he’s doing doesn’t just take balls, it takes awareness and intelligence. Congrats, man. Keep it comin’.

ian

ps - the $300 Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition NIN Ghosts box showed up at the office last week and it’s AMAZING. by far the best album package I’ve ever seen in my life.

If I had more time (time is the reason I haven’t been posting much lately) I could make a list of 100 reasons Steven rules. But to save time I’ll just put two out there tonight.

#1: He’s printed a book collection of questions and answers from his Dear Abby site, Sex and The Single Ape.

#2: He’s selling a Trader Joe’s Cashew on Ebay. Click through and read the questions and answers.

Thanks, Steven.

ian

I’m sure you’re thinking I’m just some sappy dad who writes about his kids and you wish I’d get back to writing about metal, misogynistic rap, or some combination thereof, but I have to share a milestone in my nineteen month-old’s development: singing songs from Pulp’s This Is Hardcore.

That’s right, she doesn’t just like Cheech, she also asks for Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse, and Elizabeth Mitchell by name and tonight, when I was singing her songs from This Is Hardcore like I do EVERY SINGLE NIGHT (that I’m home) she sang along.

As I’ve confessed earlier, I sing Pulp songs at bedtime because the songwriting is genius and they never get boring to me. For whatever reason, TV Movie is a favorite. It’s sweet but not simple and isn’t a stretch as a bedtime ditty.

Lately, Lucinda hasn’t always wanted songs at bedtime. Kids change and on a few recent nights she’s decided she can do without my terrible singing. “Night night. No song.” OK, no problem, not terribly shocking considering my vocal range. But tonight, after having skipped a nap entirely, she was into it. I had her full attention. I sang a couple of kids songs from Taj Mahal’s kids record and then rocked the familiar TV Movie as the encore. “Without you, my life has become, a hangover without end,” I started. Then Lucinda picked it up, “A mooooveeee may fore teevee,” she chimed in. Guess she’s been paying attention the last year.

This one’s for you, Lucinda.

Pulp - TV Movie
Buy the CD on Amazon (no seriously, if you don’t know this record, get it and sit down with the lyric sheet for a few years. hedonistic, sad, hilarious, genius.)

I finished with “Dishes” and then she cried when I left the room, saying “more song, more song”. Aw shucks.

Speaking of Cheech, we received an advance of the new Cheech kids book through an inside source. Review forthcoming. Pre-order here.

ian

[foto by Bryan Bruchman, found on Flickr]

Yeasayer - Wait For The Summer
Buy MP3s at Amazon

I’ve been using Yeasayer as an example of the power of music blogs for a few months now. Last night my claim got a nice, unprompted validation from the band’s tour manager.

Yeasayer is a great example of how the Internet has changed the music business (IMHO) because all the points in the argument are unquestionable. They’re talented and unique. They’re somewhat accessible (your mom wouldn’t likely say “turn that noise off!” if you played it for her) yet no one would fool themselves for half a second into thinking they’d ever get radio play. Their debut from last year is a truly great album that has no hope in traditional promotional channels. Yet they were blog darlings of 2007 and they’ll play to small yet packed houses all over the world (they just started a tour with Man Man and the first four nights have all been sold out). Yet if the album had come out 20 years ago we’d just now be discovering it and wondering “how did this slip through the cracks in the system?!” We’d be trying to get the band to re-form so we could finally appreciate them live.

Thanks to music blogs I, like many others, heard about Yeasayer last year and last night finally got the opportunity to see them live here in Boston. They were great. The aforementioned tour with Man Man is definitely the must-see show of the spring. Do not miss it.

[foto by Bryan Bruchman, found on Flickr]

Man Man - Top Drawer
Buy MP3s at Amazon

Between sets my friend Mark Kates introduced me to preeminent music writer Joan Anderman (ten years at the Boston Globe) and I rambled on about the music blog movement and in particular how I think it’s real but still very early and therefore filled with business opportunity. This isn’t a big shocker, I’ve been saying this to anyone who will listen for months.

Then, just a few minutes later, Mark and I found ourselves at the merch table chatting with Yeasayer’s tour manager (Mark is friendly with these guys, he manages MGMT and Yeasayer and MGMT toured together recently). The three of us were staring at the wall covered in posters for upcoming shows at The Paradise, talking about how much good music there was to see, and how business is for bands like Yeasayer. “It’s the blogs,” he finally said, unbeknownst to the conversation Mark and I just had with Joan. Mark gave me the “well, there you have it” look. Full circle.

This is all interesting to me because while I did a lot of “music blogs are the future of music discovery” pushing at Yahoo!, it was always met with credible resistance because the size of the addressable market is still undeniably small. Most of my favorite music blogs don’t even show up on the Comscore radar, Hype Machine just finally broke the 1MM unique users/month mark, and the entire space is just a few million uniques per month. But when you have bands touring and making money making their art based on buzz generated by sites like Brooklyn Vegan, do the absolute numbers matter? I don’t think so. The fact that a new connection between people who make music and people who love music is made, one that’s outside the mainstream and in many ways more efficient, is the shape of things to come. This is all part of the “1000 fans” meme. The numbers may be wrong but the sentiment is dead on. Empowered consumers and unlimited choice changes everything, from who the gatekeepers are to who the tastemakers are to where the audiences spend their increasingly scarce attention. And it’s good for culture. I love it.

Of course as I type this the dude in front of me on the plane is watching old Dukes of Hazard episodes on his laptop. Maybe he didn’t get the memo about unlimited choice?

ian