Liquid Sunshine

Listening Harder

2010-08-30T14:47:00.001-04:00

I was at Run for Cover this past weekend (well, it was a few weeks ago now) - it's an annual benefit concert of local DC bands covering pop bands from the days of yore. This year featured In Ex Sexy, Tron Petty, and some bands whose names I can't remember who covered C & C Music Factory (complete with non-ironic shirtlessness) and a great version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by somebody. Total fun - because how could it not be? - and done without camp, which is what makes the night so great to watch.

My friend was commenting on the sound and I found myself explaining that pop/Top 40 music, as a whole, sounds different because of how it's mixed, how the music from the 80s sounds different because "current" sounded different at the time (which explains why things from that era sound "dated" now), how the soundguy was probably used to mixing current indie rock bands and this explained the burying of the keyboards and the general noisiness of the sound. (Of course, the guys also gets props because he was mixing eight different bands in a row and it's not easy satisfying that many musicians.)

I learned how to record and mix sound in college. It's not a skill I use much these days but whenever I hear something like Run for Cover, I'm reminded of the power of the sound engineer. When I saw the Silversun Pickups a few months ago, the show was meh and not particularly memorable except for the songs at the beginning and end of the show when the the wall of sound dropped away. The wall-of-sound approach certainly has a place but it obscures the song and can make music sound the same if the songs aren't well-written or interesting. Anyway, Silversun Pickups sounded good in places because the soundman (and yes, they're almost always male) threw his aural spotlight on different instruments and balanced those sounds against each other in perfect tension - and without the wall of sound - you could actually hear that harmony.

A sound engineer can't improve a song, but he/she has an unprecedented ability to shape a song by choosing where and how to focus the listener's attention and shaping (or not) the sounds of each instrument. Even listening to the results from contests like Radiohead's for Reckoner shows the basics of what you can do with that sort of control over a song. (I didn't listen to them all but this was my favorite of the ones I heard.) For those interested in what it used to be like with high-stakes razor blades and tape, check out Geoff Emerick's book on engineering The Beatles. Speaking of The Beatles, if you ever want to play "Where's Waldo" with music, The Beatles are great because you can listen to those songs on headphones a hundred times and still hear something new that you haven't heard before.

As I said, I did this work for a while so I have a personal interest but I also like to throw my own spotlight on this hidden artform where I can.

Ethics vs. Law

2010-04-30T21:06:00.001-04:00

I was surprised by Randy Cohen's Ethicist column in the recent Sunday New York Times Magazine about the ethics of media piracy. Since the woman who wrote in had bought a hardcover copy of the new Stephen King novel and the publisher had decided to withhold the e-book version (to increase hardcover sales), the columnist decided her piracy of the e-book was illegal but ethical.

The dilemma this woman faced isn't unique though it's typically couched in terms of fairness or usability. However reframing the debate about digital media format-shifting as ethics vs. legality gets to the crux of the issue for me.

Today I was making a mix CD and a few of the songs were iTunes files. There are easy ways of breaking digital rights management protection on iTunes files, but the ones I tried weren't working. I had bought the songs - so the artists were paid - and I wanted to share them but couldn't because of the DRM. Which it's illegal for me to break. Now, if I'd ripped my own CDs, then turning these songs into mp3s would be easy and questionably-legal-but-ignorable. In short, there's no way to legally share those songs. For those that try to answer this need, well, the experience of muxtape is a cautionary tale.

Once you start thinking about all the ways people use music, it's not hard to think of other cases where what seems like a perfectly reasonable consumer desire is illegal. What about DJs who buy vinyl and then pirate mp3s? Some manufacturers bundle mp3s with vinyl to cater to that audience, but the rest are violating copyright law. Even President Obama most likely violated copyright law to give an ipod with some showtunes to the Queen of England.

Predictably, Randy Cohen's remarks inspired blog posts with lots of comments wherein each person placed the line between legality and ethics in a slightly different spot. They're an interesting bunch of comments though precisely because so many of them recognize that there is a difference between legality and ethics.

What most people want to do with their music is pretty simple: listen to it, share it with their friends (not the world), and listen to it again in another place/on another gadget. Readers will want essentially the same thing. It's odd to me that any industry would proactively choose to make their consumers become pirates to get a product that they're selling.

To be continued as the film and book world wade into the bog...

Positive Feedback

2010-04-16T16:53:00.000-04:00

I went to a couple of shows recently where I found myself thinking about how much venue choice impacts the audience, which in turn impacts the musician's performance.

First show in question: The Holmes Brothers played The Barns at Wolftrap. The Holmes Brothers are friends from my days working at their management/booking agency Concerted Efforts. I used to do advance work on their dates, traveled with them when they went to Singapore, and I'm a fan as well so I go whenever they're in town - to say hello and get my musical fix. They're a blues/gospel/R&B trio known for their three-part harmonies, a killer take of Amazing Grace, and a style that zigzags between sacred and secular. The Barns is a beautiful, great-sounding, converted barn in Virginia not far from DC that holds 300ish in a seated room. I'd never been there before because it's not accessible by public transport.

The key word in that description is seated. The more concerts I attend and put on, the more I believe there's no better way to kill the energy in a popular music performance than to make everyone sit down. Even if you can have a drink in your seat.

Of course, whether the venue is seated or general admission is only one of many factors that go into which venue an artist plays: which venues are available, how big are they, where are they, is the date standalone or part of a longer tour, how is the tour routed, who else is playing in town that night, how recently has the band played the area, what's the ticket price, who's the intended audience...and hardly least of the factors: how much does the venue want to pay the artist.

The second show in question: I saw Yeasayer at the 930 Club a few days later. Yeasayer is the "it" band of the moment and the show had been sold out for weeks in advance. (I scalped a face value ticket in front of the club the night of the show.) The place was packed with people who wanted to dance. But there was no room to dance because it was too crowded. This isn't strictly the club's fault because some government third party sets capacity on a performing space, but have you noticed that club capacity according to fire code is always so much more than seems possible?

So much of live music is about the exchange of energy between musician and audience, where each feeds the other to create a unique experience. Which is why I get annoyed when people are forced to chair dance because dampening that exchange of energy doesn't serve either artist, audience or venue.

Refreshed

2010-04-01T17:41:00.001-04:00

Back from New Orleans trip #6 and it feels refreshed this time. As in previous posts, I was there to hang out with a smart, thoughtful, committed group of musicians about activism for a few days culminating in a fantastic rock show at One Eyed Jacks.

Our opening night party at Mother-in-Law Lounge had the best pick-up band of all time with George Porter, Jr. from The Meters, Terrence Higgins from Rebirth Brass Band, three members of Bonerama, keyboardist Brian Coogan, a crawfish boil, and lots of dancing.

Other highlights: meeting David Montana, the Second Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe (read more - my photos were taken with permission), visiting Ronald Lewis and a Mardi Gras Indian and Social Aid & Pleasure Club Museum called The House of Dance & Feathers and po-boys. Leah Chase made the best dinner I've ever had at the legendary Dooky Chase restaurant. From there the night segued into wild dancing to the Stooges Brass Band (listen here) at the Hi-Ho Lounge and a nightcap of beignets and coffee at Cafe du Monde.

I know it's easy to forget about New Orleans when it's been nearly five years since Hurricane Katrina and there have been earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Iran, Pakistan, and China, a tsunami in Southeast Asia, not to mention all the smaller and man-made disasters that don't inspire telethons. But New Orleans is ours - the music community's and America's. It's the birthplace of so much American music and we stand to lose a part of what makes us unique if we let it slip away for lack of effort.

Just over a year post-storm, my first trip was so devastating it was hard to imagine that the sky was ever bright over that city. I'm sure it was sunny but my memories of that trip look like this.

This time around I could see progress. Brad Pitt's and Global Green's houses don't look as lonely as they did last time. There is, of course, still plenty to do and there's plenty of anger that it's still undone. There are still people living in Houston and elsewhere. The economic downturn has no doubt slowed down the recovery process. Still, there were also fewer houses with spray paint on them, more traffic, more people out, the sounds of construction, and a feeling of normalcy and hope all around.

Pick-a-Band

2010-03-24T01:34:00.001-04:00

Maybe it was a symptom of not being at SXSW, but I've been craving live music lately. And not just the bands I know either.

In addition to seeing a bunch of different live shows last week, the other night I nearly made it out to a non-predetermined club to see whoever was playing. I don't think I've ever shown up at a club for no reason. There's always been a reason - I like their music, a friend wants to go, I work for them, I need to check them out, I was given free tickets. As I said, I nearly made it out, so I don't get full credit, but it felt liberating to not have a plan.

On the planned side, I saw the weirdest live music performance I've ever seen in the form of Tanya Tagaq, an Inuit throat-singer. I've seen and admired the Tuvan style of throat-singing, but this was different altogether. Imagine that sound you make when you stretch first thing in the morning but while inhaling and beatboxing and sounding tortured. And imagine that you're Bjork and you hug everyone and you really like steaks. I sound like I'm making fun of her, but the cool thing about her was her sincerity and lack of irony. That and she ended the night by saying "Thank you for accepting weird." I was enamored.

The following night at Rock and Roll Hotel I enjoyed the crack band and countryesque croonings of middle opener April Smith and the Great Picture Show while remaining underwhelmed and disappointed by the droning from indie darlings Here We Go Magic - kind of like Arcade Fire but with fewer hooks. Also liked The Dig at the 9:30 Club who I've been meaning to see because they're friends of a friend and Port O'Brien. Portugal. The Man headlined, but by then I was too hungry to hang around; did learn that they're from Wasilla, Alaska though.

Now I head off to New Orleans for another few days of talking about activism with musicians and a rock show at One Eyed Jacks.

I guess the pick-a-band adventure will wait until another night.

Music as Gewgaw

2010-03-08T21:05:00.000-05:00

I admit I live in the bubble of the embattled independent music world. Given that, it was an interesting experience to spend two days in the Corporate Music World when I attended Digital Music Forum East on February 24 and 25 in NYC. Some thoughts on my foray into that strange land:

- Music-as-most-definitely-a-business: I was looking forward to hearing David Pakman, formerly CEO of emusic, now with venture capital firm Venrock, because I'm a subscriber and emusic's obviously been looking to grow their audience and their bottom line lately. The noteworthy point for me of his interview was that, contrary to the many emusic subscribers who cried foul when they started offering some Sony titles last year, Pakman describes emusic's niche of independent music as a business decision. They took the path of least resistance - with the independent labels who were more willing to license to them at decent rates - and built a business model around them. Which says to me, that while the indieness-as-godliness image of emusic might still be "authentic", it's an image built to support a business model, not the reverse.

If that's the case, there's nothing wrong with that since it enabled the rise of one of the most successful digital music retailers ever...but I'd bet it's an affront to all those people who hold emusic as a standard-bearer for the indie aesthetic (whatever the hell that means these days). If you think I paint too strong a picture, try googling "emusic sellout" - it's not all about this topic, but it's a prominent theme.

- A guy from MTV Music was asked why they don't play more music videos. That's probably the most asked question to all MTV employees ever. He talked about how the channel is about more than music videos. And since the schedule has all seven hours of music videos programmed, from 3 AM - 10 AM, I agree. But why not own up to it? Just say that "My Life as Liz" garners more viewers than music videos ever did. No, they're not saying that in so many words but they did quietly drop the words "Music Television" from the logo recently.

- Branding, image, markets, profits, brand penetration, so much about music as a thing to sell other stuff. For example, a question asked from the stage: "do you need music to brand a product or just an engaged audience?" Now I recognize that many indie bands would happily license their song to Sears to fund their next tour. Making money to further your career isn't selling out - these days, it's surviving, which translates to winning the game.

My beef with this whole line of discussion is that it's not about music, rather it's about how to make McDonald's/Proctor & Gamble/Jeep more successful - with the incidental help of X artist/song. Throughout my two days there was very little discussion about paying artists, many complaints about licensing costs, and I'd almost swear I saw the audience smile kindly and condescendingly at the one guy who spoke from the stage of signing artists to his label for their music rather than their marketability! As they all acknowledged, it's a rough business to be in - now and ever. If you're not in it for the music, then why bother? Go sell tires instead already.

It's like that call I got once from some guy wanting to know how easy it was to make good money making music. He seemed to expect me to have a roadmap handy. *Smile* *Sigh*

Sipping from the Garden Hose of Words

2010-02-28T21:26:00.001-05:00

To lessen the feeling of being perpetually behind, I've been trying to be more intentional with my literal and virtual piles of stuff to read.

I currently have magazine subscriptions to Outside, Cook's Illustrated, and The Atlantic. I also sold my name to TapeOp's mailing list in exchange for a subscription. At the beginning of the year, I swapped Paste Magazine for The Atlantic.

As someone that works in music, it feels odd to no longer receive print music journalism in the mail. But I found I wasn't looking forward to reading Paste anymore since they're so focused on adult-contemporary genres. That, plus having so many sources to find music now, meant that reading it didn't seem necessary. The last music magazine that I remember wanting to read from beginning to end in one sitting was Musician magazine. What was cool about Musician magazine was just how many genres and musician-related issues they covered. Maybe it was a slight foreshadowing of the work I do now?

In terms of long-form reading, I've succeeded in consolidating the "to read" list to one online list on goodreads.com. I still add more stuff to the list than I read - but at least I know what I've been meaning to read.

The blogs, however, are killing me. Can't keep up. Too much content. Not enough time. And the brain only takes in so much in one sitting. Do other people just let all the daily knowledge wash over them? Do they use services to sort through it all? Even though I'm slowly unsubscribing, I think I'm only managing to swap the stuff I don't care about for less stuff that I care more about -- which only makes the problem worse.

Too much stuff to read! Magazines! Blogs! Books! Ahh!

Ode to Snowstorms

2010-02-10T22:08:00.001-05:00

I love snow. Even today, on my fifth day of being held semi-hostage by two consecutive snowstorms - I still love snow.

For me, snowstorms are about trudging down the middle of the street in a city that's as quiet as it's ever going to be because lots of snowflakes have forced me and everyone else to give in to something they can't control.

It's not only that snow covers bare ground and purifies the landscape and gives us days off, but it's what a good snowstorm does to people. I come from one of those places where strangers don't talk to each other unless it's about snowstorms or the Red Sox in the playoffs. In DC, like in Boston, snow brings people together. My experience has been that during snowstorms people are kinder to each other - shoveling, pushing cars, helping people over snowbanks; they're more patient - driving slower, standing in lines at the grocery store; they have more fun - sledding, skiing, snowmen, forts, snowball flights. Kindness, patience, and the ability to enjoy life can get lost in the daily grind of "accomplishing things" and snowstorms give people the chance to rediscover and embrace them.

Fair Use Now

2010-01-26T14:10:00.000-05:00

I attended Public Knowledge's World's Fair Use Day last week - an entertaining and informative day-long exploration of the state of fair use and how technology is pushing people to invoke it for new purposes.

Fair use is a principle of copyright law that entitles the public to freely use copyrighted work for commentary or criticism without needing permission from the copyright owner - full definition with examples here and here. In order to determine whether a work is fair use, a judge weighs four factors: 1) the purpose and character of the work, i.e. is the use of the work transformative or educational; 2) the nature of the work, i.e. is it fiction or non-fiction, published or not; 3) how much of the copyrighted word is used and is it the heart of the work; and 4) what does the use do to the value of the original work.

Stay with me here, because I know it sounds like a pretty opaque concept at first, but it's used easily and without mishap often. Basically, a song parody or a book review that includes a quote takes advantage of the fair use principle to use the original song or the quoted material, respectively. (Notable exception: Weird Al Yankovic gets permission from recording artists and licenses every song he parodies rather than claiming his songs as fair uses. Check out artist reactions to Weird Al's requests to parody. Kurt Cobain's reaction is priceless.)

What I find so compelling about fair use is that it sits exactly at the place where the law and popular culture and digital culture are colliding. As has been noted umpteen times in the last few years, we live in a remix culture, and remixed work relies upon source material, and source material requires money to create. So the law struggles to untangle the need for creators to make a living from the need for the rest of the public to inform, criticize, comment, and mashup. And that's what fair use deals with.

Most of the programming I saw at World's Fair Use Day dealt with multimedia uses of copyrighted work that were critiques/commentaries that were clearly transformative to me. For example, Jonathan McIntosh's So You Think You Can Be President is an overt critique of the political process but it's an even more inciseful commentary once you read about what he's trying to accomplish below the comedic surface. The same holds true for his Buffy vs. Edward from Twilight (accompanying explanation here).

Fair use in multimedia can be a murky proposition, but seems to be an easier case to make once guidelines are established. That may be wishful thinking on my part, but it's still a far easier argument to make than fair use in music.

After all, practically speaking, how do you recognize a critique or commentary of a song that's being sampled? How do you delineate a non-transformative use of a sample from one that is transformative? I consider Girl Talk, for example, to be transformative in how he juxtaposes and recontextualizes samples, but is that fair use? Cardozo Law Review writes two fictitious opposing opinions, Idolator stands firm, and the New York Times even weighs in.

The existence of that gray area is exactly why I find the topic of fair use so fascinating: sampling in music today creates art that's valid, valued, and culturally relevant but the law has no standardized way to recognize it - imagine it as music in its own private Guantanamo Bay.

All that's not to say there aren't ways to deal with sampling in music. There are, but unfortunately, they're clunky and expensive and not conducive to the creative process. There are also creative remedies to improve the current sample clearance process. But those remedies are almost beside the point if musicians have to circumvent fair use - the system set in place by copyright law for precisely this purpose - to create music that doesn't flout copyright law and and allows them a chance to make a living from their art.

Extracurricular

2009-12-12T10:31:00.001-05:00

About 20 minutes after I turn on my laptop and start writing, my machine has begun crashing and flickering like that fluorescent light flicker that gives you a headache. I've decided not to take it personally and let the Genius Bar live up to its name on Monday. We shall see.

Anyway, here's some cool stuff that's made an impression lately:

- A few months ago, I saw Martin Atkins of Killing Joke & Ministry on his book tour behind Tour:Smart. Book tour is a misnomer since he didn't talk about his book - which goes into great detail on how not to kill yourself on tour and the reasons why being a tour manager can be one of the worst jobs ever. He did talk a lot about marketing yourself though and had some fantastic examples to pass around. I thought these were really cool: 1) Moldovar's CD with a working light theremin, song titles written using circuitry, a headphone jack, and a built-in speaker, which altogether make the CD into an instrument of its own, and 2) Shogun Kunitoki's picture vinyl with animation loops that you can see if you get the strobe light that goes with the vinyl. I have a hard time caring overmuch about the music when there's so much extracurricular fun to be had with the packaging. As long as it's not Top 40 crap.

- Last month's issue of Outside is outstanding with a timely article on the perils and challenges of fighting in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

- Clone-themed entertainment I've enjoyed lately: Dollhouse Season 1 and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. There's definitely a creepy factor to both of these, but it's a good creep.

- Music Hack Day featured lots of boys slinging code for a couple of days to make music apps talk to each other. I'm still unclear on the need for the table full of soldering irons. But still, it's always informative to look at the music industry from a heretofore unknown angle and see how the consumer challenges get fixed. Check out the hacks.

- Stevie Wonder performing Superstition on Sesame Street. Money says that was the only time Cookie Monster got name-checked during a performance of that song.

- The Muppets redoing the music video of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Mama! Mama?

- The Puppy Channel from this episode of This American Life. That is, unless you think we've gone over the cuteness deep end?

Missing Pieces

2009-11-30T23:55:00.001-05:00

I went back and forth with my friend Shane last week having one of those political science discussions that could've gone on forever - and still might - and ended with us agreeing for the most part.

Shane argues that the progressive movement lacks strong enough convictions to hold Democrats accountable. The conservative movement has the Federalist Society, Ayn Rand and the Christian right to ground its ideas independent of the GOP's political desires. The movement demands allegiance for its votes and its money and in turn, the GOP slavishly listens. For better or worse, the movement has succeeded in kicking out those whose beliefs differ - thus, no more moderate Republicans. This winnowing might eventually undo the GOP if the conservative movement's demands exceed its vote-getting power...but for the moment, the marriage thrives.

The Dems don't have the same ideological obligation to a movement. While the conservative umbrella gets smaller and more exclusive, the progressive umbrella gets ever bigger. I've always liked that the progressive movement has a bigger umbrella and can handle dissent within, but if the term "progressive" is too broad, it loses meaning - the Stupak amendment to the House version of the health care bill is the latest example of the problem. If a cohesive progressive movement had held Dems accountable on the defense of a woman's right to choose, then poor women wouldn't have been sacrificed at the alter of politics. But if a movement doesn't demand or can't agree to demand an action, then why should a political party strictly uphold any belief beyond its own political ambitions? After all, where are traditional Democrat voters going to go?

I bring this up because I've been gaining new respect for the conservative movement while reading Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine which looks inside the current Supreme Court, profiles the justices, their opinions and legal philosophies, the legal strategies that worked and didn't, and chronicles how the conservative movement gained influence in the Court. It's been a fascinating look at how the groundwork was laid and built upon for decades for the confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

After seeing the history laid out, I find myself chagrined that the best the progressive movement seems to have is "Palin 2012" and "Down with the crazy Christians!". I exaggerate, but it was easier to be a progressive when it was solely a reactive movement that could blame everything on Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Now, Dems have power and I supposedly agree with them because I don't agree with the GOP...and yet Bush's policies are still in place on trying detainees held at Guantanamo, the definition of torture, warrentless wiretapping, a woman's right to choose, and don't ask don't tell policies on gays in the military. I'm disenchanted. And I wonder who actually represents me. Well, no one represents me since I'm a DC resident, but that's another blog post.

So, who represents me? Before I can answer that adequately, we need more political parties - after all, I might align with the Dems but if they're not advocating on my behalf then who am I going to vote for instead? And most assuredly, we need election reform - voters should never be put in the position of voting "strategically" as it was artfully called in the 2000 presidential election. So, while I've certainly been talking about convictions, I see the lack of convictions as evidence of structural problems. Consider that a promise for part 2!

And thanks, Shane, for the links and the arguments.

Sugarcane Candles

2009-11-16T23:41:00.000-05:00

I had my second annual Divali dinner last month (I just realized that when I say it like that, it sounds like a real tradition!). It's a tradition I really enjoy keeping, though my dinner parties don't resemble the Divalis I grew up with.

For one, it wasn't called Divali. It was Divari with the accent on the first syllable. The Indian New Year I grew up with had lots of family and the homemade sweets that you could only have at that time of year and maybe little presents for the kids - or maybe I'm making that part up, not sure. My grandparents' apartment was always alit with candles to keep away the evil spirits and the doorways were decorated with wreathes of flowers and scrolled designs on the thresholds made of colored powders. Everyone endeavored to get along for the night and usually did. Which meant they'd all get together and urge on the child of the house - me - to do the prayer/benediction/ceremony that involved walking around the house with a homemade sugarcane candle chanting the Aireu Maireu (anglicized obviously). I'd wonder at how the piece of sugarcane with the cotton ball wick turned into a candle, get horribly bashful about the chanting, thrill to the moment and then ask for another of the sweets. All the food was always delicious - not just because of the holiday but because my grandmother was a great cook.

Cooking is one of the arts that I wish I had cared to learn from my grandmother when she was still alive to teach me. She died about 10 years ago and it was a few years before I realized the lost knowledge. But I still missed eating good Indian food so I started cooking anyway using cookbooks. It wasn't the same, but I had to start somewhere and I got better the more I cooked. After moving to DC, deciding to have the first Divari dinner party was a big deal - would we end up eating anytime that night? would it feel like something was missing if there weren't sugarcane candles and chanting? what if someone was allergic to something? and of course, would it taste good? It all came together beautifully though and that's when I started branching out beyond Indian food for people other than myself.

I'm not experienced enough with Indian cooking to be the intuitive cook that my grandmother was but, in getting to a place where I enjoy sharing my cooking, I feel like I've reclaimed some of what was lost. Except the sweets. I need to figure out how to make those to complete the lesson!

It's probably just as well that I forget to take pictures at my dinners since these and these are much, much cooler.

Civic Duty

2009-11-10T00:32:00.001-05:00

I finished a week long jury trial last week - my first time serving on a jury. The defendant was charged with possession of a controlled substance - pot - with intent to distribute and possession of an unlicensed, unregistered firearm - a semi-automatic Tec-9.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to serve though I'm left wondering how anyone ever gets convicted. My fellow jurors and I were told after we delivered a verdict that the first jury to hear this case couldn't come to a decision. We came close to doing the same, but after endlessly discussing the definition of "possession", we ended up compromising enough that I doubt anyone but the defendant was satisfied. Of course the law needs specific rules, but I'm dismayed at how much of the law is about technicalities and finding the right one to suit the occasion. Technicalities serve both sides, but it's also easy to see how an inexperienced public defender can be overmatched.

I was more bothered by the semi-automatic than a little pot, so convicting the guy on possession of less than $200 of pot stung a bit. But without more evidence there was nothing more to do. Despite popular rhetoric on the sanctity of the Second Amendment, actually getting caught with a gun you're not supposed to have is apparently much more perilous than such small quantities of marijuana.

I also hadn't thought about the impact of having a law student on the jury. It was like having a medical student around when they're learning how to diagnose people: everyone's sick with an exotic condition...rather than just having a cold. The same was true for this guy: why didn't the cops watch longer, were they profiling the neighborhood, maybe the defendant was passing candy bars, how come they didn't find this and that piece of evidence. All valid questions, but you can only judge what's there.

The best part of the experience was talking to both attorneys after rendering a verdict and learning their opinions of their cases. The defense was resigned to losing the drug charge but both attorneys thought the case for the weapon was leaky. It felt very much like being inside an episode of Law & Order and watching the attorney work a little sleight of hand to obscure the missing evidence. These people weren't Sam Waterston, but in retrospect the diversions and the glamours weren't hard to see.

Anyway, my $4/day travel payment is in the mail and I'm off the hook for at least another two years.

Bookshelf: Genes & Julia

2009-10-24T14:57:00.000-04:00

I've been reading Steve Olsen's Mapping Human History, which looks at genetics through the lens of ancient history and describes possible migration patterns that brought the human species from the couple of people we're descended from who lived in Africa 100,000 - 150,000 years ago to the 6.7 billion humans we are today.

The big reveal: A few mutations and 150,000 years and it turns out we're all descended from a half-human, half-Cylon hybrid kid named Hera - if one were inclined to mix their media like that. But really, he spends a lot of time methodically disproving the teabagger-types and talking about how, genetically-speaking, we're all much, much more similar than we are different and how race is a social construct and not a genetic fact. The actual surprise is that that's still news.

One of the more interesting sections examines the biologically Jewish population, a distinction that it wouldn't have occurred to me to make. The discussion also reminded me that I've never read the Bible and maybe I should. Ultimately I found the cultural implications of migration more interesting than the biological ones, but still glad I read this.

Also, just finished Julie Powell's Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. For the most part, I'm inspired to stay far away from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But then, I'm biased right now since I didn't like Julie Powell's book - maybe the movie's better? It got better the less time she spent feeling sorry for herself.

I'm feeling burnt still from the last few months of craziness, so I've been burying myself in books and the television I've missed. On the reading, I think Freakanomics is next. And I've finally caught up to television on Mad Men and How I Met Your Mother and now have a crush on Neil Patrick Harris. Dollhouse next?

What's Next?

2009-10-12T15:12:00.000-04:00

Well, it's done. FMC Policy Summit 2009 is over. I'm very proud of the conference we put on. I'm also in an unfamiliar place personally as a result. This multi-day, three-ring circus of a conference has been my goal for a few years...and now it's a goal attained.

Graduating high school and college count as milestones reached, but those were expectations as much as achievements and weren't choices I made. Moving to DC and making a life here is a personal goal that I've also seen through (four years today, as a matter of fact!) Organizing this conference was different though, because it was the first long-term professional goal that I chose and embraced.

What also makes this moment unique for me is that there isn't an obvious next step. When I graduated from high school, the next step was college. When I graduated college, the next step was getting a job that had something to do with college. Those were questions and answers that were anticipated and prepared for. But I didn't anticipate these questions to spring up right now: What's the next big goal? What drives me professionally now? Are incremental goals enough for the moment?

All questions I'll be figuring out how to answer. But don't mistake me, this is a very cool place to be. Having decided to do something and then succeeding is a point of pride and glee.

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As to the conference itself, here were a few of the moments that stand out:

- The sight of the line to get into our SRO crowd on the first day. I know we put on a great conference, but I never really believe other people agree until they start arriving
- Finally getting to see Copyright Criminals; trailer here
- Rob Kaye's hair (one day we'll get him to dye/shave the FMC logo into his head before he arrives)
- We had to get a campus group to relocate their canned food drive when we arrived which resulted in statements like "I gotta go get rid of the food drive."
- Maps, directions, signs, maps, more directions, bad directions, driving directions, what if they take our signs down?, no clue how to direct you here, and the wonderful volunteers who took it upon themselves to stand at strategic locations and direct people
- Sorta making the live video feed work and "beaming" Peter DiCola in for the sampling panel
- The rock show...and having already seen it before so missing the last half wasn't so tragic
- Scene from Office Space + the room above + two turntables = Mike Relm soundchecking on Tuesday morning
- Our closing night cocktail party at the Eighteenth Street Lounge
- Thursday evening after the Summit at 7:46 PM, when I shut my computer down and realized the marathon was over

Circling

2009-09-10T23:57:00.003-04:00

Busy since FMC's Policy Summit is only three weeks away. Ack! The more conferences I attend, the more I realize I like ours - it's not just smart, but it makes an effort not to talk into the vacuum. Among the many cool things planned, I'm really looking forward to the screening of Copyright Criminals, hearing Radiohead's Brian Message, and our panel on IP, privacy and network rights. I guess I've been looking at the title long enough that "Up in Your Bits" is no longer snicker-worthy!

Among my recent thought-provoking, smile-making, huh?- or cringe-inducing moments online:

The Family Guy maybe inspired 179,997 indecency complaints in March. Yeah.

Short and pithy take on the effect of Facebook and Twitter on us. And longer and more insightful take on "white flight" from Myspace to Facebook.

Having watched The Contrarian daily declare war on Comcast, this ode to Netflix is nice to see. That plus the crazy vacation policy, well, I'm jealous.

I like.

Food-related: Cereal-packaging fun. Hubby-hubby. Absolut's newest flavor is Absolut Boston - I wonder if you end up with that awful accent after drinking it? I can't help but cringe at "Fat Princess", a video game that involves saving a princess who the other team has made hard to move by feeding her lots of cake. But I'm also just weirded out. Really? What's the command for feeding her cake? Circle-up-up?

Visiting whattheinternetknowsaboutyou was a little creepy. Not surprised however that browser history is so easy to detect.

Alrighty, off to bed with Guillermo del Toro's The Strain, i.e. non-chick-lit vampire novel. Jury's still out on whether the payoff will be worth the lengthy build-up.

Yes, No, Maybe

2009-08-31T23:58:00.003-04:00

I was watching this TED talk by Alain de Botton on success and failure and how meritocracies don't actually exist and got to thinking about the question "what do I care about?"

It's a question I ask myself a lot lately - because it helps me organize my mind and because knowing the answer makes it easier to articulate what I want if I've sifted through the choices already. Since I'm in the midst of my semi-annual event-related frenzy, the question is timely and allows me to loosen up on my micro-managing tendencies. Most importantly, it lets me define success. Botton, whose Art of Travel I really wanted to like when I read it on vacation last month but it didn't resonate for me - meanders his way more successfully in this talk through snobbery, envy, and the comparisons one makes in modern society. Interesting stuff with an equally insightful conversation in the comments.

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In non-work-related things: I caught The Phenomenal Handclap Band, who mercifully didn't feature a full chorus of hand clapping. To be honest, I can't remember what exactly they sound like - the review I just read described them as "indy soul rock jam-core" which could be just about anything - but the crowd - including the two tiny little schoolteacher-looking-ladies-complete-with-pearl-necklaces next to me - and I had a great time dancing and I only paid $5 to get in.

Looking forward to seeing Numero Group's Eccentric Soul Revue and my friend Stew's musical Passing Strange as a concert film by Spike Lee. I will never be fortunate enough to see Tsunami, but instead I've had the good fortune to work with both Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson.

Speaking of Jenny and Kristin, come to FMC's DC Policy Summit (my baby) on October 4-6, 2009 if you're a musician or at all interested in the music industry's future. Register! Apply for a musician or student scholarship! Watch the live webcast! Come to the shows! Watch the film screening! Have a few drinks! Talk too much! What? Ain't that enough???

Kickin' It Live

2009-08-14T09:27:00.002-04:00

On the live music front lately:

I caught Run for Cover, a DC tradition where local bands remake themselves into crack cover bands for a one-night-only benefit show. These musicians knew, too, what make cover bands work as entertainment: complete knowledge of the material and total commitment to it. After all, making fun of the music is only funny if you're playing it properly. Otherwise, you're just being lame. Confession: I saw Bon Jovi in high school when Extreme opened for them at Great Woods outside of Boston. I might have thought the music was cheesy, but they were excellent performers because they knew how to put on a show...and it was the same thing with my friends David Brown and David Durst of Poor but Sexy who were part of the covering band. The Runaways and the Top Gun reenactment were also great; sad I missed Casper Bangs leading the Bee Gees finale though.

Tinted Windows (a "supergroup" - a term I hate more and more), in contrast, excelled at playing OK filler songs. Maybe if they'd stuck to covering songs by each of their bands - Cheap Trick, Smashing Pumpkins, Hanson, and Fountains of Wayne? The only upshot to the evening: US Royalty, the openers, who were worth seeing again.

I don't have plans to see any other live music at that moment, but I am trying to produce my first show for FMC's conference in a few months. I know booking shows and audio and marketing and budgets to varying degress, but putting it all together is new and a little scary since I'm trying not to lose money and put on a show from scratch, i.e. not in an existing venue. But then what's to worry about? It's not like the concert business is losing so much money that they're giving away tickets for free? Hah.

Barcelona: No Straight Lines

2009-08-05T00:41:00.001-04:00

When you're going through airport security in the US, you often see signs telling you not to joke about bombs or otherwise try to lighten the asinine process. When I was proving to the disarmingly good-looking gate agent in Madrid that I was eligible to fly to the US, he was simultaneously looking at passports and conducting a poll of the best food to eat in Spain.

That story exemplifies for me what made Spain different. Airport security has fun. There's more PDA on display than I've seen anywhere else: from teenagers making out to middle-aged couples grabbing ass - and I do mean grabbing and squeezing - to the elderly couple who'd probably been married a lifetime sneaking kisses while schooling passerby on how to dance the flamenco. The street entertainment never stops: the guy who keeps the soccer ball off the ground to the guy dressed like the alien from Alien pretending to bite people for spare change to the person who is inexplicably headless with his head on a table next to him. I was wandering around one night after dinner and came across an emo-girl with a faux-hawk and Docs who was blowing enormous soap bubbles to earn spare change.

Even the city's most well-known art feels looser. There's no Mona Lisa primly displayed behind glass - instead there's Antoni Gaudi's fantastical buildings with no right angles. There's the Picasso museum where he recreates Velazquez's Las Meninas paintings in multiple cubist renderings. I admit I don't get Picasso and get tired of assembling his cubes to find the complete image but I enjoyed watching his art evolve over the course of his life from straight forward portraits to cubes that focus on the whole rather than the parts.

Some other highlights:
- The food! Predictably, the farther off the tourist track, the better and cheaper the food. House wine was as cheap as water in many places and I got used to drinking it with every lunch, the egg sandwiches were an excellent breakfast, and tapas were so easy and delicious. I tried all sorts of random edibles: local hard cider, fried codfish balls, some killer blue cheese, all sorts of funny sausages, fish of various sorts stuffed into things, rice cooked in pig's blood, panther's milk which a kindly bartender handed us when we were paying our bill. (The explanation took some doing: "Por favor, que es esto?" "Leche de pantera." "Que es leche de pantera?" "Leche de animal." "Leche de que animal?" "Pantera." "Pantera?" "Si, pantera." "Ah, si, si, panther.")

- The Tour de France: I got to watch in person the end of Stage 6 into Barcelona and the beginning of Stage 7 leaving Barcelona en route to Andorra. The tour has become part of my summer routine - for reasons that would need another post to explain - and this was the one of the nicest surprise moments of scheduling I discovered. Very cool moment to be that close to the action.

The notable lowlight was having all my electronics and my passport swiped in Barcelona on my second day. Other than my photos, it was all thankfully replaceable though caused some hassles at the time. Between my cousin Elizabeth getting sick at the end of the trip and my lost stuff, I ended up visiting all the places one doesn't want to go on vacation: police station, consulate, and hospital.

The free and easy way about Barcelona didn't translate that well when things weren't going well: my police report was full of typos and they couldn't have found me even if they had found my things. The place where my bag was stolen was unsympathetic and told me I should've paid better attention and handed us our astronomical bill. But then, Elizabeth's trip to the emergency room was completely free - a courtesy that the US certainly doesn't extend to travelers.

I'm still replacing crap, but the upside is my new iphone! Elizabeth's photos, too, will arrive eventually.

Anyway, that's it, folks. I seem to have fallen out of the blogging habit while on vacation, but my brain is now considering blog-worthy topics again, so I'll be back on a more consistent basis.

Morocco: At the Beach

2009-07-23T09:43:00.003-04:00

Or maybe I should say "Le Moroc: A La Plage". My experience was the same kind of disconcerting as a foreign language that moves too quickly and keeps slipping away. It was the same when I was trying to write in my travel journal: lots of moments but no narrative. Which is probably why it's taken me so long to write this.

This trip is the first time I've really enjoyed all that goes into a beach vacation: getting overheated in the African sun in Cabo Negro, cooling off in the Mediterranean, finally learning how to swim (well, the doggy paddle and crawl), eating beignets on the beach, watching people get fleeced to take camel rides, spending long afternoons reading, speculating on the fishing boats on the water every night, and - one of my favorite parts of every day - late nights spent gossiping on the porch with Mark, Kristin, our cousin Elizabeth and our pilfered beers. We ate on a different schedule in Morocco than usual, which seemed to accentuate the length of the days: a light breakfast in the morning, a bigger lunch around 3 or 4 pm, and a snack with mint tea and pastries (le goutte) around 10.

The best of the day trips was having my father show us the Tetouan of his childhood. You remember that Sesame Street skit called "This is Your Life" with Guy Smiley? The afternoon felt just like that. The fantastic maze of the medina there had spice and thread and fabric merchants as you'd expect, but odd bits of the west, too, like an outdoor television display showing the NBA.

Other day trips were in some ways more memorable for their journeys than for the towns themselves. Chaouen was a beautiful little town all done in blue white-washed paint at the top of a mountain. In addition to beautiful crafts and the only tourists I saw anywhere in the country (probably because the town's a main hashish producing area), the drive to and from was a sliver of a mountainside road of switchbacks that reminded me of traveling through Asia.

A few days later, we went to Cebta, a Spanish protectorate that's simultaneously a half hour and a whole world away since it's technically part of the EU. The border crossing to Spain was helacious and took two hours in the dusty, honking-filled lines. The town itself had some fine architecture, but might have been more interesting if we hadn't spent so long getting there.

By then, we'd been in Morocco a few days and the ways in which women participated in public life was plenty obvious. I've never been in a Muslim country before, so I was somewhat surprised that the local women were dressed in everything from western clothing with their hair out to a full-length chador and everything in between. Women were certainly out and about but never sitting at a cafe. Every cafe - and there were two or three on every block - was filled with men and not a single non-Western women. Even on the beach, the men and women - dressed in clothing ranging from a chador to a bikini - obviously knew each other, but wouldn't sit together. Like women, alcohol was available but kept at a distance since devout Islam forbids drinking and frowns upon drinking in public for everyone - especially women - but makes alcohol easy to find and legal though expensive to buy. Despite recent political changes, my father says that even ten years ago the country was more culturally progressive than it is now.

Still we were somewhat removed from local living and preoccupied once all the rest of the cousins arrived with many children in tow. I loved having the opportunity to reconnect now that all the younger cousins aren't quite so young. Despite the language melange of 3/5 French, 1/5 Arabic, and 1/5 Spanish with occasional English translation, a surprising amount got communicated. Or maybe the semi-immersion experience left me dangerous enough to think I knew more than I really did? Anyway, their presence alone made me sad to move on to Barcelona...which is the next post.

Books & Music

2009-06-27T18:00:00.003-04:00

I've spent the last week stocking up on boring banalities. This is always how it is. I start with some crazy list that includes doctor's appointments, electric coverters and buying stuff. I cross stuff off until I'm finally left with the more intriguing choices: books and music. Here's what I'm traveling with.

Books:

The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Caliph's House by Tahir Shah
Stars & Planets (can NOT visit a dark sky without a star chart)
plus Lonely Planet Morocco & Rick Steves Spain
I'm gonna grab a copy of The Atlantic at the airport, too

The music question's interesting since this is the first time I'm going overseas with an ipod. The last time I left town for months, I left my music collection behind, too. I don't see a specific reason to do it again, but truthfully, I didn't miss it. When you visit places that are so different from what you know, most music that you already know sounds jarring and incongruous to the landscape anyway.

So this time my ipod is well-stocked. I kept all the Daft Punk and Justice I've been listening to, and before I left work on Thursday, I added:

a couple of Sound Opinions podcasts
the latest This American Life
a bunch of Calexico
the new Dirty Projectors
Erin McKeown's Distillation
the latest Fader mix
a couple of Fatback mixes
Danger Mouse's The Grey Album
Radiohead's The Bends, OK Computer and In Rainbows
some Ratatat (not sure which album)
a couple of Daptone compilations (links here)

I'm most likely being wildly optimistic in thinking I'll get to read or listen to half of all that, but it's nice to have choices!

Anyway, I'm signing off for a few weeks. Be well and look for photos and blog posts upon my return.

On Luggage

2009-06-27T11:41:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I dug out my backpack to look for traveling stuff and found 116 Indian rupees and 84 British pence from my trip in 04.

Luggage-wise, I've gone upscale since then. Not that I've ever really been a hostel-partier but I've abandoned my backpack for my rolly suitcase.

When I bought the backpack, it felt like a rite of passage: student travel, rail passes, Lonely Planet guidebooks, and living cheaply. The first time I went overseas on my own I was 23 and newly single from the boyfriend that didn't like to travel. Post-breakup I decided to skip Christmas with my family and fly across the pond solo. God, it was lonely and exhausting to figure out everything on my own. But I needed that first trip to figure out how to do it better next time: to try to plan a trip around something that I wanted to see/do, to stick to one country, to decide what I was going to a place for rather than just seeing "the sights". Whenever I traveled with that backpack, I knew who my people were instantly even if I chose to continue on my own. I felt pride in being so mobile as to carry all my possessions on my back.

Later when I bought the rolling suitcase for my first "business trips", I felt all grown-up and vaguely important. I was about to spend the summer of 2005 commuting back and forth to DC from Boston. Since I had to look semi-professional, it didn't make sense to cart a backpack around. At that moment, with my rolling suitcase (which I never checked), I fit in with the other road warriors that flew the US Airways shuttle with me. No, I couldn't carry all my stuff on my back anymore, but now someone else was paying for the trip.

Since both of those times, I've discovered that business travel is overrated and that I can indeed live out of a small backpack for months but that maybe I don't always want to anymore. I've also given up the childish construct that frugality automatically equates with adventure. Having a little more money is nice since it lets me do more and do it more often. At this point in my life, I think it's more important to find the time and go, just go. At the time of purchase, the choice of luggage was about the sort of traveler I aspired to be - which pack of people I felt like I belonged to. Now, it just carries crap.

Anyway, I dumped the rupees and pence in the funny money jar for the next time I go to India or England. Since the jar awaits a deposit of Morccan dirham and Euros, I decided to finish packing.

Open Source Ethos

2009-06-17T13:59:00.000-04:00

The intern book club has turned into my favorite reason to read hyper-music/tech-focused non-fiction. The last selection, and my favorite thus far, was Jonathan Zittrain's Future of the Internet.

I found most interesting his discussion about what the internet was built to do: 1) perform only actions universally useful since specific problems could be fixed later and, 2) trust that all its users were working towards the common good. In short, the engineers built dumb pipes that don't care what information is being sent or where it's coming from or going to.

It's insanely naive and endearing to me that people built a network on the assumption that no one would want to mess with it intentionally. I heart geeks. But those assumptions, especially about the lack of malicious intent, are how we arrived where we are today: a glorious place that's revolutionized how we interact with each other and a place where spam and viruses and copyright infringement abound.

What I find so fascinating about the theories underpinning the internet and code and collective endeavors like Wikipedia is that the way they're built run counter to capitalism. In the brick-and-mortar world, we pay people for knowledge, solutions to problems and functionality. Our Constitution specifically encourages creativity by granting people an exclusive right to license for a time their creativity for a cost. The value is created by retaining your right to keep information scarce and then profit from its sharing.

In the digital world, websites are easy to build because you can grab code from any other website; solutions to problems are shared freely so someone else probably has already fixed your problem and left you with time to fix another problem; and the network is flexible enough to accommodate any functionality you want to build on top of it. The value instead is created by sharing information to build something greater. This student gets that and his professor certainly doesn't.

So, are the "problems" with the digital revolution only those of mindset? That we're giving away things we used to sell? And now are we trying to overlay the old economy of goods-for-money onto an open source ethos when instead we should be rethinking altogether?

I don't know, but it's nice to stumble upon a new way to view the same problem, which is why I'm interested. So check it out: the book's available free via Creative Commons license or here's an interview for just a taste.

Salad Days

2009-06-03T23:31:00.001-04:00

After all that traveling, I had a most necessary three day weekend. I've since lost that easy, relaxed feeling, but it was a fun mish-mash of lots of activity and not.

Among the highlights, I explored the Capitol Crescent Trail, which I hadn't realized was so nearby in Georgetown. That day it was a sun-dappled, multi-use trail full of people well-schooled in passing etiquette. My knee was being a bit gimpy so I didn't go all the way to Bethesda, but I'd like to return soon and try it on wheels rather than on two feet.

On Saturday night, I checked out The New Gay's dance night "Homosonic" at Town. Music was eh and all sounded the same unfortunately and the DJs were secreted away in a booth so you couldn't just go ask them to play something else. Cheap, strong drinks though.

Thoroughly enjoyed the most recent issue of The Atlantic, whose feature article was about the 72-year-old longitudinal Grant Study and George Vaillant, the latest guy to conduct the study on what makes people happy, healthy and well-adjusted. I found the whole issue interesting enough that I'm thinking of supporting print media and getting a subscription.

I also spent some time inhaling my new Angel box set. I'm appreciating it on its own terms this time around rather than strictly in comparison to Buffy. Season 3 in particular is excellent. The show does occasionally succumb to the standard network requests for more stand alone episodes rather than season-long arcs. Doesn't that approach just end up disappointing everyone? The hard-core fans want stories to move and the newbies sort of understand what's going on but don't understand the fuss since they're not seeing the fuss-worthy bits.

Anyway, I'm back at it now and trying to keep everything afloat. I think that extra day off has made this week's push possible.

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Discovered last Friday while taking advantage of an empty office to crank the tunes, my new summer song is Passion Pit's candy-coated "Little Secrets". Fits right in with summer songs of years past: Mint Royale's (featuring Pos from De La Soul) "Show Me" and Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs' cover of The Left Banke's "She May Call You Up Tonight".

Resilience

2009-05-26T22:29:00.002-04:00

There's a terrible statistic that the population of New Orleans passed away at a far greater rate in the years immediately following Katrina than they had previously. It makes sense: your neighbors are missing, your home's in shambles, your doctor's still out of town, you have nothing but the clothes on your back - so many of the things that made your neighborhood into a community are missing. All that and then your government humiliates you and your city by making you beg to be treated humanely. Even nearly five years later, note all the empty space around Brad Pitt's eco-friendly homes in the lower 9th ward. It didn't use to be that way.

And yet.

The hope and devastation bus tour on my fifth trip to New Orleans had more hope than devastation but it's because of people like Doc and Annabelle Watson who are in their seventies. They've just finished rebuilding their home for the fourth time in 40 years and were practically more interested in telling us about their grandchildren. And it's because of Big Chief Ironhorse of the Black Seminoles who spends four hours a day beading his outfit for next year's Mardi Gras parade because he knows that his city and his tribe are still going to be there to appreciate that outfit.

I had a fantastic time as I always do in New Orleans - lots of great food, a rockin' show, a chance to catch up with friends new and old, my very first crawfish boil, photographic evidence here and here - but I also feel like I owe it to the people who I've met there to use my corner of cyberspace to talk about the New Orleans that's been forgotten because the world has moved on.

So watch the Spike Lee documentary, get pissed off all over again, tell your friends and then go visit (and leave Bourbon Street).

Schmoozing

2009-05-19T23:57:00.002-04:00

Well, the most recent stop on the world tour was 40 hours in San Francisco.

I was there to attend SanFran MusicTech, schmooze and watch panels and panelists.

Along the way, I got to be on my very first panel about activism through music/by musicians. It went well despite a good-sized case of stage fright before we started. During the first few seconds I was convinced my heart was going to burst out of my chest and run screaming down the street...but then I calmed down. It wasn't exactly a focused conversation, but I'm glad I did it. Certainly a confidence booster for me.

One niggling observation: I was surprised by the hard-core attitude from audience and my fellow panelists about musicians "not risking anything these days" when they speak about social justice issues, i.e. musicians choosing to advocate on issues like voter registration rather than the death penalty.

I guess I look at activism and efforts to engage music fans around causes as umbrellas that are better the bigger they are. OK Go advocating for net neutrality doesn't preclude Springsteen from railing against Ticketmaster which doesn't preclude orchestras around the country from collecting food bank donations.

I admire the passion and fearlessness of musicians who use their pulpit to talk about controversial topics, but activism isn't a zero-sum proposition and there are certainly plenty of causes to go around.

Aside from my panel, I like going to these conferences because I can steal ideas on ways to make FMC's events better. Having broad power to try new ideas is one of the big perks of working in such a tiny office. As a result of SanFran MusicTech and last week's Free Press Summit, I'm interesting in finding ways to make networking a goal for our events, rather than a happy byproduct of getting lots of interesting people in the same room.

Anyway, off to go talk activism in New Orleans tomorrow. Expect my flickr feed to be abuzz!

Nights of Americana

2009-05-11T19:41:00.000-04:00

I missed the Stax Museum when I was in Memphis a few years ago because we went to Graceland instead. Graceland was fun and kitschy, but I suspect I would've enjoyed the Stax Museum more. Respect Me: The Stax Records Story, a documentary about Stax Records, was filled with archival concert footage and interviews with Isaac Hayes, Booker T. Jones and all the surviving MG's, Carla Thomas, both founders of Stax, Jesse Jackson, and the Staples Singers. There's even a shout out to the evil record company that stole Stax' early catalog through some fancy fine print. Go watch this.

As it happened, the same week I heard some of Booker T. Jones' new solo album with the Drive-By Truckers and Neil Young backing. Hearing his new and classic material in the same week was a study in contrasts. The new material was a bit blah and turned the assets of his trademark organ into liabilities. Maybe I'm reacting to his cover of Outkast's "Hey Ya" where he played the vocals on his organ? Ugh.

More of a lost opportunity was the American History Museum's Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn exhibit, which might have been more compelling if I were a sheet-music-geek. Do such people exist? For the rest of us merely interested music fans, it's too bad the museum didn't marry the music and the scores better. I can see the right kid (and me, too!) having a "hey cool!" moment if they were able to see a few bars of music while hearing the whole group play them and then listen again while soloing each track. Interactivity! Technology! Alas it was one of those tiny exhibits tucked away in a quiet corner on an afternoon that the rest of the place was mobbed.

Most definitely not disappointing was Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings at the 930 Club. Not that show, but NPR has some other live performances here. My highly-enthused tweets. A little stranger because of the overwhelming country & western vibe but just as delightful was John Doe with the Sadies at Iota.

On the whole, it was one good musical week.

Inattention

2009-05-05T22:05:00.002-04:00

I find lately I'm considering my dwindling attention span.

It started as a general malaise, but then Salon and The Atlantic made me think about it a little more carefully.

At the moment, I'm blaming Google Reader for my difficulty focusing. Before I started working at FMC, I had no clue what an RSS feed was. Since then, my RSS feed has slowly opened up a new world of information for me.

In the category of too much of a good thing, the quantity of information is staggering and impossible to keep up with, especially since a lot of what's available just needs to be filtered out. I like knowing that if I want to read about the "sexiest" iPhone app that Apple initially rejected, Boing Boing's new time-wasting find: the hospital food photo blog, TV on the Radio's summer tour dates, or Matthew Yglesias highlighting bus stop shelters from around the world, I can. But I digress.

My point is that I wouldn't have bothered reading any of those things, except maybe the bit on Apple, since I'd rather be reading Jess's thoughts on what it's like to graduate from college to possible impending joblessness or WaPo's extensive feature on the President's First 100 Days.

Then again, I could also place blame on my job. I've had stressful, multi-tasking-filled jobs before, but none at a time when distractions seemed so prevalent. A good bunch of the active work of filtering goes on while at work which maybe is only enhancing my fluttering nature. That, combined with actually trying to do work, leaves me feeling scattered rather than enriched by the end of the day.

I'm aware that some of this flitting is my own doing. I consolidated my blogs into an RSS feed for ease of use. I like reading blogs so that I can share them with you, dear reader. I enjoy the random stuff. Who doesn't? And some of it's just my nature to cover broad swathes of territory rather than fully investigate one small section.

But one thing's has become certain: I don't want to give in to the beast with the short attention span.

I'm grateful that I'm at least aware of my brain's habit of flitting from thing to thing. After that, I now need to make the choice to be present to the thing I've decided to do and create an environment for myself that enables focus.

On the musical side, I'm thinking about having a summer of (pick a genre). The idea is that for two or three months I'd listen to nothing but that genre. I'll start in order from history to the present and follow the important players and the evolution of sub-genres. Not sure what genre yet.

On the upside: I made it through both Salon and Atlantic articles on the way the internet is changing our brains and our attention spans. Small victories.

Wanderlust

2009-04-27T23:58:00.000-04:00

I highly recommend taking your birthday off from work if you can swing it. I write this from Boston after spending the weekend in Chicago with Alicia and Davide.

Chicago was cool - quality time with friends, good food, drinks, White Sox vs. Blue Jays at Comiskey, a little window-shopping, a bunch of episodes of West Wing season 7, and the puppy even finally stopping her violent barking at me. Yeah, we got rained on more than planned, but I'm so glad I went. Somehow taking time off at home doesn't seem nearly as relaxing as doing far more away from home. More photos here.

I'm now in Boston, which is a quick trip to see family, get my hair cut and do whatever else is possible in 50 hours. The best part though has been talking with my parents about our upcoming Morocco trip this summer. I'm looking forward to hanging with the cousins in Morocco, but the trip has also inspired lots of thinking about what else I could do while I'm in the general vicinity. I'll be wandering around Barcelona for a few days, but the future trips are enticing: hiking in Corsica, trekking around the Maritime Alps, being in Paris for the last stage of the Tour de France, or visiting my friend Bek in the Netherlands.

I'm finding, too, that the methods of transport intrigue me particularly. Flying has annoyed me more than usual lately, so the idea of getting to Corsica by boat and traveling to the Maritime Alps by train and then walking for a week or two to get to the Mediterranean is appealing.

I won't get to do any of that on this trip probably, but wanderlust is an intoxicating yet comforting feeling that I hadn't realized I missed.

For a few years, I planned and took one trip off the continent per year. I couldn't afford it after I returned from two plus months in Asia homeless, jobless and savings-less, but now that I'm not quite so poor...well, it may be a plan I should resurrect.

The Whole Story

2009-04-21T11:09:00.000-04:00

Last week Hypebot explored the future of the album as an organizing principle for music with, among others, Bob Lefsetz as resident anti-album crank and New Music Tipsheet's Scott Perry on defense.

While I spend plenty of time shuffling my ipod, there are still releases that need the context of their album to make aural sense: any Wilco release from the last 10 years, Radiohead, Arcade Fire, David Bowie, and that's just from the very limited contents of my iTunes library. What ties all these releases together are the artists who craft for the format by curating works of art that hang together like an arch and need every piece to be fully realized.

Though albums might not be appropriate for all genres of music, I don't see all artists wanting to give away the chance to make an album-sized statement. Gang of Four's Dave Allen may disagree with me (though not entirely coherently), but I don't see the album-length format disappearing until artists stop creating for it.

--

Speaking of albums, I missed Record Store Day but still struck out when I went digging at Crooked Beat on Sunday. Right now, I'm mildly obsessed with the new Metric album and its no-labels-need-apply release strategy.

More than tunes though I've been devouring books: Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicles last week snuck up on me in an excellent way and Eyal Press' Absolute Convictions this weekend. Absolute Convictions, in particular, is a remarkably even-handed social history looking at how economic conditions, religious fundamentalism, and increasingly violent anti-abortion tactics resulted in the murder of Barnett Slepian, a colleague of the author's father. While I'm waiting to for the library to deliver the next great read, I'm hop-scotching through Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.

This weekend I'm off to do a little road-tripping to Chicago and then Boston and then a leisurely train ride back to DC. I'm really looking forward to the train ride!

The Value of Music

2009-04-11T13:21:00.002-04:00

Last week, FMC released a document detailing some principles for artist compensation in the digital age.

Reading through the echo chamber that resulted made me think.

We have copyright and patent law:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

"Promot[ing]...the Arts" means to me that our Constitution encourages and rewards creativity that has value. All artistic creations aren't meant to be equal; instead, the Constitution sets up a meritocracy. In short, a creator has an exclusive right for a limited period of time to benefit from their creation IF others put value on it.

In some of the best parts of Larry Lessig's latest book Remix, he discusses what copyright used be for (sheet music and player piano rolls), who it used to affect (not you, me and your grandma), and how a bunch of small, unnoticed changes got us to where we are now. The problem now, of course, is in trying to derive money from a creation that's no longer tangible but freely available.

But doesn't anything that you want have an intrinsic value to you? The problem is only in not having found a way yet to collect money on that intrinsic value.

Skill, talent, creativity and experience have value. I wouldn't go into a restaurant and eat a meal and expect to skip out on the tab. I wouldn't hire a carpenter to frame my house and expect to stiff him. The intangible thing - the song - that a musician creates is no different.

And if copyright is abolished and musicians in the future only get paid on live shows and merchandise and whatever their fans will donate to help them record?

Well, musicians will continue writing and performing music, but it would be harder for some to make a living since they'd have to tour to be paid resulting in more musicians with day jobs; songwriters would suffer since they don't tour; recordings would probably sound worse since more of them would be done on Garageband rather than in studios; the recording/producer/studio industry would shrink since fewer bands would be able to afford a studio recording; recordings might become akin to a vanity press; the way we promote music might change since we'd no longer necessarily be promoting an album...and I could keep going.

Maybe that will be the next incarnation of the music industry. But, for better or for worse, I don't think so. There are too many people with too much at stake for that to realistically happen. The ISP levy experiment on the Isle of Man is an interesting step towards the future.

It doesn't matter how, by whom, or whether the system of payment to musicians resembles the train wreck that it is now. The important part is ensuring that the inherent value of creativity gets recognized.

My guess is that everyone will finally strike a balance that makes no one entirely happy - which is the mark of a good deal anyway - and we'll all attribute today's kvetching to growing pains.

Dancing

2009-03-28T10:31:00.001-04:00

Watching The Chorus Line last weekend brought back memories of high school when I actually knew huge portions of it. It's a dreadful movie - oozing self-important melodrama, missing some of the best dance numbers, and containing every bad 80's haircut possible - but my recollection of dancing it is one of glitz-filled excitement and sheer terror.

Terror owing to my stage fright, but it was also hitherto the most awed moment of my 12 or 13 years. It was a show that people knew so it felt important that we were doing this professional piece and it had all the crazy glammy costumes and endless rehearsals and a weekend of shows! Stage fright be damned, I thrilled to the show biz of it all.

Anyway, The Chorus Line arriving in the mail started the trifecta of dance.

The documentary Ballerina had some beautiful dancing in it but the narration was so dispassionate and clinical that I'd have sworn they were talking about the mating of some rare species of bird. Too bad, since they missed an ideal opportunity to find out more about the art and the artists.

To complete the trio, I caught Bill T. Jones at The Kennedy Center performing a vaudeville-themed dance/theater show called "A Quarreling Pair". Fun times and the q&a afterward was cool, too.

It all half made me want to dig out my tap shoes and find a class...we shall see.

Hype

2009-03-21T12:36:00.013-04:00

I am not at SXSW this week. So, I won't sitting here bragging, but I'd be hard pressed not to read about it, between the tweets, facebook, and the bloggers. Six-word band reviews that are surprisingly informative. Stubbs - been there, but never had the BBQ. This film looks cool...and it's now queued up on Netflix.

Chris Cornell releases a crappy album. Trent Reznor slams him. Chris Cornell retaliates incoherently. Via Tweets.
\m/ (>_<) \m/

Speaking of albums, you can either change how you design covers for a 1 inch square view or you can let the interwebs do it for you.

I feel hyped and contrary (and cheap) when it comes to the iPhone, but the ability to use it as a modem might finally sway me. This is an interesting point that gives pause for the pay-for-your-apps portion of Apple's revenue stream. Idolator vents, and makes another point.

Things I've like this week:

- The crazy pro-lifers always present abortion as having devastating emotional consequences (and women, of course, are too feeble-minded to understand this so they must be forced to see ultrasound photos before they have the procedure, so it'll all be gosh-darn clear), but putting a child up for adoption has always seemed like the more harrowing option to me. Then, and now.

- Despite not owning a record player, I'd buy this for kitsch value in a heartbeat.

- 3-D dragonfly wallpaper

- And last but not least, I was a late convert to Battlestar Galactica (thanks, Mark). Last night's series finale wasn't perfect, but it was the same character-driven sci-fi that I love to watch. The best sci-fi, like the best entertainment, isn't about the McGuffin or the monsters, it's about people and how they react to adversity.

That's Rich

2009-03-15T22:21:00.000-04:00

I love walking home from work while listening to This American Life. It gets me out of my head and satisfies the need for a story. This was their latest well-executed effort at lessening the modern jackass effect when discussing anything related to a bank. Their previous shows from May and October are excellent, too. Collectively, they gave me a warm fuzzy when I realized I sort of understood this.

Also, big props on act 2 from their Valentine's Day episode where they featured two amazing and brave little transgendered girls.

By now, everyone's seen Jon Stewart take down CNBC. 60 Minutes though matched CNBC's performance with this fluff piece on the FDIC.

Really. If you believe that, I got an ugly brown mp3 player to give away to...ahem, sell...Wired. No wonder the only place I see "Fast Company" magazine is on an airplane.

In other news, Apple is getting greedy with its new Shuffle. You now can only use Apple's (crappy and uncomfortable) headphones with it or you won't have volume or skipping control. Third-party manufacturers will have to pay extra for a special chip that enables the additional functions. That's rich.

The intern book club finally finished Larry Lessig's Remix. I think it'd be good for your dad to understand "the new digital economy" and how people use culture now. But for you and me, it's a tad simplistic and seems to aspire to more than it reaches. Jonathan Zittrain's Future of the Internet is next.

Club Passim now serves beer. Going there used to be an exercise in drinking cranberry juice when all you wanted was one single beer to make the folk go down better.

Holi!

OK, off to go see The Class and maybe finish off my Netflix backlog? A red envelope with In Bruges awaits.

Faulty Introductions

2009-03-07T10:23:00.001-05:00

Well, it's time to do a link dump since I've been sick and/or gimpy most of the week (the bad, bad gym beat me up). Now doing fine and on to the links!

Civility and the filibuster, will ne'er the twain meet? I gotta say, if a constant threat of filibuster means that it actually takes 60 votes to pass something, either nuke it or just say that, skip the sit-ins and marathon readings of Winnie the Pooh (more like "The Hill" since Pooh would actually be interesting) and get ON with it already. Otherwise, it's just obstructionism - from both GOP and Dems, I might add. Good comment thread on that post as well.

Author's Guild, meet the mainstream music business, you might have a lot in common. Amazon's new Kindle can read your ebook aloud to you. The Author's Guild doesn't like that because it might get in the way of the audiobook format and diminish income. In addition to stacks of other reasons that this is stupid, text-to-speech conversion is hardly illegal since the computer you're reading this on can probably do it, too. So, of course, Amazon rolls over.

Sebastien Tellier: Lecherous and French and visiting from the 70s. Oh, yeah.

Money I can spend. This presumes that you actually want to spend time on myspace as well? Do you know anyone who doesn't use Myspace grudgingly?

Sigh, but how can you not celebrate the people and the technology? And other sigh because this is just creepy and sad.

I always wanted red hair, though of course, not actually on me as I am now since it would look funny.

Dear Facebook: I know, I know, you're just trying to be more like Twitter, but could you not eff it up like last time? Love, me

Micro & Macro

2009-02-28T15:56:00.001-05:00

Busy, busy. I haven't captured the elusive balance that I started the year resolving to, but I've kept up with the things I have to do and the things I want to do and maybe that's balance enough.

I cut out of work a little early one day this week to go a National Air and Space Museum lecture by Dr. Sandra Faber titled (with webcast available) "The Milky Way: Why We Need Her and How She Was Formed". The Milky Way's a girl? It wouldn't have been hard to get lost in the talk about dark matter or string theory, yet she did a great job at explaining concepts like Big Bang theory, why life may have had an easier time forming on Earth, the life cycle of stars, recent discoveries and interspersed it all with lots of animated simulations. The evening left me feeling very small - which I think any good discussion on the cosmos should. I want to check out Google Sky, Worldwide Telescope (Windows or Bootcamp on Mac only) and sky-map now, too.

Also caught my friend David's band Poor But Sexy at DC9 the other night. They were kind of indie rock, but with chops, soul stylings/vocals and some coloring by Steely Dan. I haven't heard that particular stylistic marriage before, but it worked and I'm looking forward to seeing them again.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation: To me, the fact the brand name "Ticketmaster" is so toxic that they have to change it to "Live Nation Entertainment" gives you all the reasons you need to know this merger is an awful idea for anyone that sees live music. Do tell, why isn't inventory control a perfect science? Ver-ti-cal In-te-gra-tion. A good overview on how we got here, some of the issues in play, and live blogging from Thursday's House hearings.

Touch and Go shut down its distribution arm; the music industry mourns and explains why indie distribution was good.

No Dice

2009-02-22T11:09:00.007-05:00

Caught School of Seven Bells opening for Fujiya & Miyagi the other night at the 9:30 Club. I can't remember the last time I commented on a lack of musicianship, but 2/3 of School of Seven Bells seems to need lessons in playing their instruments and in stage presence. They sounded like the same beautiful, noisy, dreamy pop from their debut record Alpinisms, but I might as well have watched my ipod since there was nothing to watch on stage...except their guitarist Ben Curtis who played and fiddled with enough sampling gear for a couple of people. The mix didn't do them any favors either since it buried the interesting bits and contributed to the sameness factor of a lot of their set. *Sigh* Baby bands...they get better and then they get their own soundperson.

Fujiya & Miyagi weren't overly endowed with stage presence either, but they were pros and they could play and had this cool animated backdrop. So I liked them, if only because they were so much better than their openers. They'd be ripe for remixing, too, so I want to see what I can dig up.

In other news: Muxtape is back and not like it was. Wish I'd gotten a chance to talk shop with Justin Ouellette when he was a panelist last week.

Comeuppance, please come in. Why should my rinky-dink non-profit have to bear all the burdens of accurate and transparent accounting?

Need more ways to make your cassettes obsolete? Options include converting and recycling.

Speaking of obsolescence, John Strohm explains the legal issues surrounding selling used MP3s. Legalities aside, I doubt Bopaboo has a viable business model - you'd need such massive buy-in from the public to have a database of used MP3s worth searching - but the issues around the concept are sadly evergreen...which is why I dug it out of the old starred items.

Move over, Charm City Cakes for this really cool Darth Vader cake. I love you still though because you would never unintentionally do this.

Notes on the Day

2009-02-15T13:14:00.004-05:00

Ever since I took over the Events gig at FMC, I've been particularly aware of the large shoes of my co-worker Kristin Thomson that I've been working up to filling. She's so good at everything she touches that it's been a long learning process.

In that light, Wednesday's Policy Day was an especially proud professional moment for me since it's the first event that I either did or oversaw all of from beginning to end. (Reminded me of that feeling I used to get when my visa applications would successfully get the band from some African country into the US.)

A few thoughts on a fantastic 24 hours:

- Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott gave one of my favorite bits of the day during the Broadband panel: certainly there are challenges to telecom policy right now but citizen input is still important. It's so easy for problems to seem huge and out of reach but when that's all anyone hears I feel an essential empowering message gets lost. Case in point: Pandora's campaign around webcasting rates so deluged Congressional offices that the switchboard overloaded. Topics du jour during that time? Iraq and webcasting rates.

- How did people ever run events without text messaging set to vibrate? The walkie-talkies with earbuds from a few years back were incredibly clunky in comparison.

- Our event evaluations ask a question on whether there's enough diversity of gender/race among the panelists. In answering the question, interestingly, this time a couple of people said the question was unnecessary.

- Live webcasting, yay! And archives are available, too.

- One round of pool at the Black Cat = $1 in quarters. Watching the rock stars play pool and do the victory dance afterward = priceless.

Relational

2009-02-10T14:31:00.000-05:00

It was a weekend of entertainment that either made perfect sense or not much at all.

The film The Secret of the Grain lets you into the life of this family so thoroughly that you might as well be walking into their kitchen for dinner. Unhurried in its pace and willing to take the time to get to know its characters, the film lets you into its world for the two and a half hours you're at the movies. Sure, it could've been at least a half-hour shorter if the editing had been tighter, but it's an interesting place that you get to when you're turning away from the screen because you're seeing too much and the camera's gotten too close. Trailer here.

David Rousseve's Saudade (excerpts here and here), however, was the opposite experience. Rousseve talks about so many themes throughout this non-linear performance art/modern dance piece: slavery, racial and sexual subjugation, joy, the emotional trauma experienced by Hurricane Katrina survivors, the tortune of Abu Ghraib prisoners, sickness, identity - and it's all combined with a fado soundtrack and a chameleon-like tiled backdrop that draws considerable attention to itself. So, yes, it lacked narrative coherence, but still managed to achieve a sense of closure at the end.

Visually, the dance was arresting and intimate but also repetitive. The constant breaching of the fourth wall was distracting, too. I'm glad I went, but I'm not convinced that a moment of closure and a tableau of interesting images was enough to outweigh spending most of the piece hop-scotching around the choreographer's brain.

So, I'm now off to spend a few days skipping through the collective brain of the media/music/tech community. Come out if you can...or watch the live webcast on Wednesday, February 11 from 9 am - 6 pm (*fingers crossed*).

Retrograde

2009-02-03T10:55:00.000-05:00

Ick: nipple-shaped candy for kids

Double Ick: She's selling her virginity. If this is legit - admittedly a question, she could end up with millions for selling herself, but isn't she just playing into the virginity-is-sacred meme that she claims to find so unfair?

It's strange times when you're left to praise Ashlee Simpson for talking back to media that was calling her sister fat. And let's not forget Lily Ledbetter.

Ew-inducing.

Ugh-inducing: Chris Cornell's latest solo release produced by Timbaland. This song is laughable and the video's worse. He, of Soundgarden fame, used to have the best voice in rock music and integrity to boot...and now I don't know who he is musically. Also I think I preferred when I couldn't figure out what he was singing about. "That bitch ain't a part of me" indeed.

The things that haven't inspired funny faces from me lately:

- December and January's issues of Outside magazine. They outdid themselves with these issues covering Three Cups of Tea's Greg Mortensen's project to educate girls in Afghanistan, the creepy guy that held his family of 15 hostage in Alaska, the dangers of the container shipping industry, and the requisite articles on people climbing in crazy places/conditions. Don't let the over-the-top cover photos of Michael Phelps or Kelly Slater scare you way.

- Spencer Tweedy's blog. Jeff Tweedy's (Wilco) oldest son is 13 and has one of the best-written blogs I've ever read. In addition to being cheek-pinchingly cute, he also manages to rip a new one for Bill O'Reilly, write up the history of M&Ms and talk about his trip to New Zealand to visit uncle Neil Finn.

- NYT Magazine had this fascinating piece on researchers who are studying the psychology of sex and desire in women. It's lengthy but incredibly interesting.

Whew. I guess I've been catching up on my reading.

One Year of Blogging

2009-01-31T11:01:00.002-05:00

So, this experiment is now one year and six days old. In that time, I've learned over 49 posts that this blog is not a diary.

If I'd really thought about it, I'd have known that. In reading back, I'm struck by how proud I am of the writing and even more so by the regularity of it, but equally noticeable is just how much is unchronicled.

Though the existence of this blog belies the fact, I'm a fairly private person...who chose to start a blog about me and the stuff I do, see, hear, think, read, eat, and feel. In the process of writing this blog, my sense of privacy changed. It became easy to share the ordinary things, but when it came to the more intimate details of my life, did I want to share that? How much of it? Could I tell a compelling story that didn't include crucial facts? You're the better judge, but I don't look back and wish I had said less so I think I've struck a balance I'm comfortable with.

The more interesting questions though: Is there a reason not to share crucial facts? How honest do I want to be? Who am I really lying to if I lie? Where's the line between the things I share and those I don't?

The questions bring me to the larger point: Is the most fully-realized existence also the most fully-shared existence? On a personal level, I think so, but this isn't personal.

This is not a letter from me to you. I don't think I realized all of that that until I just wrote it.

Go. Stop.

2009-01-25T19:59:00.000-05:00

I didn't get to the Inauguration with the pre-dawn masses. In fact, I left home an hour before the swearing in and happened to make it to the Washington Monument as Copland's "Air and Simple Things" was playing.

It was like walking into a bubble of emotion - I couldn't help but cry at the moment. I was surprised to be moved though. I was happy of course - as much for Bush to be gone as for Obama to be his replacement, but I didn't expect the gravity of the moment or the current of collective anticipation which were awe-inspiring. I stayed for Obama's speech, the poetry reading, and Dr. Lowry's benediction - which I loved and thought was perfect - and then I left.

And that was the spectacular end of a week that was. Lots and lots of live music filled the rest:

- James Intveld: I'd never heard of him until my friend Puck suggested going. It was an evening of swinging rockabilly complete with couples taking to the floor. It was a fun night that had great players.

- Mobius Band: I enjoyed the band, but they were under-rehearsed and they'd be much better live if they had someone whose sole job was to trigger samples. It gets herky-jerky to sing, play, trigger samples and rock out. Major points for having a xylophone as a major instrument. Middle Distance Runner, who headlined the show, are big in DC, but they were kind of boring.

- The Holmes Brothers: These guys are friends of mine from my days at their management agency, Concerted Efforts. They've been playing their blend of blues/soul/gospel for decades and they're the real thing. One of them has been struggling with health issues, so it was especially good to see them play and catch up with them.

- Dueling Playboys (I think that was their name?): This was more an excuse to not go anywhere for a night while still catching up with the peeps in the hood. A non-amplified, acoustic hootenanny ensued.

Big Shoulders Ball: The Hideout in Chicago bussed a huge group of musicians to DC to play a benefit inaugural ball for FMC and the Chicago Public School marching band program on the night before the Inauguration, so I got to work the event. DCist's take and mine is below. The marching bands didn't make an appearance (boo!) but a dozen acts did. The ones that stood out:

- Waco Brothers, who always look like they're having the most rollicking good time ever. My co-worker Jean rocking out on violin with them was an added bonus. "I Fought the Law" even inspired me to tweet about it!

- Andrew Bird solo looped his way through a 20-minute set. I admit I don't pay attention to the lyrics because if I did I'd spend time deciphering them rather than listening and I'd rather listen. The violin virtuoso was ALL that.

- Icy Demons were cool and a breather from the indie rock.

- Tortoise. I kept hearing how they were so great and I liked their soundcheck, but the live set meandered and left me underwhelmed. Eh.

- Janet Bean from Freakwater/Eleventh Dream Day. While I wasn't so much for Freakwater - except for their oddly swinging country-fried cover of Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" - Janet Bean demolished that drum kit during her set with Eleventh Dream Day. I witnessed a magnificent sighting of the rare species known as "female drummer".

See photos from everything above on my flickr page!

Since the Inauguration, I've been home sick with a bad head cold...which has brought my adventures in the land of 24-hour-party-people to a halt.

Chair Dancing

2009-01-12T21:18:00.003-05:00

Long time no blog. Alas, my handy open ISP network - named HannahBanana - seems to have disappeared, so I pretty much have to be at work to get online.

Lots going on with work as usual. We're putting on a one-day festival of wonkyness for musicians. Putting on events is always a marketing game, but I find the challenge of integrating more multimedia to be the stuff I look most forward to working on - some questions via video to break up the panelist talk, a live webcast perhaps, our own personal roving newswoman maybe in addition to the usual archiving. Anyone been around when Google Moderator was in use? Anything interesting you've seen or heard about in use in conference-land?

In music news, maybe you've heard that iTunes is dropping DRM and going to tiered pricing? EFF suggests that the labels held DRM over Apple's head as leverage for tiered pricing which makes sense given Steve Jobs' previous statements on DRM. I only wonder why anyone should care? It's too little too late regardless of why. Though The Lefsetz Letter manages to get excited enough to use exclamation marks like they were going out of style, he covers all my exasperated points, too.

I've been sort of keeping up on the latest movies, too, which is unusual for me. Caught Gran Torino last weekend. Clint Eastwood plays the non-PC curmudgeon that you like despite his crankiness. I'm still not sure what I thought. I was part of an audience that found the entire movie hilarious - every swear, every epithet, every slur. And they weren't laughing in that way people laugh at Chris Rock because he manages to make the truth funny. Yes, the outrageous factor WAS funny, but after a while, I wondered if it wasn't a cop-out to so easily defang this guy's anger and disappointment with life and make them into an episode of All in the Family. Then I wonder how much of my opinion is colored by the people in the theater with me? Can anyone say over-thinking?!?

Enjoying the new School of Seven Bells album Alpinisms which is a dreamy electronic pop that reminds of Peter Gabriel a bit. However, I write this while listening to Justice's live Fader 50 mix. It's over a year old, but it's 34 minutes 38 seconds that I can't make it through without at least a little chair dancing.

On Family

2008-12-28T23:06:00.004-05:00

Whenever I go home to visit my family these days, I try to bake for them. I like to bake; my mother doesn't bake much anymore and my parents enjoy eating my creations. And who else will so willingly and happily eat my culinary experiments? So, I bake.

As I sit writing this, I listen to my father poke fun of my mother because she accidentally gifted him women's perfume instead of men's cologne for Christmas. And I'm reminded that THIS is why I enjoy coming home for the holidays. To sit around and watch too many movies and bits of all the various TV series that everyone received for Christmas - Battlestar Gallactica Season 3, The Original Twilight Zone Season 1, 30 Rock Season 1 have all been on tap this week. To catch up on all the random goings on that I've missed over the phone. To eat too much and hang out until my father stops flipping channels and settles on an hour-long look at the mating of whichever animal or the history of something. To comment on how much bigger the cat seems to have gotten and the latest animal sightings in the backyard. It's all very ordinary, but it means a lot to me that I get to be here for this.

Having had a dysfunctional childhood - like so many other people - these very typical scenes were always what I wanted as a kid. I guess I drank the kool-aid that the Hallmark commercial offered up. The thing not at all evident though in those sentimental 30-second attempts to sell something is how long it takes to get to that happy homecoming scene on the doorstep with the snow falling. It takes time to have shared history, because of course history takes time to make.

We all have family. In a perfect world, families would be the easiest birthright to claim and be a part of. In the real world, family relationships are among the most difficult courses to take in the ongoing classroom that we live in as humans.

As the year rolls to a close, I want to say that I'm grateful for everyone I get to call family.

Absurd

2008-12-22T11:36:00.004-05:00

The absurdism watch is on: I'm reading Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Everytime I pick it up, I spend the first 10 pages wondering what the point is, and then I shift into the appropriate state of mind and get into it again. It reminds me of M*A*S*H for obvious reasons.

Also reading Larry Lessig's Remix as the latest selection of the FMC intern book club. I'm early enough in the book that Lessig is still painting a portrait of how the business models of the music industry came to be and how they're not adequate anymore. This is hardly news since even the RIAA has finally realized that suing its consumers isn't a good idea. They're now planning to shift the policing for piracy onto your friendly and inept internet providers which will no doubt anger ever more people if it works at all. So, the people who can't show up to turn on your cable will now be charged with letting you know that you've broken copyright law? Right-o.

Speaking of absurdity, I was talking to a former co-worker who mentioned that she's created a folder in her email software called "really?!?" expressly for those ridiculous exchanges that one has in a 21st century office environment. Brilliant.

On the Mend

2008-12-09T21:52:00.004-05:00

I'm happy to say that my fourth trip to New Orleans in two years revealed a city rebuilding. There's still way too much to do to be conscionable, but what our government neglected, the residents of the city have stepped in to do with grace and class (with a little bit of help from Brad Pitt).

If you ever make it to New Orleans, I highly recommend you visit the Mother-in-Law Lounge, the former home of and now tribute to Ernie K-Doe. Ernie's widow Antoinette K-Doe tells the story of how she waited out Katrina for days in the second floor of the lounge before she got airlifted out of the building still flooded in six feet of water, but you wouldn't know it from seeing the new tiki bar in the back and the Christmas decorations alight.

That first night at the Mother-in-Law cascaded into a day of meetings about musicians engaging in activism, which segued beautifully into a thoroughly entertaining benefit concert for Sweet Home New Orleans, an organization that helps bring New Orleans musicians back to New Orleans post-Katrina and helps keep the city's musical traditions alive. See the nice Rolling Stone write-up and lots of photos here.

[Update: I've been cross-posted on the FMC blog, too...multi-tasking!]

Tradition

2008-12-01T22:37:00.002-05:00

Ah, the week of large meals was a tasty one.

As a kid, Divali was one of my favorite holidays. The food was so good and always featured Indian sweets - kinda of like not-oversweet pieces of fudge - and gifts and a funny song that the kid in the family had to sing throughout the house with a handmade candle to bless the home.

My own celebration last Sunday was sans song or gifts, but with a good dinner with friends and candles to ward away the evil spirits. The dinner featured Mushrooms & Potatoes in a Tomato Sauce, Lentil Soup, Rice and Peas, Lemony Cilantro Chicken, a kick-ass Raita, and one of those orange-shaped chocolates that you smack to break into sections. A good time was had by all and my very first dinner party was a success and has encouraged me to do it again.

Random thought: If I married a Chinese guy who was Jewish, then we'd have four, FOUR different New Year's celebrations to observe and three of them would move from year to year!

The next day I traveled up to Boston for Thanksgiving. It was fairly low-key trip since I was feeling crappy, but I was glad to be there. In addition to the big meal, I caught the most recent Bond film with Justin (of Loudcity). Quantum of Solace needed more moments of quiet to highlight its moments of craziness. One of the things I liked so much about Casino Royale a few years ago was that Daniel Craig's Bond finally seemed like a fully realized character rather than a caricature of one. Quantum of Solace took a step back: there were too many chase sequences, too many explosions, too much violence and none of it particularly memorable. Maybe he'll have gotten over himself in time for the next Bond?

Not by choice, but I also saw The Notebook. It was cheesiness itself but Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams are mostly winsome characters and it was enjoyable enough despite the Velveeta gloss. Then again, watching Star Wars IV: A New Hope later was an object lesson in stilted acting despite its status as a classic. Context is everything I guess.

Anyway, I'm off to New Orleans tomorrow for a short trip to talk about artist activism, to see how things have changed since I was there at the beginning of the year and catch up with some friends.

In Pictures

2008-11-23T12:54:00.001-05:00

I've recently become a fan of the Flickr Photo Blog - check out these shots from the Flatiron group, snow, or these peephole fisheye lens shots. There's this fascinating motherlode from the Life magazine archive, courtesy The Daily Dish. Those blue leaves are alas not mine, but still gorgeous (from Bostonist). Also, in addition to being such a cool cat, I didn't realize my old friend/roommate Mike Powers from my Stainerd days in Allston was such a great photographer.

Speaking of blasts from the past, check out Cassettes from my Ex. It's getting turned into a book soon but without the music (huh?), which means the blog with the songs posted is a much better way to check out this project. I have mixtapes but none from my exes, but maybe you do? They're collecting stories for the book so if you have one, drop me a line and I'll send on the directions.

There's some crazy statistic about how many fictional acts of violence we witness in a typical year if you watch an average amount of television. You can't help but become somewhat immune to it. That's why Danny Boyle's new "Slumdog Millionaire" was unique: I felt the enormity of the little violence there was. That's, of course, also the mark of good filmmaking: caring about the characters and what happens to them.

Anyway, "Slumdog Millionaire" was thoroughly enjoyable and had no song and dance numbers, for those of you averse, except for the ironic one at the end that felt like it was out of Dirty Dancing via Bollywood. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that boy meets girl, lots and lots of adversity happens, boy gets girl at the end. Even though you know that five minutes in, it's still a fun afternoon.

The End. (Hat tip to Boing Boing).

True North

2008-11-13T23:41:00.007-05:00

A few years ago Sarah Vowell pointed out this truism in "The Nerd Voice", an essay in "Partly Cloudy Patriot": it's the height of uncool to like learning in this country. The cool kids copy eachother's homework and are distinguished by how well they're able to get away with it. After high school, of course, the geeks all find each other and realize that they live more interesting lives anyway, but for 12 years, we live with the idea that you have to hide being interested in the past, the future and the world around you.

Welcome to Graduation Day Redux, boys and girls.

That's one of the developments I'm most looking forward to since the night DC exploded into cheers and honks and screams and high-fives and hugs: the geeks are out and proud again.

Two remarks that struck a cord:

As I walked to the White House the night of the election, the crowd was chanting "Pack yo' shit! Pack yo' shit! Pack yo' shit!"
My friend Emily's facebook status the next day: "Food tastes better, drinks are stronger, steps lighter, strangers nicer. It's like Mr. Rogers neighborhood."

As hopeful as I am about the coming four years, I'm dismayed to see the successful and accomplished Michelle Obama further morph in the public eye into mommy, fashion icon, and supportive wife. Hopefully, the fact that her husband seems to understand the compromises she's made will make a difference in domestic policy.

In other explosive stuff, I keep coming across examples of high speed photography of stuff while it's exploding - vases with flowers, teddy bears and balloons. Beautiful.

Also, I finally cleaned out my Netflix stash when I watched The Triplets of Belleville. It was a charming if occasionally slow animated film about a French kid who grows up into a Tour de France bike racer who gets kidnapped and later rescued by his grandmother and three fading stars of the French stage. The best part: when the tough, crusty, French grannies all turn out to be expert percussionists who play bicycle rims, newspapers, and their shoes with equal ease. It was beautifully rendered in an over-the-top caricature. Check out the trailer.

Inside Baseball

2008-11-03T18:48:00.002-05:00

The job that I moved to DC for was a tele-fundraising gig. I never made a single call, but I managed other people in their calls to raise money for various progressive causes. I'll admit to being a chickenshit - the fear of mean strangers on the other end of the line does me in - so it only seems a fair comeuppance that I made some calls for Obama over the last week. For all my skittishness though, they went really well. The first round of calls was to potential volunteers who were so pleased to hear from the campaign and eager to help. The second round was to NH voters who'd probably been taking these calls for weeks. The only notable call was to a woman who said she wasn't going to vote, maybe because I called for her ex-husband? Was it something I said?

I am indubitably and undoubtedly obsessed with the election. Between the current frenzy and Richard Ben Cramer's "What It Takes", my life has been taken over by one election or another. No wonder I'm watching Alias Season 4 for fun.

"What It Takes" is an inside-baseball look at Bush I, Dole, Dukakis, Gephardt, Hart, and Biden, their 1988 Presidential campaigns, and the modern political process. Reading it has been akin to watching the elections play out from both sides of the looking glass: 1988 from inside the election with a candidates-eye-view and 2008 from outside the election albeit from the most plugged in place in the country and in a time when it's easier to be plugged in. I'm more than ready to move on, but it's been fascinating getting a fuller picture of the characters in the play, many of whom are still around.

I now need something thoroughly frivolous to read. Maybe I'll catch up on my unread Buffy Season 8 comic books or Y: The Last Man?

In other randomness, I caught DC's High Heel Race and went to a couple of Halloween parties, including Puck's birthday party, but I punked out of putting together a real Halloween costume this year. Got a fabulous idea in waiting for future years though.

I leave you with this awesomeness. Off to distract myself and see Federal Reserve Collective tonight...toodles.

Vegging

2008-10-30T20:31:00.004-04:00

One of the interesting challenges that came out of the Hindu funeral I was at a few weeks ago is that I was told I had to be vegetarian for two weeks. While I'm a committed omnivore, I'm often accidentally vegetarian, so the change hasn't been difficult with the exception of takeout lunches. Good vegetarian sandwiches aren't easy to find and salad bars get expensive, so I've been cooking more than usual for the leftover lunches.

In thinking about it, here's what I'd miss if I decided to be vegetarian: all the various pork products - especially bacon and all the deli meats that go into Italian subs and muffalettas - and the very occasional burger. I don't eat any of those delicious things often, but how I'd miss them all...*sigh*...I'm making myself hungry. OK, no more food talk.

Caught The Black Crowes during their 3-night stand at the 930 Club last week. It brought back fond memories of the first time I saw them with my then boyfriend, an overly sensitive, Jesus-lookalike, drummer. This time around, it was just the rock if you please. They totally killed it...and without feathers, any overly-self-indulgent solos, banter, or opener to warm up the crowd, just two and a half hours of the Crowes. They played a third of their set from new material which wasn't as strong as the older tunes, but it didn't detract at all. They had a couple of gospel-esque back-up singers who I wish they'd used more. The crowd went wild over "Remedy" and I got to hear a few tracks off my favorite allbum Amorica (i.e. the album with the cover straight outta Hustler). Something about the Southern-tinged rock always leaves me feeling relaxed and refreshed.

In other non-election news, stuff I've been enjoying lately:

Feeling slightly less like a modern jackass when reading about the financial crisis now that I've listened to this and understand what "breaking the buck" means.

The awesome occasional mixes by the boys at Shilo Presents: #4 and #5

Patrick Smith @ Salon does a weekly column called Ask the Pilot about airplanes, air travel, airports, you get the picture. This post on airports, hedgehogs and poverty especially moved me.

Being something of a map fanatic, I found this fascinating.

Calexico's "Two Silver Trees"

Kaleidoscope

2008-10-22T12:26:00.001-04:00

It's been a distinctly schizophrenic few weeks.

After the frenzy of our New York events, I took a very necessary and relaxing vacation for a few days. But then I got word that I needed to be in Boston for a wake and funeral this weekend which put everything back into overdrive.

I've only been to one other Hindu funeral and so I find that I look on the rites themselves more from an anthropological perspective. The ceremony featured a yogi who took one of the nearest family members of the deceased through the rites while stopping to explain what she should do at the end of every page. So, apparently neither yogi nor family is obligated to know what to do in advance and it's not considered rude to talk or leave and return throughout the ceremony. Then some songs are sung - none of which I understood - and then you pay your respects by pressing rice into red ink on the deceased's forehead and you leave a flower petal or a flower in the casket.

One of the handicaps I go into any Indian gathering with these days is that I don't speak much Gujrati and I understand slightly more that that. Still, it was amazing how much more of the language barrier I could bridge after just a day around all the extended Indian family. Not long ago, I got a Bollywood film in Gujrati from Netflix thinking that would help me remember the language - alas the sound recording was so bad that I could barely make out the words and the movie was so incredibly awful that I couldn't watch more than 45 minutes. I'd also forgotten how any outing to eat with Indians always involves many, many requests for hot sauce and crushed red pepper.

All chattiness aside though, seeing that much distant family at one time was somewhat stressful since at this point I barely remember their names much less how they're related to me. They all seem to know me and chatter on in Gujrati while my mind whirs trying to unearth that word I heard 30 seconds ago that came after my name. My 26 hours in Boston also featured a lot of smiling and nodding to random pronouncements on how I was now responsible for whatever, which was helpfully communicated in English. No questions about an impending marriage, but someone did opine that a boyfriend was keeping me from getting in touch more often.

Of course, it was set against the very prominent backdrop of a funeral with all the grief and solemnity that accompany them. That made all the things that I normally would've laughed off feel more like an opportunity to go hang out in a cloud of mosquitos. Combined with very little sleep before and during and flight complications along the way, my nerves were pretty fried and my brain felt like a kaleidoscope that someone wouldn't stop turning. So as much as I usually love my visits to Boston, I'm glad to be back to my normal life.

Beautiful Morning

2008-10-10T11:56:00.001-04:00

Everytime I go to New York City, I like it more. The same held true this time when I was there for 36 hours total.

It was a pretty stressful few weeks in the lead-up with some expensive revelations along the way, but our event worked out well in the end. Lots of people showed up, they seemed to learn a lot and were very appreciative, the panelists were smart and personable, no fistfights broke out over webcasting rates, the cocktail party was beautifully done and tasty, the panel on sampling brought out a new and interesting crowd and no one sued us for breaking their leg on the premises. As I said, all went well.

Things seen/heard/realized while in NYC:

A representative from one of our sponsors sheepishly showed me the (illegal) painted turtles he'd bought in Chinatown the day before. Remember those? I wanted some of those so badly when I was a kid.

Double-sided posters: so cool, economical and green!

Old Town Bar in Union Square was nearly deserted on Sunday night when I caught the middle innings of the Red Sox-Angels Game 3 with James. Probably 'cause New Yorkers got no one left to root for in October. Poor things. Great burger and a great bar though with a cool history.

I missed a chance to eat good bagels, but I had a great Italian dinner at a place that I don't know the name of unfortunately.

Anyway, now back and taking a few days off and lovin' it.

Carousel

2008-10-04T18:58:00.001-04:00

A few months ago, one of our summer legal interns, Jenny, and I were talking about interesting, fun, law-student-worthy projects she could do. At the time, a friend had sent me a link to yet another fabulous mix that was distributed illegally. That got me thinking and I posed the following problem to Jenny: how do I legally post a streaming mix "tape" to this blog that includes any song I want?

Jenny very diligently started researching and took all our ideas of websites that exist in some quasi-legal realm and started piecing the whole thing together. She quickly ran into all sorts of legal bogs and the post is still in mothballs.

Anyway, I thought of it the other day when I saw that muxtape was planning a revival as a completely different service from the online mixtape service it started as. Muxtape's founder Justin Ouellette writes eloquently about his experiences with the four major label groups and the RIAA when he was trying to negotiate a licensing agreement that might have kept Muxtape alive in its former form.

Muxtape is only the latest instance of the mainstream music industry biting the hand that feeds it by refusing to embrace and enable the new and then laying blame when those services are popular. They seem to enjoy crying poor. And now that venture capital is getting harder to come by, there will be fewer services for major labels to try to squeeze for cash. Digital Music News takes a good look at the possible venture capital lessons learned from muxtape as well.

So, inevitable new, cool illegal services + industry reluctant to work with emerging tech = more music available to music fans but less money getting back to the artist and the record company. After a while, artists realize the majors aren't helping their careers and they find more visionary people to help them build music careers. If history is any guide, the major four will hold progressively tighter to their declining revenues and be less likely to work with emerging tech...

Around the merry-go-round they go...you'd think they'd recognize the view after seeing it a few times?

Chicago

2008-09-25T19:04:00.000-04:00

Well, back from Chicago. My brain feels less comatose than it did when I first got back. I love the Old Town School of Folk Music, the location of FMC's Chicago event. Being there reminded me quite a bit of working at a dance school during college and having to thread my way through little kids in tiny tap shoes to get to my office. Trip and event were good and I was proud to have been a part of it.

We stayed at this wacky bed & breakfast, complete with pottery collection, photographs, collections of all sorts, and great breakfasts. The website makes the place look straight-laced, but in person it's more like The Real World should've been housed there. My photos here.

I caught the end of the second day of the Hideout Block Party - wished I'd seen more. I enjoyed Ratatat, who on stage weren't the same band that I have on cd; they were much better live. Saw the beginning of Hercules & Love Affair's set, but it didn't seem like the right timing or venue for them. DJs belong in sweaty, crowded clubs - not in half-empty parking lots on Sunday night.

As to the event, I didn't see more than 10 minutes at a time, but I gotta go check out some of the releases by the Numero Group. They had great stories and I would've loved to have let them keep talking! Also cool to meet Dave Harrell, proprietor of Digital Audio Insider, a smart, well-written blog about making money making music.

Anyway, before, during and after all that, diversions have been the name of the game:

Burn After Reading. Well, I wish it could've decided what sort of movie it wanted to be. Dumb guy comedy? Political thriller? Hmmm. Decide and all else shall follow. Without that fundamental question answered though, how do you make all the rest of the decisions?

Top Hat had some of the best dance sequences I've ever seen on film. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' "Cheek to Cheek" is a masterpiece.

Darjeeling Limited was navel-gazing but oddly affecting. I was sceptical at first, but by the end, I bought it.

The director's cut of Amadeus was a perfect slow quicksand of tragedy and left me wanting to violently wipe the smirk off Salieri's face.

The Gorge

2008-09-14T21:54:00.001-04:00

Professionally, I've always been a jack-of-all-trades. I've liked it since doing a little of everything saves me from boredom. However, the downsides are that a) it's hard to sell cohesively on a resume b) you're never quite qualified for any specialized position and, c) you're forever qualified for more similar positions at low-paying non-profits where they can't afford more specialized people.

When I took the Events Organizer job at FMC at the beginning of the year, I didn't think much of the future, only that it got me out of an assistant gig. Then we decided to have three events in the coarse of two weeks in two different cities this fall. It'd be an understatement to say that there's been a learning curve. I've had lots of help and I'll certainly do it better next time. But interestingly, I haven't felt ill-equipped for the job.

Most definitely, over the last six weeks or so, it feels like my world has gotten progressively narrower. I work. I sleep. And everything else gets third billing: eating, friends, running, whatever.

However, the unexpected part of this narrowing focus of my days is that while my world has narrowed, it's also gotten deeper. That's because a lot of the parts of my jack-of-all-trades experiences have come into play and they make more sense within the context of this particular job. All that that random stuff that's crammed into my head has coalesced this summer into a job and I've learned more about all of it along the way.

Learning so much so quickly has felt sort of like that dog sticking his face out the window of a car on the freeway and having to turn his head at times because sometimes the onslaught of smells is just too much. But notice he keeps turning back into the wind to get more? That's been me. And it's been fun.

Anyway, if you know any musicians in Chicago on September 22 or New York City on October 6, please send them the links to our websites. These events will be a great chance for musicians to learn more about making a living making music in the 21st century and some of the policy issues that affect the process. Come on out and and pack the house!

Moving On

2008-09-07T11:56:00.001-04:00

My old boss Jenny once made the point that you shouldn't spend your time on the platform making the other side's case for them. That idea came back to me while watching the speeches at the two conventions. I know the Dems like to take the high road (and I love 'em for it), but that tack presumes there's honor in this season of silliness.

I had planned a comparison of the Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain speeches, but Cindy McCain only gave hurricane relief messages. Thank goodness there's less of a need for hurricane relief than initially expected. As for that other woman on the campaign trail who's unwittingly bringing new meaning to the word "sexist," I can't deal with talking about her anymore.

To add a necessary dose of levity to my life, I've been watching the first season of How I Met Your Mother. What took me so long? I heart Neil Patrick Harris.

Since I'm congenitally incapable of decorating, I'm in mild awe of Apartment Therapy. Boing Boing, however, hipped me to the Fish 'n Flush. Rad. Huh?

Caught My Morning Jacket this week at D.A.R. Constitution Hall. I've never understood what the big deal was with their live shows. I get it now: Jim James has scads of charisma, he's overflowing with the stuff. I couldn't stop watching. I still left an hour into the show since it's been long days at work, but was glad to go. I was curious that there weren't more hippy types and that there so many gray-haired folks. It was also definitely a night of bromance. I love that word.

I wrote about Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone a few months ago. This morning, I came across this NYTimes Magazine article about social networks and how they've changed as a result of Twitter and Facebook. The article in some ways could've been one of the chapters on the 21st century that was missing from the book.

How could I not smile?

All About Expectations

2008-08-28T15:10:00.004-04:00

Well, life moves along briskly. Organizing three events simultaneously has been a challenge for me - partly because of the newness factor and partly from the sheer quantity of things to think about. It's been a good challenge though since I have a minor adrenaline beast living inside me at times...and moments like these feed that beast.

Between work and the political theater, it's been a full week. Michelle Obama's impassioned Tuesday address made me wonder what Cindy McCain's going to say next week and will it be any different? I certainly don't want a 2-for-the-price-of-1 President so it makes sense to me that spouses' speeches, if they have to be given at all, stick to more neutral topics.

But in a year when a woman came closer to the Presidency than ever before, it's sad that wives are not only relegated but expected to address topics of hearth and home and standing by their man. To address the spin campaign in place to alienate the Obamas from voters, the yardstick of success for Michelle Obama was in how much she could humanize her family and show that they, too, had lived an authentically American life. Despite any number of opinions about more controversial issues, there was no way she could have given any other kind of speech - even if she'd wanted to.

My objection isn't to how her success was measured. After all, she had a goal and she hit her mark admirably.

My point is that the role of humanizer was always going to fall to her. As smart, talented and remarkable as she might be in her own right, her role was always going to be that of supportive wife. High profile, non-political male spouses are still relatively rare, but you and I both know that no husband would be expected to give a speech like the one Michelle Obama gave on Tuesday night.

Other Democratic Convention thoughts: I liked the fire in Kerry's address. Wish he'd given that speech a few more times four years ago. I'd like to note that CNN compared the two conventions' scheduling strategies to Spinal Tap, i.e. "you got two Clintons? Oh yeah? Well, we got two Bushes." Yup. And then Wolf Blitzer just confessed to lurving The Barenaked Ladies. Me, I always look forward to John King and his maps.

I'm glad I'm in DC this fall. 'Nuff said.

Hair Here

2008-08-17T22:07:00.004-04:00

I was in Boston and at the Cape last week visiting family. Since I've been swimming semi-regularly at the new pool down the street it wasn't quite as much of a shock to go into the ocean as it normally is. Equally fun was biking around a bit while I was there. It was a fairly uneventful few days that featured a lot of missed connections and doing the hurry-up-and-wait. And since I took my job with me, it wasn't exactly a vacation either, but enjoyable all the same. See photos.

While in Boston, I realized how rarely one sees unnatural colored hair in DC. In addition to spying the usual manic panic shades, I complimented this teenage girl at the airport on the fantastic color of her hair: blue in the back and beautifully shifting to teal in the front. Her mom, seated next to her, smiled. (Cool mom.) Not only that, I ran across a couple of 6 or 7-year-old boys with mohawks. I see plenty of mullets in DC - not worn ironically I think - but otherwise people seem to prefer a more strait-laced look here.

Went to see Dr. Zhivago yesterday but ended up being a half-hour late and seeing Man on Wire instead. Great documentary on Philippe Petit - the man who walked a tightrope between the tops of the two World Trade Center towers in 1974. Go see it.

Plucked out of the Internet ether:

The term "modern jackass".

Reinventing yourself as a frosh? Check. That's assuming you can find your dorm room though.

Freedom.

Walmart employees are copyright maximalists, dontcha know?

NYTimes cracks on French horns and the people who play them.

Still not joining the twittering masses, but interesting points all the same.

Jen, yet again, makes me tear up.

Sporting Rant

2008-08-13T11:56:00.003-04:00

The Summer Olympics have never appealed to me. Has anyone else heard the name "Michael Phelps" enough? Somehow he's even managed to overshadow those anorexic, overworked little girls in leotards that everyone fawns over, ahem, or as they're more commonly known: women gymnasts. I find the medal count crass. And while I don't deny the athletic ability it takes to play beach volleyball - this from someone that used to avoid the volleyball in high school gym class, not like Daria but close - I have a hard time taking a sport seriously if it needs sand and a bikini. All the while, the network strings you along in between as many mentions of Michael Phelps as possible.

Or maybe I'm just being contrary.

After all, at what other point in time do you get to see synchronized divers from Mexico on primetime television? There is the argument that the Olympics are a shared experience for a large part of the planet, an unusual occurrence still. The Summer Olympics are also far more accessible to many more countries than the Winter Olympics ever will be - after all, no pickup hockey in Kenya. I even got a little swell of feminist pride the other day when I happened upon women's professional cycling for the first time. Lance who?

*sigh*

OK, I'm done ranting and praising in somewhat equal parts. I promise to talk about something else in my next post.

Eat

2008-08-03T23:55:00.002-04:00

I'm nearly done reading Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma. I'm coming to the conclusion that there's no sustainable, ecologically-healthy way to eat other than growing my own food and living off the industrial agricultural grid. Being vegetarian, even if I wanted to go that route, apparently wouldn't change a whole lot. As educational as it's been to read about how food gets from from field to plate, I'm left wondering: where does that leave the conscientious urban consumer after they've been to the farmer's market?

Sticking with the theme: Aesop Rock's carefully thought out list of Top Ten Cereals and Retro Kids Cereal Boxes - just check out what they thought your kid self would want. (The post was written, by the by, by the guy who dreamed up one of the ultimate geekfest events, the Buffy Sing-a-Long, which is now in mothballs because of legal issues.)

I was sad to learn that Cookie Monster no longer says: "Me want cookies!!! Omm, nom, nom, nom!!" Apparently, political correctness and the mommy state (literally) took over and he now says "cookies are a sometimes food." Where o where is the childish glee in that? Trust NPR to notice, but at least the rumor that he'd be turned into a Veggie Monster was a hoax.

Finally, a bit of food-related wackiness, courtesy of Boing Boing, a whole photo blog dedicated to documenting banana peels on the streets of London. No doubt, some of these bananas, could've used a Banana Guard. God, I love the Internet.

3 Days in Chicago

2008-07-23T11:05:00.000-04:00

I was in Chicago over the weekend for a multi-purpose trip. Thursday's Public Enemy panel was everything that panel conversations should be. Conversation was funny, free-wheeling, and took on a life of its own. And even though it ran substantially over schedule, no one left. Keeping in mind that I know nothing about hip-hop, I found it most interesting to hear them speak from the producer/engineer perspective on the history of Public Enemy and the making of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Needless to say, I left that evening with a crazy need to watch the panel again (soon to be online), then put on the uber-studio headphones and listen for all the things that they talked about.

Dinner conversation got very tech-heavy, but it was cool to talk shop - something I don't do very often. Interesting conversation on whether mastering is a necessary process these days given the switch to more of a singles-culture and the ubiquity of gadgets that fix tune and tone for you. This is a mind-boggling toy. You could literally take one note and make a whole album with it. It's really all a bit crazy-making to imagine how it could affect sampling culture and copyright law.

Friday was me catching up on work and visiting Old Town School of Folk Music where FMC is holding a day-long September event.

Saturday I got to hang with Alicia and Davide. Here's all the random photos from the weekend. We hung out, ate too much, saw The Dark Knight and then they introduced me to wii while we enjoyed margaritas. Verdict: I sucked pond water with the tennis, did OK with bowling, can't play drums to save my life, improved with the bass and singing and didn't finish most games of Mariocart since I kept running off the road. Fun was had, but what a time suck if I had one of those. So, no. Not going there.

Encounters

2008-07-15T12:59:00.001-04:00

Escaping into the air-conditioned comfort of the E Street Cinema this past Sunday, I saw Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World. It was a fascinating look into Antarctica's McMurdo Station, which is the dedicated to scientific research and the only permanent "settlement" on the continent.

Herzog walks around the base talking to the people who work there, how they got there, what they do, why they do it. I enjoyed myself, but I felt like he was trying to get the audience to laugh at the people who work in Antarctica. Don't get me wrong, the folks who work at McMurdo seem like loners who've finally found their pack (and have the stories to go with their adventurer personalities), but I always wanted to be one of them - and applied numerous times to work at McMurdo - so I guess I took it a little personally on their behalf when they seemed to be played for laughs.

See lots of photos of McMurdo here and here.

Interestingly, the director was surprised that McMurdo looks like an Alaskan mining town. It's hardly pristine, it's filled with construction equipment and people running around in dirty white bunny boots. I think this disappointed the director since his conclusion at the end seemed to be that he wished we left blank spaces on the globe, wished humans allowed places to hold tight to their secrets rather than feel an insatiable need to uncover them. I see his point, but I think that we go to new places not only to learn more about them but to learn more about ourselves. I think of traveling more as allowing yourself to be changed by other experiences so I don't see discovery as a zero-sum proposal. And if someone else has been there first, that doesn't make the journey less significant for me.

Personal quibbles aside, go see this or at least put it on your netflix queue and be pleasantly surprised when it lands in your mailbox. After all, armchair traveling counts as journeying, too.

Overhaul

2008-07-11T19:13:00.001-04:00

I have a problem. The problem is that I get stuck in the land of indie rock unless I make an effort to take another direction. So, I'm overhauling my ipod.

Shuffling is cool most of the time and gets me listening to the random corners of my collection, but it's not enough. So, my plan at this point is to get rid of all the single tracks and everything that falls into the category of indie rock. Exceptions: the indie rock I haven't listened to and the running playlist, because I can't just go running to whatever.

Of course, the new Girltalk album is like listening to a couple hundred different albums all by itself. There are so many samples, it's like playing "where's waldo?". It's a not-commercially-available-because-he-didn't-and-couldn't-have-cleared-the-samples, pay-what-you-like dealie available here.

Anyway, what's left on my ipod? Not a whole lot since I can't afford to legally buy a new music collection.

David Bowie - he talks here about writing the songs he still doesn't tire of playing live
She & Him's Volume 1 - an odd little summer album, but the deconstructed, off-kilter Smokey Robinson cover won me over
Goldfrapp - both 2003's Black Cherry and this year's Seventh Tree
My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges - Are they really the second coming of rock music?
The Meters' Fiyo at the Filmore Volume 1
Common Market's Black Patch War
RJD2's Deadringer
Air's Moon Safari - loved Talkie Walkie, just never quite made to this classic
The National's Boxer
Tom Waits' Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards
Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - it'd be nice to know what they're talking about
Etta James boxset
Girltalk's aforementioned Feed the Animals
Ratatat's LP3
The Campbell Brothers with John Medeski on Can You Feel It?

Yup, I could go dig up the links to all those albums, but you're smart and I'm lazy and you can google them yourself. Next dispatch from Chicago's Pitchfork Music Festival next week.

Warfare

2008-07-04T13:14:00.001-04:00

On this Independence Day 2008, I note that war and conflict seem to fill my entertainment these days. I've been watching Ken Burns' lovingly done documentary The Civil War which brings back to mind Doris Kearns Goodwin's extensive Lincoln biography Team of Rivals. I've also just finished war correspondent Scott Anderson's Moonlight Hotel and moved on to The Man Who Tried to Save the World, both of which tell of internecine warfare.

Here's an interesting factoid to chew on: after the Civil War, Americans stopped saying "The United States are" and began to say "The United States is". Our country feels incredibly divided at times - and I'd guess most generations have felt that since there hasn't been a real uniting external cause since WWII - but that division doesn't extend so far anymore as to make the parts greater than the whole. And jokes about moving to Canada if x gets elected aside, I'm glad I live here. So, happy Independence Day, America.

Speaking of war-mongering, Bob Lefsetz got cranky and posted a music industry "enemies list". Gotta say, there's no better way to make 'em than by calling 'em out.

But then, people surprise you sometimes. For instance, blog comment threads normally devolve into "what do you mean, you like x band? They suck!". The readers of 17 dots - the emusic blog - have resisted the impulse and been discussing R.E.M., The National and their own music buying/listening habits in this post on the slow-building popularity of The National. Refreshing. Not as refreshing as my sangria, but no hangover either.

Finally I raise my proverbial glass to my friend Buzz who's moving out of DC. I met him one Saturday night my first summer in DC at the Marx Cafe. We started chatting over beer and discovered that we were both from Boston, we were both more than casual music fans, and we'd both spent much of that month watching the Tour de France as a break from baseball. The next afternoon he helped me finish the project that brought electricity into my hallway and we were friends. I couldn't have hoped to meet a more generous guy....happy trails and keep in touch, babe.

Numerically Speaking

2008-06-24T11:41:00.000-04:00

Remember being in grade school and learning how time signatures worked? Mathrock is apparently music based solely on using funny time signatures.

I mention this because Jean told me the other day that Outkast's "Hey Ya" is in 22/4 time. You and I never noticed this because it's an even number which means you can still dance to it without suddenly finding yourself offbeat. The conversation reminded me of feeling like I'd discovered some hidden secret message when I realized that one of my favorite Soundgarden songs - "The Day I Tried To Live" - is in 15/16. Anyway...

Speaking of Soundgarden, I saw their excellent former drummer Matt Cameron play with Pearl Jam the other night at the Verizon Center. I'm not much for stadium rock and they had a bit of mid-tempo lull early on that dragged, but once they recovered, they rocked. Kudos to Eddie Vedder for trying to explain U.S. oil-drilling policy to 25,000 people in the middle of a rock show. I'm still not about to go buy all their music, but I had a good time. And more importantly, I didn't get that distinct feeling that I was seeing a band that was a caricature of its former self. May we all age so energetically and well.

Not much live music other than that. Caught the Waco Brothers a few weeks ago and they were a rollicking good time as always. Hope to make it to Pitchfork next month - not sure I'll get to see Public Enemy perform, but I'm looking forward to seeing them talk.

New releases I've been meaning to get: Orchestra Baobab's Made in Dakar and My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges.

New releases I'm curious about: Al Green's Lay It Down (with ?uestlove producing) and Joan as Policewoman's To Survive.

Inertia

2008-06-11T19:12:00.003-04:00

An ex once told me that I was the object in motion that stayed in motion until I finally became the object at rest that stayed at rest until I finally became the object in motion etc, etc. I always found that characterization amusing and spot on...except during the summer.

I don't function at my normal speed in the summer. I move more slowly, I want to do less and have more of it be of the escapist variety of entertainment. I find myself spending weekend afternoons lost in a book and then wandering off to watch a few innings of baseball en route to something else that doesn't require lots of energy. I even want my music to be paced to a stroll rather than a run. During the last DC episode of swampiness, I found the right musical waystation in a couple of soundtracks. Soundtracks are often a crapshoot, but the Dianne Reeves soundtrack to Good Night, and Good Luck and the soundtrack to Robert Altman's The Company along with a stack of Jack Teagarden's old big band tunes, the new Goldfrapp album, and my friend Craig Klein's solo trombone release have all finally got me out of my Depeche Mode jag.

I'm going to have to find a way to break out of my mental relaxation mode though since this summer promises to be brisk at work. To prep for that, I'm getting ready to start hiring again. Arg. Didn't I just finished looking at bad resumes? Observation: the people who applied for the unpaid intern position were overwhelmingly more likely to follow the directions than the people who applied for the paid position. When I say directions, I mean that they sent the resume, cover letter and writing sample that we asked for. Is it that the people who want an unpaid internship self-select so only the more conscientious people apply whereas everyone needs to make money? Or are college students more used to following directions because they're still in college? Hmm.

I leave you with this inspired little couplet my ipod shuffled together the other day:

"Off the Grid" by Beastie Boys from The Mix Up
"Kilometer" by Sebastien Tellier from Sexuality
"Your Ex-Lover is Dead" by Stars from Set Yourself On Fire

I'd happily post a mini "mixtape" except I'm not entirely sure how to do it legally...which is a whole 'nother post.

Candlepin Anyone?

2008-06-01T23:07:00.000-04:00

I've been reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, an extensive look at social capital in the US and why there's a marked decrease from the 1950s and 60s in the strength and breadth of civic engagement and social connectedness in the US. According to Putnam, less social capital correlates with or increases the chances of everything from infant morality to obesity to not stopping at stop lights. For instance, if you smoked cigarettes and lived in Mississippi - which ranks at the bottom of much of everything in Bowling Alone - and continued to smoke but moved to North Dakota - which is at the top of most every heap - the effects would be akin to your having quit smoking.

In the way that you often find synchronicity when you start exploring a topic, I've been thinking a lot about social capital lately. When I moved to DC I was told that it takes at least a year after you move to a place for you to start feeling comfortable. I only stopped feeling like I was living on an alien planet once I made some friends, met some people in the neighborhood, and was able to leave my apartment on weekends without looking at a map. Having a number of friends that are relative newcomers here, we can all attest that even then, it's not easy: where to go, how to meet people, how to be a part of a place when you don't feel of it. All that sure takes the naive romance out of "reinventing yourself" in a new place.

I'm not sure how much I buy all of the book's arguments especially since they're about 8 years old now. For instance, the Internet has certainly added a dimension to how we keep in touch and a case could be made that this year's political theater has increased active participation in politics. I'd definitely be curious to read an update. (For you non-New Englanders, here's the explanation on candlepin bowling.)

Still, I'm glad I waded through the book...which I did in between a couple of shows that renewed my faith in live music: X and Cut Copy. I've seen X a couple of times now and they never disappoint. Their show certainly isn't new since they haven't released new music in years, but everything's played with gobs of punky, head-banging attitude and energy and they obviously have a fabulous time. Cut Copy was a lean, tight, dance machine and I can't wait to see them again. I think I may have actually jumped up and down on command. Wow. (Arf?)

And yes, finding the rock clubs in DC went a long way to making me feel like I belonged more!

Calendar Illusions

2008-05-22T15:46:00.002-04:00

Ever feel like you're definitely getting older but feeling younger all at the same time?

I took a few days off to visit family and friends in Boston this past week and arrived just in time to smell the lilacs in full bloom. As usual, I had a great time, but it wasn't all fun and games.

I had that moment when I realized that I might really need to get involved in some evolving family health situations. As the only American-born member of my biological family with the language skills and resources to cope with the system, I guess I'm going to have to get involved and be bitchy and demanding. Mind you, like Tina Fey, I can be good at being bitchy and demanding. In my head, however, advocacy is the province of an adult and it's hard not to feel like a kid around my family's older-generation-but-not-grey-and-frail family members, regardless of how many years the calendar gives me. I think it's going to be an eye-opening transition from cared-for to care-giver.

On the more light-hearted side of things, I saw a bunch of friends in ones and twos and groups, did some long-overdue clothes shopping, made it to Redbones and got me some BBQ, bought too many books at Brookline Booksmith (in particular, I felt a keen case of discounted-cookbook-lust), wore out the little kitty playing many rounds of bottlecap soccer and got scratched up by the big kitty. I discovered - how did this take me so long? - that you can sync up Bollywood film dances with just about any non-downtempo music (thanks, Justin, for that). I ran around Jamaica Pond a few times and saw the ducklings and goslings trailing their parents. The ducklings especially were too cute for words. I'm considering making my next trip back coincide with the Newport Folk Festival.

Now that I'm done procrastinating, I should get back to digging through email...have a great long weekend, folks.

Diversions

2008-05-14T18:12:00.000-04:00

Getting tickets turned into one hell of a process, but I didn't regret it when The Black Keys finally started playing on Monday. Yup, I did hear shades of Zeppelin on occasion, but that's not a bad influence to wear as long as you're not draped in it. Danger Mouse, producer of The Black Keys latest, made sure of that. I loved the raw and loose blues attack of thickfreakness (you probably heard some of it in a car commercial), but the slighter cleaner and spacier sound of the new release is completely complementary. The live show had a lot more bombast and devil-horn-worthy tunes than you'd expect from only two guys on stage. Psychotic Girl is one of my favorite tracks. NPR webcast the second night at the 9:30 club.

Also checked out the Hirschorn Museum's The Cinema Effect: Dreams exhibit. The entire exhibit hall was outfitted cinema-style, complete with red curtain at the entrance. Once you walked in, you followed faint white arrows on the floor and tried not to walk into other people. Eyes adjust of course, but even still the exhibit had a pleasantly disorienting and cocoon-like atmosphere...which was perfect since the exhitbit was about how cinema blurs the lines between illusion and reality. There were lots of quiet, eerie short films and there were also some amusing oddities: someone had taken close-up videos of a face looking around and talking - David Bowie was one of them - and then projected it onto a flat dummy head, which when played looked like it was talking to you. They wouldn't let me take photos, otherwise this explanation would make more sense. Regardless, always entertaining to have Bowie looking at you maniacally!

On the way back, I walked past the soon-to-be-open National Museum of Crime and Punishment . And then I learned that there's also a Museum of the American Cocktail. Maybe I can raise my glass with a drink made with ice cubes using these?

I was hanging at the Marx Cafe last Friday night when DJ Provoke was on fire with the funk spirit. Too bad for him that he was spinning a masterpiece in a sports bar/restaurant. Even those of us who were really into it were dividing our attentions. Sorry, Patrick. Gotta go buy some Meters.

Farmer's Market Love

2008-05-10T15:12:00.001-04:00

The Mt. Pleasant Farmer's Market started again on Saturday. I love going to the farmer's market and I'm completely spoiled since it happens 60 seconds outside my front door. I like vegetables and fruits, but the farmer's market makes me want to cook and eat even more of them. I like buying what looks good/interesting/different and then figuring out what to do with it - the green, diamond-spiked, Romanesco cauliflower, the Thai eggplant, the riotously- colored tomatoes and all the rest of it. For instance, this weekend I brought home some stir-fry greens, spicy radishes and this crazy looking purple asparagus.

I also brought back some herbs. My apartment faces north and while it's really bright from indirect sunlight, it only gets actual sunlight for a bit in the early morning so growing anything is a bit of a crapshoot. Based on last summer's experiments, I'm going to plant thyme, chives, and mint and I'm going to see how rosemary does without sunlight. I tried lavender last summer and it grew beautifully but I couldn't figure out what to do with it.

Someday, I want to have an actual garden with all sorts of vegetables and way too many heirloom tomatoes growing in it. In the meantime, my windowsill garden is a nice start.

Moments Per Minute

2008-05-03T14:21:00.001-04:00

After a workweek spent touring upstate New York, I'm back.

It was a busy and stressful week that was also entertaining, interesting and more-laughs-per-minute than usual. The parts of Rochester I saw seemed hip and happening, relatively speaking. We had our event there at the science museum which amused me because I got to direct people to the mastodon. (Before you think it, yes, I'm easily amused.) Syracuse and Albany seemed much more economically-depressed. You have to wonder what will happen to those folks if our economy continues to flounder.

Our events, however, were very well-attended by local musicians and music industry folk and hopefully we gave them some new ways to keep playing. Random photos here. It was gratifying to watch people begin to put the pieces together of how the new music business works and how they can be a part of it and how faraway policy issues like net neutrality can affect them. It's not hard to become a bit blinkered in that I forget how little other people know about the issues that I spend my days on. Always good to get a reminder.

After the Albany event ended, Jean and I drove to New York City. We arrived in the wee smas of the night at the Chelsea Hotel. The hotel itself was vaguely hostel-like but unsurprisingly very cool, as I discovered the next morning when I work up enough to take in my surroundings.

I spent Thursday catching up a bit on work (have laptop/cell phone/Internet, will travel) and with some friends I haven't seen in a while. Good to see James, who I've known since high school. James is the man behind Dutch Angle Films and he's the reason I know anything about the art of film-making.

That evening, I saw my friend Stew's musical Passing Strange, a thoroughly enjoyable coming of age story with a rock/funk/soul soundtrack and some great acting performances. I've never really been into theater, but if I lived in New York, I think I'd develop a taste for it.

Whew. Now, I'm off to enjoy a weekend with very little planned.

Vocational Musings

2008-04-30T18:17:00.008-04:00

There have been moments when I think I missed my vocation by not being a tour manager. The irony, of course, is that now that I'm qualified and semi-connected enough to shepherd bands around the world, I don't think I'd really want the job for more than short stints. I did a little bit of tour managing a bunch of years ago and enjoyed it, but it did some crazy things to my psyche. I remember spending the entire week after I got back completely on edge (while awake and asleep) waiting for the cell phone to ring and present me with some disaster to fix.

Despite that, at that time in my life I would've happily left town for 200 days a year. Now, it doesn't hold the same appeal. Maybe it's all the traveling I've done over the last few years, but business travel isn't always a perk. After all, you go places to work and you don't necessarily see much. Touring especially is all about traveling so that you can hurry up and wait for the show to happen. You and your brain don't belong to yourself - you belong to the job - and it's not possible to even attempt to maintain balance in your life.

I've watched friends have a hard time after coming back from being on tour because they don't know how to be in one place anymore and they haven't been able to keep in touch as well as they'd like so they're faced with having to reconnect with people every time. That has to wear away a sense of home if the only purpose that home has is to let you collapse for a few weeks, catch up on bills, do laundry and revisit your favorite haunts.

The huge upside, of course, is that there's nothing like that feeling you get when the show starts and the crowd is totally into the music. Not to mention the comradeship that develops when you're spending every waking moment with a group of people. You become fast family because it feels like you're cramming more moments of living into a day. Everything feels louder and funnier and weirder and altogether more exhilarating. It's that sensory overload that makes for a serious case of the post-rock-tour-blues when it's all over.

Anyway, we all change as we get older, and that's one of the biggest changes I've noticed over the last few years in me. I still love to travel and I have all the wanderlust that I used to have, but traveling as a job doesn't seem to hold sway over me anymore.

Keeping Score

2008-04-26T15:14:00.004-04:00

I got a year older last week and because of the occasion discovered that there are multiple depressing songs about turning 31 out there. I, on the other hand, had a few too many drinks with a bunch of people I hadn't seen in while and enjoyed myself thoroughly. It's always cool to see the different parts of my life intersect and interact.

I told the story that night of my experiences with The Mendoza Line's Timothy Bracy in a can-you-believe-that style of humor and then felt badly afterwards because it's as far from funny as you get. I couldn't find a link to the song on 30 Year Low, but the apt comparison seems to be to Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Compared to that, Aimee Mann's typically dour and bitter soon-to-be-released track on turning 31 is innocuous.

The live music scene has left me blah over the last week or so. I saw the New Pornographers at a sold-out 9:30 Club show last week. Yes, there was good-natured fun poked at our ugly new $5 bill, Americans in general and the audience (from the Canadian band), and the band clearly enjoyed themselves, but I might as well have listened to the record. Neko Case was cool and soldiered on despite a bum ankle, but I didn't see much of the indie-rock goddess that all the hipster boys bought tickets for. (Lest you think I'm exaggerating, I just googled "Neko Case indie rock goddess" and got 6,590 hits.)

Last night was Son Volt who seemed bored and were boring to listen to. Wilco definitely got the better half of the Uncle Tupelo break-up. There were way too many mid-tempo numbers that sounded alike. They were marginally more interesting the closer they got to alt-country (and farther from roots rock), but that wasn't enough to keep me there for more than a half-hour.

However, I liked Son Volt's touring guitarist Chris Masterson whose playing was melodic and economical but ballsy when necessary. Which was not often enough with Son Volt and much more so when he joined opener Bobby Bare, Jr. for a couple of tracks. Bobby Bare, Jr. was good though and I'd see him again. Eccentric and crazy are the words everyone uses to describe him and he definitely upstaged the headliners. Also amusing, his bassist looked vaguely like Borat had dressed him. Photos of Bobby Bare, Jr. and Son Volt.

So, final score: 1 (plus a temp guitarist) for 3. Ah well.

Life continues apace. I'm heading out of town tomorrow for a few days to shepard FMC's traveling circus around the boonies. Once that's over, I should be posting more regularly.

This Ain't No Disco

2008-04-14T22:47:00.001-04:00

I had forgotten over the last six months how much I enjoyed wandering into my local bar after work and watching a couple of innings of baseball with frosty beverage in hand. It was nice to remember last week after the packed weeks that keep happening.

Among the fun non-work stuff, last week Puck and I were at Iota for Federal Reserve Collective, but ended up in the restaurant half of the club eating their killer french fries and drinking half-price wine. Aside from being very cool, Puck makes these which I find hilarious but don't click on the link if you're prudish or under 18, kiddies.

On Saturday, I was at The Black Cat for This Ain't No Disco which is Chris Burns and Ed Porter (Dudes) spinning. I really enjoyed it and I loved the musical selections, especially those of Chris Burns. The place was full by night's end but not packed...not for long methinks. Must track them down again.

I'm thinking about spending some of my tax relief check on either a bicycle or a keyboard. I've been having a hard time keeping up with the running lately, so it's hard to say how much a bike would get used. Still, it'd be fun to take rides up Beach Drive which gets closed on Sundays. But then I've always wanted a real piano or keyboard so I could try my hand at playing again. Can't decide.

I'll be seeing a lot of the 930 club in the next month: New Pornographers are this week and Black Keys, Son Volt/Bobby Bare, Jr., and X are coming up.

Random thought: Am I the only one who hears a tuba and thinks of elevator music? I've been shuffling through the ipod lately and have twice now come across a tune with a tuba in it and have found myself thinking of elevator hell. I got no issues with tubas or tuba players, I just think elevator music has done them a real disservice.

Alright, back to making breakfast for dinner.

Mixing It Up

2008-04-03T18:57:00.001-04:00

My latest score courtesy of my office: The Beastie Boys' newest all-instrumental The Mix-Up. It's reminiscent of The In Sound From Way Out, which I've played at more gatherings than I can count. There are more moving parts, but you wouldn't mistake it as anyone other than the Beasties...groovy. Also, in the same batch, the Sondre Lerche soundtrack to "Dan in Real Life". He's gone all adult contemporary. Ouchie.

Radiohead's In Rainbows is growing on me. Speaking of, they got one of those remix-our-song contests going on here. Points off for mixing each instrument together for you so you only get to remix five tracks - you know they somehow used at least 48 tracks.

I was at Arts Advocacy Day on Monday. Along with media training and learning how to talk to your elected officials, I got to take a course in lobbying which included a detailed lesson on how bills turn into laws and all the detours-to-nowhere they can take. It was vaguely like my high school civics class except more interesting, possibly because I was paying attention this time around. If nothing else, The West Wing now makes even more sense.

Saw Lust, Caution the other night. It was a quiet and reserved but intense film. Tang Wei, the lead actress spins a web and then gets herself caught in it - and you watch it happen on her face. She gives an amazing performance.

Just returned from a good time in Buffalo where FMC presented a day long seminar for musicians on how to make money from their music and how to get involved in policy issues that affect them. SRO crowd that was engaged and diverse. More seminars coming at the end of the month in Rochester, Syracuse and Albany. Tell your musically-inclined friends!

OK, back to sitting on hold with the bank and the person who needs "signatory" spelled four times...

Renewal

2008-03-30T14:11:00.001-04:00

The nicest thing I've taken away from SXSW is a renewed excitement about listening to new music. There's always so much to check out between listening to the new, looking to the past to hear the evolution and feeding the current obsessions, that it just feels endless at times. But then I went off to a place where everyone's excited about all that music. And I guess all that listening and talking snapped me out of my doldrums. Case in point: I have next month's 40 emusic downloads already used which has never happened before. In the queue for next month: Bon Iver, Sandro Perri, some old Black Keys because they're coming through town next month, and Robert Nighthawk (courtesy of Document Records). This month's downloads got decimated in my current alt-country jag: Waco Brothers, Gillian Welch, and Eilen Jewell.

The last few weeks have been so awash in trying to roll the snowball up the hill at work, that I feel like I could write a love letter to the elevator that takes me out of that building, but the Stars already did that in this cool song but blah video.

In a random bit of synchronicity, I keep hearing about a resurgence in popularity of vinyl as a format, aka the "vinyl revival": donewaiting and idolator do the latest roundups on the topic and here's a blurb from the panel at SXSW with some exciting rumors included for those who care.

I spent last night on the roof deck of Reef trying to solve the world's problems with Andrew and Brian and Megan. Failed in that goal, but had a good time all the same.

Expressing Yourself

2008-03-23T20:54:00.002-04:00

This apartment building burned down in my neighborhood while I was in Austin. No one was hurt thankfully, but the remains are a pretty crazy sight to walk by daily.

I got some grief when I mentioned that I didn't want Clinton to go down in flames in Texas and Ohio. For a bunch of reasons, I don't see the downside in extending the primary season to give Obama time to turn more smart, thoughtful Americans into believers, especially if his response to potshots is to turn them into opportunities, as he did in his recent thoughtful, impassioned discussion of race. But rather than go on about that speech, I refer you to The Journal of Abundant Media, who already said it better than I could.

Amusing moments caught in four days worth of World Figure Skating Championships coverage: this guy from Sweden dug out the Saturday Night Fever get-up and Sinead & John Kerr from Scotland imitated aliens, but at least he didn't go commando. I wonder if DJ Shadow knows he's got a new audience in these French ice dancers? Men's figure skating has turned into the land of sensitive metrosexuals, which makes Daisuke Takahashi's program to a hip-hop-esque remix of Swan Lake all the more entertaining. Some years you could get snockered if you turned the awful-costume-watch into a drinking game. This year, you sadly would have been stone cold sober. Aside from that, it's been a thoroughly entertaining few days of appointment television/competition.

I enjoyed myself at The Black Cat's Saturday dance night. A good time was had by all though the music was pretty unimaginative and the DJ confused the crowd at times. Still, judging by the booty-shaking, no one seemed to mind much. I'd go back since it was fun and $6 to get in.

Starbucks's record label Hear Music - for which I worked one summer when it was still a little chain of cool music stores - is learning how hard the music biz is these days: the straight and the snarky take on that.

Can I Do It Again?

2008-03-17T18:58:00.002-04:00

In the event you're not tired of reading about SXSW yet...

Once you resign yourself to the idea that you're going to miss 99.9% of what you want to see, SXSW is a no-holds-barred great time. The whole conference has that feeling at times of a house party with everyone you've ever met. Hung out with lots of people, panels were interesting for the most part, I left with posters courtesy of Flatstock, the music was everything you want in a music festival (as long as you ponied up for a badge) and the whole shebang ran on schedule.

Bizarre sights: the blogger cage (scroll down for photo) and international speed dating.

Sadly wasn't invited to this party.

Here's the quick wrap-up on the artists (i.e. at least two songs) I caught:

Wednesday

Centro-matic

Thursday

My Morning Jacket

DevotchKa

Friday

Waco Brothers

Wiley and The Checkmates

Herman Hitson

Andrew Collberg

Deadman

Jimmie Vaughan

Headlight - misheard later that night as "headlice"

Abra Moore

N.E.R.D. Watch video

Rhapsody's Tim Quirk wandered SXSW collecting drunk-dialing stories from musicians. He managed to get installments from The Hold Steady's Franz Nicolay, The Mekons'/Waco Brothers' Jon Langford, Gang of Four's Dave Allen and more. Don't laugh, you know you've done it, too.

Even if I'd know that Bob Mould was in town on Saturday, I think I needed the silence by then. Still, would've been cool to hear Copper Blue live.

Spunky hopefuls, huh? Pun was completely intentional.

Oh, please.

Future Leads to the Past

2008-03-13T20:41:00.001-04:00

One severely overbooked flight, four hours of waiting, a three hour flight to a place I wasn't going to (Dallas), another overbooked flight to another place I wasn't going to (San Antonio), 3 hours of driving (Dallas to Austin) that included someone nearly ramming into us on the highway...and we made it to Austin at 12:45 last night...15 hours after I left my house. Insert sigh o' relief here.

I've spent the day chatting and watching panels at SXSW to get ideas on people who can participate in FMC conferences in the future, to actually watch some panels and learn from them - something I don't get to do at our events, and to get a sense of what people are interested in learning.

This afternoon's panels included an interesting one on "Selling Music As a Service." No doubt webcasts will be available in a few days here. The concept of treating music as a service instead of as a product is hardly a new one these days. It feels like the topic du jour, much like pro- and anti-DRM debates were a few years ago. The question that inevitably comes up is "what is the future?"

If I could have the perfect world of musical discovery, what would it be? Would ownership of the music matter? There's certainly an allure to the idea of having the world's entire musical library at your fingertips from one device for you to access at any time for a fee. Portability of whatever system would be key for me. But giving up the idea of ownership would also be a shift in thinking. Our music and other collections define us in so many ways because they're indicative of who we are or were and what we deem or did deem worthy of spending money on or not tossing. What would replace that identification process? Would we have to (wow) go back to talking to each other and not making snap judgments based on that one Celine Dion or Backstreet Boys release that mars an otherwise worldly, eclectic and hip music collection?

I'm off to dinner - possibly to a benefit concert for a documentary called Body of War and My Morning Jacket later tonight and as many other bands as I can see in between now and when I collapse. By the way, NPR is webcasting and broadcasting MMJ as well as Vampire Weekend, and Yo La Tengo and R.E.M. last night.

Rhymes with Stealin'

2008-03-08T17:44:00.003-05:00

It's been a travelin' kind of week.

Monday was a quick trip to Philly where I visited my co-worker Kristin to talk through some website stuff. For lunch that day I had the most delicious vegetarian Italian hoagie at a place called Chickie's. They were stuffed with sauteed broccoli rabe, roasted red peppers, baked eggplant and provolone cheese. For the skeptical amongst you, I promise that broccoli rabe is GREAT in sandwiches.

Wednesday I left on my tour of upstate New York. This is part of the same free-educational-seminars-for-musicians-project that I went to Syracuse for. That trip was so useful and productive that I sorta, kinda, maybe, OK, I really did volunteer myself for this second trip. I'm beat right now, but it was worth it. If I ever forget how much you miss on conference calls and emails, this was a huge reminder. I met some great folks who are eager to learn more and to get as many people involved as possible, so mission was definitely accomplished.

I suspect the musicians' union as a concept is going the same way as other labor unions in that membership and leadership are aging and they're struggling to continue catering to their existing membership while also trying to find ways to appeal and be relevant to the younger, non-orchestra folks. Not an easy task.

One of our project partners, The Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester have a mini gallery in their office with a cool metalwork exhibit going on. The metal chair in the photo was pretty comfortable.

I saw country/folk/blues singer Eilen Jewell (yup, it rhymes with stealin') last Saturday at the Iota Cafe. She opened there last year for The Holmes Brothers and I spent her entire set talking to them (and over her). And once I paid attention, I felt badly that I hadn't paid more. So, I wanted to see her and she of the smoky voice didn't disappoint. Her guitar player played the tastiest, honky-tonkish, chicken-pickin' licks, her upright bassist was slappin' away like one of those guys in the old black and white reels from the 40's wearing tails, her drummer brushed with abandon, and she crooned over it all to the dancers and watchers. In addition to originals, she covered Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday and Loretta Lynn ("Fist City").

Heard on the radio while in a DC taxi cab on Friday night, sidekick says to DJ: "You know, this is probably the only hip-hop show with an all Will Ferrell intro."

From Monday's NYTimes: the new, more personable Hillary Clinton "recently tried her hand at bowling an orange up the aisle during [her campaign plane's] take-off, a favorite game of the news media." If we have Clinton as President, will the White House Press Corps graduate to grapefruits or maybe even pomelos? Watch the party start then, yee haw!

Off to SXSW next week. As wrecked as I feel right now, I'm still excited ;)

Jeweler?

2008-03-01T18:30:00.002-05:00

Two [correction: two days later, I'm now up to three...] near strangers in the last week have asked me if I'm a jeweler. You see, if you google my name, I'm not the first "Chhaya Kapadia" that comes up. The first is the founder and designer of Maya Jewels. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but are there really that many people out there that get an email from my work email account, google me, think I'm a jeweler, and then wonder what the jewelry has to do with music?

A crazy week of work travel is coming up. I'm heading to Philly on Monday and then I'm taking another run through upstate New York on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday where I'll be visiting Buffalo, Rochester and Albany (in that order). Oy. Not so bad though in that I love taking the train. After booking all those trains I'm convinced that Amtrak subsidizes all the rest of their routes by marking up the cost of the Northeast Corridor since it costs peanuts to travel the full width of New York but it's cheaper to fly DC-Boston.

I didn't get to see Wilco last week since tickets sold out within hours. What a great bill, too with the always awesome John Doe (of X and The Knitters) opening. Lucky for me, NPR has the whole show online.

On the techie front, I got to see Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) this week while working on my boss' new laptop and I think I have a gadget crush. I'm considering upgrading since the reviews look stellar. That and I've been looking into Office 2008. I'd be willing to pay a lot if Entourage (the red-headed, country bumpkin, Mac-based stepchild of Outlook for you Windows folks) worked better. Alas reviews are mixed.

DC News

The US Mint doesn't want to print "Taxation Without Representation" on the new DC quarter. Silly me. No doubt it's not necessary since our history-obsessed citizenry is fully aware that DC residents don't have a vote in Congress. Obnoxious.

In addition to lacking a vote in Congress, DC is also without many places to dig through music for us non-turntable-owning types. DCist runs through the music retailer landscape.

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It seems 11 hours at the office, no dinner, three Chimays and staying up till 4 talking didn't result in my feeling the best this morning. Ya think? Greasy breakfasts fix many a problem though.

No Jazz Flutes

2008-02-25T21:18:00.003-05:00

Ah, Syracuse. Depending on whether you're feeling charitable, Worcester, MA or Hanover, NH come to mind. I was there for a 36-hour trip this past weekend to have meetings and check out venues for a seminar we're doing there in April. It wasn't a bad time, but 36 hours was plenty. While there I got to listen to lots of suits talk shop about the intricacies of the FCC and communications law. A bit brain-numbing. On the upside, I got to sit in on a lecture by Pandora's founder Tim Westergren. He's a very cool former musician with a business model that will hopefully continue to make money and introduce people to new music as long as Soundexchange doesn't do them in. Since they need people to listen to all that music and categorize it in umpteen ways, they actually hire those poor, starving, non-touring, Berklee College of Music grads who had to take all that music theory! Drat. If I'd know that I would've stuck with ear training and contemporary harmony...that is, as long as it never involved listening to the jazz flute.

I tie my brain in knots regularly over FMC's finances: how to pay for things, how to justify them, how to pay just enough - not too much but not too little either - for what we need, and how to explain it all. Funny, I never thought about its innate alternate-universe-esque weirdness until I read this article in the Non-Profit Quarterly. If you work for a non-profit or are considering it, this article should be required reading.

Alas, non-profit accounting is not as amusing as Chad Vader (courtesy of the dude from Innova I met in Syracuse).

The Long Tail's Chris Anderson has a free preview on the Wired website from his new book called, in case you miss the point, "Free".

On the political front: Harold Feld considers how Clinton's constant style vs. substance charge is more about campaigning style and how Obama and Clinton are using the Internet differently. Can't finish this without asking why? Seems Nader can't properly answer that question either.

Well, at least I only got a few points in the Dork category...

Pop Culture Gaps

2008-02-21T23:15:00.009-05:00

As some of you already know, I have some rather noticeable gaps in my knowledge of pop culture, especially with movies. So I've been catching up on my movie watching lately. Send me your top ten lists if you feel inspired and I'll add them to my Netflix queue.

Most recently seen:

Lost in Translation: nice to know that hype is sometimes warranted.
Eastern Promises: does Viggo Mortensen do anything badly? I even got my geek on and watched the featurette on Russian mafia tattoos.
Once: great music in a sweet little film though knowing that the 37 year old guy was dating the 19 year old girl in real life was a little weird. I wish I'd caught the two of them when they came through town last year.
Match Point: I didn't really buy the ending and it seemed to drag. That said, it certainly added to the mini-Scarlett Johansson fest.

I even tried to go see There Will Be Blood last weekend, but the film broke (broke? really?) and so no movie. Since then I've moved on to television featuring women who kick ass while living in the midst of extensive mythologies. No, not Buffy this time around, but Alias.

I think I'd have a lot more books if I had an apartment like this. But No Depression won't be on bookshelves anymore.

Digital Audio Insider considers the new music equation.

I didn't know that Wilco has webcasts of live shows on their website.

If Friday's weather holds, I'm off to Syracuse. If not, I may try to see Jason Isbell (ex-Drive-By Truckers) at the 930 Club.

Museum Etiquette

2008-02-17T13:15:00.003-05:00

I went on a first date on Saturday afternoon. We ended up at a very typical DC first date place: a museum, to be specific, the National Museum of African Art. Now, I like museums, but as a first date activity they have their downsides, namely that you're wandering around looking at art and reading descriptions and not getting to know each other. Yes, sometimes conversations spring up around the art, but unless you were both art history majors, conversations tend to go something like "Person 1: I like the hat on that sculpture. Person 2: Yeah, that's cool."

To remedy this flaw in the museum first date, I've taken to discussing where in a hypothetical house I would put the piece of art we're looking at and posing the same question to my date. Maybe my approach is flip and disrespectful to the process of appreciating the art, but at least it gets you talking to each other and getting to know each other, which is after all the point of a first date. I don't know what this says about me, but I envisioned a lot of the African sculptures I saw on Saturday in gardens and greenhouses. The woman in/of this bowl has such attitude on her; I'm not messing with her. Anyway, while the date in question seemed to find my line of thinking amusing at first, I think he ended up being annoyed. Oh well. Suffice it to say, my date didn't end in hickeys. By the by, "an ode to hickeys"?

Now here's some art I like for its own sake: latte art.

This was a fantastic exhibit last year. I have to make it there this year.

On the scheduling front, I realized a few days ago that my tickets for Justice are the same night that I'm arriving in Austin for South by Southwest. Damn. There are still tickets for the Baltimore show at Sonar so I'm not without hope that I'll find someone who wants to go and also has a car. Besides, I'm going to be in Austin, so I can't complain that much.

Though I'm a Scrabulous devotee, I got my ass handed to me earlier this week by Jean in an FMC office Scrabble game. Rematch is in the offing.

I had an insanely long week at work. I was going loopy from financial reports by Friday night. The week ended serendipitously with drinks at Marx and a late night breakfast at The Diner. It was exactly what I needed. Thanks, Rick!

Cake & Raspberries

2008-02-12T09:57:00.001-05:00

So, do I start with my ode to television or my hearty raspberry to television? I'm feeling like applause first, so I have to say that I love the Food Network show Ace of Cakes. I might want Giada De Laurentis and Ina Garten to make me dinner, but I want to hang out with the people at Charm City Cakes who spend their time making these wacky, gravitationally-impossible cakes. I mean when was the last time you saw a slab of bacon and a can of Miller Lite made of cake - that was completely edible?

As to raspberries? Twin Peaks Season 2 gets that honor. I finally finished and my initial response was "that's the end of Twin Peaks?" After sitting through hours of Nadine pretending to be 17 again, Windom Earle laughing maniacally, and Heather Graham playing an ex-nun, that's the ending we get? Any show with that many mysterious deaths should pay off its viewers suspension of disbelief better than that. Season 1 was a lot of fun, but Season 2 believed Season 1's hype more than it should have. Arg. I'm annoyed. I feel kinda cheated by my television set.

The oddball find of the week: your friends at Boing Boing dug up this history of conjoined twins for the curious folks out there.

Finally, here's some funny that crossed my path, because who can't use a laugh?

I think I'm behind the curve on this on, but it's still f*cking hilarious: Sarah Silverman F*cking Matt Damon.

Last weekend's This American Life was all about tough rooms. One of the toughest has to be backstage at The Onion.

Listenin' Around

2008-02-07T09:45:00.001-05:00

I was at the Iota Cafe on Monday night and saw Federal Reserve Collective who do a casual monthly night there of alt-country/folk/pop by various DC indie musicians. Though I missed the guy I was there to see, I really enjoyed it and plan to go back next month.

As to the events of the larger world: 1) didn't watch the Superbowl because if I'd gone to my friend Robert's party, I would've been that annoying person who doesn't understand the game; 2) having only been a resident of Massachusetts and DC, my vote has never really mattered, until next week that is. That's exciting - in a geeky way.

Also very cool is that I'm going to SXSW next month...and on the decidedly less earth-shattering side, I'm going to Syracuse later this month. Both are work trips, but I'm looking forward to SXSW since I've never been to that guargantuan industry confab. While I was at the 930 Club last weekend, I got tickets to Justice next month. And Chromewaves took a stab at collecting the dates for this year's biggest North American festivals. Since I'm not much for camping in the desert or the middle of nowhere, I'm not sure which festivals I'll make it to. Lollapalooza maybe?

If you live in DC and you have some free time during the day, the National Archives is screening the landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize. I'd go, but for some unknown reason, they're showing it in one hour blocks on Tuesdays and Fridays at noon throughout February. Oh well, DVDing it, I guess. They're also showing all the documentary and short film Oscar nominees at more reasonable days/times later this month.

I didn't realize I knew so many people with blogs until I started keeping one myself. My friend, Jen, for instance nearly made me cry with this the other day since the best friend with cancer that she mentions was also my very oldest friend. Reading her post made me miss Phatiwe anew.

Super Tuesday & Fat Tuesday

2008-02-04T15:45:00.002-05:00

A sizable portion of my week was spent working on a benefit concert on Saturday, February 2 at the 930 Club by OK Go and New Orleans funk brass band Bonerama. Together the two bands are releasing a digital-only EP on Tuesday, which is appropriately enough both Super and Fat Tuesday. Proceeds from the EP will support the building of a new home (here's what left of the old one) for legendary New Orleans musician Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, who's still living in Houston since Hurricane Katrina, and Sweet Home New Orleans, an organization that helps New Orleans musicians return to and stay in New Orleans. Saturday's concert was sold out, a ton of fun to work on, great music from some of the nicest musicians you could hope to meet and all in support of great causes. Added bonus that my night ended with a chili half-smoked during my first trip to Ben's Chili Bowl.

EP is available on iTunes. Here's the Washington Post review. Photos are forthcoming.

As to Super Tuesday...I love watching election returns. Yup, I'm a geek, a political junkie, whatever. Washington, DC often gives me reasons to move someplace else, but one of the great reasons to stay is the unending political theater and the way that DC residents lap it up. It's better than sports...'cuz it's real! So, yeah, me and CNN are going to get cozy Tuesday night.

Speaking of elections, I've never made a political contribution in my life. But I'm about to make my first for Barack Obama. I'll support Hillary in November if she gets the nomination, but it's a refreshing feeling to truly vote for someone rather than against the other guy. Interesting quote from Hillary (quoting Mario Cuomo) that I read a while back: "You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose." Obama certainly has the poetry down; I hope and believe he's capable of prose if the time comes.

Hey boys and girls, sorry for the late notice, but did you know that you essentially kissed the person at your Superbowl party that double-dipped into the bowl of dip? This bit of popular science comes to you courtesy of the same guy that explored the validity of the 5-second rule last year.

I hate badly done Flash with a passion, but I'm passing this easy online Flash editor along in the hopes you'll only make the good kind. Pretty please?

My hometown of Boston got lit up, both literally and figuratively, last week in remembrance of the day a year ago when city officials were unable to tell ad campaign from terrorist threat.

Mishead lyrics by LCD Soundsystem this week: "we're all hi-hi-high on lemon zest". Still not sure what they're actually saying.

The Underage Shimmy

2008-01-26T14:46:00.002-05:00

No doubt Mitt Romney must know from bling since he talks about it here.

It has been a long week of crunching numbers and watching Twin Peaks Season 2 to recover from the resulting brain freeze. I've also been part of the search committee for an Operations Coordinator at FMC. This person will fill my job so I can become Events Organizer. The process has really made me think about how you judge someone's ability to do a job when they don't have much experience. I've been lucky when people have made that leap of faith about me in the past but how do you judge that in someone else? I'm feeling grateful these days that I don't make my living in HR.

I saw Buffalo Tom at The Black Cat last night. Bassist Chris Colbourn used to be my boss but I'd never seen him perform. I enjoyed the show, but equally entertaining was the underage girl who was doing the suburban butt shimmy against her equally underage boyfriend. She danced. He squirmed while trying to figure out how to cop a feel but not actually dance. The best part? When her mom appeared and joined her in dancing (bad dancing runs in the family) while the boy kept his distance only to sidle back when mom's back was turned.

Feeling the need to make fondue? Wow.

Saw Juno last weekend. Smart and sharp movie that could've been cold, but instead was done with a lot of heart. I really liked it.

Other odds and ends:
Tim Wu talks here in Slate about why both you and AT&T don't want AT&T to try to filter content for violations of intellectual property. Color me convinced.

Heard on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me this morning regarding Bill Clinton: "You know, he's like that kid that graduated high school, but keeps hanging around. You just want to ask him, 'aren't you, like, 28?'"

How Do You Start One of These?

2008-01-22T15:29:00.000-05:00

Not sure what came over me, but I suddenly decided I wanted a blog of my own. I'm hardly expecting an audience of anyone but occasionally curious friends and Facebook folks, but I think it's more about the act of sharing my life in this particular way that intrigues me...so here I am.

Why "Liquid Sunshine"? At some inspired moment, I decided that a perfectly ripe mango tastes like liquid sunshine. Since then, it's been a poetic and convenient moniker and so I'm using it here. Don't expect platitudes to daisies and blue skies though.

What can you expect? I travel a fair bit and enjoy writing about those trips. I listen to and see a fair bit of music. Since I'm employed by Future of Music Coalition as an Events Organizer, I also get paid to read lots of blogs/news stories. I've rediscovered the movies in the last few months. So...you can expect to read about any/all of that along with the random musings that go with any personal blog.

Chhaya