insights from the digital future
Anyone who knows me quickly finds out that I am a live music junkie. I don’t have a problem, per se, but I do go out to see bands perform multiple times each week. Last night was one of those excellent, multiphonic nights that reminds me why it’s so important to live in a large cultural hub such as Los Angeles.
Over the course of a couple hours I saw two bands and three electronic beat mixer-uppers (DJs, I guess we call them) all within a couple miles of my Echo Park home. Money well spent on a broad experiential night. Everest tore up the Bootleg Theater, and later I caught the final three beatmasters at Proximal Records Proximity One: Narrative of a City (listen below) Release Party: Sahy Uhns, TOKiMONSTA, and Daedelus. I was torn between going to one show or the other and was ecstatic to have the timing to get the best of both worlds. It helped that a small lighting fire at The Echo set the show back a half hour or so.
I got a few decent photos. Plus see below for a list of podcasts and websites that I check regularly to get my fill of live music (video and audio) when I’m not at the show myself. People talk about digital downloads and physical music. Physical music for me means hearing it live. Feeling it.
Over the past few years I’ve realized that I’m not absorbing new music quite like I used to. I continue to discover and accumulate new music constantly, however, I’m not listening as closely. I used to make mixes quite regularly, dating back to the late 80s and early 90s, when I used my trusty dual cassette boombox.
Over the past decade I’d consistently update my Live365 station and spend my days listening to that. There are hundreds of songs that I’ll never get sick of listening to. And, yes, I still listen to a lot of the stuff that you hate and vice versa.
In order to keep my work, creativity, and spirit fresh and on an innovative tip, I feel the need to put forth a more concerted effort to discover and absorb that which informs and inspires me. Hearing, seeing, discovering something for the first time is an entirely different sensation than celebrating that which is proven, known, and comfortable. Innovation is a two-way street and it’s the adventurousness of discovering and absorbing that drives and inspires me.
I’m still hearing a lot of the same music in my subconscious that I’ve been hooked on for the past five to ten years. I went stream of consciousness in curating this mix and what’s apparent listening back to it is that a big part of the musical me is stuck in 2005. To some extent I think it’s lazy to stick with what’s comfortable. It’s outwardly redundant and certainly not innovative. It’s the five year anniversary of my last mix – Extraordinary Renditions (Aug 2005). Five years ago I picked up and drove my Civic out to Los Angeles with my dad to take on grad school and get where I am today.
So here goes, I mixed it all up into one track this time the playlist is below – listen / grab it.
It feels like April Fools in July with the launch of Facebook’s inevitably anticipated Q&A service.
Ages after every other internet portal and social network went ahead and entrapped the unfocused masses in endless loops of Q and A clickery, your Facebook news feed is probably popping with sophomoric questions right about now.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun — as in funny. I can’t take it seriously. And I’m going to have to make sure this April Fools joke comes to an abrupt end (as soon as somebody tells me how to opt out). Did I think twice before trying out questions? Well, I took a second to take the above screenshot, but then I dived right in. I wanna play! This is the most fun and interactive FB App since Mafia Wars! Look at all those notifications — mostly from people I don’t even know… yet!
But I really felt like I was doing this while trying not to fall asleep in 4th grade Language Arts class or something. ESPECIALLY when Facebook told me that I had to capitalize the first word [sic] of each sentence.
Nice to see Facebook finally reaching out to its under-served high school (and younger) community and to provide some educational value while at it!
So now that I wrote this tongue-in-cheek blog post about Facebook’s latest feature, can I quit it?
Not before I ask.
Check out real Facebook + Media coverage of Q&A here, here, here, and here. I’ll come back to FB Questions if the API proves to really open up the platform and say, enable embedding of questions and polls on this here blog.
