Today, Wired Magazine led me to wasting my entire day looking through the internet and touring all of the crap I am not connected to, and can't find a reason to connect to. It all led to the inexorable conclusion: I must just be getting old. Because, seriously, I don't get it, and that frightens me.
I'll step back and build up to today's epiphany. First, ignore that I have a blog. Becuase I'm obviously not a "blogger," so I don't think this counts. This is just my cute little way of keeping in touch, as you guys well know.
It started back in college, when, ironically enough, I heard about Jenni and jenniCAM.com, where some crazy chick was running a camera from her apartment to the internet, and letting everyone see her life. It was a bizarre curiosity that most of us forgot.
Then, a few years a go a friend sent me an invite to Friendster. My reaction: are you serious? I do not need to be involved with this shit. Friends, check. Girlfriend, check. Everyone I know has my phone number, check. What's the point? Decline invite, and move on.
After that came MySpace and Facebook. Same reaction - what do strangers need to know about me? Nothing. What do my friends need to know that they already don't? Nothing. No need for a MySpace page: I'm not a band, I'm not an author (yet), etc. - I have nothing I need to get out there. Proceed with life accordingly.
A few months ago, my first issue of Wired told me a story about Twitter and all its weirdness. People are txting the crap out of their lives and having it posted to this networking/blogging service. Wired made an interesting observation - it's dumb, unless your circle of friends is all doing it, which then leads to an interesting sharing with the peopel in your life. Hm, neat. But I don't have the circle of friends doing it, so it's not for me. Once more, I press ahead.
Understand, this whole time, I feel like I'm keeping up, for the most part. I have a lot of gadgets. I spent near the maximum for this here laptop. The only technology I gave up on was a PDA, but partly because it came out just before that stuff became connected to phones. So, I was under the (apparantly mistaken) impression that I was keeping up with the times.
Then, the iPhone came out. We all know that story.
And today, I read in Wired about justin.tv, where people "lifecast" themselves. Freaks like Jenni, methinks. But, whoa ho, what's this? iJustine, a "freelance designer/video editor" who has her whole life on camera.
Justine seems to be having a lot of fun with her wired yuppie life. I know because I can watch her 24/7. I watched her all day today, while looking around the web at shit, like Last.fm, that I don't understand, trying to fathom how I suddenly became one of the disconnected ones. For the first time, I realize I've gotten behind, and it scares me.
So here I am, barely conversant in technology that's becoming ubiquitous, while there's Justine. Admittedly, she's on the opposite end of the spectrum - FULLY plugged in - but she shows me just how far I have to go to keep up. She's successful, and for the most part, not weird. She has a Facebook page. She has a MySpace page. She has numerous blogs. She's on Twitter. She's on Last.fm. She's on groovr. She's on virb. She sends an average of 30,000 txt's a month. I can watch her entire life on the internet, for God's sake!
Watch live video from ijustine on Justin.tv
So what does all of this mean to me? Not much, other than the realization I just described - I'm behind in the world of technology, and thus I feel old. I'll get over it. But if you want to help me live a more "wired" lifestyle, please drop me a line and help an old man out.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
Plugging Good Music Without Shame
I feel no shame in plugging the new album Fears & Accusations by two talented musicians, Brent Bowman and Bryan Lisa. While many musicians have talent, it doesn't mean a thing unless they can put together a tight, impressive product. But, these guys have done just that.
Before its release, I had heard that I should expect a brooding, acoustic album inspired by the likes of Iron & Wine, Bob Dylan, and Tom Waits. However, upon my first listen, I realized Bowman and Lisa have created something more. These songs could easily be the calm artful tune in the middle of the kickass album of any of your favorite rockers, like Snow Patrol, Jet, or the Foo Fighters.
Opening with the catchy waiting, the album welcomes you into a genre of music as difficult to describe as Bowman and Lisa have framed it on their MySpace page: "your basic acoustic/alternative/emo/folk/blues/alt-country/rock band."
Bowman and Lisa continue with a dozen more tracks that might at first seem to run around high-five'ing as many influences as possible - Chris Isaak, Waits, B.B. King, Radiohead, and Townes Van Zandt, to name just a few - but, in the end, they take some great sounds from these genres and influences, and put them together to create something excitingly new and yet comfortably familiar.
The haunting exhuming you recounts the mixed emotions of a past relationship that Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon would know well, while on looking back, Bowman channels powerful crooning similar to the Chris Martin warhead of Coldplay's musical arsenal. Bowman, however, infuses it with a strength and grit that Martin could never pull off, making for an emotionally stirring ballad.
Other tracks on the album show Bowman and Lisa's lighter side, with the fun romp, i'm the man, showcasing Bowman's guitar talent and successfully trashing every controlling golddigger ever to think she could latch her hands into a musician, while the blues-infused something in our skies will have even the most mainstream-pop listening whiners stomping their feet.
While the album heads out with increasingly dark tunes, such as the final destructive ballad of a man using prostitutes to dream of his lost love, it reminds me that beneath all the bubblegum pop out there, good musicians are still making good music.
I hesitate any time I think of plugging a certain artist. There are simply too many people out there endorsing absolute crap for all the wrong reasons. So, I thought hard about whether to do so for these guys, but the fact is that I think you'll like their album. It's simply good music, and you'll be humming these songs to yourself long after the closing notes.
Buy Fears & Accusations
Before its release, I had heard that I should expect a brooding, acoustic album inspired by the likes of Iron & Wine, Bob Dylan, and Tom Waits. However, upon my first listen, I realized Bowman and Lisa have created something more. These songs could easily be the calm artful tune in the middle of the kickass album of any of your favorite rockers, like Snow Patrol, Jet, or the Foo Fighters.
Opening with the catchy waiting, the album welcomes you into a genre of music as difficult to describe as Bowman and Lisa have framed it on their MySpace page: "your basic acoustic/alternative/emo/folk/blues/alt-country/rock band."
Bowman and Lisa continue with a dozen more tracks that might at first seem to run around high-five'ing as many influences as possible - Chris Isaak, Waits, B.B. King, Radiohead, and Townes Van Zandt, to name just a few - but, in the end, they take some great sounds from these genres and influences, and put them together to create something excitingly new and yet comfortably familiar.
The haunting exhuming you recounts the mixed emotions of a past relationship that Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon would know well, while on looking back, Bowman channels powerful crooning similar to the Chris Martin warhead of Coldplay's musical arsenal. Bowman, however, infuses it with a strength and grit that Martin could never pull off, making for an emotionally stirring ballad.
Other tracks on the album show Bowman and Lisa's lighter side, with the fun romp, i'm the man, showcasing Bowman's guitar talent and successfully trashing every controlling golddigger ever to think she could latch her hands into a musician, while the blues-infused something in our skies will have even the most mainstream-pop listening whiners stomping their feet.
While the album heads out with increasingly dark tunes, such as the final destructive ballad of a man using prostitutes to dream of his lost love, it reminds me that beneath all the bubblegum pop out there, good musicians are still making good music.
I hesitate any time I think of plugging a certain artist. There are simply too many people out there endorsing absolute crap for all the wrong reasons. So, I thought hard about whether to do so for these guys, but the fact is that I think you'll like their album. It's simply good music, and you'll be humming these songs to yourself long after the closing notes.
Buy Fears & Accusations
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