I have not been paying much attention to music lately. A few nights ago I was flipping through the channels before I went to bet and Letterman said the band Butch Walker and the Black Widows would be on next. I had never hard of them so i persevered through the 12 inane sales pitches until the show came back on.
I was expecting something a little “country” based on the Butch Walker part. The group played a song called Synthesizers. They looked . . . kind of 80s . . . kind of today . . . but they looked real. They looked like were NOT pretending, they looked like they were having fun and actually cared about what they were doing. There seemed to be passion in their effort. This is not easy to accomplish when you have to go from 0 to 100 in front of a live audience on a TV stage.
Oh yeah, the music – I really liked it. To be honest it was the whole package i liked, the music, the words but more importantly this guy Butch had something. Yes, it was talent, it was commitment it was the ability to relate. Most music stars today are caricatures. Their persona like their music is manufactured – entertaining, yes, but superficial.
Well, I needed to find out more. When the some was over I went to the trusty interwebs. Turns out this was not his first rodeo. He is a singer/songwriter, he’s been at it one way or anther since he was 18. He is 42 now. If you are a music biz insider you probably think of him as a producer. He has produced a bunch of artists/albums including Avril Lavigne, Weezer, Bowling for Soup, Gavin Degraw, Katie Perry, Pink, Panic at the Disco and a lot more.
Of course, he has a website/blog www.butchwaler.com. it’s worth your time to browse through it. I am pretty sure he is the one that actually posts to it, not his publicist. Once again you see the talent and the “realness”, he says things we would say (or think) if we were in his place. He is as likely to post pictures of his kids as of his famous pals. Harper Collins liked his blog and style so much they asked him to write a book which he did – Drinking with Strangers: Music Lessons from a Teenage Bullet Belt. I will read this book.
This guy isn’t the next Springsteen or anything. His music won’t appeal to everyone but here is someone writing songs with real words
This is what you get when you mix an Android phone with a stove and add 10 years. It’s a very cool concept. Most industries (with the exception of car companies) don’t go to the trouble and expense of producing concepts to show the general public. Electrolux is showing some leadership putting things like this out there. They have other futuristic household designs on their site www.electroluxdesignlab.com
Today many sites on the internet look different than they did yesterday. Google has a black bar across their name/logo, Wikipedia is dark which means none of their billions of pages are available to explain whatever crazy reference you read in some blog. Social media sites are burning up with comments about PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). In a tiny nutshell, these congressional bills try to protect copyrighted content on the internet by making it illegal to use/display/link to content without permission. It is backed by the Time Warner, Sonys, CBS’s and NY Times of the world. It is opposed by almost everyone who uses the internet as their primary method of producing or consuming content. The argument against it isn’t that copyrights shouldn’t be protected it is that is bill is so vague and clueless that it can’t work.
Here is the part I really get a kick out of; you can’t go to a current events online site without reading about SOPA or someone’s opinion about it, but if you turn on the TV, radio, open the newspaper it will barely get a mention. They want it but they don’t want to stick up for it because they know most people are against it so they just don’t talk about it.
,255,255); text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; display: inline !important; font: 13px/18px arial, sans-serif; white-space: normal; orphans: 2; float: none; color: rgb(0,0,0); word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px”>This SOPA thing is shaping up to be a major debacle. I predict by the time it’s over even it’s most staunch supporters will be saying things like, “I wasn’t really in favor of it as it was written” or “ me? that wasn’t me, I never inhaled”
Here is one of my favorite quotes from a SOPA detractor – “Under SOPA, you could get 5 years for uploading a Michael Jackson song, one year more than the doctor who killed him”
I spend a lot of time on g+ these days, sorry for the lack of posts. I will do better.
Here is something I came across that was worth sharing with you. It’s a popular song covered by a band who does it in an unusual way. I think I may like this version even better than the original. And
Many times while you are finding your way in the world someone will ask you “what do you what to be when you grow up?” Seldom do you really know the answer. Some have an occupation they keep in their back pocket so they can appear confident and focused but even those people don’t usually know the answer. Others are utterly convinced that they want to be Jacques Cousteau when they matriculate only to be blindsided by the fact that there already is a Jacques Cousteau and you have to be someone else. As a parent you don’t usually ask your own kids that question directly, you know that they don’t know. Let me draw an analogy;
Your kid is a young driver in an icy parking lot. They have never driven on ice before, the cars don’t seem to go where you point them. There are other kids in the lot
, they range from apathetic to hell bent for leather. Some really want out, some are checking out the sound system but most are trying to find the exit with their name on it. They can’t use someone else’s exit, they have to find their own. Several parents are standing around the edge of the parking lot, many are yelling instructions to their kid. They can’t see the exit either but over there looks like a good spot. One guy has a megaphone. More than a few have their face in their hands, they remember trying to get out of the parking lot years ago. There are collisions, tears and the kid with the megaphone dad has his tires spinning so fast if they ever find dry pavement . . . well . . . we don’t know what will happen but we don’t want to be anywhere nearby when it does.
Some kids start making it out their exit. If you follow their tracks from where they started to where they left they often look like a handwriting exercise in the snow and ice. One girl’s car has more dents then smooth spots but she is wearing her seatbelt and smiling, she made it to her exit. None of the mishaps were really that serious even if they seemed so at the time. Most of them make it one way or another. The mom and dads look at each other with relief and say something like “I knew they would make it she takes after me”. They look at the people who are left, they see the kid reclined in the drivers seat with the engine off and the radio blaring and his mom screaming something trying to get his attention, they do not pass judgment, the same thought passes both their minds at the same time, “there but for the grace of God go I”
It’s not really over, they will end up in other parking lots sooner or later but for now it’s touchdowns for parent and child alike. 10 years from now the kids will look back and think, “yeah, I made it no problem, it wasn’t that big a deal”. 10 years after that they will be breaking out in a cold sweat, looking for their megaphone and be almost convinced that kids today may never make it out of the parking lot.
Sarah cleared the parking lot this week. She got the whole college thing under control after a couple of years, saw her exit and fishtailed her car through it by getting hired by the company where she did her internship, grinding out a self-study course, and acing all 4 parts of the Certified Public Accountant exam the first time through. No megaphone required. TOUCHDOWN!
Here is Sarah in her winner/princess/CPA sash, sporting her new victory lap purse, she left her tiara at home
