My tweets of the last week:
Personal
drive into infinity
I feel like I spent more time in the car this weekend than being a person.
That was always part of my resistance against having a car, and then against driving one. I remember as a kid all the interminable trips to places not even worth going to spend money we might not have had, and then the constant orbiting the block for a parking spot when we returned.
I remember thinking, valuable years of my life are being spent, and swearing inwardly I wouldn’t be the same way as an adult.
Yet there I was, driving to a barbecue in NJ, driving blinding around NJ trying to find our show, driving back from our show, driving through blinding rain with the idiot light on to see bro’s show in NJ, driving through subsequent flooding to get back home.
My reasoning to myself earlier this year was, you’re tithing your time in exchange for being interesting. No hunting for parking spots, anyhow, since we have our teeny garage. Plus, more seeing friends, playing shows, and getting to bro faster. All the things I claimed I wanted and valued.
This weekend wasn’t a chore – it was a proof of concept. It was good. But I don’t want to spend a tenth of my life riding around in a car.
Or, at least, I really need to get that iPod dock installed.
Crushing On: Popdust
I’ll admit it – I like my pop news. I want my Gaga fix, I love Kelly Clarkson, I snark on American Idol, and I should probably be able to mumble something about Beyoncé to our interns to prove I am not a total oldster.
Yet, the arena of pop news is a bleak place filled with fawning and no-calorie celebrity stories about every popstar’s walk down the street or who they were rubbing elbows with out at a club.
Enter Popdust, launched earlier this year. I first caught wind of it from Twitter album reviewer @1000TimesYes, who is one of my fav Twitter users and one of Popdust’s snarkiest writers.
Popdust obsesses over Gaga, Beyoncé, Glee, Bieber, American Idol, and all other things Top 40 – but it keeps them at arm’s length, remembering that beneath the popularity there is actual artistry to be discussed and dissected. You can almost feel the eyerolls in some of their coverage (especially re: Glee), and they often go meta, talking about why they’re even bothering to talk about the things they’re talking about.
Case and point: their Gaga coverage. When Born This Way dropped Popdust covered it wall-to-wall for a week, running substantive track-by-track reviews, that took Gaga to task for her clunkers. They also landed an exclusive phoner with Mother Monster herself last week – not something most pop blog outlets could say (even if they’re attached to a major media network or print magazine). In the interview they called “Edge of Glory,” her “third best single,” and actually got Gaga herself to comment on what her best songs have been. Amazing!
After the big get I read up on Popdust’s backstory. It’s not as if it was launched by 1000x out of his parent’s garage. It has a major media pedigree, with founders who were EIC’s at Billboard and CEO’s of their own startups that sold for north of $300 million. They completed a $1mill A-Round of financing – one million, for a pop blog! Even if we include all the crazy music and comic books I buy every year as part of CK’s operating budget it is significantly less than 1% of that.
You know what? I don’t care if it takes a million dollars and rich dudes with business savvy to put together a website that takes pop seriously while keeping a tongue firmly planted in cheek. Popdust is my favorite pop news outlet of 2011.
i love it, it’s perfect, now change
As I gave Gina and Jake my third “we only have to change this one thing” note on a song last night, I wondered if they were starting to hate me.
I’m always the one giving the most notes in rehearsal, whether it be with AC or Filmstar, so wondering if people hate me isn’t unique just to rehearsing with AC.
Why do I do it? It’s not that I have the best ears – Gina and E are much better than I am. It’s also not that I’m the one not making mistakes – I make plenty, sometimes the most! And, I love getting notes – I’d be happy to get some.
So why am I the one Simon Cowelling at the end of every song?
Mostly, because someone has to do it. That’s not to say that every song requires a critique, but they at least all require a moment of consideration before moving on or else rehearsal turns into going through the motions. If you hear things to tweak while rehearsing and don’t tweak them then you might hear the same thing against next time.
Tweaks aren’t always bad things. Jake plays a lot of high, melodic bass lines in counterpoint to my rhythm guitar work and my backing vocals. Last night I realized this was my “problem” on “Real End” – our parts totally matched, but after years of playing with Gina I wasn’t used to the new harmony they created. The fix is simply us both playing our parts with confidence so they’re distinct from each other.
However, I think the real reason for my litany of notes is that my musical super power doesn’t lie in melody or blend, but in being a fan. I make music that I love to hear. Just like you would know if someone singing your favorite song at karaoke sang the wrong melody, I notice when a song doesn’t sound like itself.
I might not be able to articulate what’s wrong (though I certainly do so better than Randy “Pitchy” Jackson), but that’s why I have bandmates to help me! I simply know when something’s up.
I’m pretty sure that Gina and Jake didn’t leave my house hating me last night, just like I know we managed to make improvements on almost every songs in our repertoire.
How many of those improvements came from my notes? Possibly none, but would we have improved without the notes?
I don’t know.
#FollowFriday: @SarahCooley
Today I’m highlighting @SarahCooley as my #FollowFriday. #FollowFriday is a way Twitter users point out their favorite folks to follow.
Sarah went from someone on the periphery of my social media scene to one of my best digital friends, which to me is what Twitter is all about.
@SarahCooley
Why follow Sarah? On most days she tweets a friendly good morning, she’s an expert in community management and blogging platforms, she’s a vegan with great recommendations on NYC eateries, and she had a full-time career in social media before she had a quarter life crisis!
(Also, she helped to kindle my unhealthy addiction to fashion scarves.)
But, enough from me – let’s hear from Sarah!
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@krisis: How do we know each other?
@SarahCooley: Wow, this is a long story ;) But I first met you at a planning meeting for #BlameDrewsCancer.
[What Sarah declines to mention is that she was part of our Ground Control team (along w/@amanda_nan) when I went skydiving in 2009.]
@k:How do you use Twitter?
SC: I use it for business and for personal. Lately I’ve really been enjoying that so many of my non-techy friends are using Twitter.
It has been helpful to me in two ways. #1, so that I can see how people that aren’t early adopters use Twitter, which helps me to be better at my job. #2, because now my friends understand so much more about me and what I do, since they use Twitter too.
@k: What’s the coolest thing that’s happened to you because of Social Media?
SC: I don’t know if I can pick just one story. So many different things have happened to me because of social media, but I am the most thankful for how it has shaped my career. [Read more…] about #FollowFriday: @SarahCooley