What do you say, Portlanders? We’ve got some fancy new containers but what are we going to do with all those leftover yellow plastic bins? One container can be used for glass, as everything else gets tossed into the new blue thingy with the wheels, but what about the rest of the yellow [...]
Last summer I enjoyed Mexican food and beers while Roy Christopher threw some questions at me. Upon reading the result of that discussion now it doesn’t feel so much as an interview as it is two friends discussing the state of “things” over a drink. As Roy writes “Dave’s ideas about the state of the [...]
The thinking shed
I suppose it was inevitable. The same day the Gang of Four news broke I received a letter from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) asking me to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The IFPI has every right to ask me to comply with the law as it [...]
What the hell happened to you, record industry? You used to be so fun. One week away from the ‘official’ release of my already favorite album of 2008 and nothing peppy detected from Island. In fact, that is the saddest label artist profile I’ve ever seen. There’s roughly, I don’t know, ZERO content. Shame on [...]
Two blog posts dropped into my inbox this week. One from Elliott Van Buskirk’s Wired blog and one from Gerd Leonhard on Digital Music News. Both posts had a similar headline [in fact it could be argued that Leonard's post was identical to Van Buskirk's which was posted 6 months earlier] - MP3 Blogs Could [...]
What would a music video look like if it were purely directed by the music? Not driven by a concept, nor by a desire to build an image, but purely as an expression of a great song? Designer Jakob Trollback shares the results of his experiment in the form. The song is “Moonlight in Glory,” [...]
Pharrell at the Fader Mag Party, SXSW 2008. Photo Nilina Mason-Campbell
I didn’t need to attend any of the music panels at SXSW this year to feel the malaise that is sweeping the music business. One five minute trek through the trade show proved to me everything that I already know - the cornerstone of this [...]
Tokio Hotel fans. Pic by Rahav Segev for The New York Times.
It’s funny how new bands break through the white noise. I heard about Tokio Hotel last week from Justin Kistner who runs the Metafluence blog. At lunch he mentioned that the Roxy, a club on West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip had noticed that comments about [...]