Author: smack

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Talk about Synchronicity

So I’m sure my brain was engaged, but not fully connected.

I wrote the first blog post talking about the things that have inspired me the past few years, including the Gang of Four, and then of course I spend the next two days hanging out with Dave Allen. How cool is that?

Dave and I are sort of on eerily parallel courses right now. I’m in Seattle, he’s in Portland. We’ve both got design/consulting/new media companies. We’re both trying to rally our band mates into taking this new internet/social network/music/community thing head on.

What a great guy, and he’s got a great blog (now in the blog roll of course): pampelmoose.com. You should check it out.

Why were Dave and I hanging out, you might ask? We’re both members of the Recording Academy (the folks who bring you the Grammys), and we just had a two day Music Tech conference about the intersection of technology and the music industry. It was two days of really great information. We’re posting video of all the panels. I gave the first workshop and moderated the panel on digital distribution. Dave moderated the panel on social networking. Pretty critical stuff, if you’re a musician.

You can check out the video archives here.

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Watch Out World, Here We Come.

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It’s taken awhile, but we here at Petrols central are finally serious about dusting off the rock tools and treading the boards once again. Why? Well why the hell not is what I say. There have been a number of things over the past few years in particular that have spurred this on.

1) Gang of Four reunion – these guys changed my life back in the day. No, seriously. I listened to the records incessantly, and they were without a doubt the best live band I ever saw. Twenty-odd years later, they came back, and they slayed. They were astounding. They were monumental.

2) Killing Joke reunion – (Raven – RIP). Similar to Go4, in that they came, they saw, they totally destroyed. Interestingly enough this was a week after a much-touted up and coming band (the Rapture, cough-cough) came to town and just blew. I mean totally blew. I’m so sick to death of the post-modern, ironic, “I’m in a band but not really” stance so many bands seem to adopt these days. Seeing the ‘Joke a week after these turds was the perfect antidote. It made me realize why I got into music in the first place.

3) The death of the old music industry – Seriously folks, wave goodbye to the record biz of lore. What’s going to replace it we don’t quite know, but I derive an enormous amount of pleasure watching the death rattle of the current mess. I’ve been evangelizing and expostulating about this for years now, and voila. It’s not like it was a big secret.

4) The rise of social networking and a new musical landscape – Without wanting to sound too pollyanna about this, I’m incredibly excited about the potential of the Internet as a distribution and social/community platform. Even though things are very confusing right now, I think it’s probably the best time ever to be a musician. Well, perhaps with the exception of the 60s, but that’s only because the drugs were far better. I’ve been talking about this for years now – it’s time to put up or shut up.

So here we go – TPE are going to rise from the ashes, and rock your sweet tootsies off. We will crush. We will destroy. We will have a very good time doing so. And with any luck, we’ll be in a town near you soon.

s.