I'm Online, But Not Really

01:13 PM July 24 2009
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I recently took Way Cool JR’s online artist report card, and without creating any suspense here...failed miserably. It seems like lately the big challenges for musicians (other than getting gigs and making music, which is something I am also not really totally rising to the occasion of) is presenting themselves online in a clean coherent way everywhere and having their music available to be listened to, purchased, shared, and oh yeah...they need to be actively participating in their various social networks too. Reading other peoples blogs, listening to their podcasts, etc.

All of which leaves me as someone with a bit of an old-school distaste of computer screens (honestly I would rather be practicing or having my kid spit his breakfast back in my face) somewhat at a loss. There’s lots of fun discussion of this by a bunch of bloggers I have in my reader, most notably Andrew Dubbers post about minimizing your time online and Artistdata’s super sweet service that allows me to update my Myspace page with gigs without ever having to go to Myspace.

Generally awesome pianist/composer Andrew Oliver apparently had some things to say about this Web 2.0 thing recently as well. As people gradually figure this stuff out (like do you really want to buy music with a widget?) I think it’ll be easier to be as Dubber puts it “strategically lazy”. In the meantime I’m going back to bed.
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Why I Love The French

11:17 PM July 08 2009
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My wife Jessica and I went to the Stravinsky fountain when we visited Paris in 2006. We saw the fountain after I tried to get into Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) which it turns out doesn’t really give tours.

They do concerts, but we were definitely not there in concert season. So I got to stand in the lobby and try to be the smiley American while the French security guard wondered exactly what was wrong with us.

Anyway the big highlight of this jaunt is the Stravinsky Fountain which was commissioned/ordered by Chirac probably via composer/conductor Boulez who is pretty much an international treasure. His music looks and sounds like this and the man himself looks like this.

Each one of the sculptures is inspired by a Stravinsky piece (we could pick out the Firebird and Rite of Spring) and does something, either via a motor or internal fountain. So things rotate, churn, spite water, all to music that is piped in from IRCAM (via actual large battleship-style pipes) and you can listen to the IRCAM concerts (the stage is underground, below the fountain) in the square and watch the fountain at the same time. The whole effect is sort of a Tim Burton-style aquapark experience. Also they had buckwheat crepes nearby. One of my favorite places in Paris.
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