I liked this band immediately when I first heard them in 2007.
But our relationship (in my mind) has grown slowly and steadily until now: a critical mass of pleasure at the hands of the mouse has tipped me over from listener to lover.
I'm in. Hook line and sinker.
I appreciate the time it took for me and this repertoire to meet each other, really.
Because now, I've got nothing but love for these indies.
This TED talk by Clay Shirky unpacks what it means to have a media that is inherently social.
What comes to mind, for me, is the democratization of the media: cumulative, collaborative storytelling, a return to the oral tradition in real time through Twitter and Facebook et al.
But now, we get to share our images through the single biggest revolution in popular expression.
We get to be audience and producers all at once, allowing amateur or citizen journalism: information control becomes a thing of the past, threatening governments for whom censorship is critical.
Today, amateur producers outnumber professionals, building their own reputations and intellectual equities.
They are connected to one another and to their interconnected audiences, who, for the first time, can talk back.
Top-down communications are a thing of the past.
Communicators collaborate in the generation of an agreed opinion through 'trending'.
Public figures can opt to respond to negative trends or ignore them.
PR in the public domain becomes much more participative.
Brands that interact in this space with maturity and intelligence will listen and respond, optimizing the opportunity to enhance their attributes and diminish their failings.
This is a conversation to be abandoned at great risk for any business entity.
Stand-up comedy represents a very important part of the content, personalities and media that help me feel less alien. Good stand-up permits my imagination It allows my eccentricity. It assures me that I am one of many who interrogate, laugh at, reject and end up self-consciously modified by social norms that are so un-normal. I am so grateful for this particularly courageous social tale-teller (and musical talent, what a treat!) Thanks to a new colleague for the recommendation. This is a beautiful, to me, Love Song:
I have Springsteen's single 'Working On A Dream' off the album by the same name on a loop in my head.
The album itself is very beautiful: grounded, nostalgic and honest in an almost Dylanesque way, apart from its clarity and tunefulness. (Forgive me, Dylan die-hards.)
What's interesting, is that Springsteen 'leant' two singles off this album to two very different causes.
1. He donated the song 'The Wrestler', perhaps the darkest and most lyrically devastating offering to Mickey Rourke's come-back phenomenon. I always remember the line "If you've ever seen a one-trick-pony then you've seen me."
2. He campaigned with the then Senator Obama with the song 'Working On A Dream' as a true peoples' anthem, in contrast to the largely misunderstood 'Born In The U.S.A', which Regan tried to appropriate during his 1984 re-election bid.
The irony of that non-collaboration was that the content of 'Born In The U.S.A' contradicted its broad, rallying melody with an angry indictment on the Vietnam war, its victims both dead and returning and the living conditions of the working-class American at that time.
