Summertime7 by spickeringlr (You can download these songs by clicking the ‘down’ arrow on the right side of the players above.)
These are actually “Cover” songs of Josh Rouse material. The forum community over at JoshRouse.com is a very tight knit passionate group. One of the star members named Will produces a podcast that usually features picks from the forum fans or bootleg material from Josh’s live shows, and artists similar to Josh and such. Well, the next podcast they are doing a special version of “Covers” of Josh’s material done my forum members. So these are the two numbers I submitted. Readers of this blog will have already heard “Summertime” as I did that on my own a few weeks ago just for fun, not knowing they were going to do this podcast. Nothing’s changed on that track, except I did EQ the vocals better. In that earlier version there were some spots where the vocals went into the “red” so to speak. That’s recording talk for too high of a level and the recording can “clip.” So I think the overall sound of this version is better, smoother.
“65” is a bit of an obscure song. It’s older material off an LP called “Chester” that Josh did in his earlier years in collaboration with a guy named Kurt Wagner. Kind of has an Alternative Country R.E.M.ish feel. I’ve always like the song and the LP. Very raw compared to the smoother sounds fans of Josh Rouse are used to. Kind of feels like a few guys getting together, having a few beers and just letting it rip. The lyrics. What do they mean? Who knows. Who cares? They’re just fun. It’s like stream of consciousness. It’s like letting off steam. It was fun to make. Being from the South, I’m kind of partial to that R.E.M.ish southern country influenced alternative sound.
This is definitely version 1.0. I want to make a lot of things better, but I’ve been working on this song so long, I needed a way to ritualistically “let it go,” mentally “get it off my desk” as it were, so I can work on other songs. Funny thing. I never was satisfied with this song, more the way it sounded, the production quality. And I hadn’t listened to it in a while. So I recently put my iPhone on Shuffle, a John Mayer song popped up, then a Ravel number, and then this, one of the earlier versions I did, and I thought, “Hey, it kind of holds its own in sound quality to those.” I liked it. Whenever you’re working on a song, it’s like you have to get some emotional distance from it, in order to hear it objectively. I thought it was good. I want to eventually dig into the individual tracks and make some little things better, but overall, I thought it fit in and held it’s own as it is, against some other music that I have a lot of respect for.
(V1)
Oh honey, oh dear,
Whatcha’ been doin’
Since you been here?
You like sunny
Eyes blue as the sea
Tell me stories so funny
So I can laugh and sing
It’s cold and it’s snowin’
We gotta chance to be free
There’s a fire that’s still glowin’
On the inside of me
We’ll drink from the bottle
Vintage Pouilly Fouisse
We’ll swim through the oceans
And dance in the valley
Chorus:
Over the hills and into the trees
Riding so high, feeling so free
Don’t turn around I want you to see
Just what you mean to me.
(V2)
Mountains covered with sunshine
Hills covered in snow
Wind singing like angels
Singing things we should know
I wanna take you forever
I wanna take you to sea
Round ’bout like the angels
Filled with harmony
It’ll be so funny
It’ll be so clear
When we’re walkin’ on Sunshine
When we’re walkin’ on air
Chorus 2.
Solo. (Over 2 Bars of Verse Chords and a full Chorus)
(Verse 3)
You’re so funny
You’re so sweet
Lips like honey
Eyes like the sea.
Oh honey, oh dear
Whatcha’ been doin’
Since you been here?
Walking this morning with the dogs, we came across a turtle in the grass near the woods. I remember a friend of mine posted some photos recently of turtles, so I decided to sit down, take a break and see if I could snap him (no pun intended). I like the last two the best when I got closer to his face. I wish I would have gotten even a few inches closer, but really felt like he was going to snap me! You know it was relaxing, just gazing at him there. I rarely think about turtles. There’s so many of them around here with all the ponds. But when I stopped to gaze upon him, I really felt the sense of another being there. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? It was sort of a “quasi” spiritual experience. Very relaxing. Maybe that’s what’s so addictive about photography, the relaxing feeling you get from really looking at things in a calm way. So I “beamed” the last photo straight up to flickr from my iPhone, which instantly “tweeted” it to my Twitter. It was ironic: when I came back home I had a couple of responses. One was: “perhaps he wants to lead you on a journey of self discovery” which I thought was rather ironic, considering the feelings I’d had while taking it. Lovely.
He mentioned he got it at a place called: StressLimitDesign.com in Montreal. Their webpage looks like they don’t want you to contact them (that’s facetious). So I don’t know what their prices are.
Scobleizer mentioned a few weeks ago that he got a logo, which is a pretty big deal: the no.1 blogger in the World has never had a logo until now! Ha! I need to dig up that post. Seemed like a pretty cool little place where he got it. [later] Oh here it is, I found it: http://idesignyourlogo.com/ I design your logo dot com? Doesn’t get much more focused than that. Just browsing, I like their work.
Scobleizer's New Logo by IDesignYourLogo.com
Of course there’s always 99designs.com, which everyone raves about. I’ve been interested in logos for some time, getting one myself, making one or something. As you can see I don’t have one, except for some special text that Google provides.
Writing this at a cafe on an iPad having breakfast and coffee. Other than the WordPress app being horrible, I could get used to this.
“He who is forced against his will, is of the same opinion still.” – Deepak Chopra
I’m sure you know the back story: Last week, Rand Paul, son of Congressman Ron Paul (R) Texas, won the Republican nomination for Senate in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The day after his victory, his Democratic opponent, Jack Conway, announced on “Hardball” that one of the reasons voters should consider him “out there” or “extreme”, I can’t remember Chris Matthews’ exact words, but you know the typical descriptions of Libertarians: “Wacky, Looney, Tea-baggers, etc.” designed not to intelligently debate them, but to label them in order not to have to have the debate itself. Conway stated, for one reason, is that Paul wanted to repeal the 1964 Civil Rights Act, implying in its entirety. You can imagine all the hairs on the back of Matthews’ standing up. Later that night, on the “Rachel Maddow Show” is when the real firestorm or controversy began. Paul was on the show being interviewed and pressed on this exact question. He explained that his position was that 9 of the 10 sections of the law he agreed with, but the aspect that delt with private businesses, he was against. The red boiled to Maddow’s face.
“Are you saying that businesses should be allowed to not serve black people if they so chose?”
Mr. Paul tried to explain his position in a philosophical context, demonstrating for instance the idea that if we think of private businesses as “public” spaces that the proprietor of said establishment would not have the right to ban guns.
Ms. Maddow would have none of it. She was out for blood.
“Just answer the question, yes or no.”
Mr. Paul was flustered. He knew that by giving a simple answer of “Yes” that a piece of video tape a few seconds long would be produced in order to smear him and possibly destroy his campaign completely. Why? Because answering that question “Yes” without explaining the philosophical context for your reasoning would automatically label him as a racist. Loaded sound bites like these, whether text or video, are like reflexes in the brain. They automatically fire. They are like branding a cattle. They stick for life.
Blood Ms. Maddow did draw. She definitely left him mumbling and stumbling. To say he didn’t handle it well is an understatement, but by know means a death blow, because he did emphasize his reasoning, that he was definitely not a racist, nor would support such a business personally. While she won the debate and definitely drew blood, he definitely didn’t come off as the typical politician, seeming like a puppet. He definitely came off, if stumbling on PR Grades, as someone who was authentic and thoughtful. I don’t think anyone watching it, even an African American, would truly think Paul is a racist, though it was clear it was Ms Maddow’s intent to brand him this way.
I would like to argue that Mr. Paul is right and that Ms. Maddow and her ilke are wrong with two main points.
That the point is moot.
While Mr. Paul did say he “philosophically” disagreed with the commerce section of the Civil Right’s Act, he did say he clearly had no intention of repealing and that was not part of his platform. His thoughts and point of view were simply to display his overall philosophy. Opponents argue that it is impossible to separate his position on this topic as a demonstration of his philosophy from the danger that he would actually repeal the law, assuming he had such power, and bring back segregation to the country. But this is simply not true. For one, no one could ever have the power to over turn the Civil Rights Act. It would entail overturning the whole law, which no one is for, or could ever have the political will to do so. Overhauling such a law would be a mammoth undertaking: the commerce clause has already been decided in the courts, and no one want to change it because the facts of America today are that no one’s interested in going back to the way it was. We don’t want discrimination based on race even in private business, and the facts of America today is that by and large we don’t have that. Now whether that fact is because of the law itself, or that time and the country have simply moved past it naturally might be up to debate. But no one’s really interested in it. We’ve arrived at the place we wanted. Does it matter now whether it was by boat, train, or plane? No matter how you slice, dice, or cut it, the point of the specific law is history and moot. Mr. Paul clearly demonstrated that he and any reasonable person understood it to be that way. Ms. Maddow, if anything, demonstrated she did not. And I would argue that anyone who thought the point of the specific legislation itself wasn’t moot at this point in time would be the one who is “looney” or “extreme.”
2. One can use a moot point to make a broader philosophical argument
Just because a specific action in the past today is moot, doesn’t mean the action itself can’t be used to make a broader philosophical point, and that philosophical point of view from Mr. Paul’s perspective is this: Freedom is the highest value in our country. Why? Well, I won’t pretend to get in the founder’s head or hearts, but if I were guessing I would say this: In psychology there is the tenant that every brain has a light and dark or “shadow” side. But in order to quell or not let the “dark” side display itself in public, one must somehow find a way, not to exorcise the dark side (that only makes it grow) but somehow ritualistically acknowledge and honor the “shadow” in a private way. It is found that if the shadow side of our nature is honored in a private way, it will tend not to display itself in a public way. For the subconscious knows no difference in “private” or “public” and it’s energy is released with any kind of sincere acknowledgement. Freedom is chosen as the highest value of society for precisely this same reason: a population that is forced in behaving in a way that is deemed socially acceptable, (instead of “choosing” to behave in that way), is a population whose dark side, shadow, and resentment grows, along with its corruption. Instead, a population that has private freedom, has a sacred space in order to deal effectively with their shadow energies, and in turn gives birth to more energy for good in the public arena. A society that chooses to do good, instead of being forced to do good, is the kind of transcendent society that the founders, I believe, had set as a goal, and freedom is its sole and primary driving force. The Founders in their day had seen bad and mediocre societies come and go, but they wanted to build the platform which would foster not just good, but a great society, and the solution they found was a very illuminated one, and as all such solutions are, a very ironic and paradoxical one: the secret to harnessing the greatest amount and best energies of an individual in the service of his society, was not to control him, but instead to free him.
Instead of screwing with the granularity of your main page or account, confusing and aggravating the users, all that Facebook has to do is have two separate pages for each user: one completely private (except for those one chooses to be friends with), and the other completely open and connected to the open web. They already have this feature in “Pages.” All they have to do is tell people that this is your private page, and this other is your public page. To encourage users to create a public page, make the public page the only place that is searchable in Google or the open web. If only 10% of users choose to have a public page, you’ve got an automatic Twitter in one day. But to encourage even further adoption, innovate and iterate the public pages like crazy, and also tell the users, they must have a public page in order to search the public database. If the only way people can search and more importantly gain value from the Facebook public database, and the network effect that goes with it, is to have a public facing page, I can guarantee you 90% of users will adopt it.
What does this approach do?
It restores user trust. If you’re main account is completely locked down, not even searchable, you will also gain more users. My sister doesn’t belong to Facebook. She doesn’t trust it. Maybe it’s too late, but if trust were restored, she and millions of others, who don’t even consider Facebook and option, may join. But even if they don’t, you’ve restored trust in your main user base.
When users have a clear choice, they are going to contribute more value to the eco system. I recently heard Deepak Chopra quote, “A person convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.” This manipulation of users to “trick” them into sharing things in public, only makes them more reticent, if not in fact close their account, to share anything useful.
You’ve simplified things. Not all those “sliders” to give everyone a headache over their account settings. The main account is completely private except for friends. The public page is completely open. No frustration or headaches. The simplicity will make the value of the network effect and the eco-system, and possibly even the number of users, explode.
When Facebook aquired FriendFeed last year, I thought this was the approach they were going to take. Dead simple. Everyone would have their private account and then a separate public page that would essentially be FriendFeed, with all its value of search algorithms that I had thought simply nailed Social search, and would not only prove fruitful to a business model, but also provide even more value to the user. The perfect recipe for “win, win”, the exact recipe for applying Google’s search model to Social Search.
Instead, they seemed, and even more so now after F8, to move in the opposite direction. Screwing with everyone’s main account, violating that sacred trust that enabled them to get such a large user base in the first place, and what is more, doing nothing with “Pages.” And now it seems after F8, “Pages” are almost being discouraged in favor of the “Likes” implementation. I guess they figure that anyone with a public page already has a website, and instead, why not just encourage them to virtually turn that open page into a Facebook page with the “Likes” implementation? Sounds good. But what are the implications? What happens when I the individual user clicks the “Likes” button? Is all my information being shared with third parties? What happens when that gets out, and every headline across the country screams, “Don’t click the ‘Like’ button!” Turns what might have been a useful thing for not only the user, but also the Facebook brand, into a liability, not to mention simply just bad Karma.
I don’t know Marc Zuckerburg, or know what his values are. If they are indeed, “evil,” a term the industry labels a company that tries to make their money through manipulation, then I guess this post is like talking to a tree. For even if they do “Correct Course,” as Dana Boyd, Tim O’Reilly, John Battelle, and many other smart prognosticators predict they will do, does it matter? This is indeed one of the salutary effects of a free market: Consumer push back and the realization that the big money is in making the “right” choices, forces a company to change or be in danger of losing its business. In a true free market, what’s right for the company is aligned with what is right for the consumer. But still, if Facebook is the “it” company of the next decade, and only the market is forcing them to make the right choices, the internet won’t hold in its hands a very transcendent leader. “He who is forced against his will, is of the same opinion still.”
The internet and the communications revolution is truly a place of infinite possibilities, almost a metaphor itself for the “Quantum Effect,” which states that, even in a complete vacuum, even in complete nothingness, (which is not to be imagined as a patch of empty space, because in nothingness, even space doesn’t exist), the idea of symmetry must exist, and the slightest break in it, which must occur, leads to an explosion of infinite proportions.
I would argue that Facebook would be of greater value and in turn be capable of making even more money than they ever imagined, by doing it the old fashioned way: providing value, innovating, and being completely transparant. Good will translates into cash in all sectors of a truly free market, but even exponentially so in the freest of free markets, one where “choice” and “free will” is the highest value: the internet. The Communications Revolution.
