Skip to main content

The Age of Video

If you stop and think about it, it's pretty amazing that I can pull up nearly any video I want. And, that it can be very easy for me to watch something that someone tells me I should. I'm listening to Radiohead's House of Cards after being told by another blogger, Corbin at I'm Spatial, which has me really digging this band for the first time. I've never been much of a fan, but this song is kind of catchy.

The way they captured these images is interesting, given that it's all made up of data as near as I can tell. We'll come back to that at one point, but this video seems pretty important to me because of the way it is introducing the concept of visual representation by pure data to a wide audience.



And now I'm listening to an interview with a young Jimmy Page, thanks to this blog, playing some skiffle. The blogger might not know it, but skiffle is the name given to what was played in Liverpool, this style of taking the blues by way of the early rock and roll that was going on at the moment. Maybe some day I could interview my dad for a podcast about this, given that he's in the same cohort as the Beatles, who started off as a skiffle band.



If I were an academic or if I had a slightly more organized mind, perhaps I'd write more about skiffle. I could take research projects to England, to visit Liverpool. I've not been in over ten years now. I had hoped to go this year, given that they're the European City of Culture.

But, back to the James Page thing. Yes, I would love to do some sort of musical study of this music, given that Led Zeppelin ended up being some of the best evolution of the blues Robert Johnson could have asked for. I recently snagged a lot of original Led Zeppelin on vinyl, and I've been revisiting all of that. I know why it's important, but I lack the vocabulary and the discipline to write about it in such a way that might be interesting to people. In the past, I would have thought a radio piece might work, but I'm not sure about that anymore. I don't really know how to tell stories anymore. Have I lost my chops?

Anyway, James Page became Jimmy Page, and to prove the ridiculous claim I made above about Zeppelin and the Blues, I present this:



Do what I do - just listen. Surf elsewhere while YouTube is on. It's kind of fun that way for so much of this stuff.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Running as sense-making

It's going to be a stressful day. I got up at 7:00 AM to start work and I could sit here in front of my computer for the next 10 days and still not get it all done. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but I'm prone to that awful habit when I'm under stress. I'm under stress at the moment as I try to balance work, my other work, and my need to run six miles or so every other day. In 14 minutes my feet will hit the street and I'll be off. No phone. No e-mail. Just me and my feet. I'm even going to skip the iPod today so I can hear the birds, and so I can concentrate on my surroundings. I don't know where I'm going to go. I know I'll leave the condo and will turn left up Commonwealth Drive. From there? I don't know for sure, but I can guarantee you the day will become a lot less stressful.

Video builds the radio guy

I'm watching the tail end of the debut of Max Headroom, one of those shows from the late 80's that seemed so amazingly different, refreshing. The premiere revolves around an advertising conspiracy that's killing people. When I was a kid, this seemed so futuristic and somehow important. A television show was critiquing television practices. Now, the irony comes in because I'm watching this show on Joost , which is a new service created by the makers of Skype and KaZaa. There's advertising, of course, but it seems so seamless, you hardly notice it. A friend of mine sent me an invite today, and there's a ton of content here that I can watch legally, as often as I want. And, the picture is pretty darned good, full-screen. Everything is changing, and changing fast. Steve Safran of Lost Remote was recently a guest on Coy Barefoot's show and continued preaching the gospel of convergence, and Joost is so far the best (legal) implementation I've seen. It lacks

The Fire at Court Square Tavern

My tavern is closed indefinitely tonight, after a fire that broke out early this morning. I had just dropped off my daughter at day care, and heard a bulletin on 1400 AM , one of our two sports-talk stations. I didn't even know they did local news, but at least on this occasion, they did. All I heard was "evacuation at Court Square" and I immediately thought I should drive over there. The big building at 500 Court Square was still standing, so that gave me a bit of hope. People were moving around Market Street, and seemed happy. Or at least, not burned. Then I turned up 5th Street, and saw one of the front windows, covered with a tarp, and a huge pile of debris on the sidewalk. Oh crap, I thought. I've worked at the Tavern since August of 2004, and have gone through many ups and downs while there. I started as a server, and became a manager and began bartending that December. It was the first place I was able to work since my separation from my first wife. Working the