Writer, musician, wizardly guide to platform independence
This is from Tom Bedor, about programming and code, but like most solid nuggets of wisdom, this is universal:
If you are requesting human attention, demonstrate human effort.
You want people to buy your album? Sign up for your class? come to your event?
If you are requestion human attention, demonstrate human effort. WOW.
What’s better “marketing” than this? Screaming fans, tender moments, so many smiles – who wouldn’t want to be on that train ride, you know?
And the fun part is this; you don’t need to be as big as Hayley Williams to live this. To be this. Today, make your magic, put it into the world. Big, small, doesn’t matter, it all counts.
Great line from artist fnnch:
“I don’t know. You don’t know. Don’t try to know. Just make art that excites you, and make enough of it that you eventually make work that resonates with people.”
Read the rest of “How to Make a Living as an Artist” for even more gems. Link via Kottke.
Hard to believe this sticker is 16 years old, and references a MySpace page.
From Raj Kaur, “Blue is immortalised in my sketchbook, from a session with wonderful Beth Spencer.”
I submitted a photograph as source material for Beth’s online drawing session, and this is from Raj’s sketchbook. I took the file and sent it to a local printer, and they made me a nice print.
I miss my buddy.
Tonight, a friend walked me around their space, showing me the works of art left to her. A precious, sweet remembrance of a dear friend.
Tomorrow, I drive to upstate New York to visit an aunt in the hospital. She’s not an artist by definition, but she made people laugh and smile. What else is art but joy?
Remember the laughter, the smiles, the experences along the way. Celebrate the sunset, the dinner together, the conversations that flow like music into the evening.
Love these two still images from Noah Kalina’s ‘Out in the Field – Comparing the Phase One IQ360 with the IQ4150’ video on YouTube, on his new Kalina channel.
I sure don’t know much about Phase One cameras, or medium format, but I love following his work, and the epic scenery he captures.
Continue reading “NOAH KALINA IN THE FIELD”
From the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” manager Jon Landau explaining the release to the label exec
“I’m not asking for your understanding, and I’m not here to explain Bruce’s thinking or justify his artistic choices. I am here to make sure the album is released precisely the way he wants, that’s it.
Whether or not you believe in this particular album, in this office, my office, we believe in Bruce Springsteen.”
This movie rattled me in a few ways, but this is the part I carry in my mission going back to 2001, that being, “I just wanna help my friends in band’s sell albums.”
This mission has changed over the years, notably to, “I just wanna help bands sell albums” when I helped launch Noise Creep at AOL Music in 2008. In 2021, when I launched Heavy Metal Email, a newsletter to help heavy bands return to email lists and websites as a way to regain a direct connection with fans, to 2023 when I renamed it as Social Media Escape Club, my mission is broader, “I just wanna help creative people make their work.”
It’s not quite so noble, more selfish than anything. I just wanted to see my friends in bands, or people I looked up to, I just wanted them to keep putting out their music, and keep this great big circus going – the artists who painted album covers, photographers who took band photos, the journalists who wrote about rock and roll.
I just wanna help creative people do their thing, and to do that thing they need to be able to let their fans know when they’ve got a new art exhibit, a new album to promote, a new book to order, and that’s becoming harder on social media in 2026.
So yes, I think simple email lists and websites make that work, just like post cards and tube amps and print flyers still work in the year 2026. Because it’s people, not platforms. It’s DIY venues filled with weirdos and punks and freaks that will outlast the “too big to fail” monoliths.
I’m not asking for your understanding, or to justify these artistic choices. Whether or not you believe any of this, I believe in the art.
There is a magic to the rooms. The spaces, the theaters, the clubs, the bars, the back porches.
I came across Roddy Bottum’s “These Rooms,” which was an eloquent journey into all sorts of rooms, weaving the magic with the turmoil, and everything in between.
“The rooms of punk rock, don’t get me started. Where we are as a youth, as a celebration, as a rebel in our lives at the pinnacle of what matters, politically, protesting, being together and the sheer volume of the music as it comes off the stage, the pits, the shine of those shows, the drunk dumbness of becoming who we. become and the strength of that.”
I’m turning 50 this year and still remember the community centers and basements and feeling the floor shake in a second floor apartment in Brookyn that was for some reason accessible only via the fire escape.
Then a good friend sent me this video of the great Ian McKellen on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, talking about live theater, and doing anything to be in those places, and the magic that happens if only we get off our fucking phones.
It’s the rooms, the spaces, the theater of humanity that endures, that allows the magic to happen, the let me find these two different pieces on this morning and to put them into a blog post that is accessible around the world via the web browser that ships on every smart phone.
I love this from Kel Rakowski, in their announcement of Popular Co.
“Stop trying to reach the mainstream. Let the mainstream come to you. When you’re building something real for a real community, the mainstream eventually has to pay attention.”