Category: Internet

Learning to Love Streaming DJ Sets

I didn’t watch any football on Thanksgiving this year. Not a single play. This year, while prepping dinner with my roomie, I propped up my iPad and streamed over two hours of Marc Ribellet’s ‘Stanksgiving’ performance.

Live, unfiltered, spontaneous, dangerous, sexy – you name it.

Marc had all his year stolen a month or so ago, so he was working his way through some new sounds, new equipment. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t always “100% funk jams,” it was raw and real, and we loved it.

During the pandemic I came across HOR Berlin, which is a bunch of live streamed DJ sets from Berlin, in what looks like a tiled-bathroom, but it’s seriously been so good for my soul.

I mean, I kind of didn’t even know I liked techno, but I guess I do now! Dark wave is a thing too, I guess? There’s just so many fun jams, which partially inspired me to start my ‘Goodnight, Metal Friend‘ mix project.

For me part of the appeal of all these sorts of entertainment is just being a part of something live, as it’s happening. Without being able to go to live shows, or take a bus into NYC and walk around and be surprised, these live streams are just doing it for me at the moment.

It’s weird in a sense, though, as these aren’t really recorded works. Well, they are, as you see from the videos embedded above, but there’s just so many good mixes coming out all the time, and this doesn’t even factor in NTS streaming radio, or what’s on SoundCloud.

Perhaps it’s that each of these moments is hand-curated in the moment, by real humans. It’s a performance, but it’s also something that can happen in the background. Music as a utility, as a backdrop, a live person performing in real time, on my computer, adding a bit of humanity to an otherwise repetitive and boring life at the moment!

This Is The Way

I don’t really know much about Ahsoka Tano, save for a few episodes the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series (which I just couldn’t get into). I don’t really know much about Bo-Katan Kryze either, but I sort of new she was a big deal.

The neat thing about The Mandalorian is the story telling and production and writing and everything just works so well together that these characters just feel important, all without knowing the full back story.

And, oh my goodness, did I really just write two posts about The Mandalorian?

Collecting

From Kottke:

Many think some people are special but usually those people just put a lot more time in it than others. This applies to sports, arts, almost everything. It’s worth doing something for a long time, even if the benefits are not always clear. Good surprising things come out of it. You also learn about yourself in the process.

Reacting to Reactions

I’ve never quite got “reaction videos,” but when I break it down, all the music writing I’ve done since 2001 were “reactions.” It’s the same idea, different format.

The generation before me had magazines.
We had music blogs.
Today its video.

I can’t really watch someone “reacting” to an album that I love, but did I search for “Mandalorian The Siege” after I watched the new episode for “reaction” articles? Oh, you bet I did.

For years I listened to albums and wrote reviews. I wrote my reaction. People read them. Now you can watch people react in real-time to hearing an album.

Same idea, different delivery. It’s okay if it’s not for me.

Special Like Everyone Else

This from ‘The Death of the Artist,’ (via @SorayaRoberts)

Anyone can easily market their own music, books, or films online, drum up a thousand true fans, and enjoy a decent living. We see proof of this, time and again, in profiles of bold creators who got tired of waiting to be chosen, took to the web, and saw their work go viral.

The artists tell another tale. Yes, you can produce and post your work more easily, but so can everyone else.

William Deresiewicz

From the early 2000s until now, there has been no shortage of music, which is why there is no shortcut to getting your stuff out there. Unfortunately everything is stacked against the artist – rent, time, space, COVID-19. For every Marc Rebillet, there’s probably 1,000 artists who got two plays on YouTube today.

This is not some moral failing of the artist with two plays. The entire system is broken, art is de-valued, and oh yeah, almost 250,000 Americans are dead from a runaway virus.

Making Sharable Clips with TikTok Videos

Using TikTok videos to promote your thing across social media can be tough given the format of the video. The Toktok video is great for sharing as an IG or FB story, but what about everywhere else?

For this clip, I took the raw TikTok video, and put it in the middle of a 1280×720 video (I use ScreenFlow), then took the client’s existing Instagram Story assets and put them on either side.

The result is a shareable video clip that shows off a cool make-up sequence, and reinforces the brand and the actual release we’re trying to promote.

Downtime Thoughts

It’s amazing how we stayed in touch before 2006-ish, before Twitter. Before Facebook. We emailed one another, texted, called. All things we can still do, but none with the endorphin rush of opening up Instagram and seeing the likes, and a peek inside the lives of hundreds of our closest friends.

And IG Stories – oh my goodness! Videos, horror, outrage, kitties – it’s like shots of espresso right into the eyeballs.

Lately I’ve been spending more time on Flickr, as I think I wrote before. Pick a tag, any tag, and get lost in amazing photos. Sort of like Bandcamp, which you all know I love.

It’s the open web. No algorithm. No influencers. No computer-bases trickery to keep me engaged, plugged in, and scrolling. I mean, I love street photography, but there’s only so much I can look at.

The one thing, though I do enjoy with Instagram is the number of runners I follow, and they post some pretty inspiring imagery and stories and videos, and that sometimes helps me get out the door.

My 15 Year Old Flickr Group

https://www.flickr.com/groups/bikecommute/

Years ago I was super active on Flickr, and I forgot that I started this Bicycle Commuter group back in 2005 – freaking 15 years ago.

I was living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn at that time, riding down Putnam Ave then North to the Williamsburg, Bridge. God damn, I miss those ride. I miss the city riding, the flow of those streets, the bike lanes, and those bridges.

Morning rides over those bridges. Evening rides. Rainy rides. Night rights. Biking in the city, any city, is fucking magic.

フェンスと自転車のある風景

One of the remarkable things about scrolling through these photos on Flickr is the web-first experience. Things on the web seem just slower paced, as opposed to the social network feel on mobile which is focused on speed.

Along the Yarra River

Lately the mobile experience just feels like go, go, go. This is partly because of my day job, and what I do for a living, but I’ve really enjoyed putting the phone down, closing my email, and getting back to checking a few websites that aren’t Google News, or ESPN.

#lasucksforcycling