Brilliant Corners

My pal Joey (and his friend, Ben) have started a comedy podcast called The Ben & Joey Show. Give it a listen, it’s good.

Maya is on the road again for another 6+ month trip around Asia. Here’s my mention of her last trip, and my post about her book to-do list (buy it!).

I've yet to hold a copy of Maya Waldman’s book, to-do list, in my hands, but I can heartily recommend that it be bought. Immediately. I've come to know Maya’s work from a friendly online community, and over the years I've enjoyed seeing the artwork she has contributed. And now, some of what’s she has drawn (and written?) comes in the form of this neat little book.

Can I really recommend this book without seeing it first? Why, yes I can. If you're not convinced, here is some of Maya’s other work to get an idea of what you can probably expect from the book:

• Some of Maya’s finely-detailed work from her notebooks
• A weblog of Maya’s letters home during her stay in the Marshall Islands

And just for good measure, here’s the description from the Amazon listing:

To-Do List inspires young and old not to take life too seriously. The “tasks” on Maya’s to-do list range from the everyday-buy milk, be less messy, go on vacation, make friends, and no fighting-to the exceptional-dance like an octopus, hug flowers, star gaze, smile giant, eat sweets, and count clouds.

Each “task” is adorned with an ink drawing that has been painstakingly hand-rendered in astonishing detail. Soon enough, your own to-do list will include enjoying the novelties found on every page.

And please note that although Amazon lists this as an audiobook, it’s not. That should hopefully be corrected soon.

Okay, maybe Jeff isn’t that famous (yet!), but his solo music project, Myopic, is featured on NPR’s “Open Mic” program. I played in three(!) separate bands with Jeff many, many years ago. Way to go, Jeff. The music is wonderful.

I'm only around halfway through Michael Azerrad’s book Our Band Could Be Your Life and two things are becoming more and more apparent as I complete the book.

One, there are a lot of bands I never gave a true listening to. Of the many bands covered in the book, I have only listened to a few: The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, and Fugazi. I have heard of all or most of the other bands mentioned in the book, but for some reason I never picked up an album of theirs. I now want to own the full catalog of Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Black Flag, Minor Threat, Mission of Burma, and The Butthole Surfers. And I haven’t even finished the book yet.

Second, I'm inspired. Damn inspired. Spending months in a cramped van or car traveling the country, city to city, sometimes playing for an audience of five for one thing only: doing what they love, making and playing music. Yes, bands have been doing this for ages, but the case with many of the bands in this book is that they were playing music that wasn’t popular at all. Punk and hardcore bands faced harassment from the police, the clubs, and by the population at large.

In order to get their music heard, they created their own music labels, booked their own shows, and played the PR game with radio stations and zines. The networked amongst themselves, promoted each other, and worked menial jobs so they could eat, since they often made no money from the music they played. It was all for the music; that was what was most important. They didn’t wait for anything to fall into their laps. They had to work hard for everything.

Oh yeah, and that photo at the top; that’s me from years and years ago playing in a band called Tarlo. I'm rockin' the Telecaster in the basement of a music store in Wichita Falls, TX. We opened for a band that played Metallica covers. The photo was taken by my good friend Chip Somodevilla, who has since moved on to taking pictures of more famous folks.

When I watched You're Gonna Miss Me at the SXSW premiere last year I had heard of Roky Erickson, but I had never really listened to his music and I had no idea of the troubles he had been through in the last decade or so. Two of my great friend happened to be the producers of the documentary and I was there at the premiere to help celebrate the happy occasion with them. Then the film started.

It’s amazing how much Roky had suffered while in the “care” of his mother. In a sense, this musical genius was wasting away and if it wasn’t for his brother Sumner helping out, who knows what would have happened to Roky. It’s inspiring to know that he’s back and playing music again. Because of the documentary, I bought a recent compilation of his music (I Have Always Been Here Before), both solo and with the various bands he played with over the years.

While the doc was on the festival circuit, I put together and maintained the website for the film. The version(s) I put up have been taken down (but here’s a snapshot from the Web Archive of the first version of the site) and replaced by another. Watch the trailer at the site, and you'll definitely get sucked in to his story.

The reason I bring this up is that the documentary is now available on DVD, and it seems to be packed with loads of extras. So, congrats to my friends; I know they've looked forward to this day for a long time.

Update: Via coudal’s Fresh Signals blog, a new music video for Spoon’s song “The Underdog” directed by You're Gonna Miss Me’s director Keven McAlester. More of his music videos here.

Another year and another SXSWi. The friends old and new; the panels good and bad; the parties and the drinking; and the refilling of my soul with Mexican/Tex-Mex food.

I don’t think I attended as many panels this year as I had in previous years, but that’s fine. Perhaps I was a little more selective. Oh, and waking up late just about every day made a difference, too. Still, I do think it was worth the trip to Austin for the yearly festivities.

One thing I really walked away from SXSW with is motivation. Surrounded by creative types from all over the “interactive” map, you can’t help but let some of that creativity and motivation seep into you. I now have a (hopefully not short-lived) desire to get a project started that I've been sitting on for too long. We'll see how that goes.

Gina has started a new weblog, Spun, to focus more on web development topics. When I first came across her Scribbling.net site, I loved the tech writing she was doing. But over the last few years, Scribbling has become an outlet for her more personal writings. Her personal and fiction writing is fantasic, but at times I missed the nerdy Gina. :)

My friend Maya is about to embark on a six-month travel across Asia. Thankfully, she'll be chronicling her journey on her weblog and on Flickr. Before she takes off on her trip and the updates start rolling in, you can marvel at her wonderfully-detailed notebook drawings and notes.

Have a great trip, Maya!