Month: June 2012

While enjoying a beer in the shadow of the Museum of Fine Arts while Tim Street was in town, he pointed to the cash register and said (I’m paraphrasing) “That’s the problem with “New Media”. There’s none of those.”

I see this problem becoming more common. Seth Godin has written at length about today’s worker being an artist. While I believe this to be true there’s the problem that many artists fail (and/or have no interest) in setting up a cash register. This weekend the lovely Carin took me to see the almost equally lovely Diana Krall at Tanglewood. It was a great show and we were impressed with the opening act, a singer named Denzal Sinclaire. The best way I can describe it is that if R. Kelly were to produce an album for Nat King Cole, it would probably sound a lot like him. I was digging deep and I don’t think I’ve ever heard another man with a better voice in concert, and may never since there’s no way to hear Luther Vandross.

As he wrapped up I immediately took down his name so I could buy some music after the show. There was nothing at the merch tent, which wasn’t much of a surprise, but what killed me is that there’s really nothing online either. DenzalSinclaire.com is just a place holder, Amazon has a single track and then you can import CDs, it actually looks easier to get the CDs on eBay. iTunes has a few single tracks and that’s it.

This is the kind of stuff that hits me hard. I spend the majority of my hours trying to connect buyers and sellers. To be standing around waving cash and saying “I want to give you this money” is a missed opportunity for both sides. It is entirely possible that Mr. Sinclaire has all the money he needs and is not concerned, but in the event that’s not the case, I would refer him to Matthew Ebel, I’m sure he could set up something nice that would work for everyone. Please, don’t make me buy used CDs from eBay, don’t let the middle man take the money I’d rather put in your register.

My Dad and I are both big music fans and over the past couple of months we’ve gotten into watching concerts on Blu-Ray. Watching a show on the big TV in surround sound in HD is not the same as being at a show, but between perfect sound, really seeing what’s happening on stage and not having to spend an hour getting out of the parking lot, you are getting a lot of value for the $20 or so you pay.

This weekend I watched two concert documentaries – one on the 25th Anniversary of Paul Simon’s Graceland, and the other on Paul McCartney’s Concert for New York that was done right after 9/11. I was surprised to find that I had the same opinion of both of them. While it was great to see behind the scenes I found that I got tired of that quickly and I thought both of them would have hit harder if they were not as long. I’m pretty sure I would have enjoyed watching the shows more than the making behind them. There were some interesting moments though, you get a taste of what it must be like for a former Beatle not to be able to go anywhere without drawing attention, and I hadn’t paid much attention to the controversy that was created when Paul Simon went to South Africa. Unfortunately while looking with a marketing eye I tend to cynically wonder about the line between doing art and taking advantage of political events to sell more music. Paul Simon makes some interesting points on that from the artists view.

As the music industry continues to be blown to bits I also find myself hoping that with the big data that comes out of things like iCloud that we might see more interesting stuff come back to light. After seeing Billy Joel in the concert for New York I went looking for some of the shows he had done back in the 90’s with Elton John just to see what they sounded like. With the exception of some Japanese imports it seems like there’s not much out there. I can’t be the only person out there with obscure 80’s remixes.

If you’ve seen any good shows in HD, do share. There are a bunch of older shows that are great but were prior to, or didn’t take advantage of HD, like Diana Krall in Paris.  Chris Botti in Boston is the favorite so far. I was a big fan of his original material, but I enjoy the standards too and this show takes full advantage of the sound and video.

Now if I could only get U2-3D in HD…