Day 16 – a song that you used to love but now hate
“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears
I had to go back to high school to think of one. This got so so much airplay and the video was everywhere when this came out that it got really quickly. I listened to it for about 30 seconds after finding the video posted below and I find I’m still sick of it.
Day 15 – a song that describes you
“I’m the Man” – Joe Jackson
To anyone who knows me, this should be blatantly obvious.
What?
Day 14 – a song that no one would expect you to love
“Finishing the Hat” by Stephen Sondheim
Ok, yeah, yeah, the secrets out: I like theater music, and I’ve always loved this song from Sunday in the Park with George. It is a poignant meditation on the creative process and the sacrifices needed to truly fulfill an artistic vision.
Day 13 – a song that is a guilty pleasure
“Bat Out of Hell” – Meatloaf
What can I say? This record has been part of my life since I was, like, seven. Here’s a cool live version of it.
Day 12 – Favourite song from a movie
“Wise Up” – Aimee Mann from Magnolia
Day 11 – a song from your favorite band
Bad Religion: “News From The Front”
This is one of their better songs that didn’t make it on to a proper release. Rather it is a b-side from, I think, “Infected” from 1994′s Stranger Than Fiction.
It’s a tricky song to sing so I never expected to hear them play it live, but it was on their setlist when they played here in Montreal last October.
Day 10 – favourite music video
Concrete Blonde: “Joey”
Like identifying a favourite song, it is difficult to pinpoint which music video is my favourite. I haven’t watched videos that much in a lot of years so I really have to go back and think about it.
The best I can do to explain this choice is that I watched a lot of Much Music during the summer of 1990, when Music Music still played music videos. I worked the night shift back then and got home around 6 or 7 a.m. I would either read books or watch Much Music before I went to bed and this was a video I always looked forward to seeing, as it’s such a great song and features a great vocal performance from Johnette Napolitano.
Day 9 – a song that you can dance to
Got nuthin’. I’m not much of a dancer.
Day 8 – a song that you know all the words to
Bad Religion: “No Control”
Lyrics don’t get much more pretentious than this!
I probably won’t do a post every day, but I will try and check in here and there. I got to SXSW in late afternoon after travelling all day. I checked in, picked up my badge, received the bags. For some reason they gave me three: one representing film, one for music and one for interactive.
I caught the last twenty minutes of Marissa Mayer’s keynote. She is the head of mobile and geolocation for Google. By the time I got there she was just answering questions, some interesting, some accusatory. Anyway, it’s all written up here.
I tried the “Big” grilled cheese, one that I was warned was very addictive, only to give it a “meh”. Disappointing. I should have put hot sauce on it or something.
The last thing I did was go hear Clay Shirky speak. I’ve been a fan of his work for some years now and was looking forward to his discussion on what was supposed to be “How to Make Online Discussion Not Suck” but instead he spoke about how the Internet is being used in times of social upheaval, like what we’re seeing in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, etc.
One thing he said that stuck with me is that with the use of more open technologies like Twitter, there are no examples to autocracies becoming more autocratic after the Internet.
During the Egyptian crisis, he said that those of us in the West weren’t having much impact when trying to be helpful, with the DDOS attacks and the Tweets letting Egyptians know of open proxies when Egyptian authorities turned the Internet off in their country.
Instead, he said what is more helpful is to take a long view. Pay attention to their issues. Volunteer remotely: find a country and join a user group. He brought up as an example onlinevolunteering.org that the UN put together.
There was tons more that I don’t feel like getting in to. I’m tired and want to make it an early night as it will be the last one for the next week or so.
