AIG.

This is a nice little explanation of how AIG got into the mess it's in, if you're interested in that kind of thing...

SaaS.

Ever heard of it? It stands for Software as a Service, and it's a little sector of the software/tech business that everyone is keeping an eye on right now. One of the leading vendors of this service right now is a company called SalesForce.com. My brother in law is actually their director of recruiting for the midwest region. What SaaS does is remove the need to buy software for your business. It moves the important stuff to the "cloud", which is another name for the internet, and charges a monthly fee for the service. It's the same concept as Gmail, except that enterprise software is big, big business. Software companies don't just make a bundle when they sell it, they make a bigger bundle from selling the support contracts that every business inevitably needs to keep their company moving along.

So, SaaS removes the expense of buying, and instead rents you the software, along with the support, for however long you want it. I'm not in the market right now, so I don't know how long the contracts last, but the point is that companies probably won't continue to buy enterprise software if this model works out like SalesForce.com hopes it will. So far it's working like gangbusters. They're projecting about $1.3B in revenue for 2010.

The correlating service in the music business would be something like Napster, I guess. You pay a monthly fee and you get access to their whole database of music. Services like these haven't taken off for crap, mostly because iTunes already owns the market and it's still just too easy to rip music off for free. iTunes has proven such a success because they really do make it super easy to get what you want, the prices are reasonable, and they don't even insist on that DRM crap anymore (which was only there in the first place because the majors insisted on it).

What if a band with a pre-established fanbase wanted to try this out on their own? What if there were very regularly updated music, video, whatever on a site dedicated to the band, and the only place you could get that stuff was from that website? What if it were super simple for anyone to use, and super affordable for anyone to join? In other words, what if it were worth it?

Would people try it?

Would bands try it?

If the other option is to put out another CD that you can only buy at the merch table, or maybe online somewhere and even then only if you're already looking for it, I think this could be a way forward for a really motivated band.

Language.

This is a table I found that shows relative current interest in different computer programming languages. This was put together by measuring the book sales of books covering a specific language as compared to their sales from the year before. The size of the box tells their relative market share, and the color their relative market traction. You'll notice the really bright green one at the top, up 965%, is for Objective-C. Mac OS X applications, and iPhone applications are written in this language. I have personally contributed at least 2 purchases to that square over the last year...

iPhone as PR tool.

So, if you're in a band and you don't have a website, you're not really a band, right? If you own a business and you don't have a website, your business doesn't really exist, right? If you ran a festival, could you see how you could get by without having a website?

The iPhone, and the mobile platform in general, is going to be the means by which info is spread, by which content is delivered, by which people are entertained and kept in the loop. The portable website, but better. Can we all agree on that much?

The road.

It wears you out. All the stories about how road eventually grinds good musicians into dust may be partially true. I'd suspect that it has more to do with drugs and alcohol on the road grinding musicians into dust. I don't have that problem, so mainly it just wears me out.

Exhaustion is a state that usually lends itself to some good playing, at least for me. Last night I was so tired I think my brain went into some kind of alpha dream state during the second set. That's when I do my best thinking when I have the energy, but not last night. Just laying down with the roots...

Computers.

Let me just say this, and I was a big PC defender/Mac smack-talker for many years. The adjustment period, when I bought my Mac last summer, was about an hour long. I just had to get used to closing windows in the left side of the screen instead of the right. Since the adjustment period has ended, and working on this thing has become sort of an extension of my arms, I gotta tell you - Macs just stay out of your way. It's that simple. I don't fight with it. i don't have to reboot or reinstall. I don't even have to think about it. When I got my iPhone a year and a half ago, I knew that this was a tool that would allow the most unorganized person to have a ball getting their shit together. That person is me. I'm pretty sure if i take the time to plot out some sort of productivity index for my life, it's going to start showing some serious upward movement around July of 08.

Health.

I started running about this time last year. I hadn't exercised regularly since college, where they gave you gym access along with your tuition. I spent the rest of my 20s gaining about 2 or 3 pounds a year, and not really doing much in the way of taking care of myself. It had occurred to me that the only exercise I was really ever going to be able to afford was running, but I hate running. I kept up this hope that some day I was going to be able to at least join a YMCA with a pool or something, as that was much more my speed.

I had a big winter last year, with the birth of my baby boy right in the middle of it. I had the same realization that I had had in college 11 years earlier - that one simple little thing that I could that would make me feel better was to start getting some regular exercise again. So I dug my running shoes out of the closet, as I had tried this before, and got started. The first mile isn't as hard as the second mile. And it must've taken me six months of plugging away at just running those two miles without stopping, but once I got over the hump, I really got over the hump.

My short run around where I live is right at 4 miles long, and I try to do that every other day when the weather allows. I start getting really antsy if I go more than a week. Without a shadow of a doubt, I'm in the best shape I've ever been in. I lost the pounds and then some, and haven't really relapsed at all as far as bad eating habits. My wife Michelle is a veg, so it's easy when I'm home, but I've managed to keep at it on the road with greater and greater success. I got up yesterday at 7:30 and went for about 3.5 with my buddy Matt, and then did another 3 or so here in Charleston. As you can tell, this is about nothing in particular, but if you hate running as bad as I did, there's a very good chance that you could love it as much as I do now...

Band meetings.

Generally suck. You want to know what happens when 6 musicians get together to discuss running their business? Not much, usually...

Just in case.

I know you know this already, but can we keep this off the Earthboard until I figure out what this is going to be about? I'm self conscious enough already. Danke...

Toward the point...

Okay, so this blog is gonna be really boring if I do it in chronological order. I want to make sure that my two readers so far have something to look forward to besides cleaning out my mental closet.

I had an idea for a business that would be really cool if someone started.

I'm in a band that gets virtually no love from the mainstream media, the major record labels, the world at large...Yet, we've been together for 8 years now. I've been in the band for 6. When I first joined the band we were buying a van from a liquor store parking lot so that we could get around the country more comfortably and reliably. That van turned 300,ooo miles last weekend. We played Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. In February. "This is ridiculous" we thought to ourselves. Yet, we sold out the little place we played in ME, and the huge place we played in VT. Turns out cabin fever is a good thing for your band. But we do this all the time.

You take your average artist that's on a major label, that's on the radio or MTV, and we draw more people to any given show in any given town than probably 90% of them. That there's something going on here is plain for anyone to see. That we're impossible to "market" in the traditional sense, in the traditional way is equally plain, to me at least. I don't even know how to answer the question "What kind of music do you guys play?" and I've been looking for a straight reply for 6 years. So I don't get frustrated when we put out a new record and it doesn't sell, or get the media response that I'm sure it'll get, or when the good radio play we're actually getting for the first time doesn't actualy translate into any hard numbers. Okay, so I do, but does it really matter? If you're a fan of RRE, how did you find RRE? Was it seeing an article in the paper, or a magazine? Was it by hearing us on XM/Sirius?

It may have been, but I'd say chances are pretty strong that either one of your friends turned you on to us, or that you stumbled across us on the internet. That tells me something.

Numero Uno

To speak into the void.

So I've had this idea simmering on the front burner of my brain for several months now. But first, I should probably introduce myself, or do a bio, or something. Maybe this will take several parts, because I've never tried to write a bio, and I feel like I've done a good job living unconventionally with my first 30 years here...

I was born in ATL, Georgia, that is. No brothers or sisters. Great parents. Always totally behind me for some reason. I got pretty mediocre grades at the private school they sent me to, and spent most of my time getting in trouble. Nothing big ever, no real cause for concern, I just didn't really feel like fitting into their mold over there. I realize now in hindsight that I left high school with pretty low self esteem after being told for half of my life what an underachiever I was, how much potential I had that if I just "applied myself". I had some really good friends, though, and at some point found music.

I'd been in the school band since 6th grade, trombone. I realize now that I never knew how to read music. I think I learned the parts by listening to whomever I was sitting next to. That amazes me in hindsight, but nobody picked up on it, least of all me. I was that into the trombone anyway, I was much more into the drums. I used to get on my band directors nerve because as soon as we got into the room I'd be back in the percussion section, not learning the trombone parts.

"Why didn't you just switch to percussion?" you might ask..

"Because we need trombones" was the answer I got for years and years whenever I asked to switch to percussion.

There was one time that I was really into building model planes. I didn't use plastic cement, for some reason I used a hot glue gun. It was messy and my models turned out looking like crap, but that's not the point. One time I'd set my glue gun down, with it pointing into my glass of water. It had dripped some hot glue into the glass, apparently, right before I took a sip. I burned the crap out of my top lip and had a huge ugly scab for weeks. The band concert was coming up that week. I couldn't play the trombone. I got to be a percussionist for a week. It was like heaven. I couldn't read music for the bass drum either, but I damn sure could make the part up. Nobody ever knew, and I never told them. I totally forgot about that until now.

Anyway, I forget why, but at some point I got more or less kicked out of the band. I think I skipped a mandatory concert to go on a youth group trip with my church. I asked them if I could skip the concert to go on a youth group trip and they said "no". This would've been a reasonable answer, except that five minutes before my best friends James had asked them if he could go on the exact same trip that I was asking to go on, and they told him "sure". So I went anyway. Now I remember why. Amazing this blogging...

Anyway, now I'm in a band, and right now I'm on a tour bus heading to the GA theater in Athens. I've got some time to kill, so I'll keep catching you up, whoever you are. At this rate, I'll get to my big idea in another 20 posts or so.