Month: July 2003

Man Walks on Fucking Moon

Zep

I can’t say enough great things about this DVD. I’ve never been an especially great Led Zeppelin fan – the only CDs of their I own are Presence and the Page/Plant No Quarter album. I have some vinyl, but really I’ve always accepted Zep as a given; something that was influential to the stuff I listen to, but not something that totally grabbed my attention. Maybe it’s because I’m a visual thinker (and maybe because “Song Remains the Same” was lame) but seeing and hearing these guys playing in their prime is a revelation. A message from the past that not only says, “this is what great rock is” but also implies that much of what passes for rock today is predominantly derivative, lame crap. And I’ve only watched the first few tunes of Disc 2.

Tone Tone Tone

Speaking of revelatory experiences, I drove 3 hours to Fayetteville last night to see one of my personal gods, Eric Johnson. He Who Has the Tone. This is a guy who, for all his guitar prowess, can do something few guitar players can do – move the chicks. The crowd consisted mainly of guitar players (predominantly male) and their girlfriends, and I noticed that while the guys stood motionless with their arms crosed (as musicians so often inexplicably do), the gals were swaying back and forth and even dancing. Eric writes good pop tunes and keeps his shows a 50/50 split between instrumentals and vocal tunes, so there’s something for everyone. Hopefully my friend Kerri wasn’t too bored. She made me chicken and broccoli. Mmmm. And she loaned me her Pantera and Megadeth CDs so that I could stay amped while I drove the three hours back to LR.

Predictions for the Future

Or, you’d be surprised what 100 years can do.

  • Everyone in the modern world will one day have a personal communications device that functions as a combination phone-TV-Internet and GPS unit. Obviously, all bandwidth will be wireless to these units, eliminating the need for conventional network infrastructure, thus removing all high wire telephone lines from our sight. Phone numbers will be largely hidden from view (much the way http://66.253.8.233 is rarely seen compared to pointedstick.net because the words mask the numbers) as these devices will be likely be entirely voice activated and user-interactive. Telephones will be obsolete as two-way video communication becomes the norm.
  • Radio and media consolidation will be moot as every car will have web access so that you can listen to your friends’ radio programs streamed in high-definition audio from anywhere.
  • Record companies will diminish as music becomes less a commodity and more a service. As Pro Tools or some competing format becomes more user friendly, musicians will have the means by which to make high quality recordings more easily. Bands will gig more and make their money from shows and merch. Possibly they will offer subscription services on their websites, thus removing the need for record companies.
  • Cut-and-paste music will become a more popular genre as new ideas and sound sources become more scarce. Possibly "sound designers" will emerge as a genre.
  • Garage bands will be replaced by bedroom programmers and electronic music will likely overtake the musical forms based on the playing of conventional instruments.
  • Flying cars will likely never happen, as there’s just no safe, suitable substitute for gravity. We just don’t have any leads on how to manipulate it. However, it will be possible for transportation to become almost entirely free of conventional tire-road friction (this will of course depend on the willingness of petroleum industries to find other things to do than make gasoline). With this, it may be that we will see the closing of many many gas stations.
  • The space elevator may well be a reality (for those who doubt it, remember that we routinely strap people to 4 million pounds of explosives and blast them into space).