Showing posts with label money for nothing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money for nothing. Show all posts

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Aesthetics - The Home Office

If only mine looked like this.




It's not as if I had any advance warning. I found out on a Friday and by Monday afternoon I was hauling freshly-configured computer equipment and hastily snatched manila folders and legal pads and sticky notes out to my car. I dumped everything in our second bedroom, dreading the colossal task of crawling under my desk and unplugging six hundred twisted cables and dusty power cords and sticking every loose plug into the back of my new computer; crossing my fingers that God would have mercy on me and make everything work. Everything didn't. The whole process consumed one and a half hours, and I found I had a worthless second monitor that chose to flash red, blue, and green bars instead of the anticipated helpful work screen. I actually worked with that monstrosity on my desk for half a day until I decided to ditch it to an empty corner of the room.

Thus I had a room littered with spare computer parts and cables; a room that already was filled to overflowing. This was heretofore my kick-back room, where I smoked and watched TV and blogged on the weekends and paid my bills online. And listened to music.Now it was suddenly my workplace for eight hours every day, and it was ugly.

Sitting in a tiny room for an entire work shift, one not only feels claustrophobia creeping in, but they notice everything that's aesthetically wrong. And it begins to grate.

Our townhome is tiny -- there is no "magic closet" where extraneous items can be stuffed. And people give me things. It's not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but there are only so many knick-knacks I can accommodate before the whole place implodes. Add to that mishmash hideous ominous "black things" - spare monitors and hard drives and speaker cables - and you can imagine my depression. Today I disguised the detritus as best I could. At least I can now glimpse it and not be horrified. The boxes the fake plant is resting on have been swaddled in leftover Christmas wrap. The guitar is disguising cardboard Amazon shipping boxes holding spare computer parts.




My setup is far from ideal. Maybe by the time I get to go back to the office, I'll have it configured to my satisfaction. I'm thinking there will be several tweaks between now and then.

My bottom-line advice: make your work space as tolerable as you can. You've got to live with it.

But it's only Saturday night -- I can be messy and no one will be the wiser.



Thursday, July 7, 2011

You're A Terrible Judge of Your Own Music


Alas, it is true. Murphy's Law will tell you (and I'm not exactly sure who Murphy is, unless he's Papa Murphy, in which case, I'm not real crazy about his pizzas, either) that whatever song you think is your absolute best, fans will absolutely HATE, or worse, will absolutely IGNORE.

How do I know? Well, that's where marketing shows its real value. By "marketing", I mean basically slapping up some songs on a promotion site, such as ReverbNation or Jango, or, if you're really, really bored and narcissistic, on your own radio station.

It's the ultimate conundrum, I guess.

For example, I'm sure that Mark Knopfler thought that this was the greatest Dire Straits song ever:


Watch Dire Straits(money for nothing) in Music | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Of course, that was before Canada got wind of the song, and determined that it was COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE FOR BROADCAST. (Really, Canada? And here I thought you all had that laissez faire attitude. You know, being French and all.) And strangely, "Money For Nothing" was released in 1985, so it only took a quarter of a century for Canada to determine the utter inappropriateness of the song. Well, they have a backlog.

So, Mark was downhearted. Well, actually, he was feeling pretty uphearted until approximately the year 2010.

Ironically, little did Mark know that the actual favorite Dire Straits song, as determined by the fans, was this:



Why, Mark asks? Well, it was because of this line:

"doo doo, da da DO do do doo doo".

Not scientific, I grant you, but what, after all, is scientific about music?

The moral of this story, if there is one, is, as an artist, please make sure that you include this line in every one of your songs:

Doo doo, da da DO do do doo doo


Then riches shall be yours. And you won't have to guess which song your fans will like best, because they will like them all!

Another fine public service from me, your Music Success Guru. And I don't even charge for this!

Woo-hoo-hoo.