Bill & Ted’s Excellent Soundtrack

I was in my second year of architecture school when the movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure hit theaters. It was (and still is) a significantly absurd movie, but it was absurd in all the right places and had a most excellent soundtrack. Something that would appeal to a kid in his early 20s pulling all-nighters making drawings and architectural models.

At some point I discovered the soundtrack to the movie on cassette tape and I listened to it religiously until I knew the songs by heart and the order in which they played – the way that anybody raised during Continue reading Bill & Ted’s Excellent Soundtrack

One Sweet TomorrowMud Story

2015-tomorrowworld

My mom just told me a story that her friend Thelma passed along to her this morning, and I thought that I’d share it with you guys and maybe you could tell your friends. Thelma’s little church is just down the road from the location of TomorrowWorld, an amazing electronic dance music festival that came to the United States from Europe back in 2013. I remember when art director Sean Jennings Ryan first showed me this video of TomorrowLand… Continue reading One Sweet TomorrowMud Story

This Clown is on Fire

2013_clown_fire

In case you missed it: this past Thursday a towering clown with a “golden voice” stormed YouTube with a cover of “Royals” by 16 year old singer Lorde, ringing up 1.5 million hits in only 3 days and propelling the mysterious artist known only as “Puddles the Clown” into the spotlight.

As the rest of the world scrambles to pierce the mystery of the colossal crooning harlequin we here in Atlanta already know the fool’s not-so-secret secret identity: his name is “Big” Mike Continue reading This Clown is on Fire

Weezer’s Time Machine

Weezer_The_Red_Album

The first half of this year was unexpectedly rough, but things are better right now and I think one of the contributing factors has been a five year old album by Weezer, known simply as “The Red Album” (released in 2008). I’d bought the disc a few years back and ripped it to iTunes but until this past spring I had never really listened to it. At this point in the summer I’ve heard it at least 30 or 40 times, which isn’t at all unusual for me. Weezer has been my “happy summer band” since the time I made a trip to Los Angeles for my friend Evan’s wedding and wound up rolling my rental car through Beverly Hills while rocking out to the Weezer song by that same name (as must have many other 17 year old boys, trying to impress people).

Developing Nations and Singers

Juliana Finch and Five Day Drive
The internet keeps getting more interesting in so many unexpected ways. The newest thing that I’ve seen is Kiva.org, a website that allows you to invest in businesspeople in developing countries. Instead of giving them money, making them forever dependant on your handouts, you make loans to them to help them get their dream businesses off the ground. Some of these budding entrepreneurs are truly touching. I’m going to try this eventually, being pushed into it by some of the folks over at AppleNova. I was interested, but not surprised to see that one of the people in my newer circle of friends, singer Juliana Finch, is giving a similar internet loan website a whirl in a bid to raise enough money to produce her first true studio album, the one that will surely launch her star.

The friends we share in common, most of them singers, assure me that Juliana will indeed be famous one day, it’s only a matter of time and funding. Click over to her MySpace page for a sample of her work.

Juliana is being invited to perform at larger and larger venues around Atlanta, perhaps you’ve already seen her. I look forward to investing in Juliana’s career, after all, how cool would it be to tell people that you helped finance a famous singer? Pretty darned cool. How cool would it be to say that you’ve financed a famous singer AND made a loan to a grocer in a tiny developing nation somewhere in the world? Amazing cool.

All You Need is LOVE (and money)

Cirque du Soleil and Love
Cirque du Soleil has announced that they’re introducing a brand new show named “Love” based on the music of the Beatles, with preview shows beginning in Las Vegas in June. The preview clips from the show are inspiring enough to make any Cirque-loving Beatles fan reach for their bankbook to see if they can swing tickets, airfare, lodging and poker chips. I’m tempted.