Heaven Will Now Go To 11: R.I.P. Jim Marshall

Jim Marshall, The Man Behind The Stack, has passed away at 88.  His battle with cancer was ended with a series of strokes.  The working drummer invented his first amp in the '60's, and by the end of his storied career had been awarded the Order of the British Empire.  He was nicknamed the 'Father Of Loud", and as founder of Marshall Amplification, he was the power behind the throne for generations of guitarists, from Jimi Hendrix to J. Mascis, and leaves a proud legacy, and a company that states: "Where he is going is about to get louder"...

(photo of J. Mascis courtesy of Gordon Withers, Washington, DC 2010)

new paradigms...

Or, further dancing on the ashes of a dying industry...



Here's something different...Mr. Withers, who provided us with the link to the Surrealist Compliment Generator, is using an interesting model to bring his newest project to fruition...Hopefully it works, but, regardless, someone will take this concept and run with it. For more on this, and more eloquently than moi, try here... It's fascinating to see folks twist the new social media to their ends, from building and inflaming fanbases to skewed concepts of touring to actually funding projects.
Amanda F. Palmer is using her Twitter presence to galvanize a fanbase across different medias, culminating in a handy dandy IPhone app that consolidates music, her blog(s), videos, etc into a nifty little (free!) package that raises the bar on artist apps. Palmer is also fighting a pitched battle to get out of her contract with Roadrunner Records, using her media base to promote direct purchase of her DVD as the only means of her actually seeing money, rather than through traditional retail.

Both Palmer and Zoe Keating have used Twitter to promote what Palmer charmingly refers to as 'ninja gigs', fun little gigs in unexpected places with a minimum of overhead and publicity, banking hard on the word of mouth and innate weirdness of the gigs, from Palmer's formal dress at the beach ukelele gigs to Keating's performances at terminals in the San Francisco Airport.

On twitter, they are respectively: @trisloth, @zoecello, @amandapalmer

endnote: this just in, here's another approach from Chuck D, Flavor Flav, and the good folks at Public Enemy...

What is Surreal?

Ahhh, let us ponder that eternal question...My new favourite webpage: The Surrealist Compliment Generator...For instance, just now i got: 'THE SISTERS OF ST CATHODE ASK THAT YOU COVER YOURSELF IN FILAMENTS AND TAKE PAINS TO MAKE YOURSELF FULLY INCANDESCENT THIS EVENING'

I feel blessed, and quite frankly, it sure beats the hell out of fortune cookies and daily horoscopes...(thx to Gordon in D.C. for enlightenment...)