blackrimglasses.com

LotteWilde: are oyu there?
LotteWilde: well Amy says you can email her
LotteWilde: it might be cool to email her and correspond a little before you meet
LotteWilde: that way you’ll sorta know each other
LotteWilde: (somewhat)
LotteWilde: email her at
LotteWilde: amyhaber@ucla.edu
LotteWilde: how did your meeting go?
LotteWilde: g’night
LotteWilde: xxx
LotteWilde signed off at 2:03:19 AM.

Thank you Kell!

Is Microsoft product development now run by people throwing darts toward a wall?

[From Windows 7 Starter Edition Only Runs 3 Applications At Once]

After running a Dell Mini 9 with an illicit operating system on it for a few days, and with a built in cell modem, I wonder if Apple’s netbook (which you have to know they’re working on) will be a way they extend their deal with AT&T? An Apple netbook, half an inch thich, 5 hours battery life with built in 3G modem would basically murder small children and laugh about it while others cheered. Meaning it’d be awesome but make the Dell look like My First Sony.

Contributing to a nation of obesity = bad. However, you have to give compliments to a company with this frank, quick and transparent customer service response. And they didn’t have to use Get Satisfaction!

[From Above And Beyond: Consumerist Sleuths Track Down Offending Domino's Store]

I am in love. Claude Shannon information theory for the twitter verse.

[From Tweet A Sound { sound + software } at { sound + design }]

Awesome article on one of my favorite forms of conceptual art: RFC’s. I had a class in grad school where we did RFC’s as art projects. Super fun.

[From Op-Ed Contributor - How the Internet Got Its Rules - NYTimes.com]

I turn thirty on Friday, which means yesterday, 5 days prior to this anniversary for me, is an anniversary for a band I like a whole lot. 29 years ago, on April 5, 1980, in a church on a street in Athens, GA, R.E.M. took the stage and played.

It was a friend’s birthday party.

All that remains today is a steeple.

The band however has endured.

My office, and indeed many aspects of my life are filled with things related to this band. I’ve been ridiculed for it, been made to defend it, had to make excuses and later embraced it. It’s odd that a band consumed so much of me, but in the end is it anything to be ashamed of?

Maybe it helps to figure out why this happened, since it happened near this time, many years ago, and it directly relates to why I work in the music business.

On April 10, 1988 I turned nine years old. I looked like this. April 5, 1988, R.E.M. turned eight. They looked like this. My uncle Ian, who at the time was 14 was heavily into every piece of music played by Rodney on KROQ. At that time, R.E.M. had a top 10 single with The One I Love. My uncle, who saw it as his familial duty to instill on me the gift of good taste, decided that instead of a Lego set, he’d get me music.

R.E.M. Document was one of the records I got. Later, in November, he got me R.E.M. Green (released November 8, 1988, which was a shitty day for other reasons).

Up to this point, I liked music. I had some tapes that I took from my dad. Mostly they were things he was into in the 1970′s: Fleetwood Mac, Beatles, Elton John. As well I had some LP’s and a record player. I liked the album Help! a lot. My musical currency however was lacking. I was nine years old. In 1988, my exposure to music was what I found around the house and what was played on MTV. What I remembered about R.E.M. was that they had that weird video with the fire in it, and I wanted it to end so the Beastie Boys video would air.

Document is an interesting album. Like Lifes Rich Pageant before it, it opens with bombast. Unlike Pageant, it’s not a guitar riff intro into it, but a full on assault. I put the tape in, pressed play and listened: Finest Worksong, Welcome to the Occupation.. End of the World. Flipped it over: One I Love, King of Birds, Oddfellows. Then again. And again.

I didn’t know about the band. I thought they might be British. I made my dad take me to Music Plus, but I didn’t have enough money to buy the three cassette pack of Murmur, Reckoning and Fables. They did however have a copy of the December Rolling Stone proclaiming R.E.M. “America’s Hippest Rock and Roll Band.” I read the article. I found others and read those.

In November of 1988 I bought Green. March of 1991 I bought Out of Time. October 1992 I preordered the limited edition of Automatic for the People. In September of 1992 I stayed up all night in Hawaii to watch the debut of the Drive video. My room had collections of VHS tapes of appearances and videos I had taped. Saturday Night Live, every video, interviews on 120 Minutes and more.

In 1992 I also got Internet access and found lyrics, guitar tabs and communities around R.E.M. In 1993 I was on AOL and found the REM Fanclub. I’m still friends with people from there to this day. In 1993 they opened up Usenet on AOL and I was on rec.music.rem

In 1994 I bought Monster at midnight. In 1995 I saw R.E.M. live. In 1996 I started a website. In 1996 I finally met Michael Stipe.

Fanaticism gets a bad reputation. Or fandom if you want to call it that. It’s derided, ridiculed, blamed for things — with reason — and relegated to the fringe of behavior as something “others” do, but you’d never sink to. The act of being a fan is willing yourself to admit that something that you don’t control makes you happy and fulfills something for you. The act of being a fanatic is letting something you don’t control make you happy, whether you like it to or not. There’s a fine line there.

I’m a fan. But in the past twenty-one years I’ve become something more. I have a hard time figuring out what that is. In fact I’ve spent a long time struggling with this and trying to reconcile it. As much as I’ve been motivated and driven in my professional and personal life, I’ve carried with me a love for a band, and applied the same level of motivation and effort toward that. In some places this intersected (how I got my job at Warner Bros. Records). And in some it didn’t. I created a website not to seek anything but a sense of community with those that might think like me. I made the site an online community in 1998 for the same reason.

In the years since, I came to know the band not because I wanted anything from them, but because it seemed like the natural thing to do. I didn’t try, these are things that just happened.

Twenty-one years ago, I got a cassette tape as a gift. Today I find myself, weekly, having to explain why every inch of my walls and boxes in my office contain R.E.M. memorabilia. It’s easier now, I use the “I worked with R.E.M. for a long time” and since I now work at their label. It used to be more difficult. Today, they are friends of mine. But its further than that too. How did I meet my wife? We were introduced by someone I met through the band. How did I get my job? Craigslist…. and their manager gave me a recommendation.

For a long time, I’ve been apologetic for my love of this band. But should I be?

I view it this way: I grew up loving a band, who I ended up becoming friends with, and who are the nicest guys I know. Celebrity or not, rock star or not, artist or not. Just nice people. They’re nice to my wife, nice to me, have been nice to my family. Not because they owed me anything, but because that’s just how they are.

I grew up listening to their music, watching videos, going to concerts and buying albums wondering what enables people to make amazing things that others can enjoy. I wondered what I would say when I met these four guys, who somehow, got together on a spring night in a southern town to pound out some songs.

The first time, I stammered “Thanks”

In the end, I didn’t have to say a word.

I think people underestimate the importance art plays in life. We too often value things that matter only to remove concern for us to enjoy art unencumbered. Money, success, material things help us raise the bar for the default of comfort, but what truly elevates us above default are two things: love and passion.

We find love in all things: people, art, animals, nature, the world at large. We find passion in the things we’re allowed to love without filter, tension or reason.

I love a lot of things. I love my wife, my animals, my family, the thing kicking inside my wife and my life in general. I’m passionate about many things as well. But no matter what I loose myself in, no matter what I love unequivocally, without reason, something always, without fail puts a smile on my face:

We are R.E.M., and this is what we do.

To Mike, Michael, Peter and Bill and Bertis: Thank you for doing what you do.

You guys are the reason I continue doing what I do.