Nothing To See Here

I’ve always had trouble motivating myself to exercise. I know it’s good for me. I know I’m not getting any younger, but I’m not fat (though my cholesterol is high now) and through the miracle of genetics, I have a decent build for someone who hasn’t consistantly worked out in years. I want to exercise, but I don’t want to do the work. Apparently there’s a pill now, but I’m not into taking pills. A couple of weeks back I was reading my daily dose of RSS feeds and came upon a pushup workout. It required little time, worked all sorts of muscles and it sounds pretty badass to say you can do 100 pushups, which, if I followed the regimine, I would be able to do in 6 weeks. Sold.

I’m a week in to the workout and while it’s not easy, it’s pretty fun to do and is a great, energetic start to my day. I’m taking a photo of myself after each workout, and will do one of those fancy time-lapsed movies at the end of the 6 weeks. Hell, maybe I’ll go for 200, but I don’t wanna get to far ahead of myself. If you’re curious about what I do pushups to every morning, my choice:

The Black Angels – Directions To See A Ghost
Download from Amazon

In addition to the pushups, I bought a new skateboard over the weekend and plan on skating around Hollywood a little during lunch and to blow off some steam during the day, when possible. It’s a Mark Gonzalez Krooked deck with Independent trucks, Bones Swiss bearings and Spitfire wheels. After years of not skateboarding following a nasty fall, I’m super rusty, but getting my confidence back little by little.

I may need to add another activity in there somewhere, but I’m totally determined to get in shape without stepping foot in a gym.

The good men of Everest will be hitting the road, covering the west coast, beginning later this month. They’ll be playing with some other incredible artists.

8/20 San Francisco, California – The Independent (w/ Two Gallants, Howlin Rain, we have a large guestlist so check in with me!)
8/23 San Francisco, California – Outside Lands Festival (w/ Tom Petty, Ben Harper, M. Ward, Devendra Banhart) San Francisco, California
8/24 Sacramento, California – Old Ironsides (w/ Parson Red Heads, An Angle)  Sacramento, California
8/26 Seattle, Washington – Tractor Tavern (w/ Parson Red Heads, Elder Mason)
8/27 Salem, Oregon – The Space (w/ Parson Red Heads, Easterly)
8/28 Portland, Oregon – The Artistery (w/ The Parson Red Heads & Oh Darling)

Related: Check out their photos from the recent European MMJ tour and pick up Ghost Notes at Amazon.com if you don’t have it.

I think about my music listening habits all the time. The music sometimes reflects my mood and I’m fickle as all hell. On to the next favorite band. It’s too easy to find a new band all the time with the amount of music I find online and get turned on to . I make my monthly mixes every month, which reflect my listening habits and sometimes a guilty pleasure or two. And then there’s the albums that I always seem to go back to, some of which you can see reflected in my last.fm profile. There have been a lot of great records so far this year and it’s never too early to start thinking about my year-end, best-of list, right?

Deastro Keeper’s
I originally heard Deastro on the free and absolutely amazing Ghostly Swim compilation. The whole thing is pretty stunning and you can’t beat the price. The Deastro album is only available through eMusic for the time being.

Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes
If you haven’t heard of these guys yet, you probably will at some point this year. They get compared to Band of Horses and My Morning Jacket, but that’s only because of the lead singer’s voice. The similarities stop there. This band must be experienced live as well. They put on a Majestic show.

Jubilee In With the Out Crowd & Rebel Hiss
Jubilee hasn’t released their debut album yet, but that didn’t stop me from giving them the best $20 I’ve spent this year. If the singles are any indication of what’s to come, this band could be on their way to greatness, which they deserve. Powered by Topspin, this is some of the best rock I’ve heard in a long time.

KiD CuDi A Kid Named Cudi
One of the best hip-hop mixtapes I’ve heard all year and another free album that I would happily pay for. Save your money for his debut, which is due later this year. Everyone is gonna be talking about this dude.

It’s exciting being at a startup again. It’s even more exciting being involved with the web again. Just before I took off for a holiday break in December, I had dinner with my friends Scott and Anne. Scott had just left AOL to head up the new music department at Buzznet and he wanted me to come over to head up music industry relations. I had been at Control Room (f.k.a. Network LIVE) for almost 3 years. I was one of the original employees and took tremendous pride in what Control Room had become. Scott was presenting me with an awesome opportunity to really step out on my own, work with him on building something from the ground up and I was really excited about the prospect. After some back and forth, I accepted the position, resigned from Control Room and this past Monday, started working at Buzznet as Head of Music Industry Relations.

The week flew by. It was an exciting first week of getting acquainted with the culture at Buzznet, how things worked, what things weren’t working, looking at comps of the new layout for the site, sitting in on a few meetings, getting to know people, trying to remember names, showing people qik, Yahoo! Live, setting up promotions for bands on Buzznet, catching up with label people and lots of other stuff. One of the great things about working at a startup is that your job title doesn’t necessarily reflect what you do. You do 3, 4 or maybe five different jobs and it’s fun. I look forward to going to work in the morning and I’m fortunate to have been able to say that for the past few years of my life. It feels good to be excited about work and starting something new is always fun.

As the sun comes up in the morning, it will be the 1-year anniversary of my dad’s death. I have so many thoughts swimming around in my head. I can’t even believe it’s been a year, but I draw incredible strength from the fact that I’ve made it through the last year. It’s been a rough one. I was reading back through the blog entries I made during the final weeks of my dad’s life, amazed at how they made all the emotion rush back into me. There’s not a single day that goes by that I don’t miss him intensely. My life just isn’t the same. How could it be? I do try and live my life a certain way that honors him. I promised myself that I would and I will continue to do so. Wherever you are, Dad, I love you. May your memory continue on in the minds and lives of the people who loved you.

Next Tuesday, I will be casting my vote for Barack Obama. Over the course of the campaign season Obama has demonstrated that he is the only choice if we want to change the direction of America, change the international opinion of America and bring hope back to a country that has spent the last 8 or more years going down the wrong path. I find him to be extremely inspirational, spiritual without coming across as a religious nut and someone who represents my core values. 

Regardless of who you like as a candidate, please take the time to vote. It’s a privilege that we often take for granted in this country.

A friend of a friend made this gorgeous and strangely(?) inspirational video.

I ordered a pair of Nike Dunk High Pro SB Bruts, but the order somehow got cancelled because they didn’t have my size. I’ve moved on and picked up a pair of the new SB Blazer Low, in black of course.

Today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the U.S. Some of us have the day off from work, but it’s not a day off. It’s a day on. We must take this as an opportunity, if for nothing else, as a day to reflect on peace, humanism and compassion. Most years I go to a celebration of Dr. King’s life, but I’m laid out with a nasty flu today so I looked around online for transcripts to some of his speeches, particularly the ones that the media didn’t cover, and there are quite a few. There’s a good article on fair.org that explains why, which makes for an interesting read. It mentions Dr. King’s speech entitled, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” It’s amazing (or not) how applicable this speech is to today’s state of the world. Take the time to read and/or listen to him give the speech and enjoy your day on.

I’ve been keeping a monthly music journal for over 10 years now. Many of my friends get my monthly mixes and I’ve had more than a few ask me just how I go about doing it and what tools I use. Up until last year, I didn’t have a good answer, but now that I do, I’m willing to share the secrets to making the perfect digital mixtape. This isn’t about the mix itself. That’s something else entirely and is a pretty personal thing. I don’t mess around with Windows much, so this is only going to help the Mac users out there. Perhaps someone else can write something up for the PC users.

Step 1: Gather your tools.
First and foremost, I highly recommend an iPod of some kind. The reason that I make my mixes on my iPod is because I have music on a few different computers and I don’t want to have to worry about not having the right computer in front of me when I make a mix. As long as the music is on the iPod, then I’m set and so are you. The three pieces of software you’ll need are iTunes, ID3 Editor and Senuti. ID3 Editor will cost you $15, but if you spend any time making mixes for people, then it’s worth it to have good metadata embedded in your MP3s. I’ve tried all the free programs out there for managing ID3 tags and there’s none that works better. Senuti is a simple donationware program that will allow you to get your music from your iPod onto your computer. Don’t worry, it’s not going to break your iPod or your computer.

Step 2: Copy our mix from your iPod to your computer.
Before you do this, you need to make sure you have the Senuti preferences set up properly. Just make sure your preferences look like mine.

You’ll probably want to create a folder on your desktop (or somewhere else) that will have all of the MP3s from your mix inside. That way, when it comes times to zip the folder up and upload it somewhere, you’ll be one step ahead. So, assuming you have your preferences all set, choose the playlist on your iPod from within Senuti, select all the tracks in the right-hand pane and then click on the transfer button. It will ask you where you want to transfer the songs and you’ll choose ‘Other…’ from the drop-down menu and choose that folder you created a minute ago. Once Senuti finishes transferring the songs, you should now have a folderfull of MP3s.

Step 3: Edit the ID3 tags.
I suggest doing this as a two-step process. The first step is to clear out any extraneous metadata from the files and to change the album name to your mix name on all of the files at once. If that confuses you, you’ll see what I mean in a minute. First, open ID3 Editor. You’ll notice that nothing happens, but it will say ID3 Editor next to the apple in the upper left hand corner of the screen. From the File menu, choose ‘Open group…’ and select all of the MP3s in that folder you created during the last step. Make sure there is a checkmark next to everything, including the attributes in the Extended section as well. The only entries that you’ll want to fill out in the ID3 v2 pane are Tracks (how many tracks is your mix?) and Album (what are you going to call your mix?). Optionally, you can use some artwork that you may have for your mix as well. In the ID3 v1 pane, the only attribute you will fill out is the Album.

Once you’ve finished with that, click the ‘Update’ button. Now, go to the folder that has all of your files, select all of them and drag them to the ID3 Editor icon that’s in the dock. This will result in a bunch of windows opening up in ID3 Editor, each one representing the individual songs. You’ll need to make sure that the data that is in each of these is accurate, or at least as accurate as you want. In other words, make sure that the Track data of each corresponds to the track number on your mix, the song name is correct, the genre is correct and any other info you want. I know it’s time consuming, but the people that get your mix will thank you for it.

Step 4: Check your work.
Remember, the title of this handy how-to includes the word PERFECT. And in order to make sure your work is perfect, you’re going to want to check it. The easiest way to do this is to open iTunes, create a new playlist and drag the folder into that playlist. Everything should look really nice and they should be in the right order. If they aren’t in the right order, there’s a chance that you’re not seeing the Track Number column in iTunes, which you can make visible by going to the View menu, choosing ‘View Options…’ and making sure there’s a checkmark next to Track Number.

Step 5: Zip and upload.
You’re now ready to zip the folder up and upload it to a server of your choice. I upload mine to my own personal FTP, but you may want to use something like YouSendIt or Drop.io to distribute your mix. Macs have the ability to compress things into a .zip file built-in, so no need to install any extra software for that. Just go to the folder on your desktop, right click (or ctrl-click if you don’t have a mouse) and choose ‘Compress whatever-the-name-of-your-folder-is’ and it will create a .zip file of that folder, which you can then upload to your server of choice.

Happy mixing!