Scott Barstow

You Never Know Who’s in the Room

A few years back I went to see a Switchfoot concert at a college nearby.  At the time I knew who they were, but would not have considered myself a fan.  At the urging of my brother, I went to see them. 

The concert venue was lousy, and there was almost no one there.  Probably less than 500 people showed up.  The warm up bands were awful.  I was skeptical.

Next thing I knew Switchfoot was up on stage and giving it everything they had.  They had an insane amount of energy and put on an amazing show.  I became a fan that night.  Fast forward three or four years to two weeks ago when I took my entire family up to Charlottesville, VA to see them perform again.  It’s a four-hour drive from where we live, but I knew it would be worth it.

Sure enough, they killed it again.  It was one of the best live shows I have seen.  

The moral of the story for me has nothing to do with Switchfoot, but rather their commitment to giving it all every night they perform.  They could have easily mailed it in the night I first saw them, or even given 75% of their usual effort.  Instead, they made us feel like there was nowhere else they would rather be.  As a result, they gained a whole family as devoted fans.

Something to think about when you don’t feel like doing your best work.  

An App I Would Like To See

In Facebook, I have listed most of the musical artists I would go out of my way to listen to or go see.

A few months back Sara Bareilles came to Wake Forest University, about 2 hours from here.  I have been a big fan for a while now, and had wanted to see her live.  I happened to check her website a month or so before the show and found out she was coming.  Otherwise I would have missed it.  That seems crazy to me.  

I have chosen to make this information public in my profile, so it seems like there is an opportunity to build a simple app that would take things like tour schedules for artists and make sure I know about them.  Write on my wall or send me a message when artists I care about are within a radius I specify.  

For instance, I might travel 500 miles to see U2, but only 50 miles to see Eminem or five steps out my front door to see Brittany Spears.  Using a Facebook app, I could add artists I want to see and select the radius.

Does this exist out there and I am just not finding it?  Or is there something similar / better?  Let me know!

Lady Gaga and the Myth of Accidental Stardom

I am (obviously) not in show business or music, and so there are times when I tend to think that people that are very famous have stumbled into it.  They just happened to be doing something when the right person just happened to be watching and that just happened to turn them into stars.  I also can sometimes think that the people involved in these industries are less intelligent than, say, a Mark Zuckerburg or (insert your famous technology personality here).

I was watching this week’s episode of So You Think You Can Dance last night with my family.  It’s one of our guilty pleasures as a family.  If you have not watched the show, the basics are that contestants dance a variety of different styles (everything from jazz to hip-hop to ballroom), with and without partners, and are judged by both a panel and people at home.  The talent on this show is amazing, and I am not a dance person at all.  Anyway, this week, Lady Gaga was a guest judge.  She had on a sensational outfit (I believe her platform shoes were at least one foot high), turquoise hair, and looked to me like she had just come off a pretty rough night.  

I am not a fan of Gaga.  I don’t particularly enjoy her music.  And, up until last night, it was my working assumption that she had achieved fame by being sensational and outlandish.  There could not be someone intelligent behind all of the “uniqueness” that she brings.

What I learned last night is that there are very good reasons why she is so successful.  First of all, her attention to detail was amazing.  She would critique the contestants on hair, makeup, prop choice, the nuance of the choreography, all the way down to a particular way they held one particular part of their body in one particular part of the dance.  And it all made perfect sense.  She also was very, very well-spoken and articulate.  It was very impressive to watch her in action, and for me, I had a moment of realization that everything she does is calculated, well thought-out, and definitely not a set of random choices that have somehow been strung together by fate.  She is as good at what she does as any of the technology people we like to label as geniuses, and she is just as deliberate in going about it.

I am sure there is something to the “right place, right time” thing that everyone talks about.  I am not sure it’s any different in music than it is in business or sports or any other industry, however.  The people that prepare for those moments are the people that get the break and push through it.  I got the sense last night that Lady Gaga has been preparing for mega-stardom for a long time, and it’s no accident that she is where she is.

Color me impressed, and humbled by prejudice.

Is Lady Gaga’s ascent to stardom just happenstance?  Is there such a thing as accidental stardom, regardless of industry?  Leave a comment below

A Day with Spotify

Yesterday I signed up for Spotify, the music service that has been around for a while but is just now available in the US. I signed up for the Premium Service because, well, that’s what I do. I wanted the whole enchilada. The features with Premium are:

• You get to use Spotify on your mobile phone.  They have a really nice iPhone app.  The tracks are synched to your phone from your playlists so that you can listen to them at any time on your phone
• You can play all tracks in your playlists offline
• Unlimited streaming of music
• Integrates terrifically with iTunes.  You can drag tracks from Spotify right to your iTunes playlists, etc. and see all of your iTunes music right in the Spotify app.
• No advertisements!

After signing up, I downloaded the Mac version of the desktop app, downloaded the iPhone app and was off and running.  

User experience

The user experience was pretty intuitive.  You can search the massive Spotify music library for tracks, playlists, etc.  It feels a good bit like iTunes here.  One thing that really bothers me is that I don’t have the option to add columns to the songlist grid.  For instance, I like to see the track # when looking at an album.  I couldn’t add Track List as a column.  As a matter of fact, I don’t see a way to add any columns.

Adding a new playlist and is really simple, and again it’s a lot like iTunes.  You add the playlist, then just drag tracks from the catalog to the playlist.  There is a ‘Share’ button at the top of the screen that allows you to quickly share your new playlist on Facebook, Twitter and (strangely) MSN Messenger.  The Share button did not have a way to just copy the Playlist URL so you can paste it yourself.  You can also indicate whether or not the playlist is available offline.  Really simple.

One feature I really wish they had was the ability to play to any Apple Airport destination.  I have an Airport Express in my house, but can’t direct music to it without something like Airfoil.

Synching to my iPhone

To synch with my iPhone, I simply launched the iPhone app on my phone.  It connected with the desktop app and synched all of my playlists, etc.  That’s a little odd as a user experience, but it works.  If you have an iPod, you can just connect the USB cable and it will synch that way.

Sharing music

To share music, you can share the url via Facebook, Twitter, and MSN Messenger via URL.  You can also send music to another Spotify user, which will show up in their inbox.  This will be handy for recommending music to friends, etc.  There is also an integration to Facebook for finding out what your friends are listening to.  I couldn’t test this because I don’t know anyone else using it yet.

Overall, I am so far really impressed with Spotify.  The catalog is immense.  There was not any music that I searched for that was not found.  In some cases it found a bit too much.  I got a lot of karaoke versions of songs / artists when searching that was a bit annoying.

I am going to spend some time this weekend building up some playlists and testing out the Facebook integration a bit more.

If you signed up for Spotify, let me know.  I would like to test the more interactive parts of the app with others.

What are your thoughts on Spotify?  Is it better than other online music sites for you?  

Sorry, Girl Talk. I Don’t Get It

I was in Phoenix last week and had the opportunity to go see Girl Talk “live.”  I say “live” because, while Mr. Talk was definitely alive, as was the arena, the music was not.  I don’t mean it wasn’t a quality production, but at the essence of things, he is really just clicking a mouse and playing other people’s stuff whilst jumping around at a pace that I have yet to see elsewhere.  Give me guys writing their own stuff, however much it may suck, over that sort of thing any day and twice on Mondays.

Here is where I would get what Girl Talk does.  If I were in a huge club in Las Vegas with a few thousand of my closest friends, and he is up there doing his thing, that would be a ton of good fun.  He has some of the most creative mixes I have ever heard.  

But, I don’t get being in a crowd and watching someone click things on two computers. I would probably get it more if I had the appropriate chemical alterations happening. Sadly I did not.

I saw a guy walking around in a Girl Talk concert t-shirt that said “I am not a DJ.”  I am guessing that the “DJ” label is some sort of insult to Mr. Talk, but as my economics professor used to say “wishing it were so will not make it so.”  

What am I missing about Girl Talk?  Can someone tell me why people pay to watch a guy play music from his computer?  Maybe I can start charging people to watch me pick playlists from my iTunes library.  Hmm… new business idea…