Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1004
Smashing Pumpkins, Ben Smith's Traffic, the early 2000's New York Tech Cinematic Universe, the Autumnal Equinox as the real end to summer as it relates to P-Town parties.
Good morning. Hello. How’s it going. Oh shit I stupidly put a call for 8:30 this morning. What was I thinking. No way this thing’s going out before 9. Sorry about that. Work, man. I had ten calls yesterday. I guess today is an improvement with only seven. If I can just make it through today we have a bit of light up ahead. Yesterday actually went shockingly well. Sometimes you have so much work there’s no realistic option to procrastinate or whine and you just have to suck it up and do it and you go into a different, more productive mode and get it all done quickly. That is always nice.
I’m listening to the Smashing Pumpkins. Giving Siamese Dream a re-listen. Pitchfork did one of those “reviews of past albums” thing and it made me think I need to listen to Siamese Dream again. Man people freakin loved this album. I was a Pumpkins fan before it came out, you know, back before it was cool, etc etc Gen X woo woo, and I own a lovely first pressing double purple marbled vinyl copy of Siamese Dream I bought the week it came out. But I gotta say, I’m not a giant fan of this record really. It… I mean, grunge was cool but it wasn’t the entire world of early 90’s music for me, it it didn’t exist in a vacuum, it was as much a progression from metal and prog and punk as Billy was. So this whole “Billy was bucking grunge and channeling Rush” thing is not a particularly interesting storyline for me. BUT I will say it’s got a lot more variety than I remember, not having listened to it in its entirety in oh, thirty years or so. Pitchfork also did, a while back apparently, one of those reviews-of-old-albums for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which I never gave a chance at all because of the first single. But the dude made a decent case for it, at least for people who were adolescents at the time, and he gave me some insight into why my wife loved it so much when it came out, so, you know, brought us closer together as a couple, so thank you Pitchfork. I’m gonna give Mellon Collie another chance today as well, probably.
The one thing that really does stand out on Siamese Dream though is damn — Jimmy Chamberlain is a hell of a drummer.
So I’m revising my thinking about being in Boston on Wednesday night. Might stay in New York. Undecided. Definitely gonna be in Boston on Thursday for Peter Gabriel. I am very torn on this trip between “I left the house so I might as well make the most of it’ and “my poor wife is not cut out for mornings she can’t be expected to take Jane to school for too many days.” It is tough.
Also it turns out Chris Ewen is DJing in P-Town on Wednesday. I thought that stuff ended at Labor Day but apparently P-Town stretches out the summer a couple more weeks and more power to them, I say. Fight the man, who says summer has to end on Labor Day. Hello Autumnal Equinox. The P-Town party crowd is clearly attuned to mother earth more than the America’s various school systems. Stick to your guns, I say.
All that is to say I really would like to have Chris DJing on my celebrated return to Man Ray. Which means I could, I suppose, stay an extra night in Boston and go Friday night, but that would be four nights away from home, and then it would cut into my weekend and, you know. Gotta do chores.
Life is so hard.
So I finished Ben Smith’s Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral and it was pretty pleasant. A nice trip down memory lane, New York tech in its baby-faced infancy, etc. etc. And who doesn’t love a book who calls you — and I quote — “one of the great digital ad guys of his generation.” I mean, I’ll take it. The weird thing, though, is the sort of absence of the advertising side to this whole story. I mean, it’s there — maybe one or two paragraphs about the concept of “native advertising,” a few mentions of Gawker’s original ad sales guy — but it’s like… I mean it’s such a giant part of the world you are describing. VCs invest money in internet properties because they expect that these properties will draw ad revenue away from the giant pot of money that is television advertising and the success and failure of those endeavors drove valuations of digital properties every bit as much as Disney’s acquisition interest or Vice or, well, Traffic. There is an alternative prism into this story where Jonah was focused on the mechanics of virality and Nick on fighting the man, as eloquently described in this book, while Zuck was focused on social networking and data and the three of them probably would have been on more or less equal footing were it not for Zuck’s much more successful marriage to Sheryl Sandberg and the power of advertising. Imagine if Jonah or Nick hd a Sheryl. It’s just, like, Ben Smith is a news guy but you can’t shake the sense that the real financial story (and this is, in a large part, a financial story) was happening beyond just beyond the border’s of Smith’s perception.
Also seems so weird that the book was just about Buzzfeed and Gawker and not, like, at least Vice as well? But I guess this book is about a specific thing. The history of that moment in New York tech is still yet to be written. But how can a single comprehensive history of that time ever be written? Every company was a drama. Every company was its own Halt and Catch Fire. The New York Tech Cinematic Universe. Man I would watch the Gilt Groupe dramatization.
Oh hey look at me I got through that 8:30 call just fine.
Anyway, the other thing that really struck me about this book is how many people Ben Smith hangs out with that were Republicans at one time, or ironic Republicans, or Republicans that eventually become Democrats, or Democrats that eventually become Republicans and, really, I feel like he should have mainly seen that as a warning sign that something was amiss… in his life? In the business? Eh, I don’t know. Just struck me as indicative of the mindset of a certain milieu: political fungibility.
Absolutely glorious Jane bedtime last night, lots of LEGOs, a solid dance party of the usual hits plus the Jisoo solo track video which is just bonkers my god. There was a dance move in there I’d never seen before that took my breath away. Also we watched a lot of Lego manufacturing videos and I tried to explain injection molding to her but I don’t think she really got it. I didn’t have a good visual aid. Maybe Adam Savage or The Scope of Work newsletter can make a children’s book k thanks.
But this morning was more rough. She still wanted to go to school, but she was tired and cranky and didn’t wear pants or eat anything or wash her face or put on shoes and it is literally her fourth day of school and we have already given up and sent her to school in pajamas pants so, you know. Winning. We got her there on time, though. With her hair brushed.
So, you know. Still got it where it counts.
Justa Mix for you today. Old and new. Really its a whole mix with the excuse of getting Martika on a mix. And man, again, that MAN ON MAN record rules. New Killers, Breeders and GBV are all…. all right? The Breeders track grows on you.
Until tomorrow!
I have also been alerted to this important related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgQyiJvpH_Q
I also was not the hugest fan of Siamese Dream, but I did enjoy watching this 1993 Tower Records acoustic set they did for the album’s release. Apparently it’s been a huge bootleg thing among fans for years. https://youtu.be/hzwOwzGtiZw