Good morning. Hello. How are you? #999
New York tech founders really weren't very rock and roll. I got cut off in the drive through line. These are unrelated.
Good morning. Hello. Happy Tuesday. How are you? I am good, more or less. Listening to a tape of an unknown band from Boston from the 70’s or 80’s. It is shockingly good, I have to admit. But I do not know who the band is, so I cannot help the poor soul in search of this truth. Solid bass playing, though. Good harmonies. Are you an afficianado of Boston bands from the 80’s? Then check the song out and see if you know it. Oh ha.
The song just ended and I got a Breyer’s Ice Cream ad on Soundcloud. That is funny. I helped make that ad system a decade or so ago, before they ever got their contracts signed with the record labels. Look at you, nascent Soundcloud ad delivery system, you’re all grown up.
You know, at that time there was no guarantee Soundcloud would survive, and for a while there it felt like it might lose its cultural relevance. But it made it. Soundcloud is an important part of the music ecosystem and it is.. I assume… not going away. That is nice. I’m glad I could help in my small (very small) way.
I was thinking about the Soundcloud founders last night, actually. Well, I was thinking of everyone in tech I ever worked fore and with. Because I am reading Ben Smith’s Traffic book about Buzzfeed and Gawker and Huffpo and New York tech in the oughts and it is taking me down a memory hole. Nick Denton and Jonah Perretti and Cameron Marlow and Rachel Sklar and Spiers and the Lerers and Nick Douglas and Melissa McCarthy and and and. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where I’ve known so many of the people in it. It’s good that that whole story is documented. I feel like Rosencrantz or Guildenstern or something reading this book. I mean, I do make one explicit appearance, and one or two implicit appearances but, then, so do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
I’ll have more to say about my single appearance and the accompanying essay when I get to that part of the book, but I had a major epiphany last night reading this book: I thought these were my people, at the time, I thought we were an idealistic scene all working for the same thing. But we were not (except you, Cameron. You’ll always be my people). We were never alike. I mean, they weren’t all like each other, either: the book does an admirable job pointing out the wildly different motivations of Jonah and Nick. But what I realized is that none of these people were actually internet idealists. I mean, I guess that’s rich coming from the ad guy but I have always been an idealistic ad guy (such a thing exists, I assure you). But even more at our core: none of these people were rock and roll. None of these people cared about rock and roll. That is so weird and I don’t understand how I never noticed it. I mean at Barbarian lots of people were rock and roll, and I kinda had this heuristic in my head that half of the Gen-Xers on the web were Rock and Roll, used to be in a band, were in a band, ran a record label.
But in New York tech? Not really! Not a lot of rock and rollers in Ben Smith’s Traffic. And of course, Kevin and Dan at Hard Candy Shell aside, you didn’t see a lot of NY tech people at Rock and Roll shows. Andy at USV. Jim at Raptor at least a Rock and Roll fan. Solid deadhead contingent, I guess they count. In New York tech-driven media and advertising, plenty of rock and rollers. But in mainline pure-cut New York tech? Not too many. Especially among the founders.
And last night, finally, as I experienced a second night of my milquetoast version of insomnia, I realized that was why I always kinda felt like an alien.
Turns out most of New York tech was not motivated by the punk/situationalist ethics of Tony Wilson in his prime.
Even beyond the rock, it doesn’t feel like any of these people were… idealists? I mean I guess Nick was idealistic in his own way (and god he was right about the no VC wasn’t he). But it was… it was a kinda nihilistic idealism in a way. And Jonah was passionate about traffic, and ironically ended up having a massive political influence, but neither one of them was a techno-utopian, working to use the internet to make a better world. Neither came from the Whole Earth Catalog school of internet builders.
Which I guess in hindsight was absolutely 100% correct of them lol.
Back from a McDonald’ run and it was delicious, even if a beige Honda Accord carrying four people cut me off in the parking lot, going high speed and diagonal through the empty spaces to beat me to the drive-through line, then taking forever at their order cuz they had four people in the car. And it did them no good, as in the end we were both waiting at the same traffic light after we got our orders. No one in the car noticed my cool, icy, terrifying stare at them, or they were all so intimidated by my bad assery that they studiously did not look at me.
Man. What kinda person you gotta be to cut someone off in a drive through line.
Man. What kinda person you gotta be to still care about it fifteen minutes later.
I got this one last McDonald’s breakfast cuz Grammy decided she wanted to spend a night with Jane one last time for school, so she slept over. Which did not mean I got my final practice run before school starts tomorrow. Which is probably fine.
And so I guess tomorrow is it, it is the day. It’s happening. And to really get things kicked off on the right foot there was a shooting at UNC yesterday that caused the entire Chapel Hill school system to keep all the kids sheltered in place and the parents could not pick up their kids at the end of the day. Really made us feel super good about our choice here.
Really needed that. Awesome.
RIP to Brian McBride from Stars of the Lid. I love that band so much. Some of the most intense, beautiful, overwhelming live shows I have ever seen. I’ve been secretly hoping for a reunion for years but I guess that’s out of the picture now. He will be sorely missed. I bookend today’s ambient playlist with two of his bands. Per Aspera Ad Astra.
Until tomorrow, issue 1,000. Gawd.
jane “resuming” activities in list form is a thing of beauty ♥️
As a Gen Xer in NY tech-driven media who was around back then and who was and is in bands (and went to shows with Kevin and talks music online with Andy), oh and also a deadhead, todays missive hits home!