Traveling to Oxnard for tasting #2. Finding the place was easy thanks to google maps, but there’s no proper exit going west bound on the 101, so we had to find our way onto the other side of the freeway by some magical mystery route.

We ended up on time and at A Gift of Taste. First impressions of the place was “wow, this is kinda ghetto”. But the cakes tasted way better than our first adventure, granted they didn’t have the pomp and frills of the last time.

So we had the Chocolate w/Mocha Chocolate mousse, Marble w/fresh strawberries, and a white cake w/raspberry-chiffon custard. All of these were pretty sick, despite the fact that they looked like something I could have made in 5 seconds, but it got the job done as far as tasting goes.

The fresh strawberry one was my favorite, but we’re also thinking about our location and time of year we’re going to be having the wedding. We’re also unsure that everyone would like strawberries, so a strawberry-chiffon custard option would most likely be our best bet.

Ultimately I felt like we weren’t getting the proper attention at their small cramped table on the side of the wall. We were more like a side-show to their plethora of decorations they had on display in their crowded store (reminded me more of Hallmark than a bakery). They forgot forks at first, the cake fell over and went everywhere after one person would attempt to cut with the side of the fork, and we were told we would be one of four wedding cakes that day. Yah, wedding cakes.

We have two other places in mind to check out, so we’re hoping to feel comfortable with the people and the taste of the cake and be done with our decision. This hasn’t been the easiest decision making process like I anticipated, but perhaps we’re making up for everything else which came together so smoothly.

Hey everyone.

We will be recording drums tomorrow, April 19th at 5:00P EDT (2:00P Pacific) for our upcoming record due out later this year. We’re live streaming everything we record to you via ustream.

You will be able to check out our new songs in the making and watch what we do behind the scenes to bring this record to you online. There is also a chatroom available for you to type type type with us and others. We’ll be bbq’ing, having some drinks, recording, and rocking it.

Go to lastfalling.tv to watch us stream live or check out the clips we’ve recorded. Come hang with us tomorrow!

Interactive Music: Personality 2 Person

I can’t tell you how important I think new digital media is to upcoming bands and musicians. In a world where we have everything at our fingertips and where we are just a router away from any virtual entertainment, we are quite literally raising the bar for the game to be played online. Music is not about the sound anymore, it’s not entirely about the message or words pushed into predetermined melodies. It’s all about the style at which personalities are broadcast to you, the person.

People want it real. They don’t want a polished turd from a pretentious band that’s quietly and patiently holding a price behind their backs as they throw their bait, waiting for you to get hooked onto their line. People are getting smarter, more selective, more refined and compiling diverse musical tastes. The downfall of record stores and the mental inferiority of record labels has left self-discretion at it’s peak in a virtually untouched indie atmosphere; the internet. It will be a few years until main stream media infiltrates the new and exciting creativity of online music and attempts to monetize the extent at which that creativity is governed (there’s some guy and a major corporation working on that right now, I guaranfuggintee you).

People have the desire to know what is behind the music. In addition to finding you genuinely interesting and real, they want to be virtually immersed in the life of you. They want that reality show they can’t get on television, they want to know what your dreams are, what video games you play, what images you think are funny, what news articles you read. They don’t want to wait for your ‘Behind the Music’ in 15 years, they want photos and blogs and videos and documentaries to discover for free, banners to display on their personal web page to express themselves and so they can tell their friends and feel important, exciting ways to keep up with you other than a mass email. They want to interact with you in their underwear at a computer whenever they want. They want it different. If they like what you’re creating and (more importantly) like you and your personality; congratulations, you’re winning loyal fans.

Your street team is your online army.

The street attack is getting old, and it’s a baseless form of gaining any social reputation with good economical sense. You can play gig after gig and reach a few people that you can converse with, maybe get them interested in kicking around the idea of buying your shit so you can get that gas money you need to get home. When it’s all said and done though, and you’re left to packing up your gear and taking off to the next venue, where do you leave your brand new fans? At the last club listening to the horrible band after you? With a hand shake and an overpriced cd or t-shirt? No. Give them a card with your main web site hub address where they can access your personal social networks and links to explore your interactive streams, photos, videos, and merchandise. Draw a heart around your band name, buy them a beer, tell them a story they will remember for the rest of the night and into the next morning, and spend time with them off and online. It’s a moral imperative.

[Photo courtesy of p2p-weblog.com]

Maybe it’s because there’s a pile of work in front of me, maybe it’s because I have no access to my 360, or maybe it’s because I JUST LOVE BEING A BLUE SQUARE.

The simplicity of it all makes for a riveting basic experience that can leave you wanting to conquer each challenge, kick your computer screen in, or rip out your sound card because of the annoying music.

I managed to get to level 7 before I had to say eff it. I died a lot.

The World’s Hardest Game

Myspace has done nothing to appeal to the social networking future and they don’t want to. Web 2.0 has every forward thinking social networking user waving that 2.0 flag and Myspace will only throw tear gas (it’s how ‘emo’ was born, srsly). Showing us hints of internet buzz words like “widgets” and “themes” stringing people along for the long advertising Myspace money ride. It won’t ever die. Why? A few obvious reasons:

1. It was the first major social network to be born (aside from the history AOL had, but comeon is basically the same thing now).
2. People fear change, new ideas, and will go along with the crowd. Just ’cause. It’s the truth.
3. Big fish is big. With all the other social networking apps out there and the desire for each person online to share their personality with strangers, you’ll find your random people ask if you’re on Myspace. “Oh, you’re in a band? You guys got a myspace?” “Yes, but we also have a domain name.” “Wtf is a domain?”. Yah, it went down like that for me one time.
4. Myspace has become a verb. Just like Google. When you say ‘Myspace’, they say ‘friend’.
5. “You have 73,551 friends!” It makes you feel like you just won $73,000 at a card table doesn’t it? And guess what, you can trade those chips in for a record deal now if you want.
6. It’s all about the user database.

When Myspace Attacks

Now I’m not an avid fan of Myspace. Not at all, obviously. But for bands, you either live or die by the Myspace blade of online popularity. Fine, okay, I can hang as long as it’s only for my band. After all, it was, at one time, a decent home for upcoming bands to get their foot out the door and into the laps of their growing fan base. Now, the only time I go online is to check out comments and messages that come in and delete spam.

So during one of my many trips down Myspace lane, today I log in into our band profile home page, and I get this fantastic piece of art:

Double checked on a PC. Although I’m sure sxytiffany can get to her mail just fine.

Allow me to digress.

Pay to Play

I remember growing up in L.A. and playing shows down on Sunset at the Whisky and the Roxy circa 1992-1998. It was an experience to play at these places and an event to make a small band feel like rock stars while impressing their friends and other random people that happened to be there as well. But if you wanted to play, you had to pay. How? By whoring yourself out to everyone you know.

What a fantastic revolving door Sunset Blvd. had created. It’s genius, really. You have to think about all the small sub-par bands that want to play a Friday night in 2 months at 8pm. You’re told you’re opening for 6 other bands and you will have to sell 100 tickets at $10 each. 100 people. Sure! You know 100 people! Sign the contract, get the tickets, $1,000 for the club per band. Thxbye!

The next time you want to play a show, you have to bug their friends again and again.. and again. Doesn’t matter how awesome your band is, your friends don’t want to pay $10 to get in, $10 per beer and $20 to park there over and over again. They’d rather crash your parent’s basement and do keg stands.

So by now, you and your band mates are locked into a pay-to-play contract and you might as well be thinking you’re buying a small piece of a car, or getting involved in some pyramid scheme, cause if the club doesn’t get $1,000 by the time you have to go on, you ain’t playin’. If you can’t cut it or don’t want to pay to play down on Sunset, another upcoming band will always be right behind you, willing to pick at your juicy time slot in line like a vulture on cocaine.

That business will never die. Why? Because it’s ‘Sunset Blvd’. It’s an 80s has-been quicksand commodity cesspool for upcoming musicians who try to ‘make it’. It’s a monopoly in an L.A. market, but it’s a starving monopoly, just like the record labels. And until the face of live music changes and the big venues accept their defeat to forward thinking small time bands and interactive media on the web for music, it will only continue to leach at their pocketbooks as the property and land value continues to increase until something breaks or they are forced to change.

The fact is, people are spending twice as much time online compared to when their television is turned on. Cheap forms of entertainment can be done over and over again, and people are doing them. With the economy in such bad shape and while gas at $4/gallon, do you really think an average person is going to sit through the traffic to get to the location, spend $10-15 to get into a show, $20 for gas, $20 to park, $50 for food/drinks every other weekend? F*ck no and f*ck L.A. for it.

It’s a war that musicians have to fight, just like with the record industry. It’s a tiny war, but it can be won online.

Myspace is the Sunset Blvd. of the online social networks. And it is the cheap and free form of being social ‘at the club’. It is the biggest and easiest platform for bands, artists, musicians, whatever you want to call them, to reach their audience… for FREE.

Wrong!

You guys haven’t been around long and are trying to get your foot in the door to an online market. Where do you start? Well you start a profile for your band and the watch the numbers grow like a chia pet on crack, right? You’ll be lucky if you get friend invitations from attention starved bands looking only for a number. We’re talking spam the equivalent of telemarketers. There is always advertising, but now you’re talking about some serious money.

So what exactly does it cost for you to advertise on Myspace? The band features you see when you log in are not randomly generated. In fact, before Fox bought out Myspace, we advertised on the home page for 3 days in 2004 for roughly $500.00. It drove about 90,000 people to our profile within those 3 days.

I can only imagine that it has since increased in cost by 2000%, leaving the back-end advertising trade deals behind closed doors for the new Myspace to get their product out to their database of unsuspecting users. I don’t even think they take solicited advertising anymore either.

Money always talks though.

Pay to be played, bitches.

So what can we learn from a pseudo-social-monopoly like this? In my opinion, there will be change when the straw smacks the back of camel upside the head, or until technology outdates their own backend and their database gets hacked by some 12 year old novice in Nova Scotia and sells it to a desperate Friendster. Until then, it will be the same crap from the same crap news organization in the same crap format. I give it 5 more years.

Yep. 5 more years of this:

When it comes to passing the time at work, nothing does the job better than a little mouse archery. The Apple Shooter game developed by Wolf Games has great fluidity to its motion and has a surprisingly accurate representation of virtual gravity in a flash game. It’s all fun and games till someone gets hurt though, or maybe that’s why it’s so fun? You could end up enjoying hitting your friend more than the apple.

Can you beat my first attempt? Give it a go!

Apple Shooter

Today, me and my future extended family went to our first location of cake tastings called For Heavens Cakes. Granted I’ve never been to a tasting before so I had little to no expectations, so the name of the place wasn’t out of place with my feelings about it all. My first impression going in was YES CAKE. But no, it’s not all about the cake. There’s money and thinking involved. F***.

First they brought out four samples for us four that we could try.

Out came some of the more popular samples people tend to choose from. White cake with a raspberry puree, chocolate devil’s food, yellow cake, and a weird donut looking orange flavor one. I wished that I liked chocolate more cause that one was super good. I never really liked yellow cake, the orange one was plain weird, so we eventually decided that white cake would best. Okay time to think. They won’t make you another cake, so at this point you have to imagine what these flavors would taste like if you shuffled them around with each other.

So we got white cake decision out of the way. Sweet. Now we had to pick a type of filling. Strawberry sounded nice. Okay. Then the frosting, buttersomething or other. K. Then flower arrangement decor. Uhm, fresh? K. Then it’s all about design. Luckily we went in there with a photo my fianceé picked out, and I’m not super picky and I naturally agreed that it looks rad. Simple right? Maybe for us.

Then they did the whole “Oh you gotta book us fast if you wanna have something locked in for your wedding!”. No. “We’re going to be airing a reality tv show in May things will really pick up for us then so you gotta throw a deposit down soon!”. Really? No. We’re not getting married in June or July and how much attention will you really be giving us in September if you have a “reality tv show” to deal with? Hmm?

Regardless, we’re looking forward to the next place on our list in the next week or so. Overall it was a good experience, but I don’t see us locking this place in just yet.

Been doing some updating to the page. So far so good. Wrapping my head around this interface is a little tricky but it seems as though nothing can’t be done. More to follow.

Finally going to put this site to use. Here you’ll find the multi-purpose site about the multi-me. I’ll update it more when I get the time, but for now this is what you get for 2am. kthxbye.