Cole W. Camplese

Under Pressure

Cause love's such an old-fashioned word and love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night and love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves. This is our last dance. This is our last dance. This is ourselves ... Under pressure ... Under pressure. Pressure.

Keep it Going

Not one or two, but three busted strings. Why stop? Everyone is in it for the magic that is the performance. Lots to learn from this in my mind. Could you keep moving forward?

I am going to see the Avett Brothers with my wife later this Summer. I can only hope for such a perfect performance.

What it Takes

It used to be so simple. Creativity and originality were nice little things that most of us could wrap our heads around. If you had some sort of talent -- music, drawing, editing, writing, or whatever, it was relatively easy to impress ... at least that's the way I remember it. While the Interenet is one of my favorite things in the whole World, it has upped the ante in some amazing ways. The notions of art, music, editing, writing, storytelling, and everything else in the creative space has been blown wide open by the instant access to all things that standing out in the global crowd seems harder than ever.

Take for example the two person band who made this out of control original video for youtube, Pompalmoose. I actually remember when it was enough to just be able to sing, or play, or write, or edit, or anything else. If you watch this and some of their related videos I think you'll get a similar feeling that I have -- that the Internet and technology (in general) has turned creative expression into a much more complex thing. Maybe I am overstating the output, but these two have some heavy skills -- skills I see more and more of our students showing up with. The idea related to what it takes to express oneself has been changed and that landscape continues to shift under our feet. Did I mention I love the Internet.

Shifting Music

A really good Op/Ed piece over at NY Times about the death march the music industry is on. Its not so much that people are listening less, its just that they are buying a lot less. Favorite quote being, "This is part of a much broader shift in media consumption by young people. They’re moving from an acquisition model to an access model."

What is interesting to me is how we've worked so hard to defeat piracy by coming up with all these new models -- Pandora, single track sales, etc -- that we've taken away the cushion the industry had back in the day. In other words, we had to buy the album to get the songs we wanted and buying all those songs helped pay for the ones we did want. Those days are over. When was the last time you bought a full CD?

Photo credit, via Flickr thomasmperry

Trick or Treat

Quick note to say Happy Halloween to everyone! It was a great evening filled with lots of sweets and some perfect time walking the neighborhood with my two little ones. They both had a blast -- even little Max who right up until we walked out the door didn't want to put his Teddy Bear outfit on.

One treat to share is the discovery of a new online music site, LaLa. LaLa is a store and a streaming music site with a wonderful twist -- it allows you to share the tracks you already own back into your online account so you can listen anywhere you have an Internet connection. I tried it today and used the LalaMove application to scan my iTunes library and send up some sort of identification that I own all that music. Doing that unlocks the same collection of songs at the LaLa site. Very, very cool. So, now I don't need to burn CDs of music just to take them to work to listen to. Sorta feels like the RIAA is getting it? No idea, but perhaps.

LaLa is also a store where you can buy online only versions of songs for a dime and downloadable, DRM-free tracks for 89 cents. It even recognizes my Apple DRM tracks, so I can listen to them anywhere, but on my iPhone. No problem. Add in the social components and it is a very sweet treat. Nice little trick!