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Whimsy is typically the word for Bella Ciao, especially when Jay’s singing… but as you can see from this photo below, you can never predict what emotion he’ll choose to imbue in any particular performance. This one was a bit darker. Also, if you haven’t yet, I strongly urge you to go and listen to Surf Song off of the new Subject Object album. And donate!
Click the image to see the full spectrum of the shot.
Some angles of Toronto are packed with movement and energy. If you plan to live there, you wonder what area of the city – the Annex, Kensington Square, the Beaches – expresses that energy as poetry and art. To me, this photo has no end… it stretches forever into the distance, stories on every block, reminiscent of a futuristic world from a Final Fantasy game.
Click the image to see the full spectrum of the shot.
In response to Fox’s assertions that Obama’s Support for Ground Zero Mosque Draws Fire, I can’t help but wonder about the lack of any supporting quotes from the energized, passionate American Muslim leaders. These people should be releasing memo after memo, post after post and letter after letter explaining that they, as American Muslims, are just as infuriated with the radicals as the rest of America. They need to be distinguishing themselves as moderate, peace and freedom loving individuals whose American lives and reputations are being ruined by the Al Qaeda religious zealots who have been infringing on other’s freedoms.
Where the heck are they? You can’t say it’s because moderate Muslims are a ‘quiet people’. I have many Muslim friends, and they’re a group of people as disparate as any other group of people I know, no matter how you’re drawing the line through the demographics. The variety within groups of people – by race, gender, favorite sock color – is always greater than the variety between groups of people. And I know a lot of loud, passionate, very American, Muslims.
The Road from Banff to Calgary from Neil Vidyarthi on Vimeo.
Crossing the country, the mountains of the Rockies called for a reflection in green lakes… Rested, we left early one morning, driving from Banff to Calgary… This is what we saw.
Music – Asobi Seksu – Celeste
The shadows are fleeting but saved with the camera they live for eternity… A slice of time is only a slice by our human minds and in that encompassing eye this image lives on the Castro sidewalk, my camera and our minds and hearts.
Hungry Chipmunk in the Rocky Mountains from Neil Vidyarthi on Vimeo.
We met this awesome chipmunk near Moraine Lake in the Rockies… That’s Lauren handing him the food!
I got to see the newest manifestation of Jay’s music soul the other day, and as the blues rock streamed out from the makeshift stage into the Free Times Cafe, something felt momentous.
Subject Object at Free Times Cafe from Neil Vidyarthi on Vimeo.
It had something to do with the fact that this new band, Subject Object, was playing at a venue 5 buildings down from their original location because they’d been booted for drinking on the patio… They found the Free Times Cafe, set up a snare on two chairs, plugged in and invited their entourage to this new venue. The drummer laid a standard vocal mic on the ground and kicked in front of it to produce the kick drum sound, and Kent, the keyboardist, had to sit off stage. With a set up like that, a packed room and a mix of eagerness and skepticism, they transformed all the energy into a soul party. Here’s a recording I took of “Living On A Cloud”, or so the song may be titled.
Not since SoundScan first started tracking CD sales in 1991 have sales been this low for a given week. We’re literally seeing the compact disc medium die off, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of that last week in San Francisco, when Lauren and I passed by an out-of-business Virgin Megastore in the center of Market Street near Union Square. The normally flashing red Virgin lights were now faded and dusty, and a small cardboard sign upon the door read out of business as if the mammoth structure were a mom n’ pop corner store. Somewhere Richard Branson was shedding a tear.. no, who am I kidding, he’s more likely on to bigger and better things, like flying jets into space.
Buying a CD, a Tape, a Record.. These days are slowly disappearing for the mainstream, and no amount of nostalgia or pouting is going to bring them back. That said, the downturn of CD sales has actually made me sit up and realize just how much I was starting to dislike the ‘mainstream’ and mega CD stores anyway. The second I walked into one of these I’d be bombarded with teeny bop hits and faux-rock that was completely devoid of any soul or rebellious message. The spirit of the rock I loved right into the mid 90s has completely evaporated into a series of fusions and pale attempts at commercial drivel. Like any original and compelling art in history, it is doomed to be followed by imitators with every type of spirit and intention. From the good-willed but insensitive optimist to the callous and knowing businessman, the art gets warped and twisted and copied and played out until the original message is not just forgotten, but rendered mute by the onslaught of similar but not-quite-there art. And like that, the top selling rock act of the last decade becomes Nickelback and rock music is dead.
With that in mind, what do I really care if the mainstream world of CD stores takes a tumble? I won’t even go into the way that the big music label system essentially yanks originality out of rotation. So I guess when I looked at the list and its tawdry sales numbers, I felt a strange neutrality…
… until I scanned down the top 5 albums of the week. THREE of the top selling albums of the week are kick ass rock albums! The National, AC/DC and Dead Weather. That kicks ass! There is no Chingy and no Britney Spears on this list. The Billboard Top Albums chart actually looks like a bunch of stuff I’d buy. Does that mean American taste is re-rockifying? Probably not. It’s probably just that the people who buy rock are so old they don’t know what this iPod stuff is all about 
Years from now, children will look back at us in 2010 and wonder why we were browsing the web on small laptop screens when we had massive televisions and sound systems available in our living room. Perhaps those same children will wonder what it was like before “Smart TV”. Smart TV is a new service from Intel, Google and Sony that brings the web to our television sets, and if the rumors are true, is likely being announced in a few days at the Google I/O conference. What is this service about, and what does it mean for the future of television and the web?
To start, let’s look at what we expect to be announced about Smart TV in the next few days. The vision will likely be something like this:
Imagine starting up your television, watching your favorite show and simultaneously using a small sidebar displaying news feeds from your Facebook friends about their reactions to the show. You can easily browse the web, post status updates, download new applications and see television show popularity ratings and more. The best thing is that it’s all integrated into your existing television without any further technology required.