Dodes’ka-den is described as “a kind of guerrilla filmmaking”. The 1970 production was month long exercise in rapid and cost effective design decision making. In the course of this exercise, Kurosawa established a bold new aesthetic for color and character driven storytelling. His use of color is iconic, and surreal, while never disrupting one’s emotional engagement with the narrative.

It’s tempting to interpret Dodes’ka-den as the foreshadowing of stylistic techniques yet to be fully revealed. Tempting; the film is minimal and schematic in relation to Kurosawa’s body of work. As strong as his feeling for color was in 1970, the thoughts come across as an emerging dialect, while later expressions “Kagemusha” (’80) and “Ran” (’85) - both of them - present formal and immersive master courses in a stunning visual language.

You’re an independent artist, or a business, and you’re planning to produce a physical media product. First you should figure out which format is best. Don’t necessarily assume that a CD is the right format!

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume you’ve decided on CD. Let’s also assume that you’re going to work with a producer to help manage the entire project. Here’s a basic overview of some key details in producing a commercial CD.

Think of a CD project as having four management areas:
1.) content
2.) packaging
3.) promotion
4.) distribution

There are many different types of producers and some offer a broad scope of services. One of the roles a producer may take on is to make effective design decisions regarding the project’s narrative in all four areas listed above. In other words, the story of the content should be reflected in the packaging art, in the choice of packaging materials, the the types and location of promotion, in the sources of distribution, and so on.

Some producers will go so far as to match the sonic qualities of the recording with the style graphics (album art, web art, band publicity images, etc.) For example, they are aware that a certain microphone matched with a certain pre-amp will allow them to create a specific texture in the mix. That texture will translate through mastering as a design motif - and that motif or idea can be repeated in other management decisions across the full scope of the project. This may seem extreme, but repetition is a great storytelling technique, and great stories out-perform mediocre ones.

It’s usually not difficult to create a consistent set of aesthetics and related marketing decisions. Many artists enjoy making the decisions that most directly impact their creative vision. In the scheme of production obstacles, some producers will facilitate decision making, and if needed they can be called upon to make good decisions.

Other producers will join a project with the explicit understanding that they have creative direction over all areas. In this latter case, you entrust the producer to do a good job turning the vision into an product. You’ll likely have plenty of opportunities to provide input, but the contract will be structured around the understanding that the producer has decision making authority.

From my experience, the larger challenges with packaging, promotion and distribution have to do with market familiarity. Do you know the market? Meaning, the producer will probably have more and better information about the what, where, and with whom to get things done.

With manufacturing, for example, there are a wide range of vendors, near and far. A label will traditional be involved in that decision. But in the case of an independent act, you can either learn for yourself or search out someone who knows.

Another timely issue, one that’s difficult for artists and professional producers alike, is to stay current with the constantly changing state of online promotion and distribution. Questions to consider:

• Blog outreach?
• If so, which ones?
• Partner with an online distribution company?
• If so, which one?
• Partner with a label?
• If so, which one?

Some of the most technical questions have to do the bands web presence. Not every producer has first hand experience with social media, or web development project management. Nor should they! My point should be clear - different producers bring different skills to the project.

The point that I’m working towards is to establish narrative integrity in all aspects of the project.

Please remember too that you can and should handle as many of the production tasks as you’re comfortable doing. Do it yourself and you’ll have a great learning experience. Alternately, you can hire an independent producer with the skills you’re looking for.

The right producer will do much more than help you write, rehearse, refine and record your content. She’ll have a strong sense for all major decisions in the four key areas listed above (content, packaging, promotion, and distribution). This style of producer will bring a diverse set of skills and experience - ranging from songwriting, to engineering, to budgeting, to emerging technologies.

As distribution and production costs continue to change, I expect this style of producer to become increasingly common. It’s what I’ve done on the last three projects I’ve produced; not by choice (the creative process is often more fun), but by necessity. Artists have limited budgets and now more than ever they can use good advice for making the most of their ideas.

Good time to consult our old friend Ira U. Cobleigh. Mr. Cobleigh wrote the cleverly titled book “How to Gain Security & Financial Independence” (Hawthorn Books, New York, 1956). Ira’s first chapter has the romantic heading “Thrift and Gracious Living”. Here are his five major goals of thrift:

(1.) an emergency rainy day fund,
(2.) life insurance coverage,
(3.) a specific sum for the purchase and furnishing of a home,
(4.) the education of children, and
(5.) a fund to create or supplement retirement income.

Ira doesn’t mention the importance of paying down high interest credit card debt. It was a different time!

UPDATE: Minutes after posting this, I searched the good Doctor’s name and found my post very high in Google results. My purpose here is to practice thinking and writing about an old book - I don’t care to insult anyone personally. I’ve removed the Doctor’s name below to hopefully avoid unwanted attention.

Today’s forgotten management book is “The Money Personality” by Dr. Fullname Obscured (Simon and Schuster, ‘79). Dr. Obscured’s central (and heavily repeated) premise is that some people have so-called “Money Personalities”, and you can too!

Skip Dr. Obscured’s main idea. Also skip kindly past the humorous front cover - adorned with a seriously gleaming gold dollar symbol money clip. Next, ignore the rear cover’s glamour shot of a navy-sport-jacketed Dr. Obscured posing with (someone’s) private plane.

We can laugh, and we should, but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of marketing genius at work. This book will not make you rich - sorry. Much of it will bore you, especially if you’re fishing for clever management ideas. And in fairness, most of Dr. Obscured’s thoughts are sympathetic, bland, and far less malicious than my introduction suggests. If you dislike mundane sycophantic rambling, you probably will not enjoy “The Money Personality”.

Perhaps, like me, you’re willing to tolerate some rambling in patient pursuit of slow knowledge. Indeed there are things we can learn from Dr. Obscured. He was a practicing psychiatrist with deep access to the hearts and minds of the moneyed elite in late ’70s Manhattan. In a way, you might read it like a cultural artifact - a reminder of the sophisticated methods used by authors and publishers to exploit the desires of eager consumers.

“The Money Personality” was sold in the early days of a media marketing wave that brought us many pop-culture classics like “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” in ‘84, and “Bonfire of the Vanities” and “Wall Street” in ‘87. Dr. Obscured’s work provides an early and clear economic anthropological view into values of New York’s much celebrated and imitated urban elite.

Enjoy this selection from Obscured’s chapter “Walking the Tightrope for Fun and Profit”:

“The key to good tightrope walking is not a rigid posture but a flexible, supple gait. When the tightrope walker initiates his treacherous act, he knows he will temporarily lose his balance many times. His mind focuses on detecting and recovering from situations where he has lost control. If he stubbornly insists on maintaining flawless control, he will tumble to oblivion. The tightrope walker must assume the existence of periodic loss of control and must be poised for a quick recovery.”

Dynamic and flexible thinking will help you anticipate and react to inherent market risks.

So what?

So nothing. And that’s the point. The tightrope paragraph wasn’t written to teach anything. It’s a subtle way to make a casual reader feel like they’ve learned something. It wasn’t chosen at random, and it exemplifies the tone, style, and substance of the book. Like most of Dr. Obscured’s stories, the tightrope story carries his assertion that bold and exciting rich people think differently than other people. Rich people think differently, and you want to think (and act) like them because it’s better.

The danger here is explicit: if we fail to think and act like rich people, we’re destined to fall, to disappear into some sort of unknown and scary abyss.

It’s trite to observe that business books are marketed toward people that care about money and their careers. People dream of becoming rich, achieving financial security, and that’s all fine. I’m more interested in the way that heavy scientific methods are employed to promote pseudo-scientific assertions; how those assertions are reinforced in all forms of pop culture; and how it’s essential to remain mindful of these historically harmful ideas when consuming media of any kind.

The inside front cover reads:

“The Money Personality is a comprehensive guide to thinking rich that will show you how to develop the personality traits, practical instincts, and optimistic outlook on life that have made thousands of people the financial successes they are today. No book yet has told you as much about the mind of the rich and how it works.”

Excellent illustration of the techniques used by skilled copywriters and professional psychiatrists to concoct and sell a fantasy lifestyle - complete with a cute mental framework and vacuous boxes for easy checking.

Incidentally, did you see that film “Man on Wire” about Philippe Petit? Beautiful story with loads of great footage of the early ’70s Manhattan skyline shot from the top of the World Trade Center.

Excerpt from Adam Bellow’s “In Praise of Nepotism” (2003, Anchor Books):

Far from being embarrassed by their nepotistic practices, most family-owned companies call attention to them as a guarantee of stability and quality. According to Yale business professor Ivan Lansberg, family-run companies take a longer strategic view, are more humane employers, and display a strong work ethic; they also “worry a helluva lot more about quality because the bosses name is on the product.”

Excellent book for those of you who care about the topic. He starts with history - natural, social, political, and economic history of nepotism. Spends over half the book discussing specific examples of nepotism’s impact on American history and cultural development.

Digital Audio Insider provides some context for Jill Sobule’s success in raising over $80K from 552 different fans.

Digital Media Wire announces Slicethepie.com taking in $2M in their third round of venture funding. Slicethepie is another site where fans prepay artists as a means to get closer to the person and/or creative process. Meanwhile, Mr. Van Buskirk looks at Slicethepie’s first album (The Alps’ Something I Might Regret) released under the new model.

Ms. Sobule didn’t sell shares in the record. She gave away premiums, pledge drive style. Slicethepie actually distributes ownership in the product.

Dear Newimproved Plan Resonate Reader,

Experiencing minor technical difficulties from upgrading Wordpress. Stop.

Dear Wordpress PR Minions and Blog Scraper Bots,

Thank you for your wonderful new release including the fabulous fix on xmlrpc.php. I’ve been using wordpress for some time and I can honestly say I’ve never enjoyed xmlrpc.php more.

Unfortunately, during the upgrade process, one of your scripts took the opportunity to revisit the careful formatting used in all of my previous posts. We’ve got a small problem.

This description might not be technically accurate - the problem looks as though the visual post editing engine is designed to replace some special characters with their visual counterparts, by default. As a result, my blockquotes are now all broken.

The database now serves all my previous “<blockquote>”s as “<blockquote>”s.

The < and > symbols have been replaced with their visual counterparts.

Presumably there are some cases where this character replacement during upgrade trick would be great. In my case it’s a real drag… I depend on the handy blockquote feature to puff up all my posts. The solution appears to be to go back through each post, enter code view mode, and replace all instances of < & >!

If you could please forward this message to a volunteer tech support person - whomever is tasked with making my free software fun and blockquote friendly - that would be convenient. I can be reached via the email.

Thanks for your help.

Warm regards,

Jeffrey Osborne

UPDATE: Forgot that I’d made a backup. Theoretically I should be able to import all my old posts with the proper html. Will try it sometime soon and report… Nope, giving up on importing the posts and going through each post manually. Fun… Not too much work. The only negatively affected posts were ones written since a certain date. I’m guessing that was the date of the previous upgrade to 2.3.

[tags]Wordpress 2.3.3[/tags]

In 1977, Amory Lovins published Soft Energy Paths, in which he wrote:

“Some analysts still predict economic calamity if the United States does not continue to consume twice the combined energy total for Africa, the rest of North and South America, and Asia except Japan. But what have more careful studies taught us about the scope for doing better with the energy we have? Since we can’t keep the bathtub filled because the hot water keeps running out, do we really (as Malcolm MacEwen asks) need a bigger water heater, or could we do better with a cheap, low technology plug?”

McKinsey Global Institute has released a study on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in which they pay particular attention to the concept of “energy productivity”. Richard Stuebi at Cleantech Blog has shared some thoughts on the issue.

It’s curious and a little obvious to see these ideas finally catching on. Lovins and many other policy experts at the time were at least 30 years ahead of the policy curve. It’s a clear illustration of how even in today’s world of technocratic experts, science and economics can take several decades (or more) to influence political will.

[tags]Amory Lovins, Soft Energy Paths, Energy Productivity, McKinsey Global Institute[/tags]

Yesterday I wrote that there’s never been a better time to be a consumer. Said so in the context of a story about friendly Berkeley researchers who use neuroscience to turn us all into more productive shoppers. It was a sarcastic comment.

According to our colleagues at the AP via Seattle Post-Intelligencer, there have been better times to be a confident consumer:

“Over the past year, consumer confidence has deteriorated greatly, underscoring the toll of the housing collapse and a credit crunch that has made it harder for people to secure financing for big-ticket purchases such as homes, cars and appliances.”

Haven’t the neuroscience folks concluded that insecurity, fear and jealousy are the top consumer motivators? If so, we should celebrate low consumer confidence as a positive indicator!

I’ll admit that preying on peoples’ low self-esteem is somehow contrary to human nature… yet in the absence of brain scan data, such moralism is scientifically meaningless. Carry on scholars.

Quote from Jimmy McDonough’s “Shakey”:

“The eighties found the country retreating into conservatism and gripped by economic woes. Musically, it was the decade of the mega-artist - Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen. Figures who, however you feel about them, seemed a little less real and a lot more media-savvy. The black hole of MTV sucked everything through its vortex, demolishing the few barriers that remained between rock and other forms of mass media and erasing whatever tiny regional identity it had left.”

Lately some media savvy artists and fans have been using good relationship building skills and pre-fab software to form new social networks. These social networks are helping to redefine the regional identity of northern California music. Bay area sites include:

Pacific Noise
Deli Magazine SF
The Bay Bridged
BAGel Radio
Cool Waves SF
Mesh Magazine SF

These sites distribute MP3’s and podcasts, they’re involved in the net radio movement, they promote shows and create original video content, they’ve accomplished a lot in a short period of time. Expect them to do a lot more.

I’m sure there are others who deserve recognition too. Let me know who they are.