Monthly Archive for July, 2007Page 3 of 7

Our Father, Who Art In Heaven

Published
by
michael lee
on 23 July 2007
in church, faith and theology and groupthink
. 2 Comments

Posts in the Sermon Prep: Our Father series

  1. Our Father, Who Art In Heaven
  2. The Weakness of God
  3. Our Father: Sermon Final

I’m preaching again on Sunday. Just starting to gather some thoughts, and put them out here for public comment, as usual.

This time, I’m splitting a two-part series with our youth pastor, who preached last week. He has been married for less than I year. I’ve been a father for a little over two. We thought it might be interesting to reflect on things we’ve learned about God as newly minted participants in our respective roles. Not “Here’s how to be a husband” or “Here’s a message on how to raise your kids”, Lord knows we have little enough to say on either subject. Instead, the idea is more along the lines of “Here are some things about God that I’m beginning to think about differently since becoming a husband / father.”

So, my turn at bat this Sunday. I’ll post some of the ideas that are percolating as they develop. Stay tuned! Stay alert! Stay pretty! Daddy and Mommy will only love you if you are pretty!

Next in series: The Weakness of God

Passive-Aggressivity!

Published
by
michael lee
on 23 July 2007
in laugh! and politics
. 14 Comments

Scotty and Danny (Not their real names)1 used to work together in the same office. Then Danny got promoted to Assistant Boss of Scotty. Now it’s Scotty job, of course, to make Danny’s life a waking nightmare of passive-aggressive antagonism. Here are some suggestions that I thought of all on my own, during that ugly time of morning between dawn and 1st cup of coffee.

  1. Offer to get him a cup of coffee every morning. Make a big deal of asking how he likes it, and taking notes on a little notepad. Then, make it with 9 sugars and buttermilk. When he complains that it tastes awful, pull out your notepad and show him, “9 sugars, buttermilk”.
  2. Call him Danny. Danny-O. Danny Boy. Irish McGillicuddy. Elvis.
  3. Refuse to type the letter “P”. Intead, leave a space and hand-write it in later. Explain that you’ve given it up for lent, and ask him why he doesn’t respect the religious observances of others.
  4. Blog every conversation you have with him. In realtime.
  5. Loudly mock his taste in music to coworkers, but only when he’s just out of earshot in that shiny new office of his.
  6. Forge a memo from you new “Boss” to everyone in the office, declaring Friday “Dress like a Pirate” day. When he’s the only one who shows up in normal dress, mutter comments to your coworkers about how Danny-O is not a team player.
  7. No matter what idea he comes up with, always respond by saying “Well, that’s one way to do it…” in your best sarcastic voice. “Hey everybody, we should try to keep each student’s file together in one piece, so please don’t scatter them around the office.” “Well, that’s one way to do it …”
  8. Print out a glossy pic of your favorite supermodel. Replace the family photo on his desk with the glossy supermodel pic. Try to do this on a day when his wife is coming to meet him for lunch.
  9. Send emails to his boss, praising him for things that are clearly faults. “Dear Boss, Just wanted to let you know what a great job Danny is doing in his new position. All of us in the office appreciate how flexible he is with deadlines, and he totally understands when we need to ‘borrow’ money from petty cash to do some lunch-time shopping. We love working for Danny-O!”
  10. Immediately forget how to do anything on your own, and come to him with questions about even the most minute tasks. Demonstrate learned incompetence in every single aspect of your job. Danny loves that!

Congrats on the new gig, Daniel. And Scotty, you know what to do.

1. Yes, those are their real names. Sorry I lied.

Apple Update Disaster

Published
by
michael lee
on 18 July 2007
in geek and technology
. 4 Comments

So, the recent apple software update was an utter disaster. It caused crashes, system melts, and Microsoft Office apps failed to launch. After pulling my hair out all morning, I located this fix finally, and things are finally back to normal. Turns out the problem was the QuickTime 7.2 update. Here’s the post to fix the problem, if you’re having the same frustration:

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070716100311118

impressive

Published
by
June
on 17 July 2007
in art and culture, asides and miscellany
. 1 Comment

I can’t get over this opening page.

20 things to do while you’re waiting for your fans to show up

Published
by
michael lee
on 17 July 2007
in art and culture and groupthink
. 46 Comments

I’ve been trolling the posts that I missed while I was out of the country, and ran across Chad’s post about firing up Ye Olde Indie Bande. Rather than giving a specific response to his request, I thought I’d give this, a general list of things to move your music project forward.

Most of the things on this list are the result of observation - APU is like a petri dish for watching the launch of music careers. We have around 50 people at any given time who are trying to become viable artists in the commercial music world. They range in success from those who are signed and touring in support of great projects, to those who can’t even get a pay-to-play booking with 300 other bands at Chain Reaction, and I get a front row seat to their process. They come talk to me about what works, what doesn’t, and I get to listen to their experiences and cull from that data.

So here you go - 20 things to do while you’re waiting for your fans to show up. The first 4 are in order of importance, but everything after that is in wild brainstorm mode.

  1. Change your mindset. Once you’ve recorded the album and rehearsed the band, you’re no longer an artist, your full-time career is now marketing and sales. Congratulations - you’re now a small business owner!
  2. Get on iTunes and other online distribution sites with tunecore.com
  3. Upload your music to last.fm. Your music gets placed on a playlist next to well-known artists with a similar style. I can’t think of anything more valuable to a starting artist than song placement in proximity to fans that don’t know you, but that already like what you do. In fact, move this up to #2 - I think last.fm is more important than getting on iTunes.
  4. Put together an EPK. Make it downloadable from your website.
  5. Send the EPK to your very local paper, the one that writes about school board meetings and the farmers market, along with a friendly email suggesting why your story isn’t the typical I-wanna-be-a-rockstar band story. Local papers are receptive to ready-made content (nice pictures, packaged story), and it will give you some experience in talking to the media about your project in a way that doesn’t come off as pretentious or vain.
  6. Update your website blog. (you DO have a blog on your website, right?) Frequent updates help with your search engine ranking, and you want to be on the first page of results for fans who go googling for your website.
  7. Get your social networking sites up. Make sure you have a presence on MySpace, Facebook.
  8. Find 10 blogs that you think your potential fans might read. Make an interesting comment on a post. When you fill out the comment details (name, email, URL) insert the link to your website. If people who read the comment find it interesting, they’ll follow the link back to your site. Don’t promote yourself directly in the comment, just make it interesting and relevant to the post.
  9. Somewhere in-between iTunes and Last.fm is Aimestreet.com. You upload your music, people can discover it and download it for free, or a few pennies initially. As it becomes more popular, the price increases. It rewards people for becoming early fans, and rewards artists for gaining in momentum. I love this distribution model, and it’s gaining a massive following among fans.
  10. Find 5 podcasts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) that talk about music in your genre. Email the host to ask if you can send them a CD (or links to the album online). Express your interest in being interviewed for the podcast.
  11. Locate 3 artists in your region who are in a similar market (both in size and genre). Check their tour schedule for venues, and start cold-calling. The place they play today is the place you should be playing 9 months from today.
  12. Do a process audit on buying your music online. How hard is it for fans who get to your website to actually purchase your CD? Can they choose a process they are already familiar, or do you force them to do something like download iTunes, or signup for Paypal? It should be as simple, quick, and intuitive as possible for someone who already wants to buy your product to actually buy your product.
  13. Can you accept credit cards for live sales at your concerts? Have a laptop with a wireless connection to Paypal Virtual Terminal, so that you can.
  14. While we’re talking merch table, how easy is it for people who get to the table after the show to continue their relationship with the band? There are 3 pieces of critical info you should have from every fan - name, email address, and zip code. Why zip code? If you’re playing a show in San Jose, every fan with a zip code that starts with 950XX, 951XX, 940XX or 943XX should get a personal email inviting them to the show. Any fan living in Phoenix should not. Excel, or really any spreadsheet program will let you sort data this way.
  15. Put together a list of 10 known artists that you think would have potential cross-over fans. Start a series of posts on your website reviewing their latest album. Be positive, if you can. You’ll start to get links from their fans doing google searches for album reviews.
  16. Take that same list. Find out who manages each of those artists. (Google is your friend). Send an introductory email to the manager, making specific mention of the artist you think is similar, and ask if you can send an EPK.
  17. Head to your myspace page. Find 5 well-known artists who are in your same genre with a large fan-base. Check out the fans who are commenting, and send 20 of them them an invitation to become your friend. Cross-over, cross-over, cross-over.
  18. As an artist, you have 3 products. Your recorded music, your live music, and your community. Does your website allow simple, intuitive access to all three products? If not, time to stop treating your business like a hobby, and hire a real designer.
  19. Setup a google alert for your band name, or for links to your website. If somebody says something about you, or links to you, you should be the first to know! This allows you to be proactive about building relationships with potential fans.
  20. Change your mindset. You’re now a small business owner. If you want this to be your full-time job, treat it like a full-time job. Manage your time and your goals. Put in 40+ hours a week. Run this business.

So what are your thoughts? Do any of these strike you as essential? Or as complete time-wasters? What would you add to the list if your were launching your own band? How have other bands or artists found you, and turned you into a fan?

Comment away, my friends.