Recently, I’ve gotten restless, and I’ve decided to begin playing music professionally again. Trouble is, I don’t have a lot of contacts here in Amarillo. So I’ve decided to apply the same techniques I recommend to my marketing clients to my own situation. That means I’ve got to find ways to get myself noticed around town. What you see at the left here is a poster I whipped up in an hour or so this evening. I’ve secured a one-night gig – kind of a “let’s see if this works” kind of thing. Obviously, I’d like this to turn into a regular gig. So I’m doing everything I know how to do to make that happen. First, we’ll start with promotions. I’m going to print several of these posters and give them to Pizza Hut. I figure that the combination of a nice-looking poster along with taking the initiative to promote my appearance there will go a long way towards helping them see the possibilities. It won’t cost me much to do it, and it will help serve my larger goal of getting my name out there as a musician in Amarillo. With only two days before the gig, I don’t have much time to self-promote, but I figure that anything I can do is better than sitting around and waiting for something good to happen. [Read more…] about A little experiment in musicial (self-)marketing.
Entertainment
When the moon hits your eye.
Although I won’t be doing a Tribute to Dean Martin anywhere in my two sets (as the post title might imply), I will be playing live at Pizza Hut on I-40 (on the east-bound service road, between Coulter and Bell) in Amarillo (Centrally Located Between Two Oceans!™), on Wednesday, August 27th, from 10 PM to midnight. If you’re in Amarillo, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop by. Hopefully, this will be the first of many bookings in the Panhandle area.
Leapin’ Lizards!
I’m back from the family reunion, offspring in tow. Along the way, we made her first pilgrimage to the Mecca for women, young and old, a place called “Sam Moon.” What is a “Sam Moon,” you may ask? Sam Moon is a phenomenon in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It’s a chain of stores that sell women’s accessories – jewelry, purses, luggage, belts, earrings, necklaces and the like, at wholesale prices. “Wholesale prices” is a term that is bandied about in the retail game, sometimes with a sense of mendacity that would make a professional liar blush. No, Sam Moon has got the goods. They are the real deal, the genuine article, the Real McCoy. But this is not a post about the wonders of Sam Moon, the upsetting of the natural order when it comes to baubles, bangles, and bright shiny beads. No, gentle reader, this is a story about awe, shared experiences, and fatherhood. [Read more…] about Leapin’ Lizards!
EUReKa!…I think they’re on to something.
I love creative things. In particular, I’ve always loved science fiction (which gives writers a way to violate reality to serve their story ideas) and humor (which requires both creativity and intelligence to do really well). So when the SciFi channel launched EUReKA, a show that combines sicence fiction with humor, I quickly became a fan. Then they did something that, at the time at least, was creative in a marketing sense. They created a website that was a “we’re going to pretend as if all this is real” kind of thing, that somehow made the show that much beter. It was cool. The show was cool. And they were doing some pioneering work in how to use the web to market a show.
Season Two just started, and they have pulled off yet again another innovative idea in marketing – they’ve blurred the lines between product placement and conventional advertising, and in the process have forged something new, different, and in many ways, pretty scary. [Read more…] about EUReKa!…I think they’re on to something.
My two cents.
I’ve been in the business of using computers, in one way or another, since 1982. I wrote my first college paper on an Apple III. I owned one of the original IBM PCs (Hercules Graphics Card! 512K RAM! Two full-height 5 1/4″ Floppy Drives! Dot Matrix Printer! DOS 2.0! Ashton-Tate Framework! All for the low, low price of $4,000!!!). I’ve worked as a software engineer, product manager, project manager, marketing manager, and user interface evangelist for software publishing companies. I was around for the birth of Windows 1.0, the life and death of COMDEX, the rise of the common user interface, the Year of the LAN, and a slew of other things, long consigned to the dust bin of computer history. I’ve been a user, author, coder, beta-tester, evangelist, designer, and planner. In short, I’ve held just about every job you can hold in the software industry.
Now I’m writing reviews. [Read more…] about My two cents.
The Problem with Miley.
Know what a “Tween” is? Unless you’ve been living under a rock (which might not be such a bad idea, actually), you know a tween is the trendy label for those ages 9 to 12 – not quite a child anymore, but not quite a teenager. A “tweenager,” if you will. I’m the proud father of a tween. She’s obsessed with all the typical things that girls her age are – fashion, Miley Cyrus, High School Musical, Jonas Brothers, and fashion. The problem is, I’m not sold on the idea that all those obsessions are the right ones.
Here’s the deal. I had a great childhood. Idyllic, really. I want the same for my daughter. But we live in a radically different world today, and I’m afraid she’s being exposed to a lot of things that are stealing her childhood right out from under our noses. [Read more…] about The Problem with Miley.
Music that’s eclectic.
As some of you know, I’ve been a musician since an early age. Up here in Amarillo (Centrally Located Between Two Oceans!™), I haven’t had many opportunities to play professionally.
All that has recently begun to change.
Andy (the Brother I Never Had) Chase and I have put together a group, and we’re calling it “eclectic” ek•lek•tik.
Tonight, we’re playing at Randy’s of Wilderado (which is actually not in Wilderado at all – it’s in downtown Amarillo on Polk Street in the Paramount building), from 6 to 9 PM. As the band’s name suggests, our playlist is eclectic. Come on down, and you’ll hear everything from James Taylor and Jim Croce stuff to Nat “King” Cole and Hoagy Carmichael – with everything in between. Tonight, we’ve added a really excellent bassist to the mix, so there’s now four of us. Andy and I share lead vocals duty, and we switch off between guitar, mandolin, percussion, and harmonica. Describing our sound is a little tricky, because there’s nobody else doing what we do here in the Panhandle. I guess it’s kind of like [Insert name of artist here] Unplugged, because everything we’re doing is acoustic. However, that doesn’t mean it’s mellow, nor is it all ballads, all the time. We can rock the joint, too. And do.
So if you’re interested in an evening of live music, come on down to Randy’s tonight and check us out.
Don’t Buy This Book.
I love to read. I read just about everything I can get my hands on – from mysteries to histories, tech books to cook books. My favorite for light reading are in the techo-thriller genre…books about heroic Americans fighting the spies and soliders of other countries or terrorists. Glenn Beck (one of my favorite radio/TV guys) had author Christopher Reich on his show recently, to plug the book Rules of Deception. Beck mentioned that he’d not yet read the book (never a good idea to plug something you haven’t read, Glenn), but he was amazed that, as the story revolved around Iran’s attempts to enrich uranium for the express purpose of building nuclear weapons, that the New York Times had given the book a glowing review. Little did I know when I bought it that there was a good reason the NY Times loved it. [Read more…] about Don’t Buy This Book.
Everything that’s old is new (again).
I’ve actually been blogging for years – far longer than this blog has been up. While my old blog died with my old company, it occurred to me that it would be nice to have a lot of the old posts I’d written online. The answer is a bit of database manipulation, where I pull the old articles from an archive I have, and posting, then resetting the post dates. That way, the posts remain in their original, chronological order, and I’m not faced with old posts getting in the way of the new stuff. So, if you’re of a mind to look over some of my oldies (but, IMHO, goodies), feel free to scroll back to the older stuff. It’s not all there (yet). but as I get time to upload it, eventually, the old posts will live again.
The Language of Advertising.
I love advertising. There. I said it. I’d rather watch a great ad than just about anything. A 30-second national ad has roughly the same budget, acting quality, directing quality, and production quality of a 30-minute sitcom. A well-crafted 30-second spot tells a short story, with a plot, characters, story arc, and everything else you expect in good communication. Oh, and it sells something. Usually. (Some advertisers forget to sell a product, and some forget to tell a compelling story, but I’m speaking here of GOOD commercials.
[Read more…] about The Language of Advertising.