SteveCastellano.com

this doesn't make me a fanboy

I mentioned a while back that I would touch on the subject of blind Apple adoration, and this post will make an honest man out of me. A few weeks back I picked up a 32GB iPhone 4. I took some time off work. I stood in line, for a brief period (20 minutes or so), but only because the gentlemen in front of me were switching carriers. I was vaguely concerned about the antenna issue, over which a highly-placed Apple employee has apparently lost his job. But I bought one anyway.

And I didn’t line up because I’m a rabid Apple fan. In fact, I feel somewhat the same about Apple as Churchill felt about democracy; it’s pretty much the worst kind of technology company, with the exception of every other one that I’ve dealt with. But I’ve been suffering for a long time with mobile phones that didn’t do what I needed them to – including syncing with the contact list on my laptop as advertised (by Apple, ironically) – and when my last contract ran out the iPhone 4 had been announced. I had been waiting long enough for a decent smartphone that I didn’t want to wait even longer for a second shipment after the real rabid Apple fans snapped up the first wave. Hence the lining-up.

what's he up to now

I explain this to you not as an excuse, but as an aid to those who are trying to decide what camp to place me in. @DCorriveau commented on the hype surrounding the launch with no small degree of disdain, noting “It’s amazing that a product that ‘changed your life’ now needs to upgraded as ‘soon as humanly possible.’” Meanwhile, in the real world, reaction amongst my work colleagues ranged from oohs and aahs to sheepish requests along the lines of “can I touch it?”

But to Mr Corriveau’s point, my new iPhone has obviated a lot of fully-functional hardware – and an entire generation of iPhones along with it. Casualties include an unlamented Motorola KRZR, a standard definition Flip video camera (yours for $40 O.B.O.), an 8GB iPod Touch, 1st generation, which I received as a gift from my employer some time ago, and my car, which I’m told can’t be retrofitted to take advantage of my iPhone’s features for less than $1,500 CDN. This is obviously a fundamental sustainability problem.

And we deal with these situations in the most ethical ways we can think of at the time.

it's a fine tune

I would have been happy to see the KRZR run over by a train, but, realizing this would create a minor ecological hazard, I opted to recycle it when I upgraded. The Flip video will certainly sell eventually – to you, perhaps. The car probably looks a little better without a clumsy after-market dash-mount attachment. And the iPod Touch?

Often times, when subbing in on a gig, I’ve grappled with the problem of keeping my cheat sheets organized and inconspicuous. I’ve used handwritten post-its, spiral-bound notebooks, and even cunning miniature printouts taped all over my rig. All these approaches seem to solve one problem by creating another, either in the realm of presentation, lighting, or simply stability – the notebooks have a tendency to slide off my keyboard mid-performance.

it has little feet

I thought I was getting close to a solution when I came up with the idea of creating chord charts in a spreadsheet application, saving them as PDFs, loading them onto the iPod, and viewing them with one of several free PDF-reading apps available for the iPod/iPhone platform. The first attempts came out awfully small, though. Then I took a horizontal approach, distilling my cheat-sheets down to the most minimal layout necessary to recall the tune.

Landscape ended up working much better than portrait at this point. Then finally, to eliminate the problem of the iPod sliding off the Motif and crashing to the floor while I was playing, I added some adhesive Velcro dots (available at any fabric store or many drycleaning establishments) and viola: removable backlit digital cheatsheets for your next gig. Cost to me: $270 and a three year contract.

cat inserted for scale

I was, however, disappointed to discover that the USB port on the Motif ES7 does not appear to have enough juice to charge the iPod. The Motif itself is now two generations old, as the release of Yamaha’s new flagship XF series has just been announced. Perhaps I need to upgrade.

what the hell does this have to do with trust?

I’ve been wilfully ignoring the Old Spice hype. That kind of makes me a bad creative guy in advertising/marketing terms, because I’m supposed to be hyper-aware of new media strategies, and (I think) because I’m supposed to cheer on successful creative, even if it wasn’t created by anyone I know, out of solidarity, or perhaps good sportsmanship. Maybe I’m a bad sport. I might even be a little jealous. But just to be clear, I don’t dislike the ads. I watched one on YouTube. It was witty and engaging. But I didn’t go seeking out any further ads from the campaign, particularly once I learned they were being churned out at an alarming rate. I didn’t think I could ever catch up, in all honesty. And I’ve got stuff to do. Hell, I didn’t even watch the whole Chad Vader series, and I really liked the first three of those.

But, you know, the buzz goes on, and eventually I was forwarded a link to a “making of” article about the online phenomenon. I was glad I read it, because I learned enough about the campaign to further forestall sitting through it all. But there was a great and almost heartwarming insight in that article. When the answer to “how can you make so much stuff so good and so fast?” gets boiled down, it sounds like this, from Iain Tait, Global Interactive Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy, the campaign’s creators: “There is such great trust.”

And if you abstract what a creative department tries to do for its clients, you end up with that T-word again. Sure, there are different ways of saying it: engage, start a conversation, build a relationship, woof woof arf. But really, every brief could have in it somewhere, “Can you get them to trust us?” Because a relationship with your partner, or with your customer, or with your client, isn’t much of a relationship without Trust.

A while back Alex Bogusky came to town for a talk. And I don’t attend that many talks, because they tend to be quite expensive, and usually focus on broadcast, or have to be broadband enough to appeal to a wide audience and therefore cover a lot of ground that I’ve already researched on my own, or end up being, you know, a bunch of agency reels. But Mr Bogusky is about as close as our industry gets to having its own real-life rock star. I mean, there are probably people who don’t work in the industry who know who he is. And while I knew if whatever it was that made his work great could be imparted in a half-hour Q & A there would be a whole lot more great work out there than there is, I still thought it would be worth my while to go and have a listen.

Plus, I wanted to ask him a question: How do you get the freedom to do the radical things with a brand that Crispin Porter + Bogusky got to do with Burger King? And I did. I said, what, were they just desperate?

Alex replied that no, if you smell that kind of please we’ll let you try anything just help our brand desperation you should back away, because desperation is poisonous. He said what made the BK/CPB partnership work was, to a large degree, having a great open-minded, forward-thinking client who trusted them, and who had faith in their abilities.

Faith is another loaded word of course. Faith sometimes feels like the opposite of empirical evidence, particularly if you follow the monkey trial that’s been going on in the U.S. for 85 years. Faith is usually portrayed as the victim, and empirical evidence the aggressor. Folks come armed with science to destroy faith. Or so some would have you believe.

The fears of the faithful are well-founded. Toe-to-toe, facts will beat faith where the object of faith is unprovable. Not because you can’t be a scientist and a theist. You can; many are. But if you’re starting from a blank slate, and you have the choice between faith and fact, which would you choose? Facts are a sure thing, aren’t they? That’s what makes them facts. If you start with facts, you don’t need faith. (For a wry fictionalization of this principle, may I direct you to Douglas Adams’ Babel fish as proof of the non-existence of God argument).

It may seem odd to compare advertising creative to religion, but the former remains to this day the hocus-pocus of the profession. Every day it gets easier to test, track, measure and compare results. The ability of marketers to measure, and to improve results based on post-analysis, is now their primary selling proposition, and clients are buying. But where does that leave the magic of creative?

Can you test creative? Sure you can. But you have to know exactly what it is you’re testing. You have to isolate your variables or your results are worthless. For this reason, a surprising quantity of testing I’ve seen conducted in the marketing world has a hole in it big enough to drive a bus full of grade 11 science students through. And if your variables aren’t offers, or product features, but concepts, how do you know how many and what variables are involved?

Furthermore, testing creative is only of value if you’re going to be using that creative again in some form, for the same product. So as marketing budgets are more beholden to provable, predictable results, a byproduct of this increased demand for measurability is more restrictive creative guidelines, and more creative presentations that involve discussions of how it has been demonstrated that our target audience responds this way or that way to one stimulus or another. What you get in the end, more often than not, is advertising that is not only undifferentiated within its own brand, but within an entire category.

And as more marketing dollars are taken from non-measurable channels to be piled on the digital and direct response side of the scale, the real stand-out campaigns, regardless of media, will continue to be those that come from trust-based, risk-taking relationships. There’s no way anyone could prove beforehand that a half naked man beating a piñata with a fish in his bathroom would sell aftershave. But it sure as hell got my attention, and if you don’t know already, I’m a pretty tough sell.

In a 2008 career retrospective in Marketing Magazine, Ian Mirlin was quoted as saying:

I think the creatives in my era cared very deeply about what we did. I think we were given more leeway than today. I think we dealt with less research, less fiddling, less risk aversion. I think we dealt with more clients who would stick their necks out.

And this is, for me, the final piece of the puzzle. I’m not suggesting that testing and research should be done away with, or that they should carry no weight in a creative brief. But I think what Mr Mirlin is getting at here is that there is a connection between that trust – that risk-taking, that sticking-out-of-necks – and caring. An expression of trust fosters confidence, and ownership, and can only serve to spur on a creative team to excel. Sure, you’d fire anyone in your creative department who didn’t care about his or her work. But if you knew a way to make the people who care already care more, wouldn’t you want to capitalize on it at every opportunity?

There’s a sushi restaurant in New York where the menu is two words on a chalkboard: “Trust me.” This is essentially a reflection of the Japanese omakase, which can be translated as “it’s up to you” when spoken by the customer, but has its roots in the Japanese word for “entrust.” Your chef chooses what you will eat, and what you will pay for it. As a customer, you get his best quality ingredients prepared in a manner that is an expression of his individuality, his skill, his familiarity with the catch of the day, and his gratitude. His gratitude for your trust.

I think I just decided what I want for dinner.

The following is my entry in Anthony Bourdain’s Medium Raw Challenge. If you like it, please take a moment to vote for me at the contest site.

Why cook well?

Why do anything well? Why make sure your belt goes through all the loops when you leave the house? Why listen to music? Why wash your hair? Why paint a painting? Why make love?

Why take part in the world? Why not allow yourself to perish in a tsunami of mediocrity? What does it matter if your voice is heard above the noise floor of the standardless class?

Without some kind of goal, some kind of measure of success in what you do, you’re getting beaten by inanimate objects in the perilous horse-race that is corporeality. Crystals are forming out of randomness. Volcanoes are burping out archipelagoes from a roiling sea. And yet you sit, paralyzed by ennui, waiting to be fed you care not what.

May I introduce you to organic matter? Against what astronomical odds did those oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen molecules assemble themselves into that mouthful of succulent beef? How did the universe so wrong you that you feel a fitting payback is to over-salt it? To cook it grey and dry? To let some faceless conglomeration dictate that a pimply-faced teen drench it in high fructose corn syrup, slap it between two slices of aerated starch and toss it into a styrofoam carton for you?

Why read a book? Why attempt to better yourself? Why not instead leave cuisine to the effete and the elite, while your utility food propels your pathetic husk through another in a near-endless, mind-numbing parade of joyless days? You’ve got more important things to do. Jam a meal-ready-to-sit-undigested-in-your-colon into your gaping maw and go see if American Idol recorded on your Tivo. But hurry! It’s almost bedtime!

Why partake of the fruits of the earth on which you tread? Why attempt to master elements and energy, to create beauty where before was only raw matter? Why commune intimately with your most primal animal desires, and attempt to elevate your base and disgusting bodily functions to the point where your mouth becomes a finely honed instrument that discerns, gauges, interprets, instructs, informs that vast unused brain, trains those clumsy, dumb, thick paws? Why indeed share your passion for consumption, and why impart upon those at your table the essence of the inexpressible through your mastery of the physical realm, of science, of art?

Why cook well?

Cook well to express your appreciation, through your effort and your critical and sensual faculties, for the mere fact that you have before you a practically limitless harvest upon which to feast. And if you don’t feel you owe anything to your friends, to your family, or to the universe, in exchange for the fact that you are able to not only eat but to taste, and to sit down at the table with your fork and knife upright in your fists and demand “What’s for dinner,”  all I can say is, “Your machine-assembled deep-fried fruit pie awaits.”

click to download PDF

I was asked to perform at a friend’s wedding ceremony recently and given free reign over the music selection as long as I avoided all of the standard wedding tunes. And that’s exactly the kind of direction I like – “Whatever you want, as long as it’s appropriate and unexpected.”

click to download PDF

My friends are big fans of classic 70s and 80s pop, so I took advantage of the excuse to whip together solo piano arrangements of Message in a Bottle and Everybody Wants to Rule the World. The former I chose because I’d been playing it in a band setting for years and had already been picking away at a solo version. The latter was in my head because The Bad Plus recorded a pretty amazing modern jazz version of it a couple of years back, which is still on my playlist (and in fact I nicked Ethan Iverson’s opening riff, though the rest of his arrangement is far beyond my ability to perform, or, dare I say, comprehend harmonically).

Then once I’d arranged and performed them, I thought I’d transcribe my arrangements for posterity (and to make sure I don’t forget them myself). So I blew the dust off my copy of Finale 2007 and hammered out the attached scores. Please feel free to download and take a swing at them yourself if you feel so inclined. For those of you who are familiar with Royal Conservatory grading, I would estimate that these wouldn’t take someone at a Grade 8 level too long to get under their fingers. In terms of your standard Piano/Vocal/Guitar arrangements they’d probably be categorized as “advanced.” It’s also been a good few years since I exercised my copyist muscles (some of you may recall I was a professional copyist for a few years back in the 90s) so if you notice any egregious errors please let me know and I’ll fix them up.

Creating this type of arrangement is a fun and interesting challenge. I was discussing the shortcomings of P/V/G arrangements the other day with a friend who has recently taken up piano as a mature student. It can be a real disappointment to realize after purchasing a book of your favourite pop tunes, and then going through the trouble of learning them, that they are poorly transcribed, too simplified, or inadequate in any of a number of ways. My friend’s teacher had in fact warned her off popular sheet music altogether, suggesting they work together on the skills required to lift and arrange songs from the original recordings. I’d have to agree pretty much wholeheartedly. Doing it this way is a lot more rewarding.

For probably about 25 years or so I have laboured under the false impression that the artist responsible for the hilarious and disturbing cover art on the Cramps compilation Bad Music for Bad People died of a heart attack at age 27. It’s an oddly believable story, but it’s completely untrue. The artist’s name is Stephen Blickenstaff, and he is alive and well. By a sad coincidence, Lux Interior, lead singer for the Cramps, died of heart failure last year. He was 62.

It’s possible whoever fed me that story had Mr. Blickenstaff confused with someone else; if these admittedly sketchy details sound familiar to you as associated with another unfortunate individual’s demise, please let me know.

Edited to add: the Cleveland Plain Dealer article that I linked to suggests that Interior’s heart condition was pre-existing; Wikipedia sources refute this claim.

there, that's a better picture

I didn’t mention in my previous post that my Etherwave was missing a part when I bought it. It wasn’t an essential, large, or expensive part – it was a compression nut that should have held the pitch antenna in place. Gravity does a fair job though, and as long as I wasn’t planning on playing on a moving flatbed things were going to be just fine. But I called my local dealer to ask if they had a replacement part anyway. They didn’t. They said, “We could order it for you, but you could just get one at your local hardware store.” So I went to my local hardware store, and my visit produced much head-scratching, but no compression nut. So I emailed Moog Music to ask if I could just order the part directly from them.

I emailed them on a Sunday. They emailed me back a few minutes after ten a.m. on the following day, and after confirming which part I was missing, assured me that they had it literally in hand and were dropping it in the mail for me. An envelope appeared in my mailbox this week, containing the missing part, and a spare. No charge. Not even postage.

I have had pretty much boundless admiration for the late Bob Moog and the instruments that bear his name for as long as I can remember. And to find out that the company that continues to carry his name is this decent and helpful to someone who bought one of their least expensive products second hand has really just made my week.

Marketers tend to go on ad nauseam about how important word of mouth is and what kind of social marketing strategy or viral video or what-have-you will get customers talking about their clients’ products. But Moog Music’s practice of making quality gear that they stand behind, and being just plain nice folks, is a great example to follow.

my first moog

As I mentioned in the previous post, scanning the musical instruments classifieds on Craigslist is a mindless pastime of mine; I do it habitually and not quite obsessively. I’ve found some pretty good deals there over the years; the Motif ES 7 is probably the best example. I’ve also made some impulse purchases that I’ve changed my mind about, like the Sequential Six-Trak.

Craigslist isn’t a secret anymore; it’s a pretty high-traffic channel. Which means it also has a pretty high noise floor, and aside from the occasional chuckle it can make a grown man wonder if he’s wasting his time. But I keep at it, a bit like the compulsive gambler but without the risk – because occasionally I have days like last Saturday, when I found someone in Markham listing a used Moog Etherwave theremin for sale or trade.

I borrowed a PAiA Theremax from the friend of a friend a few years back and found it kind of fun to play with, but the build quality and sound of those models is not really up to my standard. To be fair, they are sold mostly as oddities, in kit form, for hobbyists – and they’re very reasonably priced. So I knew I would get a theremin eventually, and the obvious choice would be a Moog. And I’ve been keeping an eye out for years now. It’s tricky to play, but rewarding. I’m running it through Mainstage on the MacBook Pro and latency is negligible – but you have to turn the automatic feedback sensing off, for obvious reasons. I’ll post some audio when I can produce something listenable.

One more housekeeping item: I’m a big fan of Google Reader. I was an early adopter of RSS and I look for feed links on any site that I find myself at regularly. Or rather I used to. Now I have a “Subscribe” bookmarklet in my toolbar. I subscribe to just over 100 feeds, from Google News (Canada) and my daily comics (Toothpaste for Dinner and Achewood among them) to synth geek sites and even RSS feeds for my favourite eBay searches. I also read Toronto Craigslist musical instruments religiously, as regular readers of this site may already suspect, which may seem like a huge waste of time but has netted me a couple of pretty nifty items, including a very reasonably priced Moog Etherwave theremin which I’ll be happy to tell you about sometime soon.

Google recently added this instant sidebar option that allows me to import a list of my favourite reader articles into a WordPress widget, which you should now see in the right margin, under the heading “news i read.” I haven’t been sharing articles religiously, because up until today I didn’t have any reason to believe anyone was following me in Google Reader. But now that the sidebar widget is operational I’m going to be a little more diligent about it, and I will hit the “share” button under any news items I think other folks might be interested in, and they should pop up here (the news items, not the folks). Please feel free to let me know in the comments if you think this is as neat as I do.

The links page on this site dates back to days of yore. It was originally created because my bookmarks menu was getting unwieldy, and it stayed up for as long as it did because people seemed to like it. People even linked back to it.

But it’s seemed kind of superfluous for some time now. I haven’t updated it in years, so many of the links are probably dead. And I don’t remember how difficult it might have been to find that kind of information in the past without a helpful list of links, but it sure seems easy today.

Furthermore, where in the past it appeared to generate traffic, now it just seems to generate “link exchange” requests, which I find mostly just kind of annoying.

So the links page is going away. I thank all the kind folks who said nice things about it, but a quick search suggests that they too have gone away.

I actually had a pretty good weekend and I’ll tell you all about it soon, but first here’s some cold, ugly reality.

The latest bad news about the Gulf oil spill comes via @ebertchicago. Have a look at an animated simulation of a satellite’s eye view of the Gulf spill from April 22 to May 3.

If it makes you feel any better, you can blame it on Dick Cheney. I’m guessing it won’t though.