As a former drummer, I like to poke fun at drummers.  They/we are all wired just a bit “differently.”  A while ago, I listed my favorite drummer jokes and the post is now one of the top search results on Google. 

Yesterday, my friend John Bliss, CEO of Blipsnips, sent me this great video of a drummer who totally loses it.  The group is supposed to be all about the guitarist – it’s his band, but their drummer steals the show.  It’s really funny how the cameraman decides to pay little attention to the band leader.  The drummer is part bird man and part Tommy-Lee-wanna-be.

Alright, I know I’m going to get flamed on this one, but as a Michigan Wolverine, I can’t resist. 

Today, a friend of mine sent me the video below entitled “We are Notre Dame.”  It’s the worst song that I’ve heard.  Period.  The video isn’t any better and the fact the school endorsed it by allowing them to shoot on campus and utilize the cheerleading squad makes it all the better.  If I looked this dumb playing bass, I’d never play music again. 

My friend Mark Johnson must be rolling over right now.  And just so you know, I have plenty of ND friends, so this is all in good fun.  But I stand by this being the worst song ever.

In case you are curious what the second worst song ever is, it’s the Nixon Peabody theme song.  And the story of the law firm trying to shut off their embarrassment is even funnier.

Maybe.  Quite Maybe.  Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing the Larry Carlton Trio, featuring Robben Ford with Ryan and Jacqueline at the Boulder Theater.  So, in reality, it was a quartet, but I didn’t mind the misnomer.  One extra set of hands of guitar awesomeness is fine by me.

For those of you unfamiliar with Larry Carlton, he is generally regarded as one of the finest session players ever.  His most famous work is probably the guitar solo on Kid Charlemagne, of which Becker and Fagin went through literally a dozen players to try to get someone who could handle the changes.  Many, including Ryan, myself and Steve Lukather think its the best solo of all time.  Rolling Stone magazine rated it as #3 of all time.  (Losers)  

He’s played about every style of music possible with artists such as Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, The Four Tops, and the Partridge Family and it that isn’t impressive enough, he survived a bullet through his neck which shattered his vocal cord and left him for dead by a random act of violence outside his studio years ago. 

The thing with Larry is that you never know what you’ll get in concert.  He can rock, or he can play adult smooth jazz.  Last night, the only thing smooth was the sensitivity and creativity that he brought to every type of genre possible. 

Robben Ford, his co-conspirator is no slouch, either.  Also, one of the finest ax-men around, he has worked with Miles Davis, Gregg Allman, Chick Corea and Phil Lesh.  He’s a great blues man and can sing, too.

Together with an awesome rhythm section of Travis Carlton and Gary Novak (whom I hadn’t heard of before, embarrassingly, but is now on my top 10 list of drummers), Larry and Robben completely blew away the crowd.

I’ve never seen a band with two true lead guitar players who didn’t step on each other, were incredibly tasteful and very sensitive.  While Ryan called the show a “guitargasm” it wasn’t guitar masturbation, rather beautiful, sweet, sexy and rocking.  (Except for two solo-pieces that Larry did that were draw droppingly emotional).

At one point in the show, Robben broke into solo licks and dared Larry to try to mimic him. Robben did not take it easy on Larry, but Larry followed him – note per note. Wow.

Also, we learned half-way through the show that the group had just come together for the show last night.  They aren’t even on tour!  (So, no, you can’t go see them).  After we heard that, Ryan and I realized how far we are down on the musical ladder.

A great, great show.  If you ever see Larry and Robben on the same bill together, run, don’t walk to get tickets.  I’m still smiling from last night. 

I’ve been completely negligent updating my music recommendations (drinking too much beer, apparently), but today I updated my music page where you can find what I’m listening to and check out some of my own tunes as well.

I promise to do a better job updating, so check back in over time. 

No, this isn’t another lawyer blog, rather it’s a long time coming music review.  I’m totally digging Them Crooked Vultures.  Their debut and self-titled album is excellent.

The band is fronted vocally and guitar-wise by Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age Fame and backed up by Dave Grohl on drums and John Paul Jones on bass.  How I wasn’t all over this group when their album first came out goes to show three things:

1. I’m getting old;

2. Music discovery is difficult despite my love of Pandora; and

3. I’m not listening to a lot of harder rock these days (see point 1, above).

But, wow these guys rock.  It’s totally original with great melodies, addictive riffs and powerful vocals with influences from all the bands these guys have played in.  Furthermore, there seem to be additional influences from bands like Alice in Chains, Living Colour, Lenny Kravitz, Cream, Stevie Wonder (yes, they have some great clav parts) and I swear that I heard some Electric Six lines, too. 

I’ve always begrudgingly liked Dave Grohl.  I thought his Nirvana drumming was a little sloppy for my tastes, but respected what he did in Foo Fighters.  After all it is a fact that all of us drummers are wanna-be singers, so that was cool.

I’m even more impressed with this album.  Grohl leaves the lead singing to the “pro” and does by far his best drumming work, ever.  He’s totally legit. 

Bottom line, I’m stoked.  I just wish that I had found the album sooner and didn’t just by chance heard about it from a friend. 

I’m not sure how I missed this song when it came out, but I’m glad that I found it now. 

Whatever. 

Thanks to my friend Steve Tonsfeldt, one of my most trusted musical discovery folks as well as an incredible M&A lawyer for passing along.  See, I don’t hate all lawyers, despite rumors to the contrary.

Every once in a while I get sent a link of a “new” music instrument that will “revolutionize” the music world.

And every time I have the same reaction:  So what?

Check out the video below of the Eigenharp that claims to be the most revolutionary new musical instrument of the last 60 years”

The problems that I have with these new generation of instruments are all the same.

1. They are nothing more than controllers that rely on current synthesizer technology to produce sounds which in many cases pale in comparison to the original instrument; and

2. You look like a complete tool when you are playing it.

One can argue that sound reproduction technology will continue to improve but one thing that will never change is that musicians want to look cool, not just sound good.

I do like the Bourne soundtrack choice of song, though.

Our latest investment, Next Big Sound is hiring.  Here is he scoop:

Software Engineer – Products

Interested in creating great products and tools for the music industry? We are seeking an experienced Software Engineer to join our engineering team. The position is full-time and is based in our main office in downtown Boulder, CO.

• Create web applications primarily using PHP
• Familiarity with the MVC framework
• Implement web interfaces using HTML, CSS, & Javascript
• Working knowledge of PHP, relational databases and SQL (preferable MySQL)
• Ability to learn and adopt new languages, libraries, and technologies as needed.
  (A working knowledge of Flex/Flash or the willingness to learn is a plus)
• Ability to identify performance bottlenecks and provide code optimization recommendations
• BS or MS in Computer Science or Engineering is preferred

Software Engineer – Systems

Want to solve large scale, highly complex technical problems? We are seeking an experienced Software Engineer to join our engineering team. The position is full-time and is based in our main office in downtown Boulder, CO.

• Design core, backend software components
• Analyze and improve efficiency, scalability, and stability of data collection, storage, and retrieval processes
• A focus on scaling horizontally rather than vertically
• Experience designing and implementing software for multi-tier systems that aggregate, manipulate, and display large data-sets. We use Java, PHP, and MySQL.
• BS or MS in Computer Science or Engineering

If interested, send your resume to jobs@nextbigsound.com.

We announced today our investment in Next Big Sound.  The full official Foundry Group release is here.

Next Big Sound is an online music analytics and insights company located in Boulder, Colorado. They measure the growth and popularity of bands across major web properties and sell actionable insights around those data to band managers and other industry professionals. NBS has developed a scalable architecture that can quickly add new sources of information and aims to be the definitive source of quantifiable fan data surrounding the music ecosystem.

I’m really happy that we had the opportunity to partner with Alex, David, Samir and Walter, founders of the company.  They were part of this year’s TechStars class and were in a space right in the middle of our Glue theme, our belief in the inevitable change in the music industry and even had a little bit of our Protocol theme thrown in for good measure.

Gentlemen, welcome to the family.  I look forward to a productive, supportive and exciting relationship with many good days to come.  

Last night, I had the great pleasure of seeing the Alternate Routes open up for Carbon Leaf.  I’m a huge Alternate Routes fan and authored the following review of their first album under the "music" section of this blog:

I want to sing like this guy and write lyrics that creep up on you like this. Good and Reckless and True is an album that I need to listen to the whole thing at a time. Meanwhile I find myself with some weird self-introspective teary-eyed thing going on that is part sheer joy and part devastation. Simply put this album really hits me.

It was the first time that that I got to see them live and they were great.  In fact, with all due respect to Carbon Leaf, they were the best band on stage last night.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the evening, however, was meeting leader singer and co-founder Tim Warren and talking about the business of music.  It was apparent that while they are doing well, there was plenty of frustration in how to actually monetize the asset that they have – specifically their great songs, stage show and their brand.  We spent a while trading war stories with each other. 

It once again reminded of why we’ve invested in Topspin and how tools like this will revolutionize the business model of music and allow great acts like The Alternate Routes to do what they love to do and make a solid living while doing it.