The Z Blog Axis

This blog started out as a school project (set up a WordPress and tweak the branding) that I didn't want to waste, so I started using it to pimp my YouTube show. Right now, the success of this show is the most important thing to me. It's literally creating itself as it goes, because its time has come. The Internet is ready for the first online "virtual venue" where you can see bands from all over the world perform, and I've got to suck it up and follow through before someone with more money and resources than I have beats me to the punch. Focus, Daniel-san, best karate still inside. I'm gonna go paint the fence.

Post Date: January 12, 2007

Post Title: Somethin' for yer ass

Well, we've come a long way since...I don't know, sometime back in '06, and it looks like the little seed we've sown is about to bear fruit in a big way. What started out as a simple idea I had for YouTube has somehow morphed into a sonic nuclear bomb that we're going to go ahead and deploy on Saturday, February 3. The420channel is officially detonating this bitch at our newly acquired musical "home away from home," Molly Malone's in Ramona, CA. You're probably wondering, "If this is such a big deal, who's going to be playing the night of this so-called bombing you speak of?" Dig this: The main attraction of the evening? It's fuckin' Cirkus from SWEDEN. That's right, bitches, we said CIRKUS FROM SWEDEN. They're a totally kick-ass '80s-style glam band that's got a front man who thinks he's David Lee Roth. It's funny how things happen, ya know? My original concept for the music segment of our show was to provide local musicians with a vehicle to get them exposure on the Internet. With Molly's on our side, it seems that this thing is taking on a whole new identity. Yeah, we're going to provide for local musicians, just like we planned, but this thing is quickly going the other way in that bands are finding us from all over and lining up to get on board. Hmm...Guess this Internet thing isn't a fad after all.

Post Date: December 11, 2006

Post Title: Beck in a box...just add water

If you're just joining us, a couple of us here at The420 were invited to a private taping of a "mini" Beck performance at The Nissan Live Sets Stage at Fox Studios in L.A. It was a closed set taping for what appeared to be a joint venture between Nissan and Yahoo for their online webcast advertising machine. After some considerable discussion/debate, here are our thoughts: Yes, we watched the show, but we were also watching the production of the show at the same time. We were not impressed.

Strike 1 -- They wanted to film crowd reaction shots with lighting other than what would be used during the actual performance. To facilitate that end, we were treated to some fat old man in a headset standing on stage saying, "Yeah, pretend I'm Beck." Cheesy. I understand that for the shoot it had to be done in this fashion, but there's no way in hell we were going to cheer for "old grizzly" the way we would for Beck. Give us SOMETHING to work with, please.

Strike 2 -- The show was being shot in hi-def (umm...for webcasting?) and the tapes were only 30 minutes long. We were all just settling into the groove (Beck included), and all of a sudden a voice comes over the PA telling us we need to stop for a tape change. Here we are at Fox Studios and they couldn't double up on cameras to prevent such a momentum killer? I realize there are costs involved with this but...

Strike 3 -- There was a Q&A session during the first tape change when Beck answered some questions that seemed hand-picked to serve somebody else's ulterior motives. In fact, Beck was visibly uncomfortable with the whole scene. He's right on when it comes to performance, but he was like a nervous kid shufflin' his feet when they put that lame-ass Q&A on him. We would have thought that they would have let him in on the questions in advance so he could do a little prep, but it kinda looked like he was hearing them for the first time. He's not a stand-up comic, so asking him to make somebody's retarded question interesting doesn't seem fair. It all boils down to this simple truth: In the eyes of Nissan and Yahoo, Beck is no more than a product designed to help them promote their goods and services. It was strange to see someone that WE think so highly of treated this way. Welcome to the music industry.

All said and done, we had a great time, and it was cool to see Beck and his band up close (and free of charge!), but the whole process killed the magic. I felt dirty with corporate stink after I left, and I couldn't help but be a little angry at the fact that Yahoo handed out a couple of mini-DV cameras to the audience to no doubt "leak" on YouTube. Multi-million dollar studio...and they hand out DV cams to compete with the likes of us on The420channel.