But I digress. This song is from Prince’s new three-CD set, available only through Target (so retro!). It’s a psychedelic remake of Tommy James and the Shondells’s “Crimson and Clover” with a bit of The Trogg’s “Wild Thing” mixed in. The song is rocking. Sounds so good to my brain. Check it out (listen to it through bass-friendly speakers/earphones):

Crimson & Clover – Prince

My teenaged self adored Prince, and my middle-aged self tunes in every now and then. He sounds better than he did all those years ago.

This is too cool. Whether they intended to or not, a bunch of dolphins blocked “suspected” Somali pirates as they set a course to attack Chinese ships, causing the rogues to re-think their nefarious plans.

We walked into a restaurant together, and I was keenly aware that everyone was looking at me.

“What is she doing with Molly Ringwald?”

Beats me! So we walk in and find a table. Wait a second…why am I with Molly Ringwald? (She’s a liberal, she once said in an interview, but I won’t hold that against her.)

Anyway, we’re seated and I’m suddenly nervous. She tells me I’ve got to do this thing — a speech or presentation or some such. I panic; I have nothing prepared.

Mother Nature saves me! Some kind of natural disaster occurs, and everybody flees the restaurant. I run out into the street with the other patrons to find it all torn up. An earthquake? I didn’t feel anything. So I flag down my limo driver Lou (!), who looks like James Gandolfini, and he drives me out of there. Molly’s on her own. Lou turns onto the highway…and the car falls down a huge crack in the pavement and wedges on its side. OK, intense fear of being trapped in an overturned car after a crash. I trigger my wake-up-now mechanism, a neat little trick that comes in handy when I don’t like the dream, but I turn it off. I see a way out. I’m going to crawl through an opening, and then rescue my unconscious limo driver.

But I wake up before I can play hero.

Happy Friday, readers! The weekend is here. Fellow old-heads in the audience, did you know Pretty in Pink came out 23 years ago? Good grief. Here’s a song from the movie’s soundtrack, “If You Leave,” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Brings back memories, eh? Pleasant ones, I hope.

Rest easy, everybody.

Rest easy, everybody. And thanks for reading LBC.

The next few days will be extraordinarily hectic for me, so this completes my blogging for the week. I’m making a pit stop in SC to visit family for a few weeks, then heading to Las Vegas for GodBlogCon September 19-21, then flying out to the West Coast, my new home, the first of October. Based on e-mail and comments since I announced I was moving, readers want to hear more about why I decided to move. I’ll fill you in.

Until then, have a restful Labor Day weekend, everybody. And thanks for reading my blog.

(Today was overcast and drizzly and dreary. I won’t miss this weather!)

This one, too:

For the past three weeks, I’ve been in muggy SC. En route back to muggy DC. I came down to have and recover from minor surgery (first time under the knife!) and spend time with the family. My mother’s a surgical assistant, as I’ve mentioned before, and knows a lot about these things. I wanted to be near an “expert” as I recovered. The truth is…well…I just wanted my Mommy.

In the same post I talk about surgery and my Mommy, I seek new business! (I dig the blogosphere. Don’t you?) I blog for businesses that don’t have the expertise or time or desire to update their company blogs inhouse. If you need a content provider, let’s talk. Contact me for a free consultation, resume, and work samples: lashawn [at] lashawnbarber.com. I don’t blog or “ghostblog” for politicians.

Writing career updates: I decided to take a leap of faith and pour whatever talent and every ounce of discipline I have into trying to become an author of books. I sent out a proposal. Wow. I’ve come down with a severe case of “What are you waiting for, woman? Just do it.” (It doesn’t hurt or anything, but the side effect is frequent bouts of hyperactivity.) Will I succeed? Who knows. The journey is fun, though. Yes, fun. Coming up with an outside-the-box idea, having the guts to think I can turn it into a good and salable book (sometimes two separate things), trying to sell the idea to an agent, combined with the anticipation of “Will I actually pull this off?” are very stimulating.

Trusting God is a far superior experience than trusting our fellow fallen fellows, obviously. It’s like he’s illuminating a few steps of the path in front of me, and I have to trust him to lead me where I’m supposed to go. I have no idea where that is, but as long as I stay connected to him, pray to him, study his word, and be obedient, I know he’ll lead me to the right place. He will be glorified in the journey and the destination. With that assurance, the unknown is not a frightening thing.

By the way, I’m still collecting, strangely enough, Christian band groupie stories and opinions.

Rest easy, everybody.

Current earworm:

I don’t read Ebony magazine regularly, but I’m buying a copy this month so I can read, “What Does Black Sound Like?,” an article I assume is about diverse music styles and genres among black artists.

Yesterday my brother told me about Miko Marks (click on music tab), a black country-singing woman featured in the article. Her songs sound more like traditional country than Rissi Palmer’s, and she’s been around longer. I’ve added her to my list of artists to interview and meet.

The word “diversity” has been sullied by liberals’ use of it as they obsessively focus on the color of people’s skin at the expense of what really matters, so I hesitate to use it. The connotation is a negative one for this political conservative. The kind of diversity I dig goes deeper than mere skin color. I’m talking about diverse ideas and in this case, diverse musical styles. As many of you already know, black American music extends beyond R&B and rap. I remember when the black hard rock/metal band Living Colour hit the scene back in the 80s. I was crazy about lead singer Corey Glover, thrashing around on stage with multicolored extensions in his hair. The memories.

I admit, however, I was a little shocked when I found out actor Will Smith’s wife Jada fronted a “nu metal” band called Wicked Wisdom. Wild. I don’t like the sound, but I applaud Jada for pushing boundaries and exploring the terrain.

I’ll write more about diversity among black artists on and off the blog. If you know or have heard about black artists in “non-black” music genres (or just want to respond to this post), please leave their names in the comment section.

Rest easy, everybody.

Unrelated Update: It makes no sense that I’m this excited about seeing “Prince Caspian” this afternoon.

Perlmutter interviewed me for the book a few years ago, but I didn’t think I’d make the cut. Lo, and behold, I did! On page 19, he calls me an attorney (which I’m not), wrote that my blog was “well cited by many leading conservative blogs” (which it was), and that I “attacked” him in a post (which I didn’t).

Perlmutter’s referring to a post I wrote called Peasants Don’t Blog, where I commented on an article he wrote about blog hype. Why do some people consider critiques an attack? Geez. It’s good copy, though.

Although Perlmutter misspelled my first name in the index, I’m pleased overall that he found my blog worthy of mention. On page 20 he quoted at length from a post called The Immorality of Race Preferences.

Publicist, if you want to send me a review copy, here’s my snail mail info. I’ll review the book on the blog, but I can’t (or shouldn’t) review it for a news site or print publication. Because I appear in it, there’d be a conflict of interest, or something like that.

I’m still experiencing the residual effects of a once-popular political blog. Nice memories for the most part. But I’d like to see myself quoted in books and articles about digital tech, music (Christian and non-Christian), the changing music industry (a good start), pop culture, fan culture (a new fascination), etc. And one day soon, I hope to see my own book for sale on Amazon.

Back to work!

Addendum: Music to work by (turn it up!):

(Obligatory disclaimer: Seeqpod is a music search engine, and I’m sharing a playlist. Seeqpod doesn’t host copyrighted MP3s, and neither do I. Do not illegally download and/or share the MP3s!)

As always, play hard, be good, stay safe, and rest easy this weekend.

“The advent and general adoption of the Internet, digital media and hardware took control of the global music industry away from the record labels and media outlets and handed it to the masses,” he writes. (Source)

Rather than cursing the masses and resisting changes brought on by the Internet, Price decided to adapt. He wanted to stay in the music business but needed to make money. “[W]hat could I do to remain in the music industry under a model that would not rely on selling music (the exploitation model),” he asked himself. “And thus the idea for a new model was born, turn distribution into a service for a simple up front, one time flat fee.”

Digital Label

Price created a service called TuneCore, which allows artists to upload songs and create albums. TuneCore places these albums in online music stores, and artists keep all the profits and all their rights. And they can cancel their accounts at any time. The catch? Well, if you want to call it that, TuneCore charges 99 cents a track, 99 cents a store per track, and $19.98 a year per album for storage and maintenance. Not a bad deal.

What’s the opposite of digital label? Analog label? That doesn’t sound right. But you get the idea. Under the new model, Price makes money storing music instead of selling it. He makes no judgment about whether a band stinks or is good enough to sign. He just stores and maintains the uploads. Artists with enough talent and perseverance can control their own careers, and make music and money in the process.

Price alludes to the long tail theory posited by Wired editor Chris Anderson. In the old days, the only feasible way to sell products to the masses was to get products placed on store shelves (or through mail order), which were often limited to only those items that sold well. The Internet has created virtual shelf space, and anybody can set up online stores to sell products and services. Long tail virtual shelf space is financially do-able even if you move only a few units a year. The Internet also has brought down the cost of marketing and promoting those products and services.

Artists are no longer slaves to major record labels, radio, and media outlets like MTV. They can market and promote themselves with their own web sites and blogs, through music blogs and music news sites, various online music services like Last.FM and iLike, and through social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube.

Price concludes with this (emphasis added):

Allowing all music creators “in” is both exciting and frightening. Some argue that we need subjective gatekeepers as filters. No matter which way you feel about it, there are a few indisputable facts — control has been taken away from the “four major labels” and the traditional media outlets. We, the “masses,” now have access to create, distribute, discover, promote, share and listen to any music. Hopefully access to all of this new music will inspire us, make us think and open doors and minds to new experiences we choose, not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want. It is then the public, not a corporation that gets to decide what is bad and good. The revolution (pun intended) has truly begun.

As always, I encourage you read the articles I link to. Price’s essay on how he moved from independent label owner making money to independent label owner making too little money to digital distributor making money and helping artists make money is priceless.

Digital Diversion

Yesterday I interviewed an artist signed to an independent label. I’m writing an article about how the person’s faith in Christ affects the music, similar to this piece I wrote on Hanson. I like being a tease, so I won’t tell you who it is. I’ll link to the article when it goes live.

Speaking of Hanson, check out one of my favorite songs:

Related post:

• Flux, Kicks, and New Tricks

Check out Friday’s playlist, an eclectic mix of stuff I like. (Obligatory disclaimer: Seeqpod is a music search engine, and I’m sharing a playlist. Seeqpod doesn’t host copyrighted MP3s, and neither do I. Do not illegally download and/or share the MP3s!)

After I embedded two Amy Winehouse songs last week and earlier this week, I expected irate “I can’t believe you’re promoting that drug user” missives, but e-mailers loved the songs and said they’d keep Winehouse in their prayers. It does my heart good to read e-mails like that.

Anyway, enjoy! Be good, stay safe, and rest easy this weekend.

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…or “recovering” junkie, but you should listen to this song:

I don’t agree with the sentiment, but the song is quite lovely. Perhaps Winehouse, who won five Grammy awards last month, will find the courage to leave the Dark Side and find joy in alcohol- and drug-free living and being content with making good music and winning awards and spending all that money.

Speaking of the Dark Side, I guess I’ll cross over to it (briefly) on November 4, 2008, and vote for John McCain for president. For reasons unknown to me, I ended up on his blogroll last year. It’s strange, because I’ve never supported him and never said or written anything nice about him.

Maybe I’ll write in Amy Winehouse. Oh, wait…she’s British. And under 35.