jesse poe.is blogging

Playing Human by Darius Jones

One thing that is always hard at parties, is explaining what you do.

“So what do you do?”

God how hard is that question? What part of my life do I talk about, how can I say all the stuff that I do that rolls up into an answer of “what I do” without sounding arrogant or fragmented.

Usually I defer to whatever seems most fitting for the situation, but occasionally there are those who seem interested enough to hear about “what I do,” and their question is always:

“How can you do all of that?”

Internally I laugh and think the real question should be, “how can you do all of that and do it well?”

But my reply is always the same: “It’s all the same energy, just different vehicles.”

I can’t say that I do it well, I can only say I do it with all my heart and with the goal of making the world a better place or at least a more beautiful place if for no one else but myself. The energy behind all of it is the same and it comes from a good place and therefor the result is usually pretty good.

In our present technology surged search to be everywhere at all times, I feel like “what I do” is less surprising and that more and more people are breaking down verticals and approaching the world more horizontally. Not that this is new, remember “Bo Knows” or Picasso, or Julia Childs or any number of great out there who have done more than one thing in their lives, sometimes even at the same time. Is that the role of a great father or mother?

So how do you show that and package that, not so much so you can sell it but so that you can share it, so that when you standing there at a party and someone asks, “so, what do you do?” you can give them the present of who you are in a shape and form they can handle. For me, I built this site for that reason, for others it might different. It is one such difference that I wanted to share with you, and thus the reason for this preamble.

Darius Jones.

Darius, has been sending these “emails” for the last year or so which are more epistles that emails. Sure the reason for them is to share with you the upcoming shows and some highlights from the last shows etc. But the real and more profound reason is to share himself and his attempt to make the world a more beautiful place even if you never even make it to a show, even if you are deaf, he wants to share the beauty of music and the world and the tango they can be made to dance if we only take the time.

I remember being really blown away the first one I read quite some time back and curious if it was a one off, or if it was a paradigm. It’s not a 140 character clever quip, or a FB status update, it’s real update about a friend with something to share about the world around you.  And as I read my 12th this morning on the 2/3 I just had to share, maybe it was the fact that the 2/3 decided to let me off right in front of the stairs on a monday morning, or more likely it is the reality that what you find here is a real and wholly beautiful. Something to emulate and therefor worth sharing in hopes of just that, making the world a little more beautiful even if only for a few.

Shared with his permission:

Dear True Believers,

It has been a while since I have shared my thoughts with you. A lot
has been happening. I was nominated for a JJA award for ‘Up and
Coming Artist’ of 2009. Whoopee. I was on tour in the US and Europe.
That was fun. And I’m super excited to be doing a show with my trio
tonight for the Vision Festival. I love Adam and Jason. These cats
make me want to fly.

So, what’s been on my mind lately is: why? Why do some of us feel so
deeply about things? Is it wiring? Because sometimes I feel as if I
can’t help it. I can’t help but to show my love and deep appreciation
for something that inspires me. At the age of 32, I am looking back
on my life and wondering how I got here. How have I become an artist,
and what does that mean? An artist. Sometimes I feel that word
doesn’t fully characterize what I am. I feel like I’m a healer, a
seer, magician, a prophet. A bringer of the holy truth. I can’t help
but to spill my guts. And I know that a lot of you can’t see what I
see, but I want to see what you see. I realize that’s what it’s
always been about for me–the desire for greater understanding and
greater awareness.

I feel we can be better. Collectively. As a whole. As a human race.
The world is begging, pleading for more, for greater, for beauty. I
mean, what is all this searching for anyway? Where are all these
feelings of longing and dissatisfaction coming from? There has to be
something out there that we want. Or maybe this thing called life is
just madness. Are you mad? I know I am sometimes. I like to think
of myself as crazy. To walk the streets of New York and think of
myself as an alien. That I am not of this world. That I am from some
distant galaxy where we have the power to manifest our true desires,
and we only walk among people who are seeking fulfillment in life.
When I look around, all I see sometimes are the dead walking. Why
paint? Why dance? Why cook? Why write if you’re not going to write
to change some aspect of this existence? Many of the great artists
didn’t think they would have an audience as vast as they do now. I
mean, look at Bach. Bach was basically a church musician who created
music for God, and for people to commune with God. But look at him
now. HIs music is everywhere. His compositions have influenced every
aspect of tonal music.

My heart is bleeding, people. I am searching my soul for connection.
I want to be connected to the cats that I play with and the cats that
I listen to. I want to get lost in each other. Time is ticking,
ticking, ticking away. There is only the now. We can’t live forever.
So, breathe. Right now. Take a breath. And let it out. Touch your
hand. Stick it out of the window and let the breeze caress it. I am
the wind. I love you.

Mon. June 21st @ Local 269 at 8pm
Darius Jones Trio
Adam Lane: Bass
Jason Nazary: Drums
Darius Jones: Alto Sax and Composition

Local 269 is located @ 269 East Houston St, on Suffolk St.

C’yall

Good friend and present house guest Ned Raggett wrote a wonderful talk for the EMP Pop Conference 2010 that I wanted to share and thought no better time than when he is staying at my house!

The text below is also available here at his site in audio/video.

In a discussion on the Internet site I Love Music, or ILM for short, one participant recently asked his fellow board members for assistance with an Erykah Badu song title:

“so what is jump up in the air actually called:
“jump up in the air and stay there”
“jump up in the air (and stay there)”
“jump up in the air (stay there)””

He followed up that request with a further comment:

“it’s when i ask questions like those that i reflect on how last.fm has ruined my life”

His request and comment is a perfect summary of the kind of position that we, collectively if conditionally, now find ourselves in. We are a group shaped by access to technology and the time and interest spent on those things we consider most dear. We possess the knowledge – conscious or implied – that we are no longer simply listeners of music, or even consumers of it in a previously understood sense. Using technological resources only recently developed, we are collators of information, we are identifiers of sound, we are resources of reference.

In a recent piece for Paste magazine, “Listening to My Life: Lost in the Shuffle,” Maura Johnston pointed to this state with her characteristically well-observed ambivalence:

“…as much as I’ve become used to clicking through my library over the past few months, this transformation of music into something post-physical freaks me out. There was value in music having a physical presence—even those records that you’d only pull out for very specific reasons reminded you of their existence during a routine house-cleaning. Now it’s easy for songs to get lost in the shuffle. The labeling can be faulty; the artist’s name could be in a weird nether-region of the library that you never scroll through.”

As did the ILM user, Johnston touches on the issue of correct naming, to which I will return. Yet even more telling is her use of a common word twice within the course of the paragraph, a word that appears at the top of the lefthand column in every standard iTunes window. She speaks of her collection not as a collection, but as her library. And as she has her library, she has her self-chosen role as the curator of that collection – as the librarian.

We are all librarians now. It does not matter if we have a formal degree, we nonetheless are librarians, electronic librarians, or to use a more current term for the field, we are all information scientists in an online world. As noted, this state is conditional – it is based on everything from access to cheap energy and technology to the availability of information infrastructure to the economics of personal time, it seems permanent without actually being permanent. Yet here we are, in a world where those born at the start of this millennium will never have not known Google, iTunes, YouTube, Twitter. The names of these companies and products are not as important as the assumptions and the tools they provide, everything they encompass, the new baselines of experiences that have been created.

It is hardly something new that we are librarians or experts on collections in general – the physical objects generated which captured performances, from the original wax cylinders forward, were over time seen less as novelty, more as something that could possess a longer-term value. If you wanted to know what it was that you had heard and wanted to return to it, you had to organize and be able to search for it. But it is important to note that the original time of this historical moment itself saw the codification of the home book library as a key status symbol – something that a middle-class household had to possess. It is one of the greatest legacies of the European Victorian age, and remains a powerful one to this day – think of the lingering appeal via advertisements that some in my age group or older may remember about needing to have a good set of encyclopedias at home, reference books, great novels.

The development of recorded audio provided a new extension of the impulse. Using America alone as an example, within a few decades the idea of the quality record collection was commonplace, with labels and marketers attending to new canons, from the classical tradition to jazz to Broadway musicals and from there into the archives of rock, soul, funk, metal, dub, hip-hop, the list continues. The record shelves of my youth, filled with vinyl by my parents, was no less important a possession – a presumed necessity – than the books on the walls. By the time I started my own collection of CDs, I was working within a well understood approach – and the groundwork was already being created for the upending of it all via the Internet and modern computing.

For myself, I’ve found riding this wave to be absolutely fascinating, worth the trip, but this is far from a universal feeling. Johnston’s piece is one example of this ambivalence. In a piece last December in the Boston Globe, “Untouchable,” Jeremy Eichler vented more directly. At one point his complaint was familiar – and incomplete:

“For a real collector, the hunt to find an object can at once take on the dimensions of sport, art, and life’s quest. Even a casual music lover can appreciate the feeling of working hard to track down a particular recording, thumbing through the bins, or scouring the holdings of used-music stores.

“Today’s increasingly preferred mode of acquiring music – downloading – is a surreally effortless activity. A few clicks of the mouse, and, as if some cosmic spigot has been opened, the music pours onto your hard drive. If you are converting a large CD collection, there are services that will do the entire thing for you. It has become, in some senses, too easy.”

The language in this would require endless unpacking to be studied in thorough detail – starting with the third word, ‘real.’ But I instead call your attention to what is absent in this passage, and what has often been absent in similarly phrased stories over these last few years – the step before the search. What do his idealized real collector and his presumably deeply unreal computer user need before their searches? They need to know what they are looking for. How do they know what they are looking for? What information do they have to hand? How do they use that information? Is that information easily gathered? And is it accurate – and will it lead them to what they want to find, or hope they might find?

These are the questions that dominate the work of librarians, of information scientists. For some decades in this computer era a cliché has been, per Canadian writer Bruce Sterling’s endlessly referred-to (and nearly always redacted) phrase “Information wants to be free.” A more aspirational reworking would surely be “Information wants to be found.” We are here to talk about information that presumably wants to be found, the musical creation that its creators want people to hear. Per Dr. Seuss, if the Whos that lived on Horton the Elephant’s puffball had to shout “We are here!” as loud as they could to avoid being destroyed, the musicians of the world must shout all the louder – or, if not shout, at least find a way to see that others can find their way back to them. It is the eternal problem that any and all artists, have – to capture the attention. To be found.

In 1998 in the online journal Hermenaut, Chris Fujiwara’s essay “Disintermediated!” addressed what has proved to be a series of relevant issues for the current state of research in general, though his focus was literary rather than musical. To quote a concern that has essentially come true:

“Claims have been made that the Internet, with its potential to link together unlimited stocks of digitally represented knowledge, will disintermediate the library and the university, both subject to the fatal disadvantages of spatial location and world-time.”

What do people use to search for music in the present day? Do they use the Library of Congress, or their local libraries? These are options, but clearly not the most popular ones. Instead people can use retailers, sellers like Amazon and Apple, who employ their own staff to work with artists and labels to catalog material – but they are not the only sources. Not in the world of last.fm, of Wikipedia, of YouTube, of Discogs.com, of eternal Google queries. The contributors there may take their cues from those ‘formal’ sources, or be obsessive cataloguers themselves – or they may not be.

On ILM, the same poster whose quote was noted at the start of this presentation said elsewhere that a fellow poster had once observed “our brave new digital future sometimes feels a lot like unpaid data entry work.” It is work approached by each person as they choose to approach it, there is no formal ‘training’ in place, and there will likely never be.

What are the consequences of this? Consider where the potential for error can be introduced in this sequence of events: a song is released to the world, via a livestream, via a radio debut that’s immediately ripped, it does not matter. Is there a date of its uploading? Its recording? Is that provided? Should the artist provide it? Should the label, if the artist is signed? Is it a live version? Is it a demo version? A mixtape version? Are there guest artists? Are they new, do we know who they are? Is it definitely different from a formally released version? Will it ever be formally released?

For all that there are multiplicities at work, there’s also simplicities that can create massive consequences. Consider the story of Gracenote, formerly the Compact Disc Data Base or CDDB. This site has become the de facto 800 pound gorilla of digital music information, designed to collate and present correct mp3 ID tags, an automated process – a CD is read by a computer, it is matched with an entry at Gracenote and the information is sent back to one’s own computer. However, each individual disc must be entered into the system at some point – and often it’s down to whoever gets around to it first, one anonymous listener out of the entire world.

Consider how the potential for error has also appeared over time as first promo CDs and then mp3 promo releases are sent out to the world, quite often without a Gracenote entry or without the ID tags in the mp3s to identify the tracks. This leaves it to the music writer or the radio DJ or someone similar to do the work that arguably should have been done by the person or group releasing the album or song – as perhaps some of us have thought with a sigh, contemplating an unlisted thirty-track various artists compilation.

This question of error is therefore of paramount importance. If he’ll allow my indulgence in pointing it out, my fellow panelist Douglas Wolk has written on an example of this problem before for the July/August 2008 issue of The Believer – having acquired a copy of Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns’ Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu, he entered the data into iTunes and submitted it to Gracenote, as the site returned no match with the disc. At the time of writing, he had never found a copy of it since, and the tracklisting he submitted via iTunes has since been borrowed and reproduced many times – each time containing an error he had introduced to that track listing. The ‘real’ tracklisting has now been subsumed completely by the erroneous one.

Closer to home, back around 2000 or so my good friend Mackro and I completed something we had been working towards for years – a collation of the out of print EPs by the UK band Disco Inferno. As it happened, I was the person who submitted a tracklisting for this collation, titled The Five EPs, to Gracenote. In doing so, I made a noteworthy mistake – based on the order in which the song titles appeared, front and back, on the second EP’s CD cover, I assumed that the third song of the compilation was “From the Devil to the Deep Blue Sea” and the fourth was “A Rock to Cling To.” Over time, as copies of my CDR began to circulate widely, questions were raised about this, finally confirmed by Brian when he found a copy of the original vinyl single, but first indicated by the fact that what I thought was the song “From the Devil to the Deep Blue Sea” actually contained the lyric ‘a rock to cling to.’ I had switched the song titles. The error in identification can and still has cropped up over time, and even the just-announced formal release of this collection will likely not stop this error from recurring.

These kind of issues are not simply academic or of limited interest. Consider this section from a recent story in the LA Times about SoundExchange, the nonprofit organization created by Congress in 2001 to deliver royalty payments based on digital streaming online and elsewhere:

“…at any given time, about 25% of the money SoundExchange gets from online music services such as Pandora, XM Radio and Last.fm can’t be distributed because the artists can’t be tracked down, [noted] John Simson, SoundExchange’s executive director.

“The problem stems from what Simson calls “bad data.” Music services have been required by law since 2001 to send royalty payments to SoundExchange for the songs they stream online. But they often provide scant details. Stations routinely get promotional discs in the mail that aren’t properly labeled, so the performers often go uncredited. Other times, music services keep sloppy records of the songs they play. Some tunes, for example, are titled “Unknown” and performed by “Various Artists.”

“”We have this inside joke [said Simson] that if you want to make millions in the music business, just form a record label called Unknown and a band called Various Artists, and before you’ve even recorded a track, you can collect millions of dollars.””

This would only be amusing if there were not consequences – but given the history of the music business when it comes to an uncompensated artist, whose work provides a living for everyone else involved but the performer or songwriter him or herself, often it’s not funny in the slightest.

There are many signs that more is being demanded and expected, as the digital music world reaches a level of, to use a slightly loaded term, maturity. On the level of business alone, as just noted, compelling reasons are clear when it comes to providing correct information. Meanwhile, when web services like Shazam can analyze a song one hears and give you full information about it back, it seems a perfect solution exists – except that such a service, like Gracenote, relies on a database that by definition is never fixed nor universal.

That may well be the eternal stumbling block – the idea that there’s always going to be more information out there to catalog and describe, perhaps too much information at heart. There is always ‘more’ music, new, old, constantly produced, discovered, out in the world, being made for the world. More than one library professional I’ve spoken with has said, with a wry smile, that this current situation is a way for general members of the public to sense just what it is that goes into library work, that sense of commitment – of professionalism – that requires careful attention, accuracy, focus, and a similar realization that the work is never truly done. That it started before they were born – and will continue after they’re gone.

Keeping this in mind, I should say my discussion hasn’t really been about music. Not entirely. It never was. It never could be. It’s about those points I raised at the start – about access, about ability, about what could be found. Music is the reason we are here, it’s why I’m talking to you, it’s our particular realm. But we are not simply creatures responding to notes and nothing else.

So many of the positive dreams and clichés of futurist visions have come true, however haphazardly, however unexpectedly. The instant access to ‘everything’ via a device in your hand. That we have an imperfect world of inequity and injustice rather than a perfect one is just as much of a commonplace, and the real tragedy of time and existence. However much greater the opportunities, life daily reminds us of the losses, the limitations – that there is so much unfairness of things, enough to make you scream in anger at those who refuse to see it.

Then why, out of all the concerns one should be aware of in this world, why a call to be more self-conscious about ourselves as the electronic librarians, the archivists, the markers of ‘art’ as we define it? We all create more knowledge than may ever possibly be used by any one person, and yet it is there now. We provide the help to the person in the first step in the search so they may progress to the second. We provide the tools for the future, the signposts, the way to get to that thing that was written, recorded, whatever, for someone to encounter, to consider, to be inspired by – and not simply musically.

That was always what a library did, what a librarian did. We all now have that role. And there is now so much more we can do, to contribute and to give back, each in our ways.

In doing this, we inspire the future by enabling the present. The rest will follow.

Thank you.

Black Keys -Brothers   review by Jeremy Harmon

I Just Want Something I can Ignore

It was Rob Gordon (played magnificently by John Cusack), proprietor of Championship Vinyl, in Stephen Frears’ High Fidelity that said, “I just want something I can ignore.” I can’t help but to think of modern music in this same fashion. All too common on the radio these days are crappy pop songs, overproduced with annoying hooks that tend to get stuck in your head for days, making it hard to ignore. They plant themselves like little demon seeds in the minds of the populace, rotting our minds from the inside out. This phenomenon, along with a few other rock solid reasons, has led me to avoid radio and “music” television for some years.

During the time when teeny-bopper boy bands, airheaded bimbos and emo muttonheads who vapid lyrics devoid of any depth ruled the non-hip hop music scene, I had repeatedly asked myself, “Rock and roll, where have you gone?” Occasional blips came across my radar, but nothing substantial, nothing that hit me in the gut and asked me to take notice. I had basically given up on music, resigning myself to the death of what Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly started. Finally, I found the answer in fall of 2006 when a friend sent me an album by The Black Keys titled Magic Potion. He spoke very highly of them and since we had similar tastes in music, I put it on while at work, hoping it would drown out the noise of my fellow cubicle dwellers. Little did I know I was in for a face-melting, down and dirty rock and roll experience, one that I hadn’t had the joy of witnessing since maybe the Black Crowes released Shake Your Money Maker. Not only did it drown out the noise of my coworkers, but it also drowned out my work. I couldn’t ignore this album or this band – in a very good way.  I listened to the album 3 consecutive times through and then once more on my commute home.  I was instantly taken by its gritty, bluesy sound – the heir apparent to both the Layla Sessions and supergroup Cream’s work sans Jack Bruce’s bass. Yes, please.

As I was listening to it, I immediately looked the Keys up on the internet and found that they had released three full length albums and one EP before Magic Potion.  The only thing I could think was, “How the hell did I miss these guys?” I immediately touched base with my brother, who I knew would like them and he said, “Yeah, I’ve got two of their other albums.” HUH? I immediately berated him for not passing them along and quickly hung up the phone, pissed at his negligence. I can only imagine him staring at his phone on the other end, saying “What the hell was that all about?”

I devoured their back catalogue, anointing them as the new high priests of rock and roll despite the misfire in their follow-up to Magic Potion, the Dangermouse produced Attack & Release. When I first received news via the ever wonderful Facebook fan page that Brothers (to be released May 18) was coming out, I was at once skeptical and excited at the same time. I knew they had been working with Dangermouse on this record, but I wasn’t sure how much. That’s not to say I don’t’ like Dangermouse because I do. His Grey Album was nothing short of amazing and his with work with MF Doom on The Mouse and the Mask record (arguably my favorite album of 2005) is equally as spectacular. However, his style and the Keys’ just didn’t make a happy union, at least to this listener.

So when NPR was kind enough to post Brothers in its entirety for a week prior to this week’s release, I was happy to take the record in, spend some time getting to know it, like getting reacquainted with a long lost friend. My initial reaction was that the high priests have gotten their mojo back and I don’t doubt that subsequent listenings will do anything but cement that.

The thing that strikes me most about this record is that it listens like a movie watches. It has a definite structure – beginning, middle, end – all punctuated by highs and lows, all driving the listener on a ride from start to finish. “Everlasting Light” is the dawn of the record and gives us the upbeat, toe-tapper that sets everything off proper and leads into “Black Keys Next Girl,” which hits us with the heavy drum beats and thick chords that are ubiquitous throughout Keys’ records. I just love the chorus to this cut: Oh my next girl/Will be nothing like my ex-girl/I made mistakes back then/I’ll never do it again. A great standard blues set of lyrics summing up the perils of the fairer sex. “Tighten Up” is next, which is the Dangermouse produced track and it has his fingerprints all over it. From the whistling 4 seconds in, it is obvious this was his track. An enjoyable song that really leads us into what might be the most interesting track of the first half of the album, “Howlin’ For You.” I did a double take when I first heard it; I thought it was Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2.” My fears were quickly allayed when the guitar kicked in. I never thought The Black Keys could do blues-infused anthem rock, but this song kicks ass.

“She’s Long Gone” follows and seems to be a hot mix of Cream’s “Cream Swlabr” and “Cream Tales Of Brave Ulysses.” Dan Auerbach’s guitar can only make you do the Joe Cocker face because it just hits so hard.  Next up is the instrumental interlude, “Black Mud,” which signals the end of the first third of the record. It helps clear the aural palate, but gives us a taste of the organ to be used in the next track, “The Only One,” which lightly brings us into the middle part of the record. The ethereal “Too Afraid To Love You” mixes harpsichord into the track, which always puts me in a dream-like trance. The backing wind-like synth really gives this song a great atmosphere. Ten Cent Pistol” follows and has such a great opening, taking nearly a minute until we hear one lyric. Auerbach’s guitar is reminiscent of a classical Spanish guitar you might hear in an old west film. Then comes in the organ, which grooves so nice – such a nice addition to the arsenal that already packed so much punch. “Sinister Kid” features Dan Auerbach hitting the slide guitar, reminiscent of Duane Allman’s collaboration with Aretha Franklin on the cover of The Band’s “The weight 1”  “The Go Getter” might be my favorite song on this album, which has zero throwaway songs it. They all complement each other so well, never getting so high that they come down and get low. Yet another chorus that is so blues-evocative: Palm trees/to flat broke disease/and LA has got me on my knees/I am the bluest of blues/everyday a different way to lose.  This song triggers the end of what can be called the middle of the record.

The last four songs, “I’m Not the One,” “Unknown Brother,” “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and “These Days” represent the denouement of the record. They don’t lull us to the end, but allow us to drift along on the tunes, completing the arc established in the first third of the album starting with “Everlasting Light” and pushed forward by the heavier tunes of the middle of the record. “Never Gonna Give You Up” could easily be an old Sam Cooke or Otis Redding song. Just the right amount of horn added to the guitar, which reminds me Hendrix’ “Castles Made of Sand.” “These Days” appropriately ends the record. Auerbach sings, “These blood red eyes/don’t see so good” and I can feel that because I feel that I’ve just made a spectacular journey through this record and can only realize what it was that I just listened to by going back for another spin. Which I have. And will continue to do so.

All in all, this album may not be as good as Magic Potion, but the jury’s still out. I look forward to the coming days where I can pop Brothers in and really take in the intricacies of the album. I still avoid the radio and most certainly “music” television, but I might not be inclined to do so if music such as this were played again. And I’m glad I found something that can’t be ignored for all the right reasons.

thanks to one of my longest-lasting-life-long re-found friends Jeremy Harmon

We’d love to hear back from you, please leave comments here> to say you enjoyed this.

Over the weekend, we’ve been conscious of our water and our electricity consumption. Ready for the next tip?

"I am concerned not only with the recycling of products, but also the issues of space around it, and the quality of life for the people recycling my goods. I always make a point to rinse out my recyclable materials, break them down and insert them inside each other so that they take up less space, attract less animals and insects and put off less stench." – Jesse Poe, Associate Producer, DMDxd

Jason’s take:
A large number of communities have taken giant leaps in their recycling programs over the last few years. However, these programs still have many challenges in disposal techniques, collection, sorting and even the ultimate recycling. 

For example, did you know that most recycling programs will not open or sort through any closed bags? Even if you take extra care to clean and shred used cardboard or paper products, if  you dispose of them in an opaque container (standard green garbage bag) they will be taken from recycling and sent to a standard waste facility. Many of the sorting bins systems have specific materials they can take (glass, paper, plastic) and materials not sorted correctly at the start are not placed back into the appropriate recycling stream but sent simply to the waste facility instead. It is important to read specific recycling instructions carefully, and take time to review the policies in detail. Much of the effort we make up front could be wasted if it is sent to the curb in improperly.

E-cycling (recycling of electronics) is an area that has taken a lot of heat in the media due to conditions of the workers and the health concerns about lead and mercury poisoning in foreign countries. This is an area where the consumer must review the standards and practices of the e-cycling company. Don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions about what is happening to your electronics once you drop them off. The company should be extremely transparent in their recycling processes, and no material should ever need to be sent to a foreign company for disposal.

Each of us as consumers should expect a clear product stewardship process for our materials, from creation to our usage and ultimately disposal or recycling. It doesn’t have to add costs, but we should be prepared to ask questions!

More Info:
Another great way to recycle is to invent new uses for old things.  Check out all of these creative projects, which take used items and turn them into something new. 

Etsy artist urbanwoodswalker makes pendants, earrings and a ton of other items out of recycled aluminum.

Balls like this one, photographed by Eric Hersman of White African, are filled with recycled materials like rags and newspaper.  The are popular amongst children in Africa, where soccer is the number one sport.  Check out this article from Tonic to see how this recycling model is also a growing business. 

These clever chairs are made of recycled bicycle tires.

This water bottle and CD chandelier is installed at the Arlington Library, in Virginia.

Finally, this bag was salvaged from an old moth-bitten sweater.  The revamp is a project by Kim Taylor, author of the The Sassy Crafter.  Her work has been featured, along with countless other ways to reuse your old clothes, on Sweater Surgery.

With all of these ideas, we’ll be thinking twice before throwing anything out this spring cleaning season.  What’s lurking in the back of your cabinets?

Final White Paper

Today I’m very excited to have Gitamba Saila-Ngita a freelance strategist from San Francisco and founder of the outstanding site: The Retrospective as a guest Blogger for DMDxd.

Gitamba was a part of the Unconference we hosted last month in partnership with Wenovski and Parsons, and will be joining us again next week for our 2nd unconference March 23rd at Parsons.

Last month, while floating amongst the flashing cameras, models, and elite fashion parties that make up New York City during fashion week, I was invited by Jesse Poe, Associate Producer for DMDxd, to participate in a design-centered thought strategy unConference, hosted by Wenovski. I must admit, though, that I rarely enjoy going to conferences because either a) I’m reluctantly there for work or b) the conferences are nothing more than a podium for people to wax poetic on their own importance.

Thankfully, the Wenovski unConference (billed as such due to its largely participant-driven nature that shunned typical conference requirements such as fees and sponsored presentations) fit into neither category. Populated by some of New York’s sharpest minds in anthropology, urban planning, architecture and technology, our group discussed how design-centric ways of thinking can solve every-day problems, and maybe even change the world.


In my view, good design permeates almost everything around us. Designers, regardless of their discipline, strive to solve problems of all shapes and sizes; maybe they’re re-evaulating the placement of a door handle, or envisioning what colors will best echo a brand’s core values. What started out as a loose conversation among 20 guests holed up in a Parsons’ New School classroom turned more serious when we were given the task of brainstorming how we might solve societal and environmental issues affecting New York. Some of the topics we discussed revolved around the utilization of free and unused space, how to galvanize community identity through group initiatives and (my personal favorite) how to to dispel the fear of interaction in gritty New York City.


As a group, we voted on initiatives to battle the ironic resistance to human interaction in a city as populated as New York. Would it be shirts color-coded to specific moods? Or digital umbrellas that would display your interests, giving your fellow man an opportunity to relate? If you’ve ever been lucky enough to brainstorm with design or advertising creatives, you know the pitfalls (and promise) of having so many people simultaneously generating ideas. Luckily, Humantific’s Garry VanPatter set clear parameters that let us tap into our knowledge, stories and experiences in ways that informed our ideas. And even more luckily, Petri Tanninen was kind enough to jot down all the thoughts and ideas of that brainstorm session at the Wenovski Design Thinking Ning page.


For me, the greatest take away from the unConference was the utter ease in which such various disciplines came together, and how new and innovative ideas followed. One amazing perk of the unConference was being able to ideate solutions with other people free of the bottle neck of client approval. What if a meeting to create a new building, park or playground was organized using this interdisciplinary approach? What if rigid governmental bureaucracy was replaced with groups working in balance, rhythm and harmony, all design school staples of thought? I love being challenged and engaged by thinking from outside my realm of experience because it allows me to start seeing a bigger, more holistic picture. Being in a room with someone like Jeremy Barbour of Tacklebox, who works as an architect when not indulging his many other talents, allowed me to tap into his experiences with design and architecture in China. His knowledge was influential in thinking of the ways in which a city like New York could make its populous not just friendlier to each other, but also to isolated tourists and travelers.

There are several more unConferences in the works so take a look and participate if there’s one coming your way. And special thanks to Jesse Poe and Rowland Hobbs of DMDxd for the invitation, and to Arne van Oosterom of Design Thinkers for coordiating the event. When design is truly great we don’t think of it as design, but as the ways we interact with the world around us. Imagine if we got that feeling from every aspect of our day-to-day lives, and how powerful and liberating that would be.

More coming on the next unConference!
—–
As a strategist, Gitamba Saila-Ngita has helped brands develop strategy and content for the ever changing landscape of digital media. Clients have included Odopod & Evolution Bureau (EVB) on such brands as Pepsi, PayPal, and Gatorade.  He cut his teeth in the marketing and branding world at Stage Two Consulting (S2C), a firm that specializes in branding, social media, and product marketing. There he worked on accounts including Boxee, Netgear, and Sonos.  In his spare time Gitamba founded The Retrospective, an online publication focused on uncovering trends and giving insight into global consumer culture.

DMDxd got a chance to chat with Janet Meiners Thaeler about her new book,  "I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What??" 


We will also be giving away free copies of the book on Friday. To win a copy leave a comment and winners will be chosen randomly on 11/20.

What’s your elevator pitch for I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What?

You’ve thought about pitching your news to the media. Now learn how to pitch your news to a search engine.

Why did you need to write this book?

Too many small business owners and PR firms miss opportunities because they don’t understand SEO or know the power of online press releases. I’ve seen these methods work again and again and I want people to know how to use them for their benefit and for their clients.

Who should read this book, and who shouldn’t?

Anyone who wants to get online publicity for their business or for their client. It’s a very practical guide. It even has templates for you to use and gives options for any budget.

While my book can be used for businesses of all sizes I don’t go into detail about traditional wire services. I will in a future book.

Give it to us quick: Why can’t we just slap a standard press release on the Internet?

It just won’t get the visibility you desire – you need to use a news distribution web site that has authority and gets your news on the top online news sources. I go over how to do this in the book.

Can you give our readers a few quick tips on making a press release “killer”

1. Use links in your press releases – not just to URLs but keyword links.
2. Include a boilerplate that gives all of the ways to connect with your business online (i.e. social networking sites)
3. Take advantage of trends to become an expert and get top placement in search engines.
4. Include a "call to action" in your press release.
5. After sending a press release, use the many free methods online to get your news even more visibility.

What are the differences between being a community organizer and an online marketer? And what are the similarities?

Here’s a great blog post www.connectioncafe.com and chart about that. Sometimes these overlap because building a community online can make for powerful online marketing. However, it’s just one part of online marketing.

Clearly in this day and age, print is not the end of the line. What are you doing to expand the reach of I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What? online?

It’s important to have a print book – even if it’s just sold on Amazon.com. It gets you credibility and there are lots of tools Amazon has to help you sell yourself online.

I set up a Twitter account @onlineprbook and a blog www.OnlinePRBook.com/blog I’ve partnered with folks like Joan Stewart of The Publicity Hound and PRWeb. I speak at events and conferences.

That said, I hope not to do another print book. They are so quickly outdated and I prefer an ebook. They just haven’t reached the respect that an actual book has.

We love that you have a money back guarantee on your book. Do you feel it’ll contribute to stronger sales?

I’m not sure how many people know about it but if they did, yes it should. I also give free copies to bloggers if they agree to post a review. I’ve had people say the book was worth far more than they paid.

If the book is not enough for you, I’m preparing a DVD that will show you the main tools that I use. I walk you through the steps of keyword research, submitting your news and promoting it. It will be priced a bit more but it’s me spending hours teaching you what took me years to learn. My video editor has already seen success just through passive learning he’s done editing the DVD.

My Killer Press Releases DVD will be out next month (December 2009) – watch my site for more information.

And join Janet for her free webinar Wednesday the 18th on PRWeb.

www.newspapergrl.com
@Newspapergrl on Twitter

Welcome to the third installment of our 4 part interview with Author of Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel.

Today Mitch wraps up our talk with:

• The Mystery of Bono
• His fears about Twitter and Blogging
• Who to Follow on Twitter
• How to Measure success

Welcome to the third installment of our 4 part interview with Author of Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel.

Today Mitch talks about:

• Reading War & Peace standing up
• Snackable Content
• Retro-fitting
• Radio to TV to Mobile
• Metallica
• Kanye West
• Being Nice

Listen to Part 3 of Interview with Mitch Joel

Join us tomorrow for our final segment with Mitch Joel, part 4 of this 4 part interview, where we discuss: The mystery of Bono, who to follow on Twitter, metrics and his book Six Pixels of Separation.

Welcome to the second installment of our 4 part interview with Author of Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel.

Today Mitch talks about:

• D&G
• Mobile Marketing
• How 1+1=11
• Snap Tell
• His new Book
• Yelp
• Paul Simon
• Why are Publishers & Newspapers having so much trouble?

Listen to Part 2 of Interview with Mitch Joel

Join us tomorrow for part 3 of this interview, where we discuss new content creators, War and Peace on the subway, & Kanye West, Metallica and being nice!

——-

P.s. if anyone would like the quote that Mitch asked me for. Here it is:

Il Gattopardo di Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

"Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come e, bisogna che tutto cambi."

(translation)

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."

—

Good Morning and welcome to the first installment of our 4 part interview with Author of Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel.

Today Mitch talks about:

• Should we blog?
• Mass Media vs. Mass Content.
• The Beatles.
• Creating Content.
• When is prime-time and when is it ok to not be creating content.
• and more!

Listen to Part 1 of Interview with Mitch Joel

Join us tomorrow for part 2 of this interview, where we discuss, mobile marketing, our generation, and his new book in progress!