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Welcome to the Numberhood

July 26, 2010 – 11:30 pm

Well, this one is a little behind the ball (as usual), but it definitely deserves a post. My band, The Real Numbers, has finally finished our first album, “Welcome to the Numberhood”. W00t!

Seriously, this is a huge achievement. Aside from the long hours spent in the studio. Beyond all the hand-wringing over the album design. Certainly more than the money spent. This is a huge achievement because four guys spent a lot of time together crafting some good songs and then turned their sights on the studio and didn’t let go or give up until they sounded even better. I want to thank those guys because this album would not be possible with out them. Evan, for getting me going. Dave for keeping me going and writing some kick ass tunes (and making my tunes even better). Andy for just being a monster talent whatever booth he’s in. And extra special props to Andy’s company Bay Area Tone.

Most of all, though, this feels like such a huge achievement to me because so much of me is in this album. More than any other project in which I’ve participated over the course of my musical “career,” this music is my music, and this album is a testament to me embracing the musician inside. It marks my growth as a guitar player and my birth as a songwriter. And it reminds me that you can’t run from the creative impulse.

So take a listen. Maybe even buy a copy. Most importantly, enjoy!

As a special bonus, check out the album art below. I love it. Mad props to my friend Wendy MacNaughton for the artwork, and special thanks to David Marr for putting the whole thing together.

Welcome to the Numberhood front cover
Welcome to the Numberhood back cover

By LSG | Posted in Music | Leave a Comment

This Just In….

July 8, 2010 – 4:03 pm

I love it when announcements come across the City wire. The last was about too many city employees watching the Michael Jackson funeral so as to grind the city’s network to a halt. This just came in regarding the Mehserle trial verdict being announced today.

Message from server ENV-01SVR:
Received Thursday, July 08, 2010 3:53:48 PM:

The Mehserle Trial Verdict is being announced at 4 pm – depending on the reaction BART may be shutting down some East Bay stations. If you are counting on riding to the East Bay on BART, you may wish to leave now, or at the very least, monitor the situation.

Now, this is certainly a sensitive issue, but somehow it seems like this message is just fanning the flames. Regardless, receiving messages like these make me feel like part of a family :)

By LSG | Posted in At Work | Leave a Comment

Gettin’ Out and About on the Peninsula

May 14, 2010 – 6:33 pm

Spring is here in San Francisco and the weather has been downright incredible. Consequently, I’ve been trying to get out and about in the California countryside to counteract the sedentary urban lifestyle. Between biking and yoga and the gym, I stay plenty active enough, but none of that can substitute for time immersed in the great out-of-doors. I’ve been delighted to discover that there is an abundance of amazing hiking just a few minutes drive down the peninsula. Two weeks ago I hiked Sweeney Ridge, and today I hiked the Montara Mountain Trail out of San Pedro Valley Park, both near Pacifica. Here’s the map of where I was this morning:

If was pretty damn foggy today, but it made for some great ambience and a refreshing blast of moisture now and again.

And the fog may have kept a lot of other hikers away. I only saw one other group of three hikers, but I did see quite a bit of wildlife, including what I’m pretty sure was a bobcat. Yeah, pretty cool. I also happened across some quail, a couple warblers, juncos and phoebes, a big fat banana slug and a rufous-sided towhee up close and personal. All in all, a beautiful time out on the trail, breaking in some new boots and getting some time away to celebrate my 36th birthday a day early.

By LSG | Posted in Nature | Leave a Comment

Final Thoughts on the Whole Shebang

March 24, 2010 – 6:51 pm

Today, I am back in Bay and in my work clothes — some different pants, shirt tucked in, and on this occasion, a blazer to set the tone. This means, of course, I am no longer in Austin, TX, and the annual event known as South By Southwest has wrapped.

Though woefully non-descript, I use the noun “event” because I’m not quite sure what word best encapsulates SXSW. “Conference” could work, considering all of the amazing sessions by thought leaders and industry bigs, but SXSW is more than just a conference. I’ve tried “festival” on for size, but that seems somewhat too flippant, and gives no credence to the serious work and ideas being shared. In the end I think the word I settled on was “shebang”. As in, “Yep, I’m here for the whole shebang.” Okay, maybe no more descript than “event,” and certainly flippant in its own way, but at least now you understand the dilemma. Words are imperfect, after all.

The whole shebang was quite a run. 10 days, pretty evenly split amongst geeks and rockers. In looking back, I must admit that I found the Interactive portion to be more engaging than Music. Don’t get me wrong, I fully enjoyed the opportunity to take in that much music, but day after night of consuming — be it others’ music or food, alcohol, caffeine, etc. — was not nearly as stimulating as the ideas that flowed prior. In fact, SXSWm began to feel like more of a job than an enjoyment. MUST. GO. SEE. BANDS. In the end, while I saw some amazing performances with some incredible peeps, I really just ended up missing my guitar.

Interactive, on the other hand, was truly wonderful. Not that every session was great, or that those 5 days weren’t overwhelming and tiresome in and of themselves. But on the whole, the tenor of Interactive felt much more broad and transformative. And my suspicions about a stronger community at Interactive turned out to be true. During Music, I never felt that I could turn to the stranger at my side and make an obscure comment or topical joke that would resonate. I met some great folks during the music portion, but what can I say? The geeks get community right.

I’ve heard the rumblings that this was the year that Interactive “jumped the shark,” but I found the quality of the sessions on the whole to be very high, and I came away with a lot to think about and much to inform my work. In the end, I’m a jaded musician, but not a jaded technologist. At least not yet. Perhaps when the bloom is of the digital rose I will feel the same way about Interactive that I did about Music. Until that time, thank you SXSW. I think you will be seeing me again.

By LSG | Posted in Music, SXSW, Technology | Leave a Comment

The Bands of SXSW (or at least 2.3%)

March 22, 2010 – 3:37 pm

The title pretty much says it all. I saw a cubic butt-load of bands at South by Southwest — upwards of 40, but probably way more. I heard that there were over 1700 bands at SXSW this year, so by my calculations I saw about 2.3% of the music being performed.

My full list follows, with a few notable highlights emboldened and expanded upon. Mind you, most of these sets were part of showcases and hence on the short side of 30 minutes, and I certainly didn’t stick around for the entirety of every set. Nonetheless, it was pretty incredible to hear this much music in such a short span of time.

  • Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO – best freak rock of the show…Japanese space oddity thrash that boggles the mind and tests the ear drums
  • Bachelorette
  • Balkan Beat Box – best dance party of the festival, these dudes threw down a mix of eastern european big band, hip-hop and groove that defies categorization and reminded me of how Ozomatli first took the stage by storm
  • Barcelona
  • Bear in Heaven
  • Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore
  • Billy Bragg
  • Birds & Batteries (SF)
  • Born Ruffians – kind of in the vein of the whole Vampire Weekend preppy afro-pop, these Canadian youngsters really impressed with their angular yet smooth song-writing, great vocals and a clean, hollow-body rhythm guitar tone throughout the whole show (who else does that?).
  • Broken Bells
  • Cheeseburger
  • Dawes – plain and simple, tasty alt-country with some nice, soaring vocal hooks
  • DEVO – this actually wasn’t a performance but rather an interview which was more like performance art. DEVO, Inc. has hired a advertising company to market DEVO music like any other product on the shelves, like, say, a package of Charmin toilet paper. The interview included an riotous powerpoint and a live focus group about what DEVO’s new album should be called. These guys may not have been in the limelight for the past few decades, but they haven’t missed a beat
  • Eisley
  • Ferocious Few (SF)
  • Frankie and the Outs
  • Haper Blynn – best power pop of the festival, and maybe the most polished all around performance with great keys, awesome 3-part harmonies and wonderfully concise and catchy songs. I will definitely go see these guys again
  • Hottub (SF)
  • Hurricane Bells
  • Jonathan Tyler & the Northern Lights
  • Kashmir
  • Lou Barlow (of Dinosaur Jr. fame) – solid, dye-in-the-wool indie rock from one of the genre’s pioneers that simultaneously felt unique and fresh
  • Man/Miracle (SF) - of all the San Francisco bands I saw in Austin, these guys impressed me most with some great indie-afro-rock song-writing full of twists and turns and solid vocals delivered with confidence and intensity
  • Minus the Bear
  • Morning Teleportation – best psychedelic rock of the festival….these vintage fashion enthusiasts are young yet, but their high-energy delivery shows great promise
  • Or, the Whale
  • Quasi – did’t realize they rocked so hard…impressive.
  • Royal Bangs – probably the biggest surprise find…a trio of drums, guitar and keys whose ferocious grooves and pounding drums set to some tasty loops reminded me of a southern soul version of Nine Inch Nails. if that kind of thing is possible.
  • Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings – I’ve loved this retro-soul band forever but never had a chance to seethem…they didn’t disappoint. Sharon has a beautiful stage presence and her band is tight, tight tight!
  • Shearwater – kind of alt-country-ish, but probably the best voice I heard all festival…haunting, really.
  • Shinobi Ninja
  • Spoon – these guys get better and better live, what else can you say?
  • Superlitio
  • The Beets
  • The Dutchess and the Duke – eschewing the PA for an intimate set against a rowdy bar backdrop, this Americana duo really impressed me with their harmonies and passion and provided what was probably the most intimate performance I experienced the entire festival.
  • The Lemurs
  • The Low Anthem - part of the new folk movement that the young kids these days adore, replete with hand-pump organ, upright bass and dueling bowed saws…good stuff
  • The Ready Set
  • The Very Best
  • The Walkmen
  • Titus Andronicus
  • Visqueen - maybe my favorite new find of the whole festival…kick ass indie pop-rock from Seattle lead by the beguiling and bad-ass Rachel Flotard.
By LSG | Posted in Music, SXSW | Comments (4)

Across the Spectrum of RAWK – from Geek to Glam

March 17, 2010 – 2:17 pm

It is now Wednesday — the beginning of SXSW Day 7 — and I have been here in Austin for almost a week. Things are starting to change around these parts, and I found myself yesterday feeling a slight sense of loss. Maybe it was a long string of sessions and socializing and too little sleep. To be sure, last night I took a much needed night off to rest up and recuperate before Music kicks in. But most to blame for my blues, I think, was seeing all my Interactive friends, new and old, leave the building, as it were, only to be replaced by a different batch of old friends, and plenty of new ones, to boot. It wasn’t just the people, it was everything they took with them — the geek passion, the futurist slant on present day tech, the strong sense of community, the slovenly chic, the MacBooks, the iPhones, the….I’ll stop there.

Maybe I am jumping to some conclusions, but I can’t see the Music crowd being as cohesive or convivial. I have a sense that there might be a lot of grandstanding and standoffishness to put up with in the next few days — I know I’ve seen enough of that throughout my days in rock ‘n’ roll — but maybe that’s just my projection. So far, though, it is clear that the Music crowd have their own trappings – scruffily slick, cocked hats, deep, dark glasses, headphones, guitars, black leather, the list goes on.

Somehow or another, I walk the line between these two worlds, between geek and glam. I embrace both, but oddly don’t feel a full member of either. I suppose I’ve never been a “joiner,” persay, which might explain my sense of partial-belonging. As SXSW morphs from the stage of ideas to musical ideas on stage, I will be very curious to see how the tenor of community here changes. However it goes down, when you’ve got two of the most awesome, creative communities in the world to celebrate with, why not take a bit of both?

By LSG | Posted in Music, SXSW, Technology | Leave a Comment

More Notes from SXSWi – Medium, Message & Wood Ducks

March 15, 2010 – 2:00 pm

It’s Monday mid-afternoon and I am sitting on a couch at a charging station with geeks of all stripes swirling around me. Those of us on the couches are all, minus one or two, typing away on our shiny silver MacBooks or white iBooks, but if I could see a pastiche of all those screens I’m guessing it would not look so uniform. Sure there would be Twitter and Facebook profiles, but also business plans and invoices, lines of code, maybe even my.SXSW.com. My point is that even though on the outside this army of geeks may look somewhat similar — we do have a stereo type after all: lots of privilege, mostly white, many pairs of eye glasses, a preponderance of gadgets — under the surface this army is concerned with an incredible array of ideas in the digital milieu. And lest you think that milieu is itself limited, just think about how the Internet is so quickly changing everything from science to sociality.

I’ve been experiencing an incredible cross section of this diverse milieu, tailored to my own interests but providing much broader exposure. The sessions I’ve been hitting have ranged from web content strategy to content management systems, from crowdsourcing to the publicity and privacy issues of being a part of the crowd. Of particular general interest was Dan Roam, famous for his Healthcare Napkins slide show. The main thrust of his talk “Blah, Blah, Blah….Why Words Don’t Matter” was to help us understand as communicators that we can’t really share an idea unless we have the ability to both talk about it and show it. Another incredible session was Danah Boyd’s keynote on Privacy and Publicity. This issue is so timely and her research about how we use social media so far ahead of the curve than most discussions of these issues that I plan on posting my notes when I have a chance to clean them up. For the time being and the truly interested, here is the full text of her talk.

At this point I’m going to do something that might smack a bit of self-promotion, but in reality is much more practical…I’ve been tweeting pretty regularly at twitter.com/lsgrodeska and I’d encourage you to take a gander. Not only will you see some tiny morsels I found tasty enough to share, you will also get an idea (I think) of the ebb and flow of ideas and action at SXSW. Sometimes things come clear and fast, other times slow and hazy but in one way or another, everything has just flowed.

And so, on Day 5, nearing the end of Interactive and gearing up for the transition to Music, South by Southwest has not disappointed and Austin has most definitely delighted. Great food, better friends, both new and old, and pristine weather full of sun and warmth during the day and just enough of a chill at night. Most of all, I’ve been throughly enjoying my twice daily bike rides along the river between my hostel and the convention center – once in the morning to the conference and then back later in the day to drop off my bag and regroup before heading back out into the fray.

During one of those rides I happened upon a group Wood Ducks in a small stream behind the convention center that feeds in to the river. Now every time I ride across the bridge that crosses that stream, I’ve stopped and lingered. I’ve seen up to 6 males and 3 or 4 females, and yesterday I even saw a male mount a female. It is spring time, after all. These petite, color-by-numbers creatures have brought some extra joy to my days, and some much needed persepctive on all the heady, techy ideas being batted around. For in this arena of ideas, it is far too easy to miss the forest for the trees. As Marshall McLuhan famously said, the medium may well be the message, but that is precisely why we need to be conscious of the message we want to spread as we build the medium. If we don’t take the time to do so, we run the risk of having the medium determine the message. For me, those ducks are a beautiful, tangible, and very necessary reminder of one message I am trying to bring to the medium — environmental responsibility and collective stewardship of our home, planet Earth. I challenge others to verbalize their own messages as we navigate the information stream that is SXSWi.

By LSG | Posted in Nature, SXSW, Technology | Comments (2)

First Notes from South By

March 12, 2010 – 1:54 pm

Well, I’m here. After an overnight flight from SFO to AUS through Dallas, and only a few hours of in-flight sleep, I touched down and made my way to the HI Hostel in Austin to drop my bags and settle in. This included chillin’ at the hostel, bangin’ on the shared guitar in the common area, some food, and some coffee, once I realized that sleep would NOT be included.

My next step was procuring a rental bicycle from a fellow I met through Craigslist. Renting a bike has turned out to be both a brilliant idea to get between my hostel a bit off the beaten path and all the action, as well as quite an imposition — I blew an inner tube mere hours after picking up the bike. Don’t worry, I’m fine, and my man James has been a very responsible rentee. He actually rode out to where I was with a new tube and all the necessary tools. Now that’s Texan hospitality.

Anyway, I’m here, and I’m actually sitting in my first session — How To Rock SXSW, a primer of what to expect and how to make it to the finish line in one piece. If anything, that’s what I’ve come to realize so far. SXSW is a marathon of ideas, sessions, parties, people, music and who knows what else. Since I’ve elected to be here for the whole thing, I’m going to try to pace myself. One practical strategy? I figure the more sessions I go to, the better off I’ll be.

So, to close, here’s a list of sessions that I’m interested in attending:

What Are Analytics? A Guide To Practical Data
Time + Social + Location. What’s Next In Mobile Experiences?
Mind Control: Psychology for the Web
How Nerds Can Foster Democracy in Local Government
Moon 2.0: The Outer Limits of Lunar Exploration
Gmail: Behind the Scenes
Is The Brain The Ultimate Computer Interface
Mapping and Geolocation: Turnkey Approaches You Need to Know
SXSW Interview: Cheap Trick
Devo, the Internet and You

And the list goes on. With sessions like this, if my body manages to make it to the finish line, it might just be with blown mind. Wish me luck!

By LSG | Posted in SXSW | Tags: , , | Leave a Comment

I Love Me Some Maps

March 9, 2010 – 12:01 am

I love me some maps. I really do. I love looking at them, everything from transit maps to road maps to topo maps. And I love making them. Every once in a while I get the chance to fool around in a GIS program like the venerable ArcMap and I always have fun. I won’t say that it is 100% fun — GIS can get pretty involved and ArcMap, in particular, is one of these power-user programs like Photoshop that can drown you in all kinds of high-end functionality — but bottom line, figuring out how to best present information geo-spatially is a pretty cool design challenge.

Soooo….a few weeks back when Arthur Robin Boone, the Bay Area Godfather of recycling, asked for some help compiling a map of local full service organics (FSO) collection programs, I readily volunteered my limited GIS services. Below is the map I created in ArcMap which will be shown at the 15th Annual Recycling Update, a great program put on by the Northern California Recycling Association.

By LSG | Posted in At Work, The Urban Environment | Tags: , , | Leave a Comment

Snapshot: Late February 2010

February 27, 2010 – 6:25 pm

It’s been a while since I’ve written. Quite frankly, the last two months have been kind of depressing, hence the blog absence. It’s been a cold and rainy winter here in SF — I know, I know, nothing to complain about relative to the winter everyone else has been having — but still, it’s been tough to motivate out of bed in the morning. Work has felt like a lot of, well, busy work. Politics has been bumming me out more than usual. All in all, I’ve been feeling fairly uninspired and amotivated.

Thankfully, I turned the corner about a week ago, thanks to some much needed personal care. Eight days on the Master Cleanse and plenty of yoga has helped to purge some of the ennui. My body is feeling great and my mind is on the mend. Amazing what a little self love will do. Beyond that, just this week, the mixing for The Real Numbers album has really come together and we should have a final mix by next weekend. My virgin visit to South By Southwest in awesome Austin, TX is a mere 10 days away, which leaves me quivering with anticipation and somewhat overwhelmed. And I’ve had reason to look forward to a new focus and some interesting projects at work.

Sitting here this afternoon, I’m looking forward to hearing The Magnetic Fields at the Fox Theater in Oakland, and all the good stuff on the Spring horizon. I hope to do some more regular blogging from SXSW, so until then, peace out.

By LSG | Posted in At Home | Leave a Comment