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The Noah Plotkin Project

If you're hanging out in the Chicago suburbs tonight, check out this next generation epic musical voyage.



More info here

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Deep Fried Turkey from Cajun Pacific

Thanks!

Free Ad-Supported WiFi

Greg writes about CBS's New York 'Hyper Local' Ad Zone

Great, now do this at every Airport in the country.

Thank you Ben C.

After 10 years of playing together, Tea Leaf Green bassist Ben Chambers has announced that he is leaving the band.

I had a lot of fun with Ben Chambers over the course of his career. We laughed a ton and experienced some of my favorite musical peaks together. He was a strong force on the stage, tons of personality and always enhanced the vibe. He will surely be missed in the dynamic of the band. I have a high degree of respect for someone who can step out of what they're doing on a daily basis and make the life changing decision that they're looking for something else. It's not quitting, it's stopping. At a certain point for any professional musician, it becomes more about what they want for themselves than necessarily the fans want for them. It seems that this occurs more around the 10 year mark, or after they turn 30...as someone once said.

Of course adding even more intrigue to this storybook is the fact that they've tapped one of my favorite bass players in the world to fill the void, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey's Reed Mathis. JFJO was one of the first bands we covered on JamBase back in 2001. Talk about worlds colliding. The Fred don't have plans until mid-year '08, so it's opportunity for Reed, and Tea Leaf, to connect again. Reed sat in for a large Hot Dog at the High Sierra Music Festival this past summer. Their first show together will be TLG's next show on December 7th in Santa Cruz. There will be no Ben C farewell show. The last Planet has been sung.

As the evolutions and de-evolutions of the band progresses into the future, it will be interesting and hopefully continually entertaining to see how they embrace this transition with the type of poise and grace they have met their previous career show moments. It's a unique thing to devote your trust to an artful organization, in simple hopes that they will deliver you to the great bliss moment of epic fist pumping triumphancy. I still have faith. I still beleive, in Tea Leaf Green.

Thank you Ben C, no words can amount to show the joy that you bring.

It feels appropriate to end this post one of Ben's finer contribution to our musical landscape.

Addressing the Community
Words by Ben Chambers

Well I’m a bass man, loving the crowd,
I came to get up, I came to get down
I use to always dream about the band,
Gettin’-a rock, maybe shake a few hands

So its easy to say that I’m happy today
And I didnt even need a jay.
I didn’t even need a jay.

We’re not everybody’s cup of Tea,
But we play from the heart see,
And my name is Ben C.
I try to make my bass lines silky,
Sometimes they’re filthy,
That’s when they call me Milky

I got a bucket of bud, gotta girl that I love
I got a beat that makes me fly like a dove
I guess it’s easy to see, I be the freak that I be
Coming to your town to let my flows be free
You know Snoop Dogg, I understand you better today.
And I still got something to say
I still got something to say

All you haters, stop spreading your seed,
Choppin’ up the music man you’re killin the scene
It ain’t about who’s best, it’s about good times,
About the rhythm, about the rhymes

I’m about to bust, into your door,
To give you some flow baby you knew I was pro
This is Beak, he came to speak,
I brought my cheeks all the way from the Austrian peaks,
To the San Francisco Bay…
And I didn’t even need a jay.

(Chours)
And I didn’t even need a jay…today
Everything is so heavy
And I didn’t even need a jay…today
Everything is so heavy

Don’t be hateful be grateful,
For the groove on your table
Don’t be hateful be grateful
For the groove on your table

Now I can see your cold face,
You’re riding the bar
Hate all you want, kid we’re still going far
Cuz we work hard and play harder than that
And we’re just stars and it’s a natural fact.
We attack the stage when we’re rippin’ a set,
Get about as nutty as a Vietnam vet
I’ll teach ya lil’ a thing or two about sweat boy,
You’re talking to me I don’t believe that we’ve met:

We’ve got The Beak.
We got Scotty Rage.
Not to mention Balls and T-bone on the stage.
We’re gonna form like Voltron and do what we please,
And if you do not like it don’t go cryin to me
Just dont show, hey we can still be bros,
but you never really know which way a Leaf blows

So many haters try to ruin your day,
Just ask my boy Trey

And I didn’t even need a jay…today
Everything is so heady
And I didn’t even need a jay
Everything is so heady.
Don’t be hateful be grateful
For the groove that’s on your table
Don’t be hateful be grateful
For the groove that’s on your table

Bring the Green!

Don’t be hateful be grateful
For the groove on your table
Don’t be hateful be grateful
For the groove that’s on your table

I'm Missing Shows!

JamBase's web hosting company, Rackspace, had a major power outage tonight in their Dallas data center, which happens to host our servers. As a result, the site was down for about 2 hours, no connectivity, nothing.

Apparently bad news travels quickly, and within minutes TechCrunch, valleywag, and laughing squid were posting updates to the incident. Turns out we live amidst good company, as our well respected friends 37 Signals are also hosted there.

Luckily, we're back up now...all systems are a go.

I figured this is as good of a time as any to bring to light some of the updates and activity that have gone on for 'da base in the past few months.

Since launching the newly redesigned and re-architectured JamBase website in August, we got a flurry of feedback from our community, both good and bad. Sifting through and processing all the responses and reactions to the new site has been a challenging process, as I've been at the center of the storm, replying to each email individually and reading every comment with an over-sensitive, critical eye for what can be made better. I've had to keep reminding myself that everyone has an opinion, typically the complaints get heard the loudest, and making something better for one person will inevitably break it for someone else.

With all that in mind, we focused the initial 'post-launch' fixes on what was legitimately broken. Actual, non-opinionated bugs which anyone could look at and say, "yea, that doesn't work quite right". While we did extensive testing before launch, we couldn't possibly account for the infinite combination of searches, individual preferences and random issues that popped up from a total overhaul.

This past Friday we pushed up another set of fixes and enhancements, and we're excited to finally be getting into some new stuff after a few months of simply addressing the bugs.

Most notably is the addition of a new "Show Finder" on the homepage. We heard loud and clear the cries that people wanted the advanced search functions first thing when they visited the site, and not have to find them or stumble into them. I hope this alleviates some of the previous stress and anxiety.

We also added Google Maps to the event info pages. We'd been wanting to do this for several years, ever since I put the JamBase Maps feature together. Props to Mason for working it out.

While this latest release symbolically represents a nice point of tackling most of the factual bug fixes, we've still got our hands full. We've become extremely fanatical about Search and are working on improving our main search functions to create the best live music search experience in the world. If you run across an unexpected search experience on JamBase and want to help us test our new index, please email bugs[at]jambase.com and we'll invite you to the group.

We've of course got our eyes set on a solid set of new enhancements and features, but I'll save the details until we're ready to announce.

Rest assured, these past few months have taught us a tremendous amount about building a solid product which keeps fans happy, while also appreciating the various different perspectives and merits of testing early and often.

One final comment on this. A bunch of people have written in to say, "If it ain't broken, don't fix it!" I kind of agree with this, if you're talking about a refrigerator. With JamBase, we felt that we had taken it about as far as we could go with the previous design and infrastructure. While it might have worked perfectly for your show going needs after years of adapting to that format, we have high hopes for what the service can become. By tearing it apart and putting it back together again, it allowed us to take a critical look at all of our features, understand what people really use and want and give us a chance to make it even better for the future.

I sincerely appreciate people sticking with us as it felt like we were taking a step back to hopefully take two steps forward, and know that we have an ongoing commitment to never settling and constantly focusing on what you, the fan wants.

That is, if they can keep the lights on...

Steel Train's Trampoline

I could go into depth about how I've played this on repeat for a few weeks, fawned over the brilliance of Along on the Sea, Leave You Traveling and Women I Belong To...but you can just give it a listen here and enjoy it for yourself...

Keith's Special Comment on Waterboarding

In case you missed it on Monday...

Seattle

This past weekend I ventured up to Seattle to speak on a panel at the MusicTech conference put on by the Grammy association.

It was the second time I'd been to Seattle, and both times the weather was gorgeous, albeit this time is was briskly cold, reminding me of sweet home Chicago. They tell me it's gray and rains there all the time. I've yet to see it.

The conference was pretty cool, held at the Experience Music Project and had what looked to be a little over 100 attendees. Mostly artists and local industry folks, they covered a broad range of music-web topics like download prices, licensing, royalty, streaming, social networking and my on panel: touring and technology.

On Friday night I went out to check out Sun O)) on Skerik's recommendation. Unfortunately, I didn't last through the two opening bands, which took a page from the headliner's lead and played consistently loud Drone Metal music. Not my primary genre, and I felt as if I was having somewhat of an allergic reaction and needed to vacate the building as quickly as I arrived. I'm not kidding.

Inspired to implement Genre classifications on jambase as quickly as possible, I roamed the streets for a bit longer before crashing in my heavenly bed at the Westin.

Overall it was a nice visit up north, and I appreciated being involved in an event which tries to intelligently discuss the current state of the music industry.

I've also found it somewhat refreshing to fly back on a Saturday. You really don't worry about missing much or needing to check your voicemail when you land, and you can typically fly standby on an earlier flight. Thanks Alaska Air.