You probably know that your fanbase is rabid. To what degree do you relate to your weird following?
Having been to tons of shows over the past ten years, I beleive I can say I am one of these fans.
If you could have it any way, would you want a multitude of lukewarm rockstar-type fans like the arena bands have, or would you prefer to have a small handful of devoted-if-not-borderline-psychotic fans?
What was your favorite Christmas present ever?
Do you think of yourselves as workingman type performing musicians or more as artistically motivated recording artists? Considering the examples of work from "State Songs" and Monopuff...
John Linnell: I am especially interested in your work on State Songs. What motivated your decision to include so much "found audio" on the record? Since so much of your sound on that album seemed to come from highly organic sources (carousel, parades, ambient noise), what do you think of other groups (like the Beta Band) that use similar techniques?
What do you think of some recent pop groups' departures from typical blues oriented progressions into less structured styles? (Radiohead to name one.)
Where is the pop song going and what happened to Stephin Merrit?
P.S.--
Please come South again soon. When you were in Winston-Salem we packed Ziggy's to the rafters. Wake Forest University and NC seem to like you. ____________________________
Because tool is all that computer is. It's not a piece of art, it's not a personal friend -- it is a mere tool. Like a hammer or a pencil or anything. Only a bit more versatile.
I have a dream where you walk up to a computer (at that time rather a terminal), you touch it - and the usage of it is as evident to you as the usage of a hammer.
Mark Weiser at Xerox PARC had the same dream of ubiquitous computing. Many small computers embedded around us that function invisibly without the user having to worry about OS, software, hardware, etc.
PDAs are close, but they aren't transparent enough to us because we still have to fool around with the clumsy interface.
Tivo is closer, is acts like an appliance should-- hiding the underlying operations and recording my shows. I don't have to worry about filemanagement or any crap like that in my VCR, it just works.
In the morning, I just want to turn the knob for darker toast, I don't want to tweak the toaster kernel and recompile...(meanwhile on my PC, I enjoy the tweaking)
Back to the point: I agree that OSes should shift to make our computers more like tools, but I don't think Linux and MacOS are particularly wrong for it. ____________________________
Slashdot Mirror
To TMBG:
You probably know that your fanbase is rabid. To what degree do you relate to your weird following?
Having been to tons of shows over the past ten years, I beleive I can say I am one of these fans.
If you could have it any way, would you want a multitude of lukewarm rockstar-type fans like the arena bands have, or would you prefer to have a small handful of devoted-if-not-borderline-psychotic fans?
What was your favorite Christmas present ever?
Do you think of yourselves as workingman type performing musicians or more as artistically motivated recording artists? Considering the examples of work from "State Songs" and Monopuff...
John Linnell: I am especially interested in your work on State Songs. What motivated your decision to include so much "found audio" on the record? Since so much of your sound on that album seemed to come from highly organic sources (carousel, parades, ambient noise), what do you think of other groups (like the Beta Band) that use similar techniques?
What do you think of some recent pop groups' departures from typical blues oriented progressions into less structured styles? (Radiohead to name one.)
Where is the pop song going and what happened to Stephin Merrit?
P.S.-- Please come South again soon. When you were in Winston-Salem we packed Ziggy's to the rafters. Wake Forest University and NC seem to like you.
____________________________
Because tool is all that computer is. It's not a piece of art, it's not a personal friend -- it is a mere tool. Like a hammer or a pencil or anything. Only a bit more versatile.
I have a dream where you walk up to a computer (at that time rather a terminal), you touch it - and the usage of it is as evident to you as the usage of a hammer.
Mark Weiser at Xerox PARC had the same dream of ubiquitous computing. Many small computers embedded around us that function invisibly without the user having to worry about OS, software, hardware, etc.
PDAs are close, but they aren't transparent enough to us because we still have to fool around with the clumsy interface.
Tivo is closer, is acts like an appliance should-- hiding the underlying operations and recording my shows. I don't have to worry about filemanagement or any crap like that in my VCR, it just works.
In the morning, I just want to turn the knob for darker toast, I don't want to tweak the toaster kernel and recompile...(meanwhile on my PC, I enjoy the tweaking)
Back to the point: I agree that OSes should shift to make our computers more like tools, but I don't think Linux and MacOS are particularly wrong for it.
____________________________