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Perry Farrell, I love you man!

Perry Farrell caught rocking out

Today was one of those karmically awesome days where good things happen, just because! I was lucky enough to see Perry Farrell and Satellite Party rock out today. Twice! For free! Thanks to Corey’s tweet, I stumbled across this scene outside the Virgin Megastore in SF today. Perry and the band were doing a little street gig, complete with little mini portable amps and snare drums. I only caught the last couple of songs, Porno for Pyro’s Tahitian Moon and Jane’s Been Caught Stealing with Perry being all whimsical grabbing people’s hats and one dude’s mega iced Starbucks drink. There couldn’t have been more than 30 people not including the band.

After the awesomeness went quiet, I walked up to Perry’s beautiful wife Etty and it went something like this: Do you know if the show tonight is sold out? It isn’t, would you like to go? I’d love to go! I can put you on the guest list? That would be awesome, are you serious? I love you!!

It’s weird, over the years I’ve had several random occasions to bump into Perry and I’d always tell my pal Carlton about them. So I called him and put Perry on the line. It went something like: Hey this is Perry Farrell and I’m standing on Market street with your friend… what’s your name? Eddie… who looks like a nice enough guy. Hi!

Sure enough, Etty didn’t disappoint and neither did Jane’s Addiction, I mean Satellite Party. Third song in was Mountain Song and before the night was out they had ripped through most of my Jane’s faves: Stop!, Been Caught Stealing, Jane Says and a couple from 2003 Jane: Just Because and Superhero. Porno for Pyro’s stuff too, Tahitian Moon and the happy singalong Pets. Whatever was left, which wasn’t much, must of been Satellite songs.

Perry was beaming love to the crowd and the crowd was bouncing it right back. Lots of high fives and hugging and thoughtful sentiments, even the pit was all love, mostly. At one moment, Perry stopped to take a nice fat hit off a fan’s pipe. The crowd exploded. During the encore, Perry brought out a bottle of wine and poured the sacrament in many waiting open mouths. He then pulled a couple of cuties from the crowd up on stage and then more and more. Etty did the same filling the stage. One cutie was doing some nice sexy dance thing with Etty which the house manager or whomever didn’t like much. She was kicking people off the stage as Perry was pulling people up.

The message of the night was celebration, love, hope and a brighter future. Or was it sex, drugs and rock n roll? Same thing really.

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Rachel demos the KGB at Paradise Lost

Scott Beale does it again, throwing the only party that matters in this town. Ritual Roasters which is embedded at Flora Grubb Gardens where the party was held, were serving some interesting liquor packed coffee drinks and shots. Here’s a quick video of Miss Rachel Amazonia along with Ritual’s Eileen giving a demonstration on how the KGB shot is constructed and consumed. Shot on the awesome waterproof Sanyo Xacti E1 that Japanese videoblogger superstar Tajee hooked me up with.

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

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Blogerati Night at the SF Symphony

Blogger night at the SF Symphony
photo by George Kelly

My pals Liane and Kevin tipped me off to a special “citizen media” night at the San Francisco Symphony last week that Kevin organized. Now I don’t normally clock up a lot of ear time with classical music generally, but l can throw down to some Tchaikovsky and Strauss now and again. As luck would have it, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo & Juliet and Strauss’ Don Juan were on the bill this evening.

I invite Audra and we show up at the appointed time outside the side entrance to the Davies Symphony Hall. There’s maybe a couple dozen of us milling about until we are escorted into the famed Green Room where Pepperidge Farm cookies and wine await. Yes, this is a high class affair. The carpet is green but not much else, thankfully. After an introduction from the Symphony’s Communication Department, we get our complimentary tickets and head up to our seats in the orchestra section.

Good seats, beautiful hall, the band, I mean orchestra is already seated and ready for the conductor to enter. He does and we get under way with Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy-Overture. I’m digging it but I can’t seem to stop my mind from wandering. I keep thinking about work related crap and repeatedly try and eject such thoughts from my mind so I can fully take in the romance emanating from the stage.

I look down and notice a brass plaque on my seat with David Packard‘s name engraved on it. I ponder if the famous HP co-founder had ever plopped his cheeks in the very seat in which my cheeks now sat snug. Just as I think that might be a weird thought, the first piece seems to quickly end.

After Don Juan, it’s intermission and we hurry back to the Green Room for a meet and greet with the short, young conductor James Gaffigan. The polished communicator from the Communications Department does a lot of communicating, leaving only a enough time for a couple of questions before Mr. Gaffigan has to hurry back upstairs to prepare for the second half of the program. There’s also a horn player from the orchestra present, who’s name I missed. He sticks around a bit longer and takes on a few more questions, some regarding the influence of online communication on the orchestral fraternity. No, he doesn’t have a Myspace page but his 13 year old daughter does.

The second half of the program is a long and often energetic piano concerto by Rachmaninoff entitled Piano Concerto No. 3. The pianist is a young and beautiful Venezuelan graduate from Juilliard named Gabriela Martinez. (She has one of the cleanest, easiest to read Myspace pages I just discovered). While the accompanying orchestra are all glued to their sheet music, Ms. Martinez nails the highly technical concerto from memory. A brilliant performance, easily deserving of the four rounds of applause she garners.

We stick around for the open Q&A with the conductor and Ms. Martinez and then a few of us head off to Sauce for a late night dessert. This was the first time I’ve experienced the SF Symphony in her home and I am dully impressed. I think I could really get into this.

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Podcast Hotel

Podcast Hotel

Podcast Hotel, a cool casual conference around independent audio and video podcast making, is happening this weekend in San Francisco. It takes place at the Swedish American Hall, a favorite venue for indie media makers. I’ll be moderating this session on Saturday:

1:30 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
The State of Vlogging: What’s new?
How is the community evolving? How can artists get into vlogging as a way to promote themselves and their work? We will address how enabling technologies have changed the way we view and create video content online; are broader audiences ready? Will there be increased demand as with online video sites? How will this impact news distribution in the future?

Moderator:
Eddie Codel, PodTech and Geek Entertainment TV

Speakers:
Adriana Gascoigne, bub.blicio.us
Schlomo Rabinowitz, Vloggercon/CNET
Justin Kan, Justin.tv
Josh Wolf, The Revolution will Be Televised

I’m psyched to have such an esteemed panel of online video movers and shakers. Josh Wolf is free now after achieving the status of longest jailed journalist in American history. Justin Kan has made international headlines over the past month for being the first person to “lifecast” himself. Schlomo has his short stubby fingers in more vlog pies that I can name. Adriana reports for party scenesters bub.blicio.us and worked previously at video hosting site Guba. Come on down or watch the action lifecast on justin.tv.

Coalition Demands That San Francisco Reject Google/Earthlink Monopoly Deal

For Release: Contact: Bruce Wolfe (SFPO) 415.867.5995
Thursday, January 25, 2007 Eric Brooks (Our City), 415.756.8844

Coalition Demands That City Reject Google/Earthlink Monopoly Deal
and Instead Give San Franciscans Truly Free, High Speed, Public Internet

Today, Public Net San Francisco, a coalition of various community groups and Internet professionals, insisted that the City of San Francisco cancel the pending Google/Earthlink monopoly WiFi deal, and instead use the City’s existing high speed fiber optic network as the backbone to build a truly modern, fast, and free, public communications system.

Groups releasing the statement included the San Francisco People’s Organization (SFPO), Our City, the community wireless network SFLan, and Internet services provider United Layer.

Their statement follows closely on the heels of a report just released by the San Francisco Budget Analyst’s Office, which makes clear that the Google/Earthlink deal will result in an inferior monopoly franchise that will give San Franciscans much slower access than nearly all other cities providing municipal Internet, and more importantly, will fail to serve the intended core goal of the project – to make certain that all San Franciscans, regardless of their income, get free fast and equal access to the Internet.

The report states that the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services (DTIS) acted far too hastily in adopting the monopoly deal, without seeking sufficient input from the public, and notably failing to include possibilities for using over 35 miles of city owned fiber optic cable to build a much more robust system, that could be owned by the public, and could provide all San Franciscans with free Internet service at least ten times faster access speeds than the Google/Earthlink plan. The City and its residents should not give away its ability to self-determine its destiny. The people deserve a real choice.

Said Bruce Wolfe of the San Francisco People’s Organization, “I don’t get it. DTIS spent over a year coming up with this plan and it doesn’t even serve its primary goal of making sure that everybody in San Francisco, regardless of income, gets free and equal Internet access. Smooth video, and clear phone calls, are becoming basic uses of the Internet. This deal provides neither to nonpaying users, leaving them in the digital dust.”

Eric Brooks with the local grassroots organization Our City stated, “After nearly a century of San Franciscans suffering rip-offs and incredibly bad service under the monopoly control of our public utilities by corporations like PG&E, Comcast, and AT&T, it amazes me that DTIS can stand there with a straight face and try to convince us that we should let a multinational corporate partnership own and control our new public communications system.”

Tim Pozar with United Layer, the Internet services provider that installed a free Internet system for users in San Francisco’s Alice Griffith housing project, stated, “The Budget Analyst’s report shows clearly what we have been saying to the City for over a year now. If we go for municipal ownership of a system that makes use of all the City’s public assets, including the high speed ring of fiber optic cable lying only half used right under our feet, we can get a vastly superior, and 10 to 100 times faster system, than the clunker being offered to us by Earthlink and Google.”

Ralf Muehlen, who already provides free Internet access to hundreds of San Franciscans through the nonprofit community wireless network SFLan concluded, “The big problem with the Earthlink system is that it uses a slow, wireless-only backbone that cannot accommodate even today’s needs let alone the needs of the next 16 years. 300 kilobits per second is so 1997; it’ll be utterly ridiculous in 2023, which is how long Earthlink’s monopoly will last. Earthlink has little incentive to upgrade, and their non-fiber backbone has no spare capacity. A hybrid network, that uses both wireless and existing fiber can support much higher speeds and is more robust. We already paid for the City’s fiber with our taxes, we should now put it to good use.”

Endorsing Organizations (not full list)

San Francisco People’s Organization – 2940 16th St. #314, SF, CA 94103, http://www.sfpeople.org
Press Contact: Bruce Wolfe, brucewolfe@sfpeople.org, Skype: brucew-sf

Our City – 1028-A Howard St., SF, CA 94103, http://our-city.org
Press Contact: Eric Brooks, info@our-city.org

United Layer – 200 Paul Ave. #110, SF, CA 94124, http://www.unitedlayer.com
Contact: Tim Pozar, pozar@barwn.org

SFLan – 116 Sheridan Ave., SF, CA 94129, http://www.sflan.org
Contact: Ralf Muehlen, sflan+press@muehlen.com