closing time.

blog is dead.
(or something like that)

i'm upgrading to a more "2.0" format.

check me out at andrewfurth.tumblr.com

one love and good music,
- andrew

fireflies

i grew wings.
my baby taught me to sing.
listen to that young people music.
spinning fast.
never lasts.

until the moment i figured out, what the moment was all about.
wrote it down.
light a match.
get attached.
until your artistry is snatched by greedy mouths.

and the night sky.
song. cry.
women wine.

and the sun. fly.
so high.
too much pride.

paper burn and fireflies.

and then your brothers will shoot you down.
just shouldn't carry around what makes you smile.
call it truth.
more like youth.
masquerading as an old man in denial.

and the night sky.
song. cry.
women wine.

and the sun. fly.
so high.
too much pride.

paper burn and fireflies.

crush.

young people music to get stoned and discover love to. sex and happiness - drugs and invincibility. innocence. growth.

and you move past it.

into a world of plastic flowers, adult conversation, and proper etiquitte. words are minced, emotion faked, truth only as often as talk is straight.

and it moves past you.

as the weight of the 9-5 leaves its footprints all over your ambition. as your inhibitions overtake any sort of dream-filled vision of what you can offer tomorrow.

except for the lucky few.

we put them up on pedestals and record stores and bookshelves. revealing themselves at the perfect time.

a long lost friend.

a window to the discovery of someone else’s immortality.

power. authenticity. a rose. your first time. all that’s pure and real and makes you feel so much.

a crush.

die tomorrow, live today. say it your own way, with action and expression - not conflict and oppression.

lest you be crushed.

trip-el-et.

it seems good things come in threes.

the three legs of the iconic peace image that drove revolution and change. the three leaves on a the clover that never seems to age. the three beats in a waltz... like the last one on fillmore's stage.

yet if i write with a rhythm that can be arranged into threes, it seems that i start to lose peoples' attention.

they say they only want things in fours.

four over four. eight over eight. it seems like society wants it straight... they want it in a predictable, digestible, vaccinated production that lacks soul. without this soul it is empty... a person who seems to have lost the will to live. music and art and revolution full of such empty promises and misguided desires can culminate in progress or regression. obviously, regression is fucking weak.

so we've identified the problem with thinking in fours - its regressive.

many revolutionaries, from the beatles to those fools in the management dptmt. have utilized four/four. doesn't it get old?

maybe.

this leads me (in a roundabout-never-thought-i-would-get-there-way) to my point. four-on-the-floor funk just seems to hit your deepest parts better than almost any other kind of beat. it's the 1, 2, 3, 4 that makes the world go round and keeps my heart beating.

feel no pain.

that's the only thing about music that matters. luckily, it's just three words.

--------------------

#intheheadphones :: bob marley - rastaman vibration

roots. rock. reggae.
yup, of course it's a three.
trip-el-et.

drive. wind. dead.

tin can, suntan; pen running circles round the words between the lines.

you'd better head back to tennessee, jed. you'd better not remember me dead. fade back to where you came from black jack smack in the middle of the war between the times.

sometimes streams run through my thoughts and make their way onto a page. sometimes bob speaks to you and sometimes the sun is pouring tears of rage. it feels ambitious and futile, but i want to keep trying.

to change it all.

re: social media hustlas...

so i had a few solid responses on the last blog.

got me to thinking: i think a lot of you guys are dead on when you talk about how bad for business monetizing social media might be.

here's my short, simple solution... and it, too, is on the consumer to be selective:

the consumer has to start to value advertising and communications that improve their life (rather than try to sell them product). if brands that provide you value - be it entertainment, health benefits, love advice, etc. - start to sell more product, the advertising and marketing world will be forced to change in order to keep pace.

just look at the brands that are using twitter well right now - whole foods, target, and now best buy (based on their new commercial of a woman shouting to a football stadium of help technicians... brilliant btw). they are embracing new media, adding value to their customer experience, and grabbing share of market at a time when people are looking to start spending again.

maybe these new media channels won't need to charge for services, but they will become a forum for people to interact with brands. we need to reward those brands that are communicating well by buying their products.

this might be a little out there, so here's an example:
zappos has changed the way people think about customer service and ease-of-ordering online. of course, their competitors are starting to adopt their practices in order to survive. this improves the experience for potential online shoe-shoppers, no matter where they order from.

in the same way, if whole foods is changing their product offerings, customer service structure, etc. because a few people hit them up on twitter with suggestions, their grocery store will sell more product. their competitors will have to adjust and become more communicative themselves, and the consumer wins.

so start rewarding those entities (retail, etc.) that communicate well with you as a consumer... it'll make the world a better place for all.

-----------------------------

#intheheadphones :: wilco (the album)

well, wilco has done it again. in the opening title track, "wilco (the song)," jeff tweedy croons, "wilco will love you baby," and describes his sextet as a "sonic shoulder for you to cry on." this record is unbelievable. lead guitarist nels cline continues to gracefully blend art rock, jazz, and country twang to accent tweedy's insightful lyricism and composition.

buy this. ideally on vinyl...

put up, or shut up.

so my twitter account has been down for about a week now, after some issues with twitter.search caused me to disable my account.

i can't restore it because my registered e-mail is invalid. i may not be able to get my 1,500 followers back or have access to my carefully-crafted voice, etc.

after swearing at the computer a bit, laughing at twitter's automated e-mail responses, and otherwise killing time on the weekend, my annoyance led me to think about whether or not the channel is useful, whether it's a "flash in the pan," etc.

as much as it currently bothers me, i've decided that twitter is pretty functional (i know, groundbreaking insight, right?). in spite of its infancy, it has extreme value as the evolution of marketing and journalism. brands, celebrities, politicians, etc. communicate directly to the consumer. there is no third party editorializing, zero filter, and nothing to stop an individual from communicating with his or her chosen personality.

my only fear for twitter is that they are furthering the perception of modernity that things on the internet should be free.

hosting isn't free.
tech development isn't free.
legal consult isn't free.

so why wouldn't you expect to pay for a service like this? to top it off, the minute a site tries to monetize by including advertisements, its users complain that the site has "sold out," and that "the man is wrecking their internet lives."

get over it.

if the advertising is respectful, if it provides value to you (the consumer), and if it is targeted to start conversations that you personally might find interesting or insightful, then you have nothing to complain about.

either put up, or shut up.

cause this sh*t ain't free, homie...