If you grew up in the 80s like me, especially as a teenager, Ready Player One is a book for you.
For fans of retro arcade games, 80s music and movies, MMOs, cyberpunk, roleplaying and early computers like the TRS-80, it weaves them all into a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
I can’t do it justice, so read the summary here. Â And then buy it and read it, you won’t be disappointed.
This Friday, my son and I are going to the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul to see the season finale of Minnesota Public Radio’s Wits series. Each performance features an interview with a cultural icon, a musical guest and other guests. I purchased tickets for this one specifically because of the featured guest: Neil Gaiman. Mr. Gaiman is touring in support of the tenth anniversary of his first novel, the class American Gods.
I vividly remember the first time I read American Gods. I knew of Neil Gaiman through his groundbreaking comic, Sandman, but American Gods blew me away. I remember thinking, “How does this Englishman know of all these Midwest landmarks?!” And when they stopped at a Culvers just outside of Madison… It wasn’t until a few years later than I learned he had relocated to Wisconsin, not too far from the Minnesota border. The book’s take on mythology and its plot quickly made it a classic.
I had the opportunity to see Neil Gaiman speak and do a book signing a few years ago when his last collection of short stories, Fragile Things, was published. He’s an engaging speaker and listening to him read from his stories is a thrill in itself. (I also won the raffle in support of the CBLDF):
This week’s musical guess is Josh Ritter and the hosts are John Moe of MPR and John Munson. Mr. Munson was formerly in the bands Trip Shakespeare and Semisonic. Back in (probably) 1994, for the only time in my life, I won concert tickets on the radio from Mary Lucia at Rev105 to see a showcase of Minnesota acts at First Avenue. One band in particular, Pleasure, just blew me away – it was one of the tightest bands I’ve ever seen, and I didn’t know a single song. I moved out east and never heard about the band again. A year or two later, a friend from the Twin Cities moved out east to work with me, and I asked him about Pleasure. He excitedly informed me they had changed their name to Semisonic and I bought their debut album the same day. (You probably know them from their big hit, Closing Time).
In addition, guests at Wits this week appearing via the phone include Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, and more.
Can’t wait – both for the show and to introduce my son to seeing Neil Gaiman live.
A few links to wrap up your week:
Some links to get you through your day:
Here’s some music news from the last few months you may have missed while I was being a slacker and not blogging.
One of the things I’ve been enjoying as I took a blogging break (that’s over, I swear!) is enjoying Album Club. What is Album Club, you ask? Every Tuesday night at 9 p.m. CDT, listeners gather on Twitter and listen to the same album and tweet their thoughts, remembrances and more about the album. The tweets range from information about the recording of the album to humor to scathing criticism.
The album is picked out a few days before and announced on the Album Club blog. Follow Album Club on Twitter as well as the #albumclub hashtag and at 9pm Tuesdays the tweets roll in!
Album Club is hosted by Steve Nelson, former morning co-host at Rev105 in the 90’s, former music director at 89.3 The Current, and now news director at Minnesota Public Radio. Mr. Nelson picks the albums and hosts the session each Tuesday. Since Album Club started in April, the albums listened to and tweeted about include:
Last night’s Rumours session was guest curated by John Moe – and a good time was had by all as Mr. Moe shared background on the album, the challenges Fleetwood Mac was going through when they recorded this classic, and his disdain for Christine McVie.
See you Tuesdays at 9pm!
Yesterday was my last day at Novell. I enjoyed the 1+ year I spent working there – helping to ship SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop to millions of end users through OEM partnerships was a fulfilling experience in knowing it helped Linux on the desktop grow.
To those of you I worked with and didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to yesterday, it was a pleasure working with you.
If anyone is looking for a product management / business development professional with open source experience, let me know. My resume is available here and you can reach me at paul dot r dot cutler at gmail dot com.
Today is the ninth anniversary of the day Alice in Chains lead singer, Layne Staley, was found dead in his Seattle apartment. Layne had been dead for two weeks, dying of a heroin and cocaine overdose on April 5th, 2002.
I saw Alice in Chains twice growing up. The first time was in a small club, the Eagles Ballroom, opening, believe it or not, for Extreme in the fall of 1990. The show was terrible. We got there early as we usually did, and the club was fairly empty as Alice in Chains took the stage. Grunge wasn’t mainstream yet and the Seattle explosion was still six months away from taking over the airwaves. Standing five feet away from the band, we could see that Layne was high as a kite – I vividly remember seeing how dilated his eyes were and as he growled out the lyrics to their first album, the crowd eventually booed them off the stage while we waited for the hair metal headliner Extreme to take the stage.
A couple years later I saw Alice in Chains open for Van Halen at the Marcus Amphitheater. The show wasn’t much better, though the crowd at least knew who Alice in Chains was. As much as I loved the grunge movement, being an early fan of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, and more, Alice in Chains was one band I just couldn’t get into because of the bad taste in my mouth from seeing them perform so poorly early in their career.
When Cameron Crowe’s second movie, Singles, came out, Alice in Chains was prominent as the live act in the club the main characters go to. I remember watching the concert footage and not being able to reconcile that this powerful show that was depicted in the movie was not the experience I had had in seeing Alice in Chains perform live twice.
In 1995, Mad Season’s Deceit album was released. Featuring Layne Staley on vocals, Mike McMcready of Pearl Jam and Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees, the album was a hit. I loved this album and didn’t even realize at the time that it was Layne Staley singing.
About five or six years ago, a co-worker who is a good friend of mine were reminiscing about our favorite bands from the grunge days. She loved Alice in Chains – I shared this story with her and she was shocked at how much I disliked Alice in Chains. On her advice, I gave them another try, and listened to Alice in Chains again, this time focusing on the music and putting my preconceived notion and memories out of my head.
And she was right – Alice in Chains was a great band who we lost before their time. Another example of drugs taking another artist before their time.
In Layne Staley’s memory, I’ll be listening to some Alice in Chains today.
GNOME 3 is out! I started to writing a thank you listing out individuals but it became way too long and I was afraid I’d forget somebody. So let me just say thank you to every developer, translator, documentation writers, marketers and everyone else who’s contributed to GNOME.
Download and try it, check out the videos, the new website and Planet, the new GNOME Journal all about GNOME 3, and let us know what you think.
(And a special thanks to the sysadmins who are trying to keep the site up thanks to all the traffic we’re getting!)
CC BY-NC 2.0 by Dan_h
Rock the Garden, 89.3 The Current’s annual outdoor show in partnership with the Walker Arts Center, is just under two weeks form announcing which artists will be playing to a sold out crowd in Minneapolis. The Current will be announcing the lineup on April 19th.
The boys over at Reviler take a look at who they think may be playing at Rock The Garden. With such categories as “Best Guess”, “Awesome Long Shot” and “Most Terrifying Prospect”. It’s a good list that will make you crack a smile.
Over at the Star Tribune’s Vita.MN, they also take a look and share who won’t be there based on their current touring schedule. In some ways, this is a better list than Reviler, as some of the bands Reviler definitely doesn’t want to see (with the exception of one which I’ll let you the reader figure out) are already booked or touring.
Want to take your own guess? Vita.MN has a page up where you can choose the bands you think The Current will be adding to this years Rock the Garden. See you there!