Having sat idle for too long, my old friend and personal design site Filter9 has undergone a transformation. Rather than exist a static collection of music, art and etc, it’s now a flowing collection of music, art and etc that I will be updating continuously as new works roll out.

Featuring my personal art and photography (some of which are available for purchase), it also showcases music from a community of undiscovered artists who forge ahead regardless of the world around them. Oh, and some of my tracks are in there too. (wink).

Here’s to a new F9. Hope you like it.

…and, what SXSW event would be compete without Robert Scoble (pictured, left). The man is everywhere!

So, I slithered into the conference center Saturday morning after an appalling breakfast at a Chowhound recommended spot. I won’t go into the gory details, but suffice it to say, avoid El Arroyo at all costs.

Went through the usual registration process, which was much shorter this year. It also felt alarmingly spacious this year, even with press reports of attendance numbers being much higher than in previous years. Almost immediately, I stumbled upon former co-worker/serial entrepreneur Jesse Thomas and his co-partner-in-crime Leslie Bradshaw. Together we explored the hall and made our way down to Screen Burn, which was twice the size as last year and much more interesting. They’ve added a competitive gaming “arena,” which looked akin to an American Gladiators set. Shortly after, bumped into Chris, the fifth party from yesterday’s fiasco and we struck up a short convo.

Ambled about for awhile, then spotted Tim Ferriss, who I consider a mad genius. Proposed my pared-down, snail’s-pace approach to his 4-Hour Workweek methodology, which he seemed to take with good measure. He offered that he was currently dealing with a “water obsession” that I didn’t get the full details on. Generally, he seemed like a cool guy, approachable and not ridiculously full of himself, like could be imagined.

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“Oh, By The Way,” the new box set from one of my all-time faves, Pink Floyd, is a lucious site created by Bloc Media. It’s sort of like a full-screen version of CoverFlow, but even better.

I love the interaction and the intro animations. Superb work.

As a musician and an avid fan of Hip Hop, I have always been fascinated with the debate over royalties, what constitutes “music,” and when a song is a remake and when it is a travesty. Case in point, one of my all-time favorite bands, Steely Dan and the frequent use of their songs in Hip Hop.

While their music has been featured in some songs I’ve liked, such as “Peg” in De La Soul’s “Eye Know” and some I don’t, such as “Black Cow” in Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz’s “Deja Vu,” the soul of their music has never been truly captured. Until Kanye, that is. Yes, Mr. West, dared take a major chunk of a Steely track, “Kid Charlemagne” and did a first. He made the song better. Yes, I sheepishly admit it, being the purist snob that I am, that he (or more likely, he and his team) truly re-crafted and enhanced an already great track and gave it a fresh, modern spin, taking it up to another level. It’s really the first time that a Hip Hop artist has essentially done a true cover (or at the very least, improved on the original). In the past, I have been supremely annoyed with artists that play covers verbatim and don’t give them a new twist. It’s about the artist’s personality stepping in and reinterpreting the song, isn’t it?

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1. Graduation - Kanye West
2. In Rainbows - Radiohead
3. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
4. Robert Glasper - In My Element
5. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
6. Kevin Sandbloom - MadLoveActivate
7. Pharoah Monche - Desire
8. Air - Pocket Symphony
9. Antibalas- Security
10. Budos Band II - Budos Band II

Honorable Mentions:
Bjork - Volta
Talib Kweli - Eardrum
Common - Finding Forever

(*Note: Links go out to iTunes Store, except Kevin Sandbloom.)

Snopp Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction” video is generating a lot of buzz (over 1,000,000 views on YouTube), partly due to it’s campy, retro goodness, but for me, it’s simply a great song! Snoop sings and pretty well, I might add. Either he’s had coaching or he’s been hiding this talent from us all this time.

At a time when people were writing him off as yesterday’s news, he still grabs attention and the occasional hit. True that he is a legend, but I can only imagine in this day and age how hard it is to compete, considering the low quality output of radio-ready music these days. It’s always good to see something “musical” that is wide-reaching and high quality.

For me, it’s a small, elite group that produces current music worth listening to. In Hip Hop, it includes, but isn’t limited to artists like Kanye West, The Roots, Common and Mos Def. Artists who, for the most part, are largely appealing to an aging demographic. Great to see Snoop bringing some love to the mix, punched up with a strong dose of humor.

I was already a huge fan of The Sopranos (formerly on HBO), and found myself drawn in by the sublime music selections put together by music editor Kathryn Dayak and in part by the show’s creator, David Chase. Mr. Chase was instantly put in a lofty place when I learned he discovered A3’s remix of Leonard Cohen’s brilliant “Woke Up This Morning” (iTunes link) aka The Sopranos theme song on KCRW, a favorite station of mine back in L.A.

The HBO site has a complete episode guide, with a listing of music tracks for each episode, some with links directly to iTunes. I am probably the perfect candidate for their target demo as I have pretty diverse taste in music, running from classical to punk to hip hop to metal to electronic and so on. I picked up several tracks, including Buddy Miles, James Gang, Willie Bobo, Diana Ross, Husky Rescue and Los Lobos.

On a YouTube search, I recently discovered someone had posted some of my father’s animated music videos from the 70’s and 80’s. He was definitely a pioneer in this field, having done many of these for the highly popular “Sonny and Cher” show in the early 70’s.

Additionally, he directed the first animated special ever aired on television, the ballet Petroushka, which was scored specifically for the special by Igor Stravinsky himself. Here’s my favorite of his music videos, Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bay Leroy Brown” sung by Sonny and Cher.

See more of his work here.

You know the song. It’s the one they played at your high school prom. Or maybe it was Young Jeezy.

Anyway, if you haven’t heard it. Here you go…



Nonetheless, at last, indeed. I finally got this highly customized, personalized monstrosity live.Welcome to what I hope to be a place you’ll want to stop and visit and hopefully gain some insight from, or at the very least, be somewhat entertained by. I don’t have any lofty ambitions for this other than for it to be a resource for creatives and progressive-thinking people, like you, right?