Tech Giant Logo Artists Rewind Time 100 Years

For years, and probably decades, the auto industry was king. I still remember when six of the top ten Fortune 50 companies were automakers or oil companies providing fuel for cars. It wasn't just Chevy who was the "Heartbeat of America." It was the entire auto industry that pushed the bloodstream of our economy.

Times have changed. It's the tech industry in ascendancy. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Alibaba are some of today's biggest companies, none of them part of the auto industry directly, though you might catch some serious bleed-over into that market sector when you see the "smart cars" Google is working on.

What's interesting to me is how less than three decades ago almost none of the tech companies on the forefront of the internet revolution were even conceivable. The eCommerce landscape hadn't even been considered, let alone discovered. What a wild ride we've experienced as the global internet economy was conceived, birthed and begins to mature.

Silicon Valley, 1914

Think of all the words we use now that did not exist back then. What would you think if someone said, "Email me" in 1974? What would "Do a Google search" mean? LOL? What if most of one's problems could be solved in 1974 by rebooting? Whatever that would have meant.

Silicon Valley has changed the world. Or certainly made major contributions to that end.

Recently, a tech startup company called DesignCrowd thought it would be fun to see what the logos of today's tech giants would look like if they existed 100 years ago in 1914. With this as the brief, their community of over 400,000 designers got to work — here are some of the results:

So here's the question. What would your company's logo have looked like 100 years ago?

Art Happenings Here, There and Elsewhere

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt. And poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen." 
~Leonardo da Vinci

"One eye sees, the other feels." ~Paul Klee

At the Red Mug Coffeehouse

There are some arts-related events of note today and ahead. First off, this month's featured artist at The Red Mug in Superior is Adam McCauley whose opening reception is tonight from 5-7 p.m. That owner Suzanne Johnson always turns these opening receptions into exceptional events is a given. That tonight's opening will be even more exceptional is worth noting as Gene LaFond and Miss Amy Ann will be performing. Don't miss it.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

This classic play by Edward Albee was famously brought to the silver screen by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Dennis Kempton has assembled a strong cast for a six night run at Teatro Zuccone, beginning tonight. Albee's story of George and Martha, Nick and Honey is no "Ozzie and Harriet." At the center of the story is a troubled marriage, and the games people play. The mix of high drama and wicked humor is unforgettable. Full schedule of performance dates here.

BALANCE at the 111 Minna

Light Orange by Chor Boogie

The Bay Area art scene is as vibrant as any you'll find anywhere. San Francisco has a fabulous art district with great galleries featuring work of all kinds. The city boasts exceptional art museums as well. When you think SF don't just think of the narrow streets, Chinatown and Alcatraz. Think art. There's plenty to see.

Tomorrow night is the opening reception at the 111 Minna Gallery for a show featuring new work by prolific muralists Chor Boogie and Jet Martinez. There will be an avant-gard burlesque performance by Bast, Lila Bezzani and Lady Eternal Love. Curator Micah LeBrun composed “Balance” as a showcase of the artists’ stunning use of color and to demonstrate the depth of their techniques. It's a progressive gallery striving to maintain its reputation as cutting edge,

Time: 5 p.m. till late.  Show runs through January 3, 2015.

Jet Martinez

You're Not Alone Anymore

This past month I purchased The Travelling Wilbury's first album again, on CD. I had it on a cassette but it had gotten lost at some point over the past two decades. I think it was from stumbling across a YouTube video of "End of the Line" that made me want to hear the rest.

The Wilbury's were a group of friends who had been making music together for quite some time. This page on their website tells how it came about that they joined forces to produce what became a really solid album almost by surprise. The players -- George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty -- had gathered to create a B-side for one of George's new songs.

Ultimately they pulled together a full album of material which was recorded in Bob Dylan's studio. It came across as a surprisingly fun collection of special moments, songs written by each, shared by all. One of these was "You're Not Alone" featuring crooner Roy Orbison's rich trademark vibrato. Listening to the song made me think of a blog entry I wrote in 2010, which I share here again.

You're Not Alone

I can't recall when I first had the strange thought that the room I'm in is filled with sound waves but I couldn't hear them. Wherever you went, if you had a radio you could pick up a station.

When we were kids, my dad had purchased a multi-band radio that could pick up short wave signals from all over the world. Even though he mostly listened to WOR on the AM dial I remember occasionally tuning in to strange languages on some of the other dials and trying to guess where they were coming from. "Is that Russian? Is that Finnish?" I imagined a submarine captain in the Baltic Sea.

All these sounds were accessible, surrounding us, but each originated somewhere else. It was interesting to contemplate.

Fast forward to the present. Think of the bombardment nowadays. Satellite radio is spraying signals continuously, and satellite television. Your GPS device signals are ever instructing, and the old fashioned network TV towers keep singing. We're surrounded by a cloud of noises we can't hear at all.

Science has shown us that the atmosphere is also filled with light waves. We don't see light waves, of course, but only see the objects that they reflect off of. Our light bulbs emanate photons likewise invisible to perception or comprehension.

Many religions add still another layer to the list of things unseen and invisible, yet surrounding us. Many believe we are surrounded by angels, spiritual beings not perceived by the senses... and ultimately, God.

What if we could see all this unseen "stuff"? It might be interesting for a moment, but somehow I have to think if we could see all those sound waves and light waves, it would be a little challenging. I can envision my room here stuffed with a giant mass of shredded cottonball-like material, and myself absorbed in it. Maybe I wouldn't even be able to see this computer monitor because all that stuff was in the way.

I think I like it just as it is, the room an empty space with an easy chair where I can curl up and read a good book.

Long and Wasted Years -- Another Dylan Lament

Tonight Bob Dylan will be performing live at the Orpheum in Minneapolis. It will be the first of three nights home here in his home state. Based on reviews from his recent shows in Denver, Oakland and Seattle, Dylan fans will be treated to another round of great music. The playlist may not be significantly altered from last year's Americanarama tour, but the faithful have much to look forward.

Here are a few extracts from recent reviews at BobLinks.com:

Don't You Dare Miss It! 11/1/14.
~Bob Storch, Denver show review

People showed up for a concert last night.
But instead of a concert, they were treated to an epic Performance - as Bob Dylan and his band (mostly Bob) wowed the audience with a tight, epic show at the Paramount Theater in Oakland.
~James Strohecker review

Three shows in, this tour is about digging the subtleties, rather than expecting any big song surprises. Once again, Bob is challenging his fans to hear him in a new way. Not as a greatest hits act, but as a current artist proudly performing his later work.
~Steve Rostkoski, Seattle shows

Dylan continues to perform a mixed set featuring a few songs from each period of his long career, and at least five songs from his last studio album Tempest, including Duquesne Whistle, Pay In Blood, Early Roman Kings, Scarlet Town and Long and Wasted Years.

Long and Wasted Years is the fourth cut on side A of Tempest. It follows Narrow Way, a lithe uptempo piece that is easy to get right into. What striking about Long and Wasted Years is the recurring waterfall cycle that serves as the musical accompaniment. It's like a perpetual motion machine, except fluid, continuously tumbling down the rocks, a gentle cascade that washes everything away again and again.

In some ways, though in a completely different manner, it is similar to We're Going Wrong by Cream, a powerful ungirding cycle of building emotion with no real resolution. Perhaps, we can even take the fourth movement of Tschaikovsy's Sixth Symphony as yet another variation of the emotional trauma that music can stir in the heart. The effect is of a slow ebbing away of hope, with no strength to resist the inevitable.

When Tempest came out I found myself moved by this song, especially the musical accompaniment that forms its backdrop. In the context of tonight's concert, I would very much be interested in hearing how it is performed.

Here are the lyrics, courtesy Metrolyrics as I did not see them on the BobDylan.com website this morning.

Long and Wasted Years

it's been such a long long time
since we loved each other when our hearts were true
one time, for one brief day, i was the man for you

last night i heard you talkin' in your sleep
saying things you shouldn't say, oh baby
you just may have to go to jail someday

is there a place we can go, is there anybody we can see?
maybe,
it's the same for you as it is for me

i ain't seen my family in twenty years
that ain't easy to understand, they may be dead by now
i lost track of 'em after they lost their land

shake it up baby, twist and shout
you know what it's all about
what you doing out there in the sun anyway?
don't you know, the sun can burn your brains right out

my enemy crashed into the dust
stopped dead in his tracks and he lost his lust
he was run down hard and he broke apart
he died in shame, he had an iron heart

i wear dark glasses to cover my eyes
there are secrets in em that i can't disguise
come back baby
if i hurt your feelings, i apologize

two trains running side by side, forty miles wide
down the eastern line
you don't have to go, i just came to you because you're a friend of mine

i think that when my back was turned,
the whole world behind me burned
it's been a while,
since we walked down that long, long aisle

we cried on a cold and frosty morn,
we cried because our souls were torn
so much for tears
so much for these long and wasted years.

* * * *

If you make it to the Orpheum I'll look forward to hearing what you thought of the show.

Meantime, let it roll.

Scary Thoughts (Revisited)

Opinions are like navels. Everybody has one. But some people, when they state their opinions, are more influential than others. Occasionally, some very influential people make statements that make my hair stand on end.

I remember when a former governor of Colorado said that we should not give medicine to anyone over 70 to help ease our health care burden. Hmmm. That’s a scary thought.

Well, here's a handful of other scary ideas which some rather influential people have been asserting. A few of these quotes make me wonder what their responses might be to the current Ebola epidemic. This is a re-post from June 2008.

* * * * 

The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state. —Kenneth Boulding, originator of the “Spaceship Earth” concept (as quoted by William Tucker in Progress and Privilege, 1982)

We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last! —Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue)

We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects…. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land. —David Foreman, Earth First!

Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed. —Pentti Linkola

If you ask me, it’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won’t give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other. —Amory Lovins in The Mother Earth–Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p.22

The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world. —John Shuttleworth

What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. —Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator, Colorado

I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems. —John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs. —John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing....This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run. —Economist editorial

Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental. —Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!

If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS —Earth First! Newsletter

Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planet…Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. —David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans. —Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project

If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels. —Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

Cannibalism is a “radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation.” —Lyall Watson, The Financial Times, 15 July 1995

We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels. —Carl Amery

To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem. —Lamont Cole

After the Fall: The New Yorker Weighs In On Dylan's Basement Tapes

“As I walked out of the lovely old Paramount Theater the last three nights after seeing Bob Dylan and his band, one word kept coming to mind: sublime.”
 ~Mitch Meyer, reviewing Bob Dylan's recent Oakland concerts.

November is the beginning of another busy time for Northland Dylan fans. First there’s the release of the latest set of songs from the vault, Bootleg Series #11, The Basement Tapes. Second, there’s the epic collection of lyrics from the entirety of his catalog, titled simply The Lyrics: Since 1962. And finally, Dylan himself is returning home to Minnesota, some fans already vowing to not miss a concert included the rumored unscheduled one that I can’t talk about.

The quote atop this page is from a review at BobLinks.com, the “go to” source for Dylan concert followers and more.

Regarding the Basement Tapes The New Yorker gave its reviewer plenty of ink to play with in this week’s edition. He begins with a recount of the famously obscured motorcycle accident that is all part of the Dylan legend, hence the title of the review, which begins this way...

On July 29, 1966, Bob Dylan became distracted while riding his motorcycle. Nobody knows what caught his eye—he told Sam Shepard that it was the sun; he told the biographer Robert Shelton that he hit an oil slick—but he ended up at the bottom of a hill in Woodstock, New York, with his Triumph beside him. His thoughts could have been distraction enough.

And so it goes, what really happened nobody knows. What we do know is that Dylan took a break from touring and proceeded to leave an extensive collection of recordings that answer the question as regards how he spent his time during his Woodstock years after leaving The City and The Road.

After an appropriately elaborate setup, author Sasha Frere-Jones digs into the news, which is the occasion for this multi-page review.

Next week, [November 4 to be exact] a six-CD set called “The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11,” featuring a hundred and thirty-nine songs, will be released. It is not exactly an album, and was never intended to be. Some of the songs began circulating in 1969, on an album that came to be called “The Great White Wonder,” and brought the word “bootleg” into the context of music. Six years later, sixteen songs from these sessions, plus eight written and recorded by The Band alone, were enhanced with overdubs and officially released as a two-LP set, under the name “The Basement Tapes.” Several months before the release, Dylan gave his first radio interview in nine years and said, “Somebody mentioned it was a good idea to put it out, you know, as a record, so people could hear it in its entirety and know exactly what we were doing up there in those years.”

The author does more than talk about this latest Dylan set and it’s 139 songs of uneven importance. He offers a detailed autobiographical overview of how he beame a Dylan fan. His first brush with Dylan’s music failed to connect with him. But then, somewhere along the way, like tens of thousands before him and since, a single line or stanza from a single song hits home with force. For Frere-Jones the song was “Mama You Been On My Mind” from the Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased.)

It's good article, worthy of The New Yorker. You can catch it in full here.

And in the event you don't have your tickets yet for the Midwest portion of his Never Ending Tour, here's the place to plug in, at BobDylan.com. Three nights in Minneapolis, three more in Chicago and a seventh night in Cleveland, home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Keep on truckin'. Bob. Let it roll.

Duluth Media Meet & Greet Sows Seed Thoughts for a New Journalism

John Hatcher (left) with Jeremy Iggers during part 2.

Yesterday I attended a Duluth Media Meet & Greet event concocted by UMD associate journalism professor John Hatcher and Dana Thayer. The aim of the lunch hour gathering was to test the waters as regards how to better serve the community as journalists. The interesting feature here is that historically the various media channels seek to scoop one another and thus perceive their peers as adversaries in a competitive local market. The relatively unique notion being proposed here is that perhaps in light of the challenging manner in which the Internet has re-shuffled the deck, there may be benefits to throwing out the old ways of doing things and playing a new hand.

John Hatcher served as moderator for the gathering which took place at Teatro Zuccone in the Zeitgeist Building. Two presenters had been invited, the first being Jan Schaffer, editor and journalist with J-Lab of Philadelphia who joined us through Skype, followed by Jeremy Iggers, founder and executive director of the Twin Cities Daily Planet.

Jan Schaffer Skyped in from Philadelphia

Ms. Schaffer gave us a tour through the changing media landscape by noting trends. You could tell she had plenty to say, but the brevity of our time together was somewhat restrictive. Here are a few of the highlights regarding current media trends across the country.

1) Metro dailies are disappearing. The lack of a content model is part of the problem.
2) Media entrepreneurship is at an all time high.
3) Tech companies are moving into the journalism space. We saw this earlier this year with Jeff Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post, but one also can see the manner in which Microsoft and more recently Yahoo have made their presence known.
4) There's more comic book journalism taking place.
5) She mentioned news games making a resurgence.
6) More collaborations and partnerships happening.
7) Public media partnering with others.
8) New and interesting distribution channels emerging.

Jan Schaffer was there to encourage local media to find ways to work together. She cited a J-Lab report called Networked Journalism: What Works? and encouraged us to visit the J-Labs website to learn more.

Jeremy Iggers of the Twin Cities Daily Planet shared his personal story as a backdrop for how this 21st Century news site came to be. In the early 90's Iggers wrote restaurant reviews and an ethics column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He initiated or was part of a pre-internet era version of social media in which readers of the paper would interact with stories, an enormous task as it was conducted by mail. The experience, though expensive, taught him how much audiences want 2-way relationships with journalists.

Another experience that came from outside the box was a regular feature called "Oh My News" in which the readers became the reporters. Each point included an instructive story.

Eventually he created or helped create the online media center T.C. Daily Planet in conjunction with a collaboration between the Twin Cities Media Alliance and Ethics Media. Online media is a moving target, he noted. It's also a challenge as you explore what kinds of groups already exist.

A question and answer period moderated by John Hatcher followed. Is it possible for our local Twin Ports media to collaborate and build something greater than the sum of its individual parts? The audience for this event included not only representation from traditional media but a number of bloggers, which was interesting.

One final point was made by Mr. Hatcher, that they have set up an online media resource called Lake Voice News which offer stories for any of our media to utilize so long as we identify the source.

The meet and greet ended with strong encouragement to finish the food which had been provided on platters by the Zeitgeist Cafe.

* * * *

The impression I got from the event is that UMD leadership has recognized the importance of becoming more consciously linked to the community as opposed to being isolated from it in a monastical sense. Bill Payne and the UMD fine arts leadership has made conscious efforts in this direction in recent years, most visibly in the formation of the Twin Ports Arts Align. Hatcher indicated that now that the university has purchased the former Maurice's office building, the school will be more involved with the downtown community.

It waits to be seen how the seeds from this hour long program will take root in the minds of our various local journalists. It was certainly an interesting presentation, even if a bit brief. Thank you to those who made it happen.