Grape Thinking » Music

Youtube musical performances

Mu — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 08:08:54 +0000

I’ve been listening to a few awesome performances on YouTube lately. One is from Ronald Jenkees playing the keyboard with a sick electric guitar hip hop effect goin… ridiculous. Ronald seems like an interesting guy to say the least, check him out. His sound in this video rocks. Another performance I found is Ed-Alleyne Johnson ‘busking’ his electric violin setup on the streets of Chester, Wales. He’s using all types of awesome equipment to build his rhythms… loop pedal, distortion effects, running multiple harmonies throughout… absolutely sick.

Ronald Jenkees on keys

Ed-Alleyn Johnson on Electric Violin

I know MySpace has kinda become the center of the indy music world and hopefully the messiah that will rejuvenate the music industry, but YouTube may be where it all starts. Inspiring music is a live vibe, its in the moment and that’s what’s been lost with the production of today. People can make catchy shit in the studio, but musicians can’t move a crowd of 30,000 anymore. There’s a few out there today that kill it, but not many. That’s what’s awesome about YouTube… it catches it live. I know Ed Johnson has been around for awhile, but hopefully performances like what Ronald put up will get him signed and help spread his music.

Wine Proof Pants

Ruarri — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:30:07 +0000

On a recent trip to the Benicassim Festival in Spain, I purchased a pair of quick-dry camping pants from Titanium for the trip. Walking to outside the festival grounds and sitting on our back-packs whilst waiting for the campsite to open, we took the opportunity to crack a bottle of Rioja we’d got on RENFE (a quick note on RENFE – if you’re on the site and can’t select English you need to select the drop-down labelled Seleccione su Idioma to make it so, which means you have to speak Spanish to get the site into English, go figure!)

Red Wine is a perfect libation for festivals – primarily because it doesn’t need to be kept cold; it doesn’t lose its fizz and if you’re drinking wine locally produced its dirt cheap and super-good. Within minutes of popping the cork however I’d managed to spill the Rioja on my new pants and was questioning the merits of wine in a situation where a shower is hard to find… when suddenly, with a splash of from my water bottle – the wine was gone. Brilliant! Wine proof pants – what more could a young millennial wine-lover at a music festival wish for? I reckon marketing the pants specifically as wine-proof and selling it at Bonnaroo could be a good gig.

Festivals have become huge in the UK – and I guess the States is now picking up. Winemakers have a huge opportunity to sponsor music festivals – because the combination of music, nature, art and alcohol are what festivals are all about. Festivals have re-invented themselves since the days of Woodstock and are a perfect platform for not only entertaining people, but many organisations use them to spread awareness and raise money.

The Green Man Festival coming up next week is one of the most prominent indie festivals – where, much like the Big Chill – and both less commercially than Glastonbury, it promotes organic food, green living, sustainability etc. There’s a huge oppotunity in this concept and I’d really like to see some of the Oregon wineries putting on some music festivals and promoting their wines together with bands from Washington State and around. Many vineyards have acres of land and there’s plenty scope to host festivals on the vineyard grounds themselves. Once millennials cotton onto the benefits of wine and the contribution of viticulturalists to the environment and to local communities – it’ll certainly be the final push needed.

Now that I’ve found a pair of wine-proof pants; and have finally sprung for a decent festival tent whilst having fallen in love with festivals on the first night of Benicassim in a monent of sitting with my wife and two close friends, Will and Anin, drinking Rioja as a pre-game at the campsite with Sigur Ros about to play… I think it’ll be hard to go back to taking normal holidays.

Hopefully next year the Grapethinking team can bring some of the fabulous Tastevine collection to Bonnaroo and some of the other festivals in the US, and one day to the UK – we’ll provide a tent, picnic blankets and a selection of some of the best and most affordable wines from around the world… we’ll leave the music to the musicians though. Don’t forget to bring wine-proof pants…

Mixing Business and Pleasure

Jake — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:31:28 +0000

Being involved in lifestyle marketing really has its perks. When GrapeThinking was in its infancy, and the only client was Tastevine.com, it was really easy to mix business and pleasure. As a group of Millennials passionate about promoting things that bring people together, we didn’t find it too demanding to travel to major cities and throw parties promoting particular wines, and of course, the Tastevine wine community.

As the “tech” guy, my traveling is not quite as adventurous as say Ruarri’s travels to Morroco, or Meghan’s trip Paris, but I do get a chance here and there, and I always try to make the best of it. Apparently, I’m starting a tradition of going to a concert/music festival to complement my business trips.

Late last year, while traveling in Chicago for a meeting with the Dead Grapes Society (an awesome group of wine-lovers), I discovered Lalapalooza was the same night/weekend. After talking with a few of the locals, I found my way to Grant Park, and was just in time to see The Black Keyes, and the last show of the night, Ben Harper, where Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam made a guest appearance.

I’ve always wanted to see Radiohead. They are a band reveled as the modern-day Beatles, and they are currently making their way around the globe on their World Tour… Atlanta being the stop this past Thursday night. Being in town for several business meetings, I called on some friends to see what they were doing, and as would be expected, all of my friends were on their way to the show. After a quick call to Ticketmaster, I was relieved in knowing I could buy a ticket at the gate as there were plenty, and join my friends for what I was sure would be an awesome experience.

This is where it gets interesting. I make it to HiFi Buys (Lakewood) Amphitheater, and am informed the tickets are sold out… WHAT? After a moment shock, the guy behind the counter tells me he does have just one more. I quickly pay for the ticket and rush to the gate where I’m informed that my freshly purchased ticket has already been used… WHAT? Back to the counter I go, where the guy who sold me the ticket takes a highlighter and writes OK on it. Back to the gate, and without hesitation, they let me in.

Once inside, I navigate to where my friends are sitting, and they “sneak” me into the seats of the Amphitheater with them. After catching up, I proceed to tell them the story about my ticket being OK, at which point I pull out the ticket and show them. A few seconds later, we discover that the ticket I am holding is not the Lawn Ticket I assumed, but rather a front row ticket… WHAT?

Needless to say, I ended up not only getting to see Radiohead, but I was able to live the experience from the front row with a $66 ticket.

If you read this post, and you are wondering who Radiohead is, you can listen check out some of their music on the Amazon API widget to the left. Amazon just released the ability to embed a widget that plays mp3 clips, and what a great opp to try it out. (sorry, the tech geek has to come out somewhere)

Some Good Shit

Ruarri — Sun, 11 May 2008 10:42:47 +0000

Like many a webworker – I’m addicted to Podcasts and am pretty much plugged in on a daily basis to the best of APM, NPR, Guardian News Media, Grape Radio etc. Robert Krulwich of NPR did a show the other day about the MIT Bioengineering faculty, and the dawn of a new species under the fostering care of some students with olfactory concerns. You can listen to the show here, but basically the show discusses how for bio-engineering students – life is spent in fume cupboards culturing e-coli in a petri-dishes, and due to the fact that e-coli smells like, er, smells like, well… shit, these students applied their trade to splice out the shit-smelling gene from the e-coli and replace it with the gene from Wintergreen that makes Wintergreen smell like Spearmint resulting in good smelling shit.

Now this story struck a chord with me because from time to time in a winocentric situation people may sidle up to me and ask in hushed tones how wine can smell of apples, or blood, or cigars, and essentially the ultimate question is ‘are people putting apples/ blood and sweat into the wine?’ Whilst making wine may be a lot of blood sweat and tears, it is only so in a metaphorical sense. One has to really sympathize with this question because people often speak with such authority about wine that it makes people scared to ask obvious questions. Essentially the MIT story just demonstrates that the aromas inherent to a plant are at a biological level – and in trying to find what we smell, we’re doing some detective like nose-work and trying to gain a greater understanding of what is in the glass. Part of the guess work done is in being able to come up with linguistic descriptors on which to hang your hat. So in essence – the linguistic descriptor used to describe e-coli is ‘shitty’ whist we use ‘minty’ to describe Wintergreen, and all that MIT has done is swap the shitty with the minty.

At this juncture I insert a widget from Last FM which contains music similar to that of Feist… because I’ve been reading a lot of reviews about her – and one of the great things about music journalism is the attempts to describe a musicians sound, or voice. Essentially how does one describe a medium in words that should ultimately be heard? Feist has alternately been described by various reviewers as either sounding like ‘carved steam‘ or ‘crushed mirrors in a satin bag‘ – now there’s nothing in Feist’s genetics that lends to sounding like crushed mirrors in a satin bag… but its a fan-fucking-tastic description that really opens her up to the imagination. In this vein one could describe Eddie Vedder as ‘rusted razor blades slicing sandstone’ even… and though you may not know what that means it certainly makes you want to listen. Together with online reviews and recommendations, you may perhaps want to listen to Feist – apps like Last FM will also tell you who else she sounds like. So if carved steam doesn’t help… if one perhaps said Regina Spektor meets Cat Power, that may be more helpful. Following that, you may also be interested to find out she plays with Broken Social Scene… and so on down the rabbit hole.

This is where wine and music meet – at the point where words fail us in personal, private internal experiences – and we sometimes have to turn to a reviewer to help us explain or to a friend to get recommendations of what else tastes similar. Grapethinking and its team are on a missions together with many other bloggers to help explain what wine and technology mean to young people, what it means to us, and how we’d like it to change. So if you ever come unstuck, and perhaps are lost for words to describe something or need a bottle of wine that tastes a certain way – then don’t be shy, and give us a shout…

Also – don’t forget its Mother’s Day… so if you haven’t got a gift and need an idea go to about.com

Music and Wine make the best of times

Jake — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:19:30 +0000

The press release below was brought to our attention today, and with our love of music and wine, we wanted to share. I’d also like to point out, that in reading Josh’s website , it appears he has done several things for charity, including a recent donation of a song to the WHY Foundation, founded by Harry Chapin. The foundation released an album “All-Star Charity CD SERVE2: FIGHTING HUNGER AND POVERTY”, featuring tracks from many great musicians, Bruce Springsteen, OAR, Citizen Cope, and Natasha Bedingfield just to name a few.

A MÃ‰NAGE Ã€ TROIS WITH JOSH ROUSE AT CARNEGIE HALL
NEW YORK-November 28, 2007- Fresh from Spain, Josh Rouse comes back to delight fans and make some new ones with his latest release, Country Mouse, City House. His seventh proper full-length album on his imprint label Bedroom Classics (through Nettwerk Music Group) was released this past summer.

Following the release, Josh has partnered with MÃ©nage Ã Trois wines in a new marketing venture. The promotion, which starts November 1st, will display a hang tag or tear pad with Josh Rouse information (tag line, URL, and code for downloads) on over 2 million bottles of MÃ©nage Ã Trois wines, inviting them to download samplings of Josh’s music. Fans can also enter to win a trip to see Josh perform live at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The winning fan will receive all expenses paid trip to New York for two to see Josh’s concert on April 18, 2008 – plus receive $1,000 in spending money. Fans can find bottles of wine to purchase in major supermarkets. In addition to the sweepstakes, a free song preview off the new album is available at menageatroiswines.com.

Recorded over a six-day session in Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain with rhythm section (Marc Pisapia, James “Hags” Haggerty) and super engineer/producer Paco Loco, Joe Pisapia (Marc’s brother) added some overdubs and helped Josh mix the album Nashville. “The songs were written mostly during the summer of ’06. After doing a “summer” record (Subtitulo), I thought it would be fit to do something with more of a “wintry” feel,” said Josh.

The title was conceived during a 70-mile walk through the north of Spain in October. “I thought it was a funny name and it’s similar to Aesop’s tale by the name of “Country Mouse and the City Mouse”. People tell me I sometimes resemble a mouse in photos. It also rhymes with my name. My sound is still 70′s singer/songwriter. That’s my favorite style of music, so that’s what I do. I, and many of the people I work with, am obsessed with the sound and production of the 60′s and 70′s. Put simply, it just has something that a lot of modern records don’t have. Perhaps it’s being in the moment, and Country Mouse, City House is just that, a really great moment,” said Josh.

MÃ©nage Ã Trois
The phrase-a French term for blending of three-refers to the selection of varietals that comprises this whimsical approachable trio of wines. The exotic, flowery and silky White Blend explores the promising relationship between Moscato, Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc. The Red Blend, with its rich, forward profile, shows what happens when you introduce Zinfandel to Merlot and Cabernet. Rounding out the trio (because there just has to be three) is the RosÃ© Blend. There’s no pretension and no pretense in this blend of Merlot, Syrah and Gewurztraminer-just a fruit-laden roller coaster ride. These three wines are the result of bottling some passion, fun and a little excitement-all without breaking the bank.

For more information, contact:

Nettwerk Music Group-

Nell Cochrane -nell@nettwerk.com

Karina Paje – karina@nettwerk.com

Do you MOG?

Ruarri — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:13:48 +0000

MOG is one of the newer communities to have arisen and it’s dedicated to music and features profiles of musicians like Ben Gibbard. Unlike MySpace, which has become slightly commercialized and is used by every petty marketer to invite people to parties or sell cell-phones, MOG is strictly for music. What I like about the site is the ability to see as well as listen to what other people listen to; there’s a MOG-O-METER which reads all your most recently played iTunes tracks, and then it makes recommendations of what you should listen to. Better than that, you can actually listen to music on other people’s pages for free, without downloading it.

Calwineries.com is a perfect example of how such brand innovation has stepped out of the music-only sphere and can be applied to wine. The formation of a community is exactly what the industry needs, wine people like talking, and so there are discussion boards, there’s information about any California winery you need, and one can even find emerging industry heavyweights such as Pinotblogger weighing in, which makes for a promising and powerful voice to be addressing this emerging wine community. Josh@pinotblogger.com has really opened up communication, with the recently launched Podcast and by going so far as to publish his cell-phone number on the blog, there’s no doubt that such graceful transparency is the future of wine marketing, especially for wines like Capozzi, and Stormhoek, and Vilafonte, which have all made unbelievable use of the online channel in building brands.

However, my feeling is that many California Wineries already enjoy a voice, and it’d be great if the conversation could be expanded and was between California and the world, rather than just California and California. Thinking about it this morning while reading The Pour where Asimov had quite recently spoken about various Natural wines, and linked through to a particular Rioja winery-site which enables you to do a cellar door tour, I couldn’t help but thinking that there’s a bigger picture here. Focusing on California when you have the entire world to talk about is to look too closely at the grapes when there’s an entire vineyard (to plagiarize seeing the wood through the trees.)

Grape Radio had a fantastic Podcast a while back from a Pinot Symposium, and wine-makers from Peay Vineyards and around were all discussing Pinot Clones and Swan, which had been gotten from Burgundy. However, the same clones have also gone to South Africa, New Zealand and Oregon, and it would be much more interesting to hear a world symposium where top growers held a tasting and related experiences of the same clone in completely different continents, let alone terroir? In real life it would be expensive to organize, but if the discussion were held online, where winemakers could freely exchange comments on a single discussion board, not just wineries from California, but wineries from across the globe, much interest could be sparked and a lot could be gained.Long term, it is not only an opportunity for foreign wines to get share of mouth in the US, but it’s also for Californian and US wines to get mind-share overseas. The best known Californian wine in the UK is Gallo, and if you want to find Frog’s Leap or anything from upstate New York you simply can’t, whilst you can find wine from Uruguay or Argentina quite easily in any London store.

Capozzi and Stormhoek, though from different countries entirely, have a lot to learn from one another, but at the moment there isn’t a platform to do it on. Grape Thinking, as many of you have guessed by now, will be that platform. In the coming months we’re going to launch an international wine community, where oenophiles will not only be able to affiliate themselves with global wineries, but they’ll be able to purchase the wine and review it themselves. Israeli Wines, a particular passion of mine, amongst others, will be given a platform to not only market themselves on the same platform as Australia and New Zealand, but because its digital there will be no fights for shelf-space or case-displays. Grapethinking will be the ‘digital vine’ connecting global vineyards, winemakers, bloggers, restaurateurs and wine lovers into the first global digital cocktail party where wine, opinions and dreams can be shared.

Grape Thinking » Music

Youtube musical performances

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