The New Tube Is The Web
34 percent of college students recently reported spending more than 10 hours a week online, while only around 19 percent say they devote at least the same amount of time to watching television or listening to the radio
Posts from September 2006
What Does Early Stage Investing Mean To Us?
The first post in my series on what we look for is up on the Union Square Ventures weblog.
It’s about early stage investing and how we define that term in our firm.
Looking At Carriers Through The Lens Of History
Brad has a good post on the Union Square Ventures weblog where he asks, "who will be the Dell of the network service providers? ".
He doesn’t actually answer that question, but it’s an interesting read nonetheless.
If you know the answer, please leave us a comment on Brad’s post.
Austin City Limits - Day Three
Ween, The Flaming Lips, and Tom Petty. What a great day!
The day got going for me when Ween came on. They played all my favorites. I just love these guys. The best part was when Dean Wean sang Piss Up A Rope. The crowd roared and sang along. I bumped into both guys this morning in the hotel and let them both know how much I love them.
The highlight of the day was The Lips. The clouds cleared up, the sun came out, and all kinds of wacky things appeared on the stage.
Then Wayne went crowd surfing in a bubble. What a great stunt.
They also played most of their big hits. Wayne got political with his intro to the Yeah Yeah Yeah song but the crowed seemed to take in in stride.
Wayne told the crowd that he’d bumped into Ben Kweller backstage and after hearing of his nosebleed incident, decided to copy him. So he poured blood all over himself and played the whole show that way. This picture is of him singing Yoshimi.
If you have never seen The Lips play live, you must do it. It’s certainly one of the most entertaining shows I’ve seen.
Then we waited an hour for Tom Petty to come on. As my friend said when he walked on the stage, "rock greatness is upon us". He played the songs the crowd wanted to hear, he played them straight up, and they sounded great.
Unfortunately, the threatening weather that had cleared for The Lips came back and the skies opened up and it poured. We walked out to the sounds of his new single, Saving Graceand The Travelling Willbury’s Handle Me With Care
We got totally soaked getting home, but the sea of people walking down Barton Springs Road on the way home in the rain was a very cool scene.
Austin City Limits was a blast.
Ben Kweller Is Bloody Good (continued)
Last night, literally five minutes after I posted the Ben Kweller Is Bloody Good post, I walked out of our hotel and saw Ben hanging out all by himself in front of the hotel. I said, "Ben" and he turned around and he had blood stains all over his jeans and jean vest. I just shook my head and said, "that was pretty crazy today". We chatted for about 15-20 minutes and I took a photo of The Gotham Gal and our friend Chana with Ben. I am sure The Gotham Gal will post that on her blog shortly.
Ben was very cool and not too upset about the nosebleed fiasco.
We talked about the new record, which I will say again is amazing. And he told me about the show he does on YouTube called One Minute Pop Song. I watched the shows this morning. Very cool.
My favorite episode is where he tells the story of how his dad taught him to play drums when he was seven years old.
Las Manitas
This place rocks. We had a killer breakfast there yesterday morning.
If you are coming to Austin, make sure to start your morning here one day.
I had the huevos rancheros and auqua fresca (watermelon). I am getting hungry just typing this.
They had a cool memorial up for Anne Richards which was nice to see. She was a great woman.
Nada Surf
This spring we got to meet Nada Surf when they played at a fundraiser in our backyard. It was just Ira and Matthew and they did an acoustic thing. They are the greatest guys.
We saw them do a full set at ACL yesterday (which is why we were late for TV on the Radio).
Ira had his "fuck bush" hat on just like he did at our fundraiser.
We left before they finished to take Matthew’s suggestion and see TV on the Radio and missed them play my favorite tune Blankest Year.
TV on the Radio
We saw a lot of bands from Brooklyn yesterday.
I was really looking forward to seeing TV on the Radio and they did not disappoint.
We got backstage and had a great view.
We got their late and saw them play Wolf Like Me and a few numbers from their first record.
I am looking forward to seeing them play a whole show at Irving Plaza next month.
The Raconteurs
Jack White is a rock god.
We couldn’t get very close but it was LOUD, so we heard great.
Highlights for me were Intimate Secretary, Store Bought Bones, Broken Boy Soldier, and Bang Bang.
I can’t wait to see these guys in a small venue (Roseland in a couple weeks).
Ben Kweller Is Bloody Good
We saw a crazy thing today at Austin City Limits. The Gotham Gal and I went to see Ben Kweller play. We love Ben and his new record, Ben Kweller, is awesome.
He came on late and told everyone he was sorry but he’d had a double nosebleed. But he said it had been fixed and he was going to play.
Well it hadn’t been fixed and by the third song, his guitar had blood all over it (as you can see this photo). It was kind of gross but also pretty incredible that he could play with that going on.
Then asked the crowd if anyone had a tampon and a bunch were thrown up on the stage. He stuck in his nose and played "This Is War" from the new record.
That didn’t do much to help as the tampon swelled up and fell out.
So he went to the piano and played an excellent rendition of "Falling" and then called it quits.
It was a bummer, he only got to play five songs, but it was also one of the more gutsy things I’ve seen in all my days of watching live music.
