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 How could you have an entire night at a baseball game dedicated to the TV show “Seinfeld”? It seems like a promotion about nothing to many people, but it was one of the most sophisticated, entertaining and best-executed events I’ve ever seen at a Major League Baseball game.
Beginning with the promotional cap carrying the Seinfeld insignia handed out to the first 25,000 fans, the Mets made a good impression. The cap is comfortable and good looking even with the logo on the back. And it’s not a bad association for most Met fans – the show is popular because we like it, and as New Yorkers especially, we identify with it.
WPIX is also a sentimental favorite for this sort of rerun. When the Yankees were on the station in the 70s, The Odd Couple and Star Trek would sandwich the games to our collective delight. Meanwhile, WPIX kept the focus on the program itself with grace, showing hilarious clips between most innings. When a trivia contest involving the “Soup Nazi” character was answered correctly, the scoreboard showed the actor who played him coming out and giving the fan their dvds personally!
In the 7th inning, the announcer introduced Jerry Stiller himself to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” It was a great rendition too (video after the jump!). To top it all off, when the Mets took the lead on an Ike Davis homer, the scoreboard cut to a clip of Elaine’s embarrassing dance at her office party.
The Mets carried their weight by beating the Dodgers in a see-saw battle that saw the end of Andre Ethier’s 30-game hit streak. It was an uncommonly great night of baseball and multimedia marketing synergy and I would like to congratulate the Mets and WPIX/Seinfeld marketing department on a job well done.
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 Thankfully, last night’s interview with Chris Blackwell at the main branch of the New York Public Library was not a maudlin tribute to Bob Marley but instead an overview of the great record man’s life in and out of the music business.
Rolling through album covers, song samples, videos and other photographic exhibits, Blackwell was at times interrupted by the interviewer, Paul Holdengraber of the library’s LIVE series but offered many well-known stories and described parts of his exciting life in great detail.
For example, his early years importing music to England from America and Jamaica (“a one-man operation,” he casually remarked when asked about picking records up from the manufacturer and selling them from the back of his Mini). Blackwell bemoaned the loss of sound quality as the music business moved from 78 to 45 rpm, how lps brought it to another level content wise and cds made us accustomed to hearing music without pops and clicks. Mp3, according to Blackwell sounds “worse than a cassette.”
One theme of Chris Blackwell’s life was touched upon superficially on many occasions, the aristocrat who is attracted to the “wrong side of the tracks,” but was constantly balanced through the song samples. Listening to music with one of the greatest patrons of music in history was an honor. To see him headbanging and gesturing in perfect time when a group of backup singers joined a Serge Gainsbourg track. How many of us would chose a DIFFERENT Island record in the quest to surprise Chris with an obscure recording? In this case, Holdengraber broke out the French superstar’s reggae excursion, recorded with the guiding hand and assent of Blackwell if not his elbow grease, which he said came from his assistant.
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 Bob Marley and others with Chris Blackwell in the late 70s. Tonight at the New York Public Library‘s main branch, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell is scheduled to speak on the topic of Bob Marley to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of his passing. Blackwell is not a big public speaker, so it will probably be more like a public interview, but as one of the most erudite and tasteful music men ever, it is sure to be “a lesson and a blessing.”
One famous story about the death of Bob Marley is that in the same week, Cat Stevens, another popular Island artist at the time, changed his name to Yusef Islam that week and retired from making music, so Blackwell suffered a double blow. Of course, Stevens’ conversion was not nearly as significant an event, but Blackwell also probably didn’t predict that Bob Marley in death would be thousands of times as popular than he was during life. Continued
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Google Music Beta is the name of the search/advertising giant’s long-awaited cloud storage and listening service. I was fortunate to attend the Google I/O Extended meeting in the company’s New York headquarters to see the presentations, and they were impressive. First re-capping some of the announcements at the previous I/O conferences, then moving into a theme of Momentum, Mobile and More, the main points were that Android is massive (4.6 billion worldwide activations, 400K/day, etc.); that they have just added movies, rentals and music to the refurbished Android store and More, which included Android at Home.
The music platform enables users to cache music when they will not have net access, instantly adds files based on RFID tagged retail packages and a few other nifty tricks. The main pitch is that it adds to convenience because “wires and loading music is painful.” Honestly, it’s no less painful than uploading thousands of songs which will take, how many days? I liked the service and features but the pitch seemed a little arrogant since another company has done all this already. Actually more than one probably.
Anyhow, Android at Home was really the wave of the future, which the phone now being a remote control for your entire home, including “traditional appliances.” I kept thinking how I would operate a can opener with a cell phone but then they said lightbulbs and stereos were being created with Android compatibility. Pretty cool even if they have re-created disco-lite speakers that change color. One great example of interoperability was Android being used on a treadmill to create a videogame on someone’s phone based on their workout data (running up a hill/maintaining pace/etc.).
Wait’ll it starts incorporating data to change or create playlists such as “the walk to work” or “Sunday afternoon.”
To request an invitation, please visit www.Music.Google.com.
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After a long hiatus, the Earbender blog returns with a visit to the Google I/O Extended conference from the company’s New York headquarters. After a sumptuous buffet accompanied by oldies music by the Beach Boys and righteous brothers, a short intro from Vic Gundutra, we will soon see what the hubbub is.
Google has been working on it’s music service for years and was reportedly going to offer a locker service not unlike the recently launched Amazon Cloud. Personally, the idea of cloud storage is unappealing because I don’t want to have to connect to the net to listen, and it would take months to upload my 51000+ songs currently on my hard drive. Of course most people don’t have such a big collection, but I would argue that their interest and standard of excellence in such a service is correspondingly lower too.
We will soon see what’s cooking with these guys besides French toast stuffed with ricotta and topped with balsamic strawberries.
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