Twitter Rocks My World!

Earlier this week, a couple of Tweets from Brooke Burke @brookeburke appeared in my Twitter stream. Dancing with the Stars was about to start, and at 45 minutes until showtime she was tweeting, that her daughter wouldn’t get out of her makeup chair – and then she posted a photo of said daughter in said chair. Then she retweeted a photo from her wardrobe stylist, asking which earrings she should wear on the show. Then she tweeted links to the stylist and her hair and makeup artists, and thanked them all, calling them the best glam squad in the world. And earlier in the day she tweeted about her pre-show meal, about her daughter meeting Taylor Swift at rehearsal, and watching Rod Stewert rehearse – it was a continual stream of backstage news.

Then right after the show, she tweeted… “Shocking show tonight! DWTS! Very emotional. Don’t miss it!!!”

And it was then that it hit me how much my world, and the world in general, has changed in the last five years.

A little over five years ago I was all wrapped up in Brooke’s previous show, Rock Star: INXS and covertly writing teasers for ROCKBAND.COM. Doing it secretly because I didn’t want the producers to know who I was, and not allow me access to the tapings. I hooked up with other “spoiler” kings and everything took off! It was a fabulous ride! 50,000 unique visitors a day coming to my site was great! All those people wanted the scoop, and the spoiler gods and I gave them something they couldn’t get anywhere else. We wrote about the music, about the performances, AND what happened in between. We wrote about what you saw on TV, and about what you didn’t. The next year the traffic doubled, I got backstage access, and I shot a backstage documentary. I remember it all – and it was fabulous!

But guess what? Only a few years later, Brooke Burke is doing my old job. Now she’s the one posting teasers and backstage images, and giving the world that glimpse behind the scenes at a favorite TV show.

Twitter has seriously changed the world. It’s easy to underestimate its power – it seems so trivial and superficial at first glance. But you can bet, if there’s breaking news, the very first place I’m looking is Twitter. Real people tweeting in real time – how much closer to the ground can you get? And even minor local events get coverage on Twitter. It’s not just the big things, deemed important enough by the media to make the cut – it’s a little bit of everything – major and minor, important and not-so-important.

I loved 2005 and writing about Rock Star: INXS and in 2006, Rock Star: Supernova. But if the show was still on today, things would be very different. Every single member of the studio audience could conceivably tweet in real time, after each performance. There would be no spoiler gods, but rather a rambling Twitter stream of comments from many voices – one of which would undoubtedly be Brooke Burke. And how cool is that?!

As much as I loved 2005, I think 2010 is even better. And I certainly didn’t see Twitter coming – so while I don’t know what comes next, I’m excited to see what does!

Quitting the band?

Josh with his Guitar // Photo: Cheryl SpeltsI’ve never played Rock Band, or Guitar Hero – but I’m deeply interested in the whole phenomenon of music video games. If you know me, you know why. I used to own a domain name – ROCKBAND.COM – and I had a great site that promoted indie and unsigned rock bands for nearly ten years. Then in early 2007 I got an email from a video game maker, about to debut a new game, and you can read about what followed, here. It’s a good story!

So yeah, I’m interested! Especially interested in the huge sales numbers… In 2008 music video games collectively made 1.5 billion dollars – that’s a staggeringly large number! Trouble is, in 2009, that collective number was less than half what it was in 2008. Evidently, once a customer buys a unit, there’s not much incentive to buy another – even the latest version of Rock Band, The Beatles: Rock Band, has sold less than 800,000 units since debuting late last year.

But Mike Schuster on Yahoo Finance had an idea I liked on what might take the place of plastic guitars and drums on gamers’ wish lists. What did he suggest?

“Hopefully, actual musical instruments.”

I think I could learn to like that! Very, very much!

And the photo? It’s my nephew Josh, from last summer – with an actual musical instrument… and he knows how to play it!

How did you get here?

I always get a kick out of the search terms people use to find this site. Most are of course photography-related – and there are a lot that are music or model-related as well. I also get hits for Trashing the Dress and Rock Star and INXS and Lukas Rossi – all of which I’d expect.

But then there are some just plain fun ones! Like all the people searching for a red clawfoot bathtub – who knew it was such a sought after item? I love mine – I mean I did blog about it! But there are dozens of people every month that find this blog, because they’re looking for a red tub. This last month I mentioned jack rabbits and mountain lions and I’m now getting hits related to that kind of wildlife. If that’s what you’re looking for – sorry! All I did was mention them, there’s not really much here on either animal. I also get hits for simple modern desk or a variation of that – and yeah, I do have one, but no photos of it posted yet.

But the most interesting to me this month are the searches for “sold rockband.com” or “rockband.com sold for” or “rockband.com domain name.” The game was released this month, and the domain name has been splashed all over the media and in their ads, so it’s no wonder there’s some interest right now. But wow! There are a lot of mighty curious people out there!

One Million Posts!

ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COMIt’s official! ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM just hit one million posts.

We have 7000 members – with 4700 participating and the rest only reading. And we’ve been going strong for a little over two years now, so that’s an average of about 1350 posts a day. It’s a lot! Last summer we were getting 100,000 unique visitors a day – all coming to read about Rock Star: Supernova. It was a heady time!

But reaching our one-millionth post is also a big milestone. Over 400,000 of those posts still exist.

Big News! I sold ROCKBAND.COM

A little over a decade ago, I bought a domain name to help promote some unsigned and indie bands I was working with. At the time it felt like a totally frivolous thing to do. And it was expensive – seventy dollars to reserve the name for just two years! And since it was the mid-nineties, most people had no clue what I’d just bought.

I actually wanted URB.com – since the site was known as Unsigned Rock Bands at the time. But URB.com was taken. So I tried Rock.com – obviously taken. So I sighed, and thought okay, I’ll go with RockBands.com – even though it’s ridiculously long. Conventional thought in the circles I ran in, was that the good domains were three letters long, okay domains were four letters long, and you should never buy a domain with more than five letters. Well guess what? Even RockBands.com was taken. At that point I was convinced ALL the good domains were already taken. So I settled on RockBand.com and figured it was better than UnsignedRockBand.com – at least I had that! But a few weeks later, as I started to talk up the site, I realized RockBand.com was actually a much better name than RockBands.com – it just sounded better. And less than a year later I knew just how smart a purchase it had actually been.

Lots and lots of bands registered, and many sent me their demo CDs. I interviewed the best of them and shot bands in LA and San Diego, and New York. In 2000 some of the bands I shot in NYC put together a tour of the East Coast, and promoted it as the ROCKBAND.COM Tour.

In 2005 CBS launched the TV show, Rock Star, and I launched a new and improved forum on the site to talk about music and bands, and this brand new show. And wow, it really took off! By the end of the season we were known as the best place on the web to get info about the show. In 2006 it got even bigger and better. Good times! And really great people! We threw a big bash in Las Vegas at a major hotel even – so our members could all meet up and party in real life. I got to shoot a photo essay backstage at a taping of Rock Star. Several of the singers on the show started posting on the board after the show ended. It was a total blast! Every single part of it.

ROCKBAND.COMAnd then I got an offer…

Harmonix, the creator of Guitar Hero was developing a new game with MTV and Electronic Arts – set to debut this Christmas – and they were calling it Rock Band. They weren’t interested in the site or the community, they only wanted the name. So I sold it to them!

RockBandLounge.comIn 1996 I was convinced that all the good domain names were taken, but guess what? I just registered RockBandLounge.com – it’s longer, but that doesn’t bother me anymore, and it’s very descriptive and VERY memorable.

I think I just got lucky again…

If you’d like to read about the reaction at the new RockBandLounge, go here. I announced the deal there last month – but waited to announce it here until after the sale was final.

More Love, More Lovehammers

Wanna step back in time? Check out this photo essay shot earlier this year while Marty Casey and Lovehammers were on tour with INXS. These photos have never been seen before – consider them a holiday gift for hungry Lovehammer fans!

View the rest of the photo session…
http://www.rockbandlounge.com/news/2006-12-lovehammers.asp

Or read my interview with the Lovehammers, from March, 2006.
http://www.rockbandlounge.com/news/2006-12-lovehammers.asp

Hot New Band! Quietdrive!

I got to shoot a really hot new band last night! Quietdrive has a CD out on Epic Records that was produced by Butch Walker – big big deal producer! Their two most popular singles have been downloaded on MySpace a combined 400,000 times. And they’re super cute and young – so much fun to shoot. Oh, and I LOVE their music. Their CD has not left my CD player since I got it!

I shot them for ROCKBAND.COM and you can see the rest of the images there, but here’s a little taste…

To see the rest of the images, go to:
http://rockband.com/news/2006-10-quietdrive.asp

Ryan Star at the House of Blues in San Diego

The best thing about last night? Ryan’s voice after about the third song. Before that point it was the same voice I heard on Rock Star – but a few songs in, he got looser and fuller and the way he played with the tempo felt less studied and more inspired. We got to see a lot of him this summer, but it was all one song at a time – there’s just something about seeing a full set – the minutes just add up to something entirely different – and great!

So Ryan comes out and the start is fairly low key, and he does the first three or so songs with the keys, then he gets his guitar and that’s when the show got good as far as I’m concerned. I think it’s great how Ryan can fill the stage all by himself, and create a sound that *sounds* bigger than just one guy onstage with one instrument – but if it is only one instrument I’m always going to prefer guitar to keyboards! But my big wish would be to see him with a full band – one of his friends kept pimping the big show in NYC – the homecoming show – and if there’s going to be a full band there it might be worth flying for!

There were times when Ryan would use his feet to pound the floor – an improvised drum! I loved that! Another time he forgot he was tethered to the mic stand and he came out in front and then had to sing doubly loud to make up for it – but he went for it!

As for the songs – I loved them. He played a new song “11:59” and the lyrics go over familiar ground – but Ryan’s spin on a familiar theme is so devoid of cliché, you really believe him. I think he’s gifted lyrically – but it’s the music itself that really gets me. (But I want to hear it with a full band… I know, be happy with what you get, but I really really want to hear it with a full band!)

After the show we went to Stingaree, a nightclub a few blocks away from the HOB – one of Ryan’s friends was a regular on ROCKBAND.COM during Rock Star, and so invited us to join them. It’s an interesting club with a great rooftop bar, but unfortunately it was raining hard, we didn’t spend much time up there – but I would like to go back on a clear night!

Ryan Star backstage at Rock Star: Supernova // Photo: Cheryl SpeltsAt one point I made a comment to Ryan about “shooting him” the next time he’s in San Diego or Southern California, and he nodded affirmatively, then he leaned in and half-whispered, “Don’t you mean shoe me?” – which make me laugh. It’s a running joke on ROCKBAND.COM that Ryan has big feet, and well, you know what that means. It totally cracked me up that he not only knew all about it, but he was also okay with it and saw the humor in it. ‘Cause every reference is always made with much affection, I’m sure!

For more reviews of Ryan Star in San Diego, go to:
http://www.rockband.com/forum/topic.asp?topic_id=4457
Or go to the ROCKBAND.COM Ryan Star Lounge!