SPIKE
A group of Aussies from Spike, a multi-media ad agency in Sydney, set up the coolest radio venture on Sunset Blvd. I was happy to land a producer gig at Spike Radio, Toyota’s Gen Y entertainment portal. Those well funded digital pioneers with attitude won awards for their innovative brand of a tricked out DJ stylin’ entertainment portal for the new millenium. That place rocked hard and the work was a breeze given the high level of talent there. My favorite job of that era. RIAA compliant too.

LOAD MEDIA
LOAD had a great product in their syndicated media delivery system. But their business practices needed some refinement. It was a start-up after all, but one of the largest new media companies that I worked for at that time. They raised a lot of money, allied with Hollywood’s largest content creators and kept us way too busy.

In that huge warehouse on Sunset Blvd, I learned from some great designers- the kind of punky artists that grew up with skateboards and computers. Great fun. I still use some Photoshop constructions that the brilliant Russian gave me.

LOAD embraced “synergy”, the mantra of joint ventures between branded content and web service providers. LOAD burned bright then disappeared.

SUNSET BLVD.
Other jobs included some time on Woodstock.com and ReporterTV.com. From all the new media action along Sunset Blvd. and beyond, it seemed like the paradigm shift had truly taken place. But not quite. Broadband networks were not widespread enough. You can’t build an entertainment empire based on tens of thousands of viewers. Many of the shows were good, reaching the limited audiences by fantastic technology. In the end, sponsors and advertisers required higher numbers.

After the dot-com crash of 2001, there were a lot of empty hi-tech offices in Southern California. Cavernous raw warehouse spaces, multi-level offices and miles of Cat 5 network cables. Broadband had not spread as fast as expected. Streaming media and all that it took to deliver it would have to go to the back of the line for funding. The advertisers needed the tried and true formats. Online entertainment would have to wait. In 2006, the floodgates opened.

I arrived in L.A. in 1994, fresh from radio & TV work with HoB Productions in New Orleans at HoB’s Decatur St. club and at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. I was introduced to HoB’s in-house multimedia system in New Orleans by a tech savvy musician like myself. I knew that I was going to run that system, if not in New Orleans, then somewhere bigger. Timing my move to coincide with the building of House of Blues nightclub on Sunset Blvd, I landed the job of Multimedia Director.

HoB on Sunset is a juke joint assemblage of tin, technology and outsider art, loudly resonating with centuries of music and Southern culture. The bands were the top of the world talent. The media swarmed the multi-event facility. Celebrities packed the joint for the nightly shows and the healing Gospel Sundays.

It was a world that I’ll never forget. Four months straight, every day, sometimes sleeping in the Foundation Room with Buddha or Ganesha watching over me. I experienced a perpetual red glare in front of my eyes, burned in from the brightly lit Burning Heart sculpture gracing HoB’s stage. Yoga sessions in the Green Room or the HoB’s Foundation Room calmed the soul a bit, especially prior to those weekly caffeinated management meetings.

I programmed 16 hours of music playlists daily. Handpicked the tunes, filled the house with a rising excitement leading up to the nightly shows. Editing musician biographies, researching music history. Working closely with blues scholars- funky dudes, those guys. As the Los Angeles interviewer on HoB’s Radio Show, I recorded the truth behind the music from the originators like Brownie McGhee, Bo Diddley, Taj Mahal, KoKo Taylor and scores of others.

Other syndicated radio projects came through. My favorite was titled, “I Want To Take You Higher, the Psychedelic Era” for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. My bookshelf already held many treasured volumes of rock history. Lots of vinyl.

Twice weekly sunny day drives across Los Angeles to record talk sessions, sometimes impromptu music, with many of my musical heroes to record personal stories about when our hair was long and rock was young… an explosion in a thousand directions during a landmark time of social upheaval.

The interview work brought me back to New Orleans for the New Orleans Jazz Fest documentary for NHK. The day we were scheduled to begin, I met the Japanese NHK team, fortunately with a translator. I kept the Japanese script as a memento of a wonderful journey into all things Jazz Fest style.

One day in the sound booth at House of Blues in 1994, I asked Isaac Tigrett if he was ready to take his big venture to the Internet. His eyes widened, and the next thing I know House of Blues New Media was born, ensconced in corporate offices across the street with two PC computers and a tight budget. I had done my homework and was prepared. Surrounded by red tapestry walls, shrines, incense and music, HoB New Media was launched.

We created the Hob’s first website. It seemed that every month, there was a new department; retail, guitar shop, clothing, music label, broadcast productions, TV, radio, the nightclubs, and everyone needed graphics and a webpage. We were the digital source. Late nights helping VP’s put their presentations together. A Christmas advertising request landed on my desk an hour before it was due. Typical for those days and we blasted out the media.

In order to understand what this meant in 1994, you have to grasp the idea of a company on an accelerated growth curve without a computer network. Some of the corporate folks had just gotten email accounts. We were on Windows 3.1. Code was crafted with a text editor. Oh boy, browsers could even center an image. Transparent backgrounds in gifs had to be coded in at DOS level. We boasted the first scanner in a company of a couple of hundred employees. We were popular.

After launching HoB’s first website, I transitioned to the CBS syndicated HoB Radio Hour, produced by Ben Manilla Productions. I worked as freelance interviewer on many shows. The shows were well conceived and scripted but there was plenty of room for improvisation to follow interesting tangents of discussions.

It was a sweet four years of radio work, celebrating the music and the artists. First blues, then rock and beyond. That work enriched my life in ways that money and material stuff can’t. My belief is that we share our souls every time we sit down and talk about what life means to us. Music is Life for musicians.