Interactive music video offers personalized trip down memory lane

Looking for a fun interactive mashup of technology, music and personal history?

A site called The Wilderness Downtown is showing off the power of Google's Chrome browser, Google Earth and Street View; and personalization using The Arcade Fire song "We Used to Wait" as a powerful trip down memory lane.

Background on the fun can be found at lemondrop.com but here's a quick how-to:

First, you MUST use the Google Chrome browser. Once equipped so, fire up The Wilderness Downtown site, type in the address of the home(s) you grew up in, then sit back and watch the magic of technology personalizing a music video by one of the hottest bands going. Smaller browser windows pop up here and there as the storyline progresses and your home shows up first in Google Earth, then Street View. Toward the end, you can type or draw in a personal postcard of your memories growing up in the house.

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RIP, Stan Glyde

I was saddened to learn today of this weekend's death of Stan Glyde, the British immigrant who introduced me to soccer and taught me how to play the drums. Most importantly, he taught me that I could accomplish things if I had the right focus and commitment.

Stan died in Fresno at age 76, and lived a long fruitful life as a musician, teacher and soccer coach. He inspired hundreds of kids to adopt the then strange game of soccer, taught drumming for decades and played regularly with local bands up until early this year.  I was school friends in Fresno with his sons David and Shawn, and our parents (including Stan's wife, Emily) remain close to this day.

I met Dave in third grade and soon thereafter was playing soccer on a Holland Elementary School team Stan had inspired and coached. He turned a bunch of misfits who had never played soccer into a championship team. More importantly, he taught us the value of hard work, with daily practices that focused on fitness, fundamental ball skills and teamwork.  We were called the Holland Hammers, named after the West Ham United Hammers, Stan's favorite British professional team. I can still visualize our purple and light blue uniforms, colors West Ham continues to use to this day.

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Flowers in the dustbin

I never much liked Malcolm McLaren but I appreciated what he did in bringing The Sex Pistols to the global stage.

Malcolm McLaren, standing between the bobby and Sid Vicious, was always about the dramaMcLaren died Thursday from cancer. McLaren was best known as the manager of the Pistols, a cartoonish cast of characters he tossed together and molded into a pop culture tour de force.

While stunned by McLaren's death, I guess I shouldn't be surprised these days as more and more major influences on my musical life die off. Alex Chilton, Doug Fieger, Willie Mitchell and Jay Reatard all worked their way into heavy rotation on my playlists, and their recent deaths leave rich legacies.

So it goes with McLaren, a king of promotion who knew nothing but "over the top."

I was a teenager was late 1977 when I first heard of The Sex Pistols, through news stories and magazine articles decrying the downfall of youth. Much of that disturbance was directly tied to McLaren selling the band as bad seeds and worse. More poetically, they were "flowers in the dustbin," to quote from Pistol's anthem "God Save the Queen:"

We're the flowers in the dustbin
We're the poison in the human machine
We're the future
Your future

The Pistols promotional poster that has inspired me over the yearsThose were lyrics featured on a bright and edgy poster EMI used to promote
"Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" in American record stores. I was able to snag a copy of the poster (the Wherehouse Records in Fresno was NOT going to hang such crap on its walls), and after deciphering what "dustbin" meant, proudly hung it on various walls for the next 15 years or so.

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