Just Made A Record With Jack White

Recently I won a trip to Nashville to hang with the master of new age marketing & music mogul; Jack White. I have been to a few meet & greets with different musical artists and most of the time its wham bam, say hi, and move on not knowing what hit you. Usually I left feeling a bit robbed of what you felt was your right (undeserved) to befriend someone based on how much you like their music and how much you think they would like you. So going into this my lesson has been learned, have fun & don't expect anything too special.

They put my wife & I up in a beautiful hotel and we made the most of our night out on the town in Nashville. I have never seen so much country music and karaoke within a 2 mile radius. Meghan laid down a great rendition of Man In The Box along with a few others.

Our tour of Third Man Records (Jack White's Record Label & Store) started at 12pm in the front room. To give a little background on the record store, it is a fairly large space when looking at it from the outside but when you walk in to the store it is a tiny little room that barley fits 10 people. So where did all the space go? The back has never been open to any public and we knew we would be some of the 1st to servery whats behind the curtain.

Like a scene out of Charley and the Chocolate Factory JW comes out of the back bull horn bumpin in one hand and clove a blazin in the other. With a brief introduction he asked us to follow him back into his home. His workers included females and males dressed in uniform reminiscent of the umpa lumpas. Our umpa hosts were very accommodating. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures of this space and its too bad because words could not do it justice. Full kitchen, living room, working stop light, photo booth, offices, jukebox, stage, photo shoot area, underground tunnels, dressing room and Jack Lawrence playing the stand up bass in the closet! All of the highest quality, saturated with bright colors and finished in master woodworking. Jack invited us to have a coke from the fridge and take a look around. He explained where the influences came from in each room. There was an unreleased White Stripes record playing in the background and all in all a pretty laid back environment.

Recently TMR released a series of records called the blue series where each different recording artist had their picture taken behind the blue staging area. Jack explained that we would each be making a record with our picture on it with him. How fuckin sweet is that. Here it is...its always and after thought but I wish I would have posed cool but instead I have a big shit eating grin on my face but at least it shows we were having fun.

 

 

After taking our pictures Meghan gave Jack some fresh tomatoes from our garden. Not sure if he would give us the freak card for that Meg followed through. He was very grateful and said this is great these will definitely get eaten.

Next we toured United Record Pressing where all TMR releases are printed. They are one of the biggest plants in the world and have been doing a great job for many decades. If you want to make a record this is where you go.

On our way out we were given a bag of goodies along with our finished record. All in all a great, one of a lifetime trip, that will always be fun to look back on.

Thanks Jack

Quick Note: Gilbert Arenas

Ok, so I don't own an NBA Franchise or a business but why would you invest your future in a player with an attitude like Gilbert Arenas. He has been injured the last 2 years after having 2 other productive years yet somehow the Wizards gave him a 6 year $111 Million dollar deal. He said this year he is finally ready but blamed the team for not protecting him from himself http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4480321 . Like most of us I find it disgusting that the face of a franchise would come out and make ridiculous accusations of his current employer especially considering he hasn't even said that they made him play when injured. Check out the article and see what you think. You may want to be close to the toilet because it could cause you to be sick. Not just that, I went on to Wikipedia and this is what it said under his bio:

Arenas had only played in 8 games this season due to a knee injury, before he started practicing again in May, and returned to action on April 2, 2008 against the Milwaukee Bucks,[13] scoring 17 points in a 110–109 home loss.[14]
Ten days prior, Arenas stormed out of the locker room before a game against the Detroit Pistons.[15] He had wanted to play, but his doctor did not give him clearance.[16] Arenas made a surprise return on April 9, when he came out of the locker room with 5:30 left in the first quarter.

I mean really?! These players are unreal. It's no wonder kids identify with these guys. They behave just like them. I remember how cool I thought Barry Bonds was when he would non-chalant his fly ball catches and now I realize that if I wouldn't find that attitude cool in any other proffesional. Maybe I'm showing my age but I thing I'm just showing my class.

Movie Seen: Informant!

Got out of the gym after finishing up an hour of lousy hoops (lousy referring to my performance) and decided I needed a little pick-me-up. Since the Gym is directly above the Loews Boston Common I headed over. I had been interested in seeing the documentary September Issue about the head of Vogue Magazine (I know, not exactly a manly movie but I'm interested in successful people, especially ones accused of being horrendous to work for) but I saw Informant! with Matt Damon had opened. I went in with high hopes but was literally counting the minuets before it ended. It wasn't that there weren't funny moments or that Mstt Damon wasn't great (he was) it was just that the moments were so far and between that I didn't feel like laughing when they finally arrived. The movie seemed to just float along with no sense of direction and no urgency. The drama did not build and by the end I didn't care how it ended, I was just happy it was over (though it wasn't technically since as I left they were still telling us about where the characters are today). If you want to see a movie which is clocked at an hour and fourty five minutes but feels an hour longer than that then here's your movie. Sorry besides the excellent use of music there was little enjoyable about this. So my lousy hoops performance sat there like a rock in my stomach and my mind was left to dwell upon how I wished I had gone to see that documentary.

Cape Cod, Nunfest 2009

Well last weekend represented the last weekend of the summer and I was fortunate enough to spend it on Cape Cod. My buddy Frank and I headed down there because his friend Tim, who is the owner of The Red Nun in Chatham, was hosting the first annual "NunFest." Well that's not the official name but we spent the rest of the weekend referring to it by that name. It was a charity event that hosted music acts throughout the afternoon. Wachusett Brewing Company was on hand pouring their famous Blueberry Ale along with the rest of their flavorful beers. The performances were great and there were a couple that reall y stood out to me. There was one artist who came and performed by himself named Chris Pappas. He is the lead singer of The Everyday Visuals which is a Boston based band that is fairly well known. Frank introduced him as a James Blunt type (meant as a compliment) talent and he turned out to not disapoint. His last song was the one that sewed it up for me. He started off on another acoustic ballad but stopped about 30 seconds in. He appologized and said he doesn't normally do the next song but he wanted to do it. It was Nirvana "My Girl, My Girl Tell me where did you sleep last night." By the end he was just wailing and we all were just staring totally engrossed. Nothing better than live music to make you feel alive!