Rants

The latest mascot to hate – Steely McBeam

Jeromey Balderrama

Meet the Steelers new mascot who they “named” yesterday: Steely McBeam.

 

Are you freaking kidding me?  Out of 70,000 names that were submitted, that was the best name you could come up with?  Ok, the name may be a little creative (although I do think it’s a cop-out to put “Mc” in front of someone’s last name), but the reason this is lame is because it’s another mascot.

Argh mascots – the only thing worse than a mascot is a mime.  Just what we need: another goof in a costume walking around the sidelines, blocking everyone’s view and annoying everybody.

I understand mascots in basketball: there’s a lot of breaks in the action and it’s easy to get the mascot on the court for some quick entertainment.  I understand mascots in baseball: the game gets pretty boring and you need something to show your kids.  But football?!?  There’s already too many things going on at games, and any break in the action is already pumped full of some commercialistic attempt to snag your attention. Mascots don’t belong in the NFL. 

A few years back the Broncos introduced Miles and he’s been ruining games ever since.  Welcome Steeler fan, to the new miserable experience.  The guy to the right of the mascot in the picture looks like he’s already there: he looks like he’s trying not to be sick with the realization of the lameness of mascots.

Why I hate soccer

Jeromey Balderrama

My buddy Matt found this video that best illustrates why I just can’t get with soccer.

Check out their ‘creativity’ and ‘passion’ – at acting and faking injuries.  The other fact is that the field is too damn big that you can’t get any good confrontations or worthwhile scoring.  If anything is more played out, it’s this whole “David Beckham coming over to the US”.  Ever since this deal was announced late last spring, this guy has played 0 games for the MLS.  They didn’t even get over here until a few weeks ago, and now that he’s here he’s “hurt”.

To better understand why I can’t get with soccer look no further than this Simpsons clip below:

Technorati tags: soccer sucks

Jerk musician emails

Jeromey Balderrama

Last week turned out to be a busy one for Greenfoot.  Fresh off of playing a show last weekend, we had another one scheduled for Thursday night at The D Note, one of our favorite venues.  As with all shows, we have different avenues of promotion: the fliers at and surrounding the venue, posting on our web site and RSS feed, sending out a message to our mailing list, posting on MySpace and our newest method – posting on Craigslist.

Late Wednesday night I posted the following ad for our Thursday show: Come see great band @ one of Denver’s best live music venues – TONIGHT. On Saturday I got an email from a musician through the ad (didn’t even leave a name), basically chastising us for any reason he could find.  I know that people just have a random ax to grind, and I’m not going to dignify his email with a response – but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any thoughts about it.

First off, I don’t understand why musicians feel the need to make playing music some kind of pissing contest.  In the shows we’ve played around in Denver, we’ve seen some really good bands and we’ve seen some not-so-good bands.  We’re all entitled to our personal opinions, but we keep those within our band – we don’t speak negatively about the band to other musicians, and we surely don’t rip on the bands directly.  We’ve put our music out there and have received some constructive criticism – and welcome that.  I don’t see how someone takes pleasure in ripping on other bands – maybe it makes their ego feel better about their band.  Whatever.

I do want to react to a few things he wrote in his email though:

[The subject was “Govt Mule meets Led Zeppelin????”] seriously??  Do you really think your band compares even one microshed to these two powerhouse legends?   You need some humble pie and an honest assessment of your band from another working local musician.  Good intentions are here – believe me.

If you look in the original ad, I never said that we were the next Led Zeppelin or Gov’t Mule.  I specifically wrote “[our sound] been comparatively described as ‘Gov’t Mule meets Led Zeppelin’.”  This guy is reading into this line a little too much.  This is music marketing 101 (and credited to the Musician’s Cooler podcast): Instead of saying “our band has a very unique sound”, try to think of some of your major influences (specifically ones most people would know) and use those influences as descriptive’s.  That way, when someone reads that and says “I like those two bands, I’ll give it a listen”.  Every musician has influences, it’s not an insult to use those influences when you describe your music.  In the case of this guy, it worked – he just took it the wrong way.

I checked out your YouTube videos.   Gov’t Mule meets Led Zeppelin?  Hardly.   More like “High School Garage Band Rehearsal” meets “Really Bad Jam Session.”

Good intentions are here – believe me.

As a fellow local  musician, I REALLY recommend some more woodshedding before you put your name out there on YouTube, Craigslist, etc.   First impression is a lasting one.. I for one will never come see your band because of the first impression I had after seeing your YouTube videos.

This makes absolutely no sense to me.  YouTube and Craigslist are great publicity tools, but we’re not talking about sending a CD to Rolling Stone or a video to MTV.  I’m not supposed to use these web sites to promote our band’s music, but somehow we’re supposed to expect people to magically come to our shows without any promotion.

Secondly, first impressions are important, and I’m proud of the work that we’ve put our on our web site and on our videos.  Does it have room to grow?  Of course, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t use it as a promotional tool.  In the case of the YouTube video: it was put out by the venue we played at, we can either pretend it doesn’t exist or embrace it.  It’s a great performance so we were happy to put it out on our web site.  As we grow as a band we’ll make better recordings and better videos.  That said, we don’t expect everyone to like our music.  Everyone has different tastes and that’s fine.  Frankly, if this guy treats fellow musicians this way, then we don’t want him at our shows.

Do NOT EVER compare yourself to bands like LZ and Mule unless you can back it up.   It really leaves a disappointment when I read that part of your ad, hit your site, and find the very elementary and mediocre work you guys are doing. Booking managers will feel the same as me TRUST ME.

Ok, calm down.  We used some comparative descriptions, we didn’t shoot your dog.  I’m not going to re-hash my argument from above, but just that this guy shouldn’t take this so personally.  We put ads on Craigslist for people to come check out our site and hear our music.  We hope people will like it, but if you don’t then that’s fine.  I’m sorry this guy felt like we wasted his time, but apparently his time isn’t so valuable that he can’t compose a diatribe about how he hates our band.

And booking managers will feel the same?  Some may and that’s fine, but we’ve had a steady schedule and played at a lot of great places this summer and met most of our goals.  We’ve worked hard and it’s paid off, but I guess booking managers feel the same as this guy.

I do between 60 to 80 gigs a year with my bands and I book 95% of our gigs.  You really need to think of a different way to market yourself besides the LZep/Mule thing.   What a disappointment.

Ok, so this guy can pee further than we can.  I’m glad his head grew as he wrote that sentence.  This guy is comparing apples to oranges.  When you want to make it big in music then it’s probably your full-time job and probably do need to play 80+ gigs per year.  That not our band’s goal.  We’ve all got our own careers, families and other priorities.  The music is simply a release for us, we’re happy with playing 3-4 shows per month.  We work hard and welcome any success, but our livelihood isn’t dependant on playing 80 shows per year.

And with his 95% of 60-80 gigs booking experience, the best advice he can offer us is “don’t say Led Zep and you guys suck”.  Thanks for the substantive advice!  I really appreciate all this guy is doing to support his fellow musicians, nothing like tearing other people down to help think better about yourself. But good intentions are here – believe me.

Technorati tags: musicians, musicianship

Another way to screw football fans – rivals + preseason tickets

Jeromey Balderrama

I came across an interesting story today in the Star Tribune, that talks about the Minnesota Vikings’ plan to boost their preseason ticket sales.  This year, for their single-game ticket sales, if you want to buy tickets to their home games against their biggest rivals (the Bears and Packers), you can only do so with a special “two-game mini-pack”.  However, these aren’t just any two games – they’re the two preseason games.  Worse yet, you don’t get any discount, you basically are buying tickets to two games.

If you’ve never been to a preseason NFL game, it’s pretty much night & day when compared to a regular season game.  I wouldn’t say they’re unwatchable – If you’re interested in seeing the younger players and the new talent, then they are exciting to watch.  Are they worth the regular season ticket price – of course not.

As a season ticket holder, the preseason games are included in your price (of course, at full price).  I usually try to give away the preseason games, and I believe I’ve once just ate the cost and haven’t gone.  They’re usually at weird times (like at Thursday at 6pm), and it’s a bit of a strange atmosphere.

Still the NFL seems content in ramming these preseason games down their fans throats.  It’s bad enough that the teams have 4 preseason games (2 of those being home games), but to have the audacity to charge you a full regular season price is simply highway robbery.  For the Vikings to exploit their fans with this “2 pack” deal is an outrage.

If the NFL wants to drive interest an attendance to their preseason games, they need to make changes:

  • Reduce the number of preseason games from 4 to 2.  Many teams already pair up with another NFL team for camp scrimmages.  The Broncos have done it with their JV tea—I mean the Texans- in the past.
  • Reduce the prices of the tickets, make them affordable to your NFL fans that maybe can’t afford to bring their family to a regular season game.  You would bring in a lot of people who are passionate and excited about being at those games, and would make it a great time to bring the kids.
  • Ideally – separate the preseason tickets away from the regular tickets for the season ticket holders.  I realize this likely won’t happen, but a great alternative would be to reduce the prices, then give season ticket holders the option to defer those tickets to charity.  I would definitely give a 1/2 price ticket away if it meant someone from the Boys & Girls club or big-brother/big-sister could come see a game, rather than going to a game I don’t want to be at and may not even show up.  This would make the season ticket holders feel good and also be a win with the community.

The NFL is by far the most successful and profitable sports league in the nation and do many things right – but they still have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to pick-pocketing their fans.

Technorati tags: nfl, football, preseason, broncos, vikings

The Podcast Awards – The People’s Fraud

Jeromey Balderrama

The third annual “Podcast Awards” are once again here, and what once a noble idea to recognize the hard work of podcasters has evolved into another way to generate revenue and self-promote the organizers and their endeavors. 

The site, opened up to accept nominations on July 1st is now greeting visitors with a page full of ads.  When the page loads it’s hard to see where your eyes should focus as the logos, navigation and content are broken up with banners, badges and Google Adsense advertising.  My friend Matt nailed it when he sarcastically said “nothing says ‘we really care about this award and what it stands for’ than trying to generate revenue from it.”

There isn’t a clear description of what the podcast awards are about, or why I would want to nominate a podcast I produce or listen to.  I found myself having to read over the content twice to find the “Click here to nominate” text.  I have to do a lot of digging around to begin to understand the process and how I should participate.  The category listings are laid out in a prominent manner, but are littered with redundant “Your Company Here!” linkages. 

The page just comes across as tacky and would be better served with just saying “Give Us Money” – oh wait, there is a PayPal donation button.  I understand that sponsors are needed to make these things happen, but solicitations need to be done discretely and respectfully.  I could see how an advertiser would be leery in associating themselves in a site that puts so little emphasis on podcast outreach to promote blatant advertising.

As for the categories themselves: it seems that the organizers learned no lessons about distinguishing the differences between a science and technology podcast.  Technology –  arguably podcasting’s biggest topic – doesn’t even merit it’s own category.  It gets lumped with “Science”, doing both podcast genres an injustice.  There are many great scientific podcasts out there that will go virtually ignored due to the need to nominate the big tech podcasts.  Likewise you will see a worthwhile technology contender left out because at least one scientific podcast should be represented.  At this point an “Entertainment” and “Movies / Films” grouping would make more sense.

It’s interesting to see that the “Best Podcast Directory” was left out of this year’s awards?  Was it because iTunes, last year’s recipient realized how these awards are perceived and had no interested in taking part?  Apple is many things, but one thing they are is PR-savvy.

One last thing, and this may be some picky criticism coming from the son of an English teacher, but a good proofreading seems to be in order.  The grammatical and punctuation errors cries out “unprofessional”.

I appreciate the intentions of the Podcast Awards, but unfortunately the poor execution does more harm than good.

Technorati tags: Podcast Awards