social-creature

In Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between Who We Are and What We Buy, Rob Walker talks about “underground brands”–lifestyle symbols created by independent entrepreneurs. In fact, I actually think it’s easier to think of underground brands as “independent brands,” (cuz what does “underground” really mean, anyway?) much like independent music:
In popular music, independent music, [...]

Once you ‘got’ Pop, you could never see a sign again the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again.
- Andy Warhol

It is totally disconcerting to discover a book that pretty much compiles your insights and articulates them back to you. Buying In: The Secret Dialogue [...]

…And I can make you wanna buy a product
Movers shakers and producers
Me and my friends understand the future
- The Flobots: “Handlebars”

I’ve been trying to get through Matt Mason’s The Pirate’s Dilemma for a while. It’s an easy read, but between digging up mind-blowing historical discoveries from the cultural strata–Did you know that a nun [...]

In Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter explain that really, there was never any conflict between the two to begin with. Counterculture hinges on, and consumer culture consists of, the expression of your lifestyle/identity. Whether you’re choosing to wear Nikes, Doc Martens, or some crazy obscure Japanese [...]

The goal of all human activity can’t be reduced to the leaving of descendants. Once human culture was firmly in place it acquired new goals.
- Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee

right as i was in the process of rereading the third chimpanzee (i had to read it in college for sociobiology, and recently realized i’d forgotten [...]

it’s kind of hard to write a post advocating a sense of balance. it’s easy to get all riled up and energized on preaching some kind of extreme; is it even possible to create a polemic for moderation? i’ve been sitting on this particular post for weeks, unable to summon up the oomph to do [...]

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
– e.e. cummings
which is all quite noble and good, but the thing of it is, e.e., is that [...]

when i worked at house of blues, every so often we’d have social events with all the other people working in l.a.’s concert marketing industry. people from goldenvoice, livenation (at the time this was a separate company from house of blues), nederlander, etc. lots of people in attendance had even worked at one of [...]

 
 
“We’re the most permeable membrane in show-business. Anyone who thinks they’re part of Mystic Family Circus probably is.”
- Mystic Family Circus in Freaks & Fire: The Underground Reinvention of the Circus

ok… i’m going to confess: i didn’t read the cult of the amateur (and i’ve read enough reviews of it at this point to be [...]

i moved my blog and everyone disappeared! i’m really missing the three people who used to read this blog. where you at? if you come back, i’ll get you on the list. (bring a friend, and i’ll put you down +1).
in my previous post i wrote about how hip hop culture offered the first really [...]