Patti Smith & Steven Sebring at Tower Records Shibuya

（英語の後に日本語で書いてます）

Following the wonderful appearance at Fuji Rock, Patti came back to us along with Steven Sebring in Tokyo. There were two events; one at Tower Records Shibuya on the 29th, and the other at La Foret Harajuku on the 30th.

I was lucky enough to attend the former, the talk show with Patti and Steven, who is the director of the film featuring Patti, “Dream of Life.”

The movie is to start at theaters on August 29th, and the event was a promotional one. The number of audience members was probably 300 or so. It was full house, with no seating. The staff at Tower Records were nice and we were told to sit down on the floor, so that more people can actually watch Patti and Steven. We are also allowed to take some pictures, which is unusual here in Japan. So I want to say thanks for Patti, Steven, and people at Tower Records.

The talk went on for 30-40 minutes, and we could see how lovely Patti really was, the good relationship between Patti and Steven, and how much she likes being at Fuji Rock, etc.

It covered how the two met with each other. Steven visited Patti at her house in Detroit, to shoot pictures for Spin magazine. Followed by Steven seeing her concert in Irving Plaza in NYC. And then he asked her for the permission to shoot movie to capture all of Patti…. And Patti even mentioned that Steven had been like her brother since then.

She also told us one coincidental story. The day (July 29th) was her father’s birthday. And the opening the day for the movie (August 29th) was the day on which he passed away. So some of us who are going to the movie on the opening day will surely think of him while we enjoy it!

After the talk, we got the wonderful treat from Patti, which was Patti’s solo live with her acoustic guitar. She sang “Beneath the Southern Cross” (once again dedicated to Michael Jackson), “Grateful,” and “My Blakean Year.” She started “Blakean” with some improvisational lyrics, like as follows.

I came to Tokyo
To go to the Fuji Festival
Then I went to Korea to play there too
All my band flew to California
I was lucky ‘cos I’ve got to stay in Tokyo
All the things I’ve done
All the street I walked
All the soba and sake
Have been fun
And the people welcoming
And the architecture interesting
And the temples, spiritual land
People playing and laughing
…

It was really wonderful time, and was a nice addition to the great live experience we had at Fuji Rock. I do hope she comes back to Tokyo next year for the tour supporting the upcoming album.

フジロックでのすばらしいショウに続いて、パティ・スミスが今度はスティーブン・セブリンと一緒に、２つのイベントをするために東京に戻ってきてくれました。スティーブンは、来月末に公開予定の、パティのドキュメンタリー映画 Dream of Lifeの監督です。

一つ目のイベントはタワーレコード渋谷店でのトークショウ（29日）、二つ目はラフォーレ原宿での映画の特別試写会（30日）です。僕はラッキーなことに、トークショウのほうに参加することができました。

イベントは多分、300人くらいの観客が入っていて、立ち見で満員になっていました。正直、大部分の人がステージ上のパティ＆スティーブンはよく見えない状態です。タワーレコードのスタッフの方が気を利かせてくれて、みんなにその場に座るように言ってくれたので、ほとんどの人はステージが見えるようになったんじゃないかな、と思います。あと、こういったイベントでは珍しいことに、写真もとっていいよ、と言ってくれました。パティ、スティーブン、タワーレコードのスタッフ、あと、お互いに協力した観客の皆にも、大感謝です！

トークそのものは30〜40分くらいで、パティのラブリーな人柄が伝わってくる内容でした。パティとスティーブンがどんないい関係を築いているのか、パティがすごくフジロックを気に入っていること、なんかも解る内容でした。

二人がどうやって知り合ったのか、という話では、、、
スティーブンがSPIN（音楽雑誌）の写真を撮るためにデトロイトのパティ宅を訪れたこと。スティーブンがパティのニューヨークのアービングプラザのコンサートを見に行ったこと。ドキュメンタリー映画を撮りたい、とパティに頼んだこと。など。
パティはスティーブンが自分の弟分だとも、言ってました。

すごい偶然なんですが、トークショウの日がパティのお父さんの誕生日で、映画公開日（８月
29日）がお父さんの命日、という話もしてくれました。

トークの後は、なんとパティのソロアコースティックライブ！Beneath the Southern Cross（フジロックと同様、マイケル・ジャクソンに捧げていました）、Grateful、My Blakean Yearの三曲。

My Blakean Yearは、こんな感じの即興の歌詞を頭につけて、歌ってましたよ。

I came to Tokyo
To go to the Fuji Festival
Then I went to Korea to play there too
All my band flew to California
I was lucky ‘cos I’ve got to stay in Tokyo
All the things I’ve done
All the street I walked
All the soba and sake
Have been fun
And the people welcoming
And the architecture interesting
And the temples, spiritual land
People playing and laughing
…

フジロックの余韻さめやらぬ中、すごくすてきな時間をもう一度すごすことができました。次のアルバムのツアーで来年あたりに、ぜひ、日本に帰ってきてほしい！強く願ってます。

toshi

Patti Smith at Fuji Rock 09

I made it to Fuji Rock festival to see Patti this past Friday, and
it was another wonderful show.

Setlist

dancing barefoot
redondo beach
ghost dance
southern x
pissing in the river
because the night
peaceable kingdom (into spoken phtp)
phtp (full, not spoken)
land/gloria
rnr nigger

The show run for 1+ hour. The boys did a great job, but I want to note
that Tom was incredible, adding his own trademark guitar tone to the
familiar tunes, and making great renditions of them. I liked Redondo
Beach best in that regard.

I liked Southern Cross as always. What was different this time was
that Tony was singing the Buckley part aloud and strong. Now it sounds
more of Tony’s own for me.

I cannot comment much on how it was like during the last two songs. I
just went crazy, and the songs made me feel more than satisfied.

Patti will be doing in-store event at Tower Records Shibuya shop,
promoting the movie, along with Steven on next Wednesday. Will give
you guys an update on that then.

金曜日に、フジロックフェスティバルでパティ・スミスのライブを見てきました。今回も素晴らしいショウでした。

セットリスト

Dancing Barefoot
Redondo Beach
Ghost Dance
Beneath the Southern Cross
Pissing in the River
Because the Night
Peaceable Kingdom
People Have the Power
Lland/Gloria
Rock’n'Roll Nigger

約1時間強のショウでした。バンドの演奏もすばらしかったのですが、特に、Tom Verlaine （テレビジョン）のギターがなんともいえず良かったです。おなじみのPattiの曲に、Verlaineらしいギターサウンドが加わり、このメンバーならではといえるバージョンに仕上がっていました。その意味では、特にRedondo Beachが印象に残っています。

「Michael Jacksonに捧げます」といってはじまったBeneath the Southern Cross。いつもライブで聴くのを楽しみにしている曲です。今回は、Tony Shannahanの歌うコーラス部分が、いつもより力強い歌い方になっていました。この生まれ変わったBeneath the Southern Cross もいつにも増してよかったです。

最後の２曲についてはあまり書けることがありません。全般的にメローな曲中心のセットでしたが、この激しいエンディングのときには、僕も完全にぶちキレてしまっていました。おかげで満足度が高い状態で、ライブが終わりました。

今度の水曜日には、渋谷タワーレコードでインストア・イベントがあります。その後、改めて記事を書く予定です。お楽しみに。

Adobe MAX 08 – day 1 keynote

Started the day with Kevin Lynch’s keynote session Monday morning.

• Many people are excited with new product announcements. I am, too, but let me focus on the video-related topics.
• The keynote this morning didn’t touch new Flash Media Server release which Adobe had announced on Sunday. I am sure keynote on Tuesday will do it.
• Over 80% of internet video is delivered over Flash Platform worldwide. In US it is close to 90%.
• Bud Albers from Disney tells us that they deliver massive amount of video in H.264 using Flash Player 10. And Disney.com being the one of top 3 video site on the internet.
• MLB will join NFL, NBA, and NHL by delivering all their live games using Flash in 2009. MLB has been Microsoft shop, a reference customer for Microsoft Silverlight. So it is quite a surprise to me.

While Microsoft has reached 100 million installation of Silverlight 2, Flash is without doubt ahead of the game. I am looking forward to the Keynote tomorrow.

Flash with online video

Adobe MAX 08 – Day 0

Attended the pre-event lab at Adobe MAX, its annual user conference, on Sunday, November 16. This year, it is in their hometown San Fran.

• I joined the day-long lab session for Flex. You can think that it’s basically a Flex bootcamp. Called “Flex 3: Developing Rich Client Applications.”
• I’d felt that there would be knowleges and techniques that I wouldn’t have learnt by working by myself. My expectation for the lab was correct. Both content-wise and learning-wise.
• Matt Boles did a great job in compressing 2.5-day training into 1-day. I am pretty sure that I can get up to speed with Flex development by revisiting the session materials.
• My takeaways include…
  • Some techniques to better deal with Flex Builder 3 (better productivity!)
  • Links to useful docs (especially for starters), including Component Explorer
  • Dealing with debugger (he points out that working with the debugger will give you deeper understanding of Flex)
  • Some architecting guidances

Thanks Matt for the great session. I also want to say thank you to Intuit, who hosted the reception dinner, for the nice meal and great networking opportunity at Jillian’s.

Matt Boles, Adobe

Reception Dinner

Deerhoof and Experimental Dental School

Went to see Deerhoof and Experimental Dental School at Mezzanine, San Francisco on Nov-15.

• It was the final show of their 6-week US tour, in their hometown. Should have been a special one.
• It was the third time I saw Deerhoof, and the show was by far the best for me. Their weirdness remains outstandingly unique, but that’s only one of their charms. Plays solid rock sound. Thought they were anti-rockstar types, but they can be.
• I really loved the drummer, his play was awesome. Also shocked to notice that he just plays a snare, a bass drum, and a couple of cymbals (no tom, no hat).
• Experimental Dental School, duo made of a male guitarist and a female drummer, was a great find for me. It doesn’t sound a two-man show. It’s like… Suicide + Deerhoof + Neil Young? I am not really capturing it this way.
• Sorry, I missed the first band, KIT. I should’ve checked them out. Really.

The show was a blast, with a lot more excitement than I expected. I brought home EDS CD “Jane Doe Loves Me.”

Greg from Deerhoof

Experimental Dental School

Hiromi in Santa Cruz, CA

I am so lucky to catch Hiromi’s Sonicbloom once again!

Last month, I saw Hiromi and the band in Tokyo, in a 5,000-seat venue. She rocked the house there, which was a wonderful and exciting experience. Tonight, it was a special experience, in a friendly setup with the audience size of 200. I almost cried with tears during the last tune. (To be honest, I did!) And I am not sure if that was her best show for me, maybe not technically, but I can say that it was the most enjoyable show.

The best thing was that the band was really organic and dynamic today. The guys just went wild, improvised so freely, and they seemed to enjoy all of that. So did we.

Here’s the setlist.

(first set)

1. Softly As In A Morning Sunrise
2. Deep Into The Night
3. Ue Wo Muite Aruko
4. My Favorite Things
5. XYG

(second set)

1. Time Travel
2. Clair de Lune
3. Led Boots
4. I’ve Got Rhythm
5. Caravan
6. Place To Be (encore)

There were quite a few highlights… During “My Favorite Things,” the band went very quite, and Hiromi and Martin, the drummer, grabbed the lead. Martin’s percussive work along with Hiromi’s improvisation was the most wonderful moment, I thought that way as I heard them play. But I would later know that things were just beginning.

The second set was unbelievably exciting, from the beginning to the end. Especially the last three (“Led Boots,” “I’ve Got Rhythm,” “Caravan”) all got standing ovations. The house announcement said the show was over, but we couldn’t stop, and Hiromi came back and played “Place To Be” for us.

I can quote a few of her words today. Some were quite impressive, some were so funny that it caused huge laughter.

• Thanks for inviting me back. Thank you for giving me the place to be. (right before starting “Place To Be”)
• How can I… make such a mistake. First time in five years! (as pointed out the mistake of introducing Tony as “Guitar”)
• Jeff Beck’s Led Boots… Kind of. (after finishing Led Boots. And laughter from the audience followed. Why? I guess it’s because we all felt that it was her great rendition, and not really Jeff Beck’s.)

Oh, well. There are a lot more I can tell you, but I think I need to cool myself down and go to bed. I am really glad that I chose to drive 50 miles to catch them.

Amazon’s new CDN offering to come

This news announcement came to me via several channels, including blogs, mailing lists, and news sites, so I couldn’t have missed it. And the announcement itself is not surprising to me, given that Amazon has spent a lot of effort into cloud computing space, and that they have their data centers built around the globe.

The reactions are basically like this: it’s a possible threat to CDN players in the future, with varying tones. I totally agree with it, in that big players like Akamai, LimeLight, Level3 will not be impacted in the meantime. On the other hand, new CDNs pushing lower costs with focus on smaller businesses can easily in competition with Amazon’s CDN. Those new CDNs already gave up monthly-commit contract and offers pay-as-you-go, but Amazon is even more aggressive, with flexibities like publicly available pricing and quick sign-up.

Speaking of large business customers, I actually don’t expect Amazon CDN’s getting implemented by large enterprises and media companies in the near future. Those guys must have had better pricing from established CDNs, and it will take more time for Amazon to catch up with these CDN’s in reliability/availability/capacity that large businesses will require. In addition, I don’t see any indication of functionalities like SSL or streaming, it’s just basic HTTP delivery as it seems.

I can point out that Amazon has a long history of hiring CDN’s, and as of now, they use Level 3 CDN for most, if not all, of their image delivery on their storefront. I am interested to see if and when Amazon itself will implement its own CDN for their online store.

It is totally off-topic, but one thing I found interesting is the article from Yomiuri newspaper. It’s the most selling newspaper in Japan, and the company is very traditional and conservative. That said, its article quotes like “Om Malik, GigaOm, says that…” “Mr. Dan Rayburn from Seeking Alpha expresses…” I am curious to see if they do the same with their printed edition, I guess not, but I could be wrong.

NHK’s upcoming international broadcasting service

NHK, the largest and public broadcaster in Japan, is getting quite a few major investers for its international broadcasting service.

Microsoft, 12 Others Buying Into NHK Broadcaster, Nikkei Says

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp. and Itochu Corp. are among 13 companies buying shares in Japan’s first 24-hour English-language broadcast service, Nikkei English News reported, without saying where it got the information.

The wholly owned unit of Japan Broadcasting Corp., or NHK, plans to increase its capital by 190 million yen ($1.75 million) in October by issuing new shares to the companies, the news service said. The business is currently capitalized at 200 million yen.

It has almost all of major broadcasters, and some of largest Japanese firms. In addition, it has two giants, Microsoft and NTT Communications.

I am simply wondering, if this set of investers will really help make the operations effective. Having Microsoft and NTT Com as its key investers, does it have the option of choosing the right delivery platform?

According to the Nikkei Newspaper this morning, it plans to add more IT firms to the investers, to take advantage of emerging technologies in video delivery over the internet. Specificaly it mentions that it is interested in using P2P.

I am going to watch the progress with it. The service is expected to launch in February 2009.

Hulu vs YouTube?

TechCrunch posted an interesting article comparing Hulu and YouTube.

Can Hulu Be A Bigger Business Than YouTube?

You can find interesting numbers in it.

Hulu may not size up well against YouTube – in May 2008, Hulu served about 88 million videos compared to YouTube’s 4.2 billion videos – but it has the luxury of monetizing the vast majority of its videos instead of the three percent that YouTube can sell ads against.  Three percent of 4.2 billion is 126 million videos a month that can carry ads—not much more than Hulu.

That pretty much levels the playing field in terms of revenue and profit potential.  According to one estimate, Hulu could enjoy $90 million in revenue in its first year. And although it may not be quite as much as YouTube’s estimated worldwide revenue total of $200 million this year, it equals a Bear Stearns estimate for YouTube’s domestic 2008 revenue (of $90 million).  Considering that Hulu mainly caters to an American audience, both YouTube and Hulu could see roughly the same revenues in the U.S. this year.

Despite the huge difference in video views, the sizes of the business measured in ad revenue are almost the same, in this estimate.

First, I strongly believe that as far as the business goes, the mainstream content like Hulu or live sports is king. So when I read that Hulu’s estimated revenue number is not very different from that of YouTube’s, I was not really surprised.

On the other hand, the power of UGC (user generated content) on the internet has really been significant for years. So what’s the problem here? One fundamental problem, as I see it, is that people enjoys it but doesn’t really care it as they do for the mainstream content. Which makes each piece of content not very attractive for advertisers.

I hope to see solutions when we can change the way people find and consume content. One such possibility is video search. Just like web search made web pages into gold mine of valuable information, video search can make online video into something more useful than just entertainment. Then there is room for more advertisement, with higher value for advertisers.

I am really looking forward to seeing the increased revenue numbers for the mainstream and UGC.

Tokyo Jazz Festival 2008

Hiromi was awesome in her Sonicbloom set at Tokyo Jazz. Just like any other shows of hers.

I was fortunate to catch her once again this past Saturday. She did two sets – in the afternoon, she played with a tap dancer called Kazu Kumagai.  In the evening, she played with her own band, Hiromi’s Sonicbloom. Both sets were wonderful, and memorable. Speaking of the set by Hiromi & Kaz, it was very intense and exciting throughout the entire 40-min set, you would never want to miss anything from that.

The festival itself was good too. The lineup was great, including Hank Jones on that day, and the operation seemed well. What was the most important to me, aside from Hiromi’s sets, it is Michel Camilo. I really appreciate the opportunity to get to know this great pianist. His notes are so strong and beautiful that I fell in instant love. I am already digging this guy at Last.fm, and I think I will explore more over time.

Anyways, I am convinced that the festival is great, and I am looking forward to the next year. And Hiromi is touring through November and December, so I hope to catch her at one of the shows.