Last night, I took part in the University of Northern British Columbia’s nineteenth Santa Claus debate. This is an annual event where two teams square off, one arguing in favour of Santa’s existence, the other saying he’s a fraud. Neither side lets facts stand in the way of a good laugh. I was on the “yes” side, and my presentation is below.
By the way, since I took some swipes at Neil Godbout of the Citizen it’s good to see that he has laid out his arugment in today’s editorial, titled “The Problem With Santa“. You can read it and judge for yourself which side you’re on, but I’d like to add that Santa showed up the debate at the end of the night, scoring yet another victory for the “yes” side.
If you’ve ever dreamed of spying on someone from the comfort of your computer at no cost to you, you’re in luck! A number of webcams have been going up around the city to help you out. First, catch them on their stroll down George Street using the livestream of the Wood Innovation and Design Centre being built. There’s two angles so you can’t miss them.
As they head into Civic Plaza, catch the overhead view courtesy the city of Prince George. Then, if they decide to go inside you can watch them as they go peruse the Festival of Trees this weekend.
As you can see, it’s a relatively small gap between these points. I imagine with just a few more streams we can have a full-on surveillance of at least one part of the city.
Originally I wasn’t going to say anything.
Congrats to Top 40 Under 40! #FF @GoalSpank @jessicaleequinn @akurjata @JenniferBrandle @JoelCMcKay @kaleenaross @OVERhangPG @CopperPigBbq
— Tourism PG (@tourismpg) November 15, 2013
Congrats to my Top 40 under 40 co-host @akurjata! Great company to be in. http://t.co/mNiMPJyAEp pic.twitter.com/5IZUoZxY6M
— Betsy Trumpener (@BetsyTrumpener) November 15, 2013
Congrats to #dptodd alumnist @akurjata for making the #CityofPG top 40 under 40 list http://t.co/eKa5fMYzvx #weknewyouwhen
— D.P. Todd Secondary (@dptstrojans) November 16, 2013
But the number of messages, tweets, and emails I’ve been getting has prompted me to mark this in a more public way than I had planned.
Every single congratulations I’ve received has come from someone who I owe a debt of gratitude to. Family, friends, mentors, teachers, co-workers, bosses, colleagues, past and present. All have helped me succeed.
Just before I found out I had made the top 40, I was reading this interview and highlighted the following quote:
“It’s almost like some great, ineffable Kurt Vonnegut novel: it’s hard to understand the influence people have on you until 5 or 10 years later. It’s scary to think about what my life would have been like if they hadn’t been there.”
That rings true for me. I think back all through my life and the key roles people have played along the way, without me realizing. What if I hadn’t had the teachers I did? What if I didn’t make the friends I have? What if I hadn’t inherited the work of so many others?
I think of encouragements I was given without me recognizing their value until it was too late to say thank you. Invaluable lessons that were passed along unnoticed until years later. Skills that I have only because someone else had the foresight to realize they would one day be useful to me, even if I didn’t know it at the time.
And the community where I’ve spent most of my life. My home. All along amazing people building this city, envisioning what can make it better, and putting in the work to make it happen.
My initial instinct was to downplay this as no big deal. And look, I get it isn’t an international award only given to a few people each year. But after seeing all these messages from people I love and respect who want to celebrate- it just doesn’t seem right to shrug it off. I’ve looked at the other people on the list and what they’ve done and I certainly feel like they shouldn’t shrug anything off – it’s amazing stuff. And there’s amazing stuff being done by people who aren’t on the list. There’s amazing people out there. It’s nice to celebrate success.
So what I’m trying to convey is a thank-you. I know the words are clichéd, but the sentiment is genuine. I am fortunate to be supported and inspired by so many great people.
And congratulations to everyone else out there making things happen. There’s amazing people everywhere. Celebrate them.
Humbled, no brag.
From the Lheidli T’enneh exhibit at the Exploration Place museum in Prince George:
“When Alex Bird joined the Canadian Army as a private in the First World War, he was treated the same as the rest of the troops, which included going out for a drink. When Alex returned to Canada, after the war, he was not allowed to go into an establishment that served alcohol. Nor did he qualify for the 1919 Soldier Settlement Act, for an allotment of land. This also held true for First Nations soldiers after the Second World War- they did not qualify for the Veterans Land Act.”
Lest we forget.
I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that I find interesting about the Rob Ford revelations. There’s the obvious factors, but there’s something more, as well. And I think that’s notions of “the truth.”
When Gawker and the Toronto Star first reported on the video back in May, we had three reporters saying that there was a video depicting the mayor of Toronto smoking what appears to be crack cocaine. No one else could see the video, so whether you believed this or not depended entirely on whether you felt these reporters could be trusted.
Despite defenses of the journalistic credentials of those who said they saw the video, there were still plenty of people who thought they should be doubted. Not least among them, the mayor himself. He may be getting semantic about it now, but he essentially denied he used crack cocaine. He also explicitly stated there was no video.
For months everyone without firsthand knowledge of this story were presented with two versions of reality. In the first, there was a video of Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine. In the second, there was no video and Ford had not smoked crack cocaine.
We lived with these two realities for months, and while many people questioned Ford’s version of events, many questioned the reliability of the media, as well.
Today, there is only one version: the video exists, and Ford used crack cocaine.
I guess what’s interesting about it is how seldom it seems two versions of reality get reconciled into a single truth, anymore.
Facebook and YouTube are huge, Twitter is up, MySpace is down, and Last.fm is just sort of there.
The Coldsnap Music Festival 2014 lineup has just been announced. I’m a big fan of this event, and manage the website as a volunteer.
Part of that job is putting together the little “artist profiles” – a biography, press contact, photo, video, music and links. One aspect I find interesting about this is tracking which social media/electronic music tools are used by different musicians.
At just 14 artists, this is hardly a comprehensive sample size, but it’s still a small window into which social networks are beeing deemed as “useful” by working musicians.
One note: when putting together the lists of social networks where artists are present, the only networks I “sought out” were Facebook, Twitter, CBC Music, Last.FM and YouTube. Here’s why:
For the rest, I only provided links if the links were present on the artist’s website. That means everyone could have been on Instagram or iTunes, but I didn’t bother looking. They only got counted if the artist bothered linking to them.
The results:
Everybody is on Last.fm, no one uses it:
Last.fm is more like a music wiki, I guess– I’m not really sure how artists would use it. It was one of only two sites where every single artist could be found- but not a single artist linked to their profile there.
(Almost) everybody uses Facebook and YouTube:
Facebook was by far the most popular social network, with 11 out of 14 artists having a presence on there. Of those, all except one provided a direct link to the page from their main artist website, and it was always prominent. Anecdotally, it also seemed to be about the most actively-used network (meaning artists were regularly posting there). Not really surprising.
YouTube was the only place where everyone could be found aside from Last.fm, but unlike Last.fm it was actively used. It was on nearly every artist website, and only two of the musicians I covered didn’t have their own profile. Of those two, one was still posting other people’s videos on the main artist page, which means YouTube is being actively used by all except one of the artists playing Coldsnap this year. Again, if you pay attention to internet usage, not really surprising. This is where a lot of music listening is done.
Twitter is pretty big:
When I started doing this all of four years ago, I remember maybe 50%, probably less, of the artists were on Twitter. Now 10 out of the 14 were on there, and actively using it. All ten of these provided links directly from their website.
MySpace, not so much:
The other thing I remember about when I started doing this is that pretty much everyone was on MySpace. Now? Only 5 bothered linking there, and none of them seemed to be actively using it. It was all old songs, no updated information. Justin Timberlake has his work cut out for him.
Canadian musicians are on CBC Music:
CBC Music only lets independent Canadian musicians create artist pages, which means the two Americans playing the show aren’t eligible. But of the remaining 12, 11 had CBC Music profiles. What’s more, they were all pretty up-to-date, with new songs and current contact information. Interestingly, though, not a single one of them linked to CBC Music from their websites. So it seems its a place musicians want to have a presence, but not one they are actively encouraging people to seek out?
Retail/Samping:
8 links to iTunes, 7 to Bandcamp, 5 to Soundcloud, 3 to SonicBids, 2 to CDBaby, 1 to Reverbnation, 1 to Amazon. Again, these numbers are probably higher for all of these sites, but I didn’t actively go looking- this is what was easily findable on the musician websites.
Bandcamp and Soundcloud were often incorporated into the site itself, with Soundcloud players subtly tucked into the overall design as a way to sample music, and Bandcamp being used as the store, with links to iTunes or other retailers.
For what it’s worth, the single artist with a link to Reverbnation actually used Reverbnation as his main page, and only had one other social media site- YouTube.
Streaming:
Interestingly, not a single link to Spotify, Rdio, or any of the other streaming music sites. I know musicians are on there, but unlike Soundcloud, Bandcamp, iTunes, and Youtube, they aren’t drawing attention to it.
Photos and miscellany:
Most bands had photos on their page, but only one was using Flickr to do so. Two artists had links to their Instagram, and one had a photogallery of fans who had tagged them on Instagram.
I was a little surprised that only one group had a Tumblr account on display, but I was also surprised that one artist had a Pinterest account on his links alongside Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. However, it only had 19 pins.
Final count (out of 14):
Youtube: 13 (12 with active accounts, 1 with links to other videos. The remaining 1 was on YouTube, but not with an account or links)
CBC Music: 11 (out of 12 eligible)
CBC Music if I only linked when the artists did: 0
Facebook: 11
Twitter: 10
iTunes: 8
Bandcamp: 7
Soundcloud: 5
MySpace: 5 (and mostly old, unused accounts)
SonicBids: 3
CDBaby: 2
Instagram: 2
Amazon: 1
Flickr: 1
Pinterest: 1
Reverbnation: 1
Tumblr: 1
Spotify: 0
Rdio: 0
Last.fm: everyone, but no one used it
This past weekend, I was asked to speak at a Canadian University Press conference about my own experience going from unemployed university graduate to getting a job at the CBC. One thing I’ve learned is that there are as many different paths to this work as there are people doing it, so I decided to focus on my own experience and retroactively figure out three steps I accidentally took to help me succeed. The talk is below so you can stream or download it. I’ve also summarized my points if you are a text-based person.
(On a personal note, this is the first time I’ve given any sort of a speech using just a few notes, rather than having the whole thing written out, so that was a pretty big win.)
How to get a job you don’t technically qualify for ▶ custom player
How to get a journalism job you don’t technically qualify for
Step one: Don’t wait for permission (or a paycheque)
I didn’t go to journalism school, and at the time I applied to work at CBC I hadn’t ever been trained to be on the radio, edit audio, or be a journalist. However, I had volunteered at both my campus newspaper and campus radio and had a few years of self-taught experience in those realms. It wasn’t much, but alongside my degree (political science and international studies- lots of reading, writing, and criticial thinking) it was enough to get me a job interview.
And this doesn’t have to be limited to the campus. There are free publications, you can blog, you can podcast. Learn and teach yourself and do as many types of journalism as you can so you can demonstrate not that you could do this work- but that you already are.
Step two: Be interested in something no one else is interested in
I did not get a job the first time I applied. But I did get a callback to do something called “backfill”, which is filling in when a regular employee was away. Smaller communities don’t have a lot of freelance reporters kicking around, so the fact that I was interested in staying in Prince George gave me a competitive edge. I was and am genuinely interested in the community and the stories happening here (and in the rest of the north). That gave me an advantage over the people who wanted to stay in Vancouver or Toronto.
It doesn’t have to be communities, either (though that helps). One of the other speakers said he thinks there’s a big future for journalists who report on specific issues around industry. If you are obsessed with energy projects, for example, that could help you get work.
My overall point was that if you have a portfolio full of stories about conflict in Syria and senate scandals, all it tells me is you are able to report on stories other people are already reporting on. What sets you apart is stories that no one but you would find and put together. Use your interests, your location, your nextwork to uncover something original, and stand out.
Step three: Copy people who are better than you
The first two steps were enough to get me in the door. From there, I had to improve, and rapidly. I spent time paying attention to the people I was working with and seeing how they worked to pick tips up from them. I also spent a time seeking out the best pieces of radio and journalism I could and figuring out how I could sound more like them. The first good edited pieces I put together came after I discovered This American Life and basically emulated that style. As a host, I spend time listening to the cadence of people like Jian Ghomeshi and Ira Glass and Mark Forsythe and just repeating the words they say the way they say them.
And this doesn’t stop. I regularly listen to talks posted from radio and journalism conferences and listen to award-winning pieces to pick up tips. The example I like to think of is the Beatles starting out emulating Chuck Berry and Motown and Little Richard and becoming the Beatles. You take all your influences and try to become them, and you’ll become a better version of yourself.
* * *
These steps alone are not enough. You need hustle, you need fairly strong communication and critical thinking skills, and you need a certain amount of good timing. But I think they were key in helping me have the good luck to be where I am, and hopefully by sharing them I help someone else create their own luck.
Last night I watched Prince George’s first-ever e-Town Hall meeting. Instead of having to show up in person to take part, people were able to stream the meeting online and submit their questions via an electronic form on the website.
Assuming you’re into making city hall accessible, this was a big step forward. Speaking for myself, I’m interested in these meetings, but I can’t always commit to heading down to city hall for a couple of hours. Being able to watch at home while taking care of other tasks is a huge plus. I can only imagine how much more useful it would be for people with kids, lack of transport options, etc.
So I’m a fan, but there’s always room for improvement. Here are my top five suggestions.
1. A more direct link.
There was a link to the e-town hall stream from the front page of princegeorge.ca, but if you weren’t sure it was a bit tough to find. I’d suggest either putting the stream itself on the front page for the duration, or having an easy url like princegeorge.ca/etownhall. That would also make it more shareable on Twitter and Facebook.
2. Bring the conversation to social media.
It’s great that people were able to submit questions via an online form, but why not let them take part in the conversation the way they naturally occur- on sites like Facebook and Twitter? Twitter, especially, would allow the conversation to go viral as more people are drawn into the discussion by seeing the questions go by on their timeline.
3. Display all the questions asked, whether or not they are answered.
Midway through the meeting, the moderator explained that if a question had been asked and answered, they would not re-address it. Fair enough, but it would have been useful for people coming in partway through to take a check to see if their question had been asked and answered already, or if they were just being ignored.
I submitted a couple of questions just to see how it worked, but there was no way of confirming they had been received. One question was answered, but was lumped in with a question other people had asked, and a second wasn’t addressed at all. So I’m not sure if they made their way down the line.
A voting mechanism would also be awesome, so popular questions could get more prominence.
4. Some sort of pre-show reading.
It’s common practice for politicians to be given briefing notes on various files so they can get a quick understanding of issues. It would have been awesome to have something posted on princegeorge.ca that gave people who were interested in the discussion a bit of context about how the budget process works, how their questions are used, etc, just so everyone could be somewhat up-to-speed on the issues.
5. A more general discussion.
Plenty of the questions could be defined less as “pre-budget” and more as “how does city hall work, exactly?” Based on what I saw, there would be an appetite for forums where city staff just get together and answer questions about their jobs, bylaws, that sort of thing. It wouldn’t even have to be in this format- maybe a podcast series or YouTube videos where people submit questions and the city communications staff finds the answers. This would become a living resource that people with future questions could look through to find answers.
Like I said, I’m a fan, and kudos to city hall for giving it a shot. Hopefully there’s more of these in the future- with a few possible improvements.
The city of Prince George is putting its budget consultations online tonight, with an e-Town Hall.
“The first e-Town Hall meeting is designed to engage a broader and more diverse cross section of residents in dialogue leading to Council’s consideration of the 2014 Provisional Operating Budget.”
Charelle Evelyn at the Prince George Citizen has been providing some good context for this.
“During the 2013 budget process in February, an online survey asking residents to rate their satisfaction of 28 different services generated 270 responses. Only one person took advantage of the two public input opportunities during budget meetings.”
One is a pretty low number, even when it comes to something as esoteric as budget meetings. We’ll see if this outreach leads to an improvement. Either way, for people interested in seeing city hall reach out to people via the web, this has to be seen as an improvement over other recent moves.
The meetings begin at 6 at princegeorge.ca.
When a journalist digs up an original story and other media outlets pick up on it, should they give the original reporter some sort of credit for their work?
It happens. Some reporter or another comes up with a wholly original story. Maybe they did some investigating. Maybe they got a tip. Maybe they were in the right place at the right time. In any case, they break a story and then other media outlets, the “competition”, follow.
I’m not talking about getting a press release first or being first on the scene of an accident. I’m talking about honest-to-goodness digging where a reporter finds a story that no one else did, and quite possibly no one else would have.
I am also not talking about news outlets wholesale copying each other without doing any of their own work to verify facts or move things forward and not providing any form of credit. That’s lazy, and it’s also irresponsible. What if the first source made a mistake?
But I think we enter a gray area when there’s a big story that is revealed as the result of a reporter doing some investigative work or even being in the right place at the right time. If it’s an important story, it’s normal for other reporters to verify the facts, make their own phone calls, get their own quotes, and then “match” the story. This isn’t copying, and they are doing their own reporting. But they would never even know about the story if it weren’t for that first reporter. This is called matching.
Anthony De Rosa of Reuter makes the case for ending matching altogether:
“If someone already reported the story, you’ve verified their story is correct, and you have nothing to move that story forward, write a brief and link to who did the legwork already. By all means, let your readers know about the story, lead them to it. Be a beacon for all news, not just your own. Then, move on and produce something of more value.
“Newsrooms are low on resources, apply those resources efficiently. Your 500 word re-write of the same article your ‘competitor,’ as you call them, is un-necessary and a total waste of time.”
I’ve been matched on original stories that I’ve done, and I’ve matched other people’s stories. It’s a widespread practice. And I don’t think it’s ending any time soon. So I’m wondering if there’s a middle ground.
I am constantly using other reporters from all sorts of news outlets for their own findings, contexts, and angles, and using that to inform my own interpretations and stay up-to-date on stories I’m interested in, but not actively covering. I think of other outlets more as my colleagues than my competition, because we are all working in the same ecosystem. The more (responsible) media outlets we are able to sustain, the better, in my humble opinion.
So how do we reward others for their work? If we were pointed in the right direction by another outlet, should that be noted in our own stories? Should there be an explanation about where the story originated? Or do we just assume the readers/listeners/viewers will know, and it will all work out?
If you are in the industry (or just interested), some things to think about.
Note: the first version of this post was not very well-written, so I’ve changed it to be slightly less not very well-written. For reference, you can view the original here.
See also:
Stop Matching
Is your competition really your competition?
A year-and-a-half ago, some developers announced they would be building a $40 million condo/hotel in downtown Prince George. It’s an ambitious project for Prince George’s downtown. Here’s what I wrote at the time:
“This is the opening shot. If this succeeds, others may follow suit. If it falls on its face, how many will back away?”
Today Delta announced they will be the hotel that goes into this building. It will be 170 rooms, and include a restaurant and lounge, a fitness centre with spa and indoor pool, a business centre and conference, business and event space. And, unlike other new hotels in the city this is not out along the highway. It’s right in downtown.
A year-and-a-half ago:
“So this will be a game-changer. Succeed or fail, the stage is being set.”
It’s starting to look like it will be former.
Prince George city councillor Cameron Stolz didn’t pay some of his taxes. He didn’t pay them in 2011, he didn’t pay them in 2012. He hadn’t paid them at the beginning of 2013, but then his property was put on a list of places that would go up for auction in order to collect the money owed.
Then he paid his taxes.
At the same time as he wasn’t paying his taxes, Cameron Stolz was the chair of the city’s finance and audit committee.
Then on October 3, the online news site Opinion250 published a story revealing these facts.
On October 4, he was in the Prince George Citizen saying he had stepped down as the chair of finance a because “when you’re in a position of authority as a chair of a committee, concerns can be raised because of the situation I’m in… And I thought it was best to alleviate those concerns.”
Stolz told the Citizen he made the decision to step down on September 12.
Opinion250 notes that despite this, there was a city council meeting on September 23 where no mention of the change was made:
“At that meeting Councillor Stolz submitted a report as Chairman of the Finance and Audit committee , (G-2 on agenda) dealing with a number of matters. Nowhere does Councillor Stolz resign or for that matter make it public that he planned to step down as head of Finance and Audit. The September 12th meeting, in which Stolz says he told the other members that he was stepping down over his tax issue, is not mentioned.”
/////
The question is, then, is a city councillor not paying taxes- and then being chair of finance and audit- something voters and taxpayers should be entitled to know about? If so, when?
Stolz knew he hadn’t paid in 2011, he knew it in 2012, and he knew it in 2013. He apparently stepped down on September 12 2013. And yet no mention of any of this was made to the public until Opinion250 published their story on October 3.
In an editorial in the Prince George Citizen, Mick Kearns writes:
“Stolz said, ‘I think when you’re in a position of authority as a chair of a committee, concerns can be raised because of the situation I’m in. And I thought it was best to alleviate those concerns.'”It’s funny that he didn’t come to this conclusion the first year he decided not to pay his taxes.
“Stolz did not pay his taxes for three years and did not inform the mayor and council immediately, did not step down from the city’s finance and audit committee immediately and believes now that he has paid the taxes everyone who works hard and does without certain luxuries to pay their taxes on time should be OK with this.
“Sorry councillor, but it is not OK.”
It may or may not be OK for Stolz to have been the chair of finance and audit this whole time. I am not going to make a judgement call on that one. Perhaps voters would have been completely OK with it– if they had been informed. But they weren’t.
Stolz knew he hadn’t paid his taxes from the moment he didn’t pay them. The mayor and the two other councillors who are on finance and audit knew this since at least September 12.
Again, I’d like to stress that I’m not making a judgement call on whether or not Stolz should have been on finance and audit this whole time. It’s not up to me. I don’t know the details of the situation.
But it is worth noting that this was apparently enough of an issue that Stolz and the rest of the finance and audit committee decided he should step down as chair, even though his taxes are now paid. So regardless of whether I think it’s an issue, it’s clear someone there thinks it might be one. Or at least may be perceived as one.
And if this group of elected officials feel this is an issue that could be perceived as one worth stepping down over, did they feel like it was one they should tell the public about?
Maybe there was a plan from Stolz and everyone else involved to unveil this information at some future date. They would inform the public, explain the rationale and be open and forthright about what’s happening at city hall. But for at least three weeks- and, in Stolz’s case, two years- the public wasn’t told.
Maybe the plan all along was to be open and honest- in the future.
But now we’ll never know.
Why I stopped writing at fancy new computers and bought an elementary-school reject instead.
This is a Neo Alphasmart. It is exactly what it looks like: a keyboard with a tiny screen. It holds only eight files, can display five lines of text at a time, and the only thing it can be used for is writing.
I love it.
I have a laptop, I have a smartphone, and I have the money for a tablet if I need one. So what possible use could I have for something that only writes? Well, that’s pretty much it. It ONLY writes.
Jack Cheng has an excellent essay on habit fields, where he explores how our spaces and the tools we use affect the sort of work we do:
“When we sit down at the desk in our office to work, we shape its habit field into a productive one. When we sit down in a lounge chair to watch our favorite TV program, we nudge the chair’s habit field toward relaxation and consumption. The more we repeat the same activity around an object, the stronger its habit field gets. And the stronger its habit field gets, the easier it is for us to effortlessly fall into that mode of behavior the next time we’re around the object.”
He goes on to explore the nature of computers. They are machines we use for work and productivity, but also incredible tools for consumption: of videos, of news articles, of social networks. Over time it’s possible for the computer to become a de facto distraction device, rather than a production one.
Similarly, Matt Gemmell had this post called Working in the Shed. He discovered that one day when he was unable to connect to the internet, he was much more productive. So much so that he went and bought old non-internet capable computers for future writing projects.
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After reading those posts, I started thinking about my own habits. If I sit down at a computer, for any reason, I subconsciously open Facebook, Twitter, and email. And then I start clicking around on them. I don’t think Facebook, Twitter and email are a complete waste of time, but they can definitely be time sucks when used improperly. This is especially true when you’re attempting to do something semi-open-ended like writing. It can be tempting to just start clicking around until “inspiration strikes” or “you are ready” or you “check this one thing.” This is also known as procrastination and is basically the biggest scourge I have to face in my life (I live a pretty good life).
In contrast, here’s what I can do if I sit down at the Neo AlphaSmart: write. And that’s it. There is no internet. There are no games. There are no photos or calendars or widgets or apps to goof around on.
In other words, there are no excuses.
I’ve always been a fan of music in movies. I especially like it when it can add new dimensions to both the song and whatever you’re watching. Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch are all masters at this sort of thing. But I’ve never seen a TV show pull if off as well as Breaking Bad has.
Led by music supervisor Thomas Golubic, there have been some brilliant song selections, interspersed with the original score by Dave Porter. There’s the obvious montage scenes and climatic endings but what’s more impressive is the subtle background things that go into setting the location, the character- and still comment on the storyline. Take, for example, one of the first songs playing in the background in episode one: “Have Your Next Affair With Me” by Stonewall Jackson. At first it just seems like an innocuous honky tonk song that you might find at a party in the American southwest, but if these lyrics don’t set the stage for what comes next, I’m not sure what does:
“So your last affair turned out to be a loser
And you turned out to be used instead of user”
Or this line from another background track, this one in season four- “Flyentology” by the rapper El-P and Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor:
“There are no scientists on the way down
Just a working example of faith versus physics”
There are dozens of these moments that you can find listening to the song lists found at the Breaking Bad music wiki, a meticulously-kept tracker of all the tunes found in the series. Most of those songs can be found in this Rdio playlist, as well.
In the lead-up to yesterday’s series finale, I’ve been taking select songs from this nine-hour playlist and whittling it down to about half-an-hour of music from each season. And, as Golubic used to do, I’ve added dialogue from the series as well. I have to finish off season five (some great musical moments in the final episode), but the first four can be found here.
The Breaking Bad Mixtape Series on Mixcloud
Breaking Bad was a great TV show, and it’s given me a whole new musical landscape to explore, as well. I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I did.
Further Reading:
Vice Magazine: We Interviewed the Music Supervisor for Breaking Bad
PopMatters: Thomas Golubic: The Master of the Scene
Slant Magazine: An Interview with Breaking Bad music supervisor Thomas Golubic
Ad nauseam
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RIP Mittens.
Posted on December 2 2013 and filed under personal
December 2 2013 | ∞
RIP Mittens.
Filed under: personal