This is a reader-supported publication. I give it all away for free but could really use your support if you want me to keep doing this.
Here’s the 40-minute video capture.
On this second-hand recording, when they show the slides, it’s not good, but I couldn’t find a better version on the web. The old Pop!Tech site used to have their top-quality video but that now seems lost to history as PopTech (now with no !) doesn’t go that far back in its online archives.
That’s sad for me because it means there is no online version of my original Pentagon’s New Map 2004 presentation at Pop!Tech, which was what got me the invite (minutes later) to present the next year at TED (a scout was in the theater).
So, with my 2004 presentation lost to history and only this one slightly blurry copy of my 2006 presentation available online, I decided to grab this one for posterity’s sake, as I would hate to have lost this particular memory, since it involved me having a one-on-one lunch with an idol of mine, Brian Eno, in a local cafe following our presentations that morning.
Man, does it ever make me feel old when I can’t find a video of mine even on the Internet Archive site!
Here’s how I described it back in the day on my blog Globlogization:
The fun part of the day (so far and counting): I see Brian Eno from the speakers' perch just before the session starts, so I jump down off the stage, run to the back of the theater and intro myself to him, getting a handshake.
After the session, he's in the green room, so I chat him up. We start with "Remain in Light": I ask if the entropy thing (the songs get slower from the beginning of side A through the end of side B) was purposeful or not. He says he wasn't aware of that perception (which shows he doesn't read the critics--fine by me), but says the real goal he had in producing the album was to group the optimistic stuff up front and the pessimistic stuff in the back. He said that type of grouping and shaping really doesn't happen much anymore on albums, because CDs have no A-v.-B break-up and don't impose the same discipline of size constraints. I countered that I felt the same things were happening with blogs v. books leading to blogs.
Then we traded bits on how producing an album is like editing a book, so I described Mark Warren's "Eno" to my "David Byrne" in my books.
Eno worked on "More Songs About Food and Buildings" (1978) and "Fear of Music" (79, I think). I told him that the first Heads album struck me like the early Beatles compilation albums, and that "More Songs" was sort of their "Revolver"--i.e., coherent. He liked that comparison.
I asked him about the rumors that his time with the Heads became increasingly contentious as far as everyone else was concerned and he said yes, there was this growing sense among the other three that he was sort of stealing Byrne from the rest of the group. I said he was sort of the Heads' Yoko Ono, and he laughed at that one, saying he and Ono were awfully close, BTW!
But we agreed that the Heads never could have evolved into "Speaking in Tongues" (their "Sgt. Pepper") if Eno hadn't been there on albums 2-4 ("Tongues" was 5th), and that is was a rare and cool thing for a 4-person group to evolve into the 8-person, multicultural band the Heads ended up being.
Then the next session began and Eno excused himself. I asked if he wanted to do lunch, he said yes, and then I exchanged my lunch coupon for the same restaurant (Zoot's) where Eno's eating.
If my little brother Ted knew this, he would be aflame with envy!
Lunch with Brian Eno, BTW … was way cool.
On the way to the restaurant, I get to meet Kevin Kelly too, whose book "New Rules for the New Economy" was a top-tenner for me in the 1990s, so that was very nice. He and Eno were both very complimentary about my use of PPT, commenting that the blend of sound and motion and content and delivery and humor was really unique (Eno especially liked the humor), so that was like my ego stroke for all of 2006. Now to discuss PPT with late-in-life convert David Byrne...
Actually, Brian and I discussed the Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash, Little Richard, the Beatles, Roxy Music (whom he produced), David Bowie (ditto), the Heads (also), U2 (also also), Franz Ferdinand, Artic Monkeys, and the Tom Tom Club (natch).
Of course, Brian could say things like "one time Paul (Simon) told me ..." whereas I had no specific gems like that, but we also talked the Middle East, the Long War, al Qaeda and U.S. Military change, so I got to drop some very cool lines too.
All in all, a very pleasant and charming guy. Very unaffected or without vanity. I could have spent the whole day conversing. He was my Pop!Tech dream date. His toss-off stories were like golden nuggets, given my fascination with the Heads (my big band from my college years).
So, when I said goodbye and jumped in the waiting hybrid Lexus for the drive to Portland (a Pop!Tech perq), I did something I have never done--not even with Jerry Kramer--I asked him to autograph my badge, claiming it was for my wife.
But really, I will frame it for myself.
And yes, I will tease my little brother over it someday.
Ted, my brother, had his famous confab with Laurie Anderson at a Madison radio station in the 1980s, which beat my physically bumping into Joe Strummer in a Chicago bar just before The Clash's "Combat Rock" show a few years earlier. and that one really hurt, because, truth be told, Anderson is a seminal influence on my stage style.
But, lunch with Eno, I believe, finally vaunts me back into the lead.
A fun memory alright.
Share this post