It’s been a while blog

The past two weeks I’ve been fairly ill and haven’t found time to update my bloggy. I’m still highly uncertain about the future- i.e. my future and what I’m going to do as a living. I’ve positioned myself in a position where I’m still kinda working with radio but not. I do not want to divulge more than what is stated here for privacy reasons. Let’s just say I’ve encompassed several media opportunities that can lead to other places besides radio- WHICH IS WHAT A YOUNG PERSON LIKE ME NEEDS. If I decide to pursue media, it has to be in some interactive form cause duh, that’s the future.

Nevertheless, yes, there is always going to be that part of me that would drop life if I ever had the chance to work at the BBC in some capacity if I could live comfortably on my own on the given salary. As a US citizen, it will never happen. Maybe if I acquired a graduate degree in foreign political relations and spoke a second language, perhaps I could get a job at BBC World service in some form and capacity. It’s in the back of my mind, as are many things. I wish I knew what I wanted.

I’m always going to be a bit of a radio geek, a scary foreign KROQ fan, and slightly much to obsessed with UK Radio. I don’t see that changing.

Today at work, I found some old late 90’s style KROQ stickers on a filing cabinet (I have no idea how they got there) and the guy that worked at the desk nearby probably thought I was really weird that I took them off of the cabinet surreptiously.

It’s Green and lovely. Old School too.

Don’t even mention the words ACX to me.

DECEMBER 12th

(There’s nothing here I’d really want to see besides maybe AFI but I’m not into them as much as I was. Note, as a kid I’ve seen AFI perform when Davey used to dress like a So-cal punk band singer. That means there was NO makeup, NO bondage, and NO black clothes or hair.)
AFI
Rise Against
Alice In Chains
Thirty Seconds to Mars
Three Days Grace
Dead By Sunrise
Anberlin

DECEMBER 13
Muse
311
Slightly Stoopid
Phoenix
The Bravery
Metric
Vampire Weekend
Cage the Elephant
White Rabbits

I’ll start crying.  Well not really, but you know, it never goes away. My dad jokingly asked me earlier this week if I wanted to go to Jingle Ball. Ironically it falls as the same weekend as ACX but I’ll be home in New York with finals. The Live 105 week of NSSN and the actual NSSN is unbelieveably tempting. If I manage to catch up with my schoolwork and somehow snap, that would be something I’d be willing to go to. The bottom line is I am not ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen anymore. Rise Against, Anberlin, Unwritten Law, Pennywise, (e.g. all those so cal bands) don’t really rule as much as Vampire Weekend and Passion Pit does now. After spending most of my time in NYC, I’m used to smaller shows at clubs and seeing the bands play for an hour or two. Nevertheless, when you’ve never really experienced the ACX, like poor little me, the thought of what if always lingers.

Anyway Live 105 has something more my style with my current tastes and state of mind (Yes, I still hate on LA, DUH.)

LIVE 105 DAYS OF XMAS!

Tuesday December 8th
NSSN South Bay Club (I’m guessing they don’t mean Hermosa or Manhattan Beach? LOL) Show w/The Bravery + Airborne Toxic Event (Love both those bands)
At the Voodoo Lounge, San Jose (So how do you get there from San Fran without a car?)
Tickets are only $10 !!! 

Wednesday December 9th
Radio Soundcheck Holiday Ball at Bimbo’s
w/ White Rabbits The Lovemakers, Band of Skulls, and DJ Aaron Axelsen
Tickets are only $15 !!!

Thursday December 10th
NSSN Pre-Party at Mezzanine
w/ Hey Champ, Passion Pit, Gossip and DJ Aaron Axelsen
Doors at 8PM.

PASSION PIT AND GOSSIP AHHHH. if that show were in nyc i’d go.

The actual NSSN has Muse, AFI, Metric, and Vampire Weekend.

So.. If I had nothing to do, I’d probably fly to SF and do NSSN week and then head to LA for day two of ACX and get the hell out of LA before I get mentally sick.

No. It’s not happening.. sigh. There’s always XFM winter wonderland? NO Jeany NO. You must stay home!!!

So as I sit here, I wonder if New York is a curse and a blessing. We’ll never have events like that in our cluster but that’s the way it is (we also never had a real alternative station either).

When I’m feeling a bit more energized, I shall resume blogging and writing again once I pickup my good ol’ laptop macbook pro from the apple store.

At least things with me are nominally better and that sorta radio sorta not radio thing I’m working on isn’t so bad. It looks better on a resume than what it actually is – at least for an undergrad.

It’s quite strange, innit.

I have no idea but I am falling back in to the music industry and I just caught myself. Yes, I am doing it on my own terms, under my name, with my achievements, with the know-how from childhood. Most of the networking aspects, I don’t even try; it’s come naturally to me.

The reason I started working at WCBS for radio is that I knew a station like that wouldn’t be married to the music industry. By 16, I was burnt out on it and had no mental capacity for it. I love WCBS and Fresh for the fact that there isn’t a heavy aspect of ‘music industry’ politics associated with both stations. Obviously, a station like WCBS dosen’t really add new music. Actually, new music at WCBS is a strange and foreign term. Fresh has some new music, but most of the new adds are songs that have been tried and tested. Yes, it has been a very nurturing enviornment but also somewhat frustrating when no one has any idea what you’re talking about when you say white lies or white rabbits.

And in that, I went to extremes (like XFM in London) to find that sort of atmosphere. Now a bit of time has passed since then and I’m finding myself working more with indie music and the music industry. I’m still freaked out how everyone knows everyone, even from New York to London.

It’s a bit freaky running into people from the UK that know people you’ve met on work experience and also  running into people from work whose companion knows your contact in California.

The more I get into that world, the more people will have an instant profile on me regardless of the twitter, myspace, facebook, etc. People can only really judge me on what I write on here and my twitter; I choose not to have facebook or myspace for a multitude of reasons.

That world is a bit too enclosed for me, and too much 6 degrees of separation.

Maybe I really have to set back into reality and reassess this silly stupid dream I have of me living in London, Living in NW3, and picturing myself in Camden and Shoreditch all the time.

The reality of it is I’ll probably be tired of it after some time. Because when your life revolves around indie music and making contacts to make it to the next level, you’ll never know when to stop. Luckily with CMJ I wasn’t out to network like a struggling LA musician / actor. I was just there to capture the moment and write about it.

I think I have to take a real step back and think about what the hell I am doing. Indie music is great but really? I can’t be chasing after stars my entire life. As much as I think everything is perfect in London Maybe it won’t be one day. Theoretically, I could end up in London. But if I fail, I’ll be in my late 20’s with nothing to come back to; no cushion. That would be suckage.

I just often wonder.

my plans

I’ve officially settled on a career path.

That involves interactive marketing & advertising.

It’s closely related to what I did in radio, but I really can’t work in radio anymore.

If that’s FAIL, I’ll do the Plan b. and I have a lot of those.

blog haters

Somehow I got some blog hate comment from some crazy midwesterner. His name is Ric Kimpel. He’s 41 and a total loser from West Aills, MI.

He has a perfectly lame job at as a security account manager and really can’t do anything more with his life at this point.

I don’t know why you would read someone’s blog and go off in a manifesto and write such rude things to someone half your age.

He wrote a comment in my bio and I fixed it to reflect the opposite of what he wrote. Basically, the guy cannot spell and probably never learned how to properly write. I would’ve kept the comment but it was so vile that It’s not even funny.

If he writes anything else to harrass me, I will definitely make it worthwhile in revenge.

I’m a proud new yorker. And I am not going to let anyone else bring me down because of it.

There he is. http://www.myspace.com/badgercb

What a total barney. Ew. He’s ugly too. If you would like to send him hatemail, please tell him what a loser he is at sloghog@hotmail.com

Synergy

I finally found an interesting group of people to work with. The problem for me is that I’m the only one stuck in New York. It’s been like that my entire life. The coolest friends I have in the world are in London. Even as a child, I liked my LA friends better than my New York friends. Back then, Disneyland, grass, and pools were probably the primary reason.

Even though these people are far away, it’s nice not to be the only one who likes indie and british things.

Being in New York is either a curse or a blessing.

Sometimes I can’t tell.

I don’t mind it here; New York is the balancing medium for me.

It’s better than LA but not as good as London. I’ve settled here and I really have nowhere else to go.

Read this

http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2009/09/uks-radio-advantage.html

I find this very interesting. If I wasn’t too busy taking hellish science classes this semester, I would’ve wrote something analytical like this in my blog. However, I have decided to stop writing about radio! Not worth my time anymore.

Brill!

Yesterday I saw Russell Brand at an exclusive stand up gig at the Green Room. Thanks to some lovely friends, I was able to see this gig.

I also managed to find out about this:

http://gizmodo.com/5361961/at-gizmodo-gallery-09-kcrw-and-jason-bentley

It’s KCRW’s Bentley Dj’ing at an event in New York City. I am sooooo going. Oh wait, I mean I shall attend this event.

I really have to get that “LA” out of me once in for all. However, KCRW in NYC is terribly needed.

..

I’m staring to finally get over all the trauma and childhood happy nostalgia regarding LA. I’m going to start by getting the LA remnants out my personality. Never ever will I pronounce by O’s and A’s like a Southern Californian. The Uhh’s Cannot and will not drag, they will be pronounced short and sweet like how Manhattans do it.

That also means letting go of certain things that I used to consume. When you still do things based on Nostalgia, you will never move forward. Nostalgia cannot ever be used as an excuse for anything. As far as LA, I’ve been really good in letting it go.

Somehow I wondered what the hell I was thinking at aged 10, 11 when all I wanted to do was go to UCLA or USC, drive, and hang out at the Grove and on Sunset.

This weekend has been a bit hard but when things don’t quite work out, you never really know what else will pop up.

London has been really good to me. I never realized how good it’s been to me psychologically. I go there, I turn on XFM, hang out with all  my London friends, and I’m just really happy. I’m not insecure, watching my back, wondering if someone’s judging me, or afraid if news will travel to others or back east (nyc).

I’m having this image of me in Camden, drinking a Bulmers (not Kopparberg b/c its in nyc now), listening to BBC Radio 1 on my new Ipod nano, and just enjoying life before I’m meeting my mates for 5 quid thai veggie buffet. Even in those moments in transit, there’s a sense of tranquility that I don’t even get in New York.

If I’m going West, I will pass LA. I will pass it and not even collect my $200 (monopolistic figure of speech, lol). San Francisco only.

As far as New York, I’m stuck in the United States. New York will do for now.

Remembering 9-11

Growing up in the Financial District happy-go-lucky, the idea of 9-11 was unfathomable. My entire life (at that point) those two buildings were absolutely always there. They just seemed so unbreakable. And one day, they broke. I would never have dinner with my parents at Wonders of the World ever again. The view of Manhattan from there had 360 degree views of everything. The view was stunning.

After 9-11, I couldn’t go home for an entire 8 months.

The feeling of wondering if you’d get your stuff back, if your neighbors / friends are okay, and where you’re going live for now was something I can never forget.

It’s 8 years later, I’m no longer a teenager, and those days still haunt me to this day. Some of the negative behaviours I developed from that point on have never gone away.

The entire time I was away, I just wanted to go back home. And I couldn’t. One of the jet-plane engines landed on my block. I thought it ended up in my apartment.

I came home months later to find my apartment in mountains of dust and fiberglass. At least I was home.

Several years after, I ended up moving up to Midtown. It pained me to leave the apartment I grew up in- and it’s something I never really got over. I felt like I experienced too much there- good and bad- the feelings of insecurity, etc for me to leave it.

It’s raining outside and all I can do is remember that time in my life and realize it’s been a large factor in how I was never quite the same again.

Bizzare twist of radio coincidences…

On New Year’s Eve, I found myself at Brixton Academy at an XFM show with Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip and the King Blues. To my delight, I saw Alex Zane walking around. That night was a bit bizzare because I was in a dream state. I’m in my favourite city with the physical presence of one my favourite radio stations. To me, XFM was this unreachable radio stream from a far and foreign land that I could only access through my box of a laptop. And of course, there was Alex, Bob, Mark, Sunta, and Bob who always kept me awake when I had to stay up late revising for uni.

Yes Indeed. Alex Zane = REAL. At first, I was really nervous and wondered if I should’ve said anything to him. I was afraid he would think I was weird because I listened from America. I decided that I should just walk up to him and say hi because I thought, “Well, Jeany, you’re in London. Where on earth are you ever going to find Alex Zane again?”

Some minutes later, I finally introduced myself to Alex Zane and we had a good chat. I told him where I worked and that I listened from abroad. He thought that was really neat. After five minutes, he gave me his email address and offered me a week of work experience on the spot. Since I was still in “dream-mode” I gave him my email and put the piece of paper in my pocket. I just chuckled to myself thinking, “Yeah, I’m going to wake up back in my cold  New York apartment back in Midtown really soon.”

I watched the King Blues and Dan Le Sac. John Kennedy was on stage in between bands playing music. He was real too.

After the gig, my good mate from Stockwell came and collected me. At that point, I figured this was all real. I went back to my mate’s flat and told myself if that piece of paper was still in my bag the next morning, I’ll send an email to follow up. I woke up. It was there. It was real.

I emailed Producer Bob and Alex my CV (so they did not think I was some lying weirdo) and got to come up to 30 Leicester Square for work experience on the Alex Zane Breakfast show. Being in the studio with Alex, Bob, and Sunta was absolutely unreal. At that point, I was experiencing radio heroin. I couldn’t believe that Alex Zane was incredibly polite, down to earth, and really nice. Over the past year of listening to his Breakfast show, I always dreamed of what it would be like to be one of those work experience kids. I never thought I’d actually get to do it at the invitation of Alex himself. To this day, I ‘m really glad I got to spend time at one of my favourite radio stations and interact with the people that work there. XFM still is one of my favourite stations and it’s one of the few that I became attached to while in uni. So, yeah, it was all real.

Thanks to a Camfield and a Zane, some dreams could really come true. And they did. I am forever grateful too.

Fast Forward to Nine Months later….

Anyone that reads this blog knows I’m a massive KROQ and K&B fan. I’ve been one since I was six years old. In the past 3.5 years, KROQ FINALLY started broadcasting online. From that point, I was able to get K&B anytime I wanted between 8 AM – 12 PM (which is when I usually wake up). In the ancient times of my childhood, the only way I was able to hear them was when I was stuck in LA with my dad (for months on end) through an analogue radio.

This morning I found myself eating Fruity Pebbles watching the Kevin and Bean NYC webcast on my computer. The experience was incredibly trippy in many aspects.

The technological factor is not an aspect. It’s more that Kevin and Bean were broadcasting in the same building where I used to work 5 months ago. Kevin and Bean were broadcasting from the VERY SAME EXACT STUDIO where I first cracked the mic on New York radio. Many months ago, I used to help 92.3 NOW’s drivetime presenter, Tictak, in reading texts, emails, and twitters received from 92.3 NOW’s fans. Being on the radio was a fun experience when I had the time to do it. Ever since all the NYC FM stations moved to 345 Hudson, 40 W 57th became the home of the CBS Radio Corporate office. I really thought those radio studios would’ve been an office by now.

It’s really weird. Kevin and Bean are yet so close and far away. K & B were a part of my LA childhood that I absolutely enjoyed.

It’s strange that they are in my city and in the building where I used to work. I really do want to meet them, just briefly, and not take up too much of their time. However, I don’t think I will get that chance. It’s okay though.

Fate has a funny way of delivering opportunities. The opportunities from abroad that seemed impossible seemed to have worked out for me. Yet my favourite childhood radio presenters from my favourite childhood radio station are merely miles away and they still feel inaccessible. It’s a strange feeling, unsettling, but something that has to be dealt with. I’ve always wanted to go to one of those K &B band breakfasts, Weenie Roasts, or AC X’s. However, at this point, I know I never will go and right now, I’m perfectly okay with that. Some things in life are meant to be accessible and some are not.

In another twist of fate, I think San Francisco has managed to get me out of a slight LA slump. San Francisco always manages to save me from a LA-associated episode of LA related funks.

I’m absolutely certain anything associated with LA will never be for me. And that’s perfectly okay.

The interaction of people with blogs, twitter, and email is something that I still find phenomenal. It’s amazing when people find you, or when you find people, and where the interactions lead. It’s the bizzare twists of chance and random coincidence that truly boggle my mind.

In other news, I’m truly done with this blog. I’m still in the process of working on a new one that is completely unassociated with radio. This was just something I had to write.

Bye World.

I promise. I’ll reappear and re-emerge when I feel positive energies again.

Lately, it’s been complete negativity and petty politics that are starting to bring back my anxiety and drive me mentally insane. I’ve gone into a place where everyone secretly hates me and wants me gone. It’s not like anyone would care anyway.

The good thing is I know when the anxiety is coming back and I know how to deal with it.

School is starting soon. Thank god because I need something desperately to pour my energies into.

Jerry has saved my life once again. Thanks Jerry, I owe you one.

Actually, a bit of a recall…

I found this article on the Guardian Music blog very very very interesting.

OK, this is officially going to be my last blog entry and this article is the perfect closer.

I officially have NO COMMENT on this article. I just find it highly informative, intelligent, and something to think about.