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September 27, 2005
Ford Fusion Concert Blogger Has the Best Blogging Gig in the Blogosphere
Los Lonely Boys are playing here in D.C., tonight, the ninth in a series of ten free "Fusion Flash" concerts, sponsored by Ford and Sony. I'm finally getting to one of these throw-downs, to check out the experience, the car and the music -- and to prepare, I touched base with Howie Cockrill, the Cali-based music writer who was hired to run the project's ongoing concert blog.
And what a gig this guy has -- he's flown around to nine different cities now, to watch acts such as Fat Joe, Collective Soul, Pete Yorn, the Wallflowers and more. As part of his paid duties, he attends the show, takes pics and conducts interviews with the band.
The cool thing about the Fusion concert blog is that it includes long-form audio interviews with the band members, such as this one with Collective Soul.
I'll have more on the Fusion, Los Lonely Boys and the show tomorrow. For now, check out this interview Howie did with me via e-mail:
NAME: Howie Cockrill
AGE: 27
LOCATED: Berkeley, CA
OCCUPATION: Editor/Contributor, CrazyTalk.org; 3rd Year Law Student
HOW YOU GOT FUSION GIG: I got the job through a friend of a friend [the way it always works]. One of my friends & another contributor to
CrazyTalk is friends with a guy who works at Sony. Sony is the company that's setting up all the contracts with the artists. Ford hired Sony to organize the whole thing. The Sony guy put out an APB for bloggers to do the gig, my CrazyTalk friend forwarded me the email, and the rest is history....
WHAT THE JOB ENTAILS: The short of it is that I fly to the shows, interview the bands, take pictures of the shows & write "experiential" reviews. The "experiential" part means that I don't write actual critical reviews - I just write about the experience as a whole. The longer version would include all the research I do about the artists prior to the interviews and all the techie stuff I do to get the content up on the Flash Concert website.
HAVING FUN?: Absolutely. While airports have become distinctly less
glamorous over the past few months, this is really an absurdly wonderful job.
BEST PART OF GIG: The best part is being exposed to music I wouldn't
normally listen to & experiencing it through the eyes of the fans.
WORST PART OF GIG: Red eye flights & failing out of law school.
REACTION FROM CROWD & ONLINE AUDIENCE: The reaction from the crowds have been great. Anytime there's a random free show of one of your favorite bands, its exciting. Then a percentage of those people go online to give their thoughts on the show.
OPINION ABOUT IMPACT OF PROJECT: I think there are a few different angles of the impact. One is that its pure goodness to have random free shows of relatively big bands. Another is that this project represents an initial interesting foray of corporations into cross-marketing (car + music) and riding the wave of the blog & podcasting revolution. I think this is just the beginning of major companies attempting to cash in on the indie/underground cache of blogging and podcasting - with the result being the mainstreaming of those new areas of the internet. Its also helping create the model of the interactive blog concert experience - with audio, visual and textual content.
Posted by Frank at September 27, 2005 10:20 AM | Filed under Auto News