The Usual Monday Bullshit...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
For three years running, January has been as busy for me as all the other months put together. I think next January, I’m going to rent a cabin in Tahoe, take my special ladyfriend, and split my time equally between a hot tub and breaking in a new Arbor snowboard. Yeah. We’ll see how that turns out.
Anyhow, still moving. About 50% done, so our existence is split between two abodes, thus requiring extra bananas in our diet. (Get it? Existential dread comes from lack of potassium. Yeah, a little oblique even for me.) With that out of the way…
I’ve made a store page for Phosphor, and begun filling it with market-speak and audio samples. Find it here. I also have some more info for you. Phosphor will almost certainly go on sale on Monday, and the price will be US$59.00. We’re doing the final dance right now.
On a completely separate tack, I suggest you take a quick side trip to the official NAMM site. Is it just me, or does it lend the impression that the entire music hardware industry runs on bad puns? Choice tidbit of text:
ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10, THE NAMM SHOW IS TURNING IT UP TO 11! If you want to boost the volume on your company’s sales, then the 2011 NAMM Show in Anaheim, January 13-16, is the place to do it!
Aside from being the grammatical equivalent of a 10-car pile-up, we’re treated to no less than four double entendres, all couched in a reference to a movie that is older than many of this generation’s musicians. The music industry has never been terribly subtle, I’ll grant, but this little stinger really takes it to a whole ’nother level. The 11th level, in my inexplicably humble opinion.
The greatest irony (and, coincidentally, the greatest sign of the genius of “This Is Spinal Tap”) is that the only people that find that sort of market-droid humor funny “ha ha” (as opposed to funny “queer”) are exactly the people that the movie was making fun of. (See, NAMM? I can do it too.)
Thinking out loud: the music industry, being comparatively low-rent, doesn’t really attract the best marketing people, so we, as consumers, are constantly inundated with bad puns and worse copy. Do you find that, after a while, the marketSpeak in something like that Avid Viper ad from a few days ago just rolls off your back? Do we become a self-fulfilling prophecy after a while, where we only speak to each other in phrases lifted from Tap or The Big Lebowski?
10 comments
Most industry marketing is as ignorable as most other marketing is. Hard to be bothered by it anymore.
I find it refreshing when a Shadow Hills comes along and completely turns the typical audio-marketing dialogue on its ass and builds a whole world around their products. You just don't get that kind of attention to brand from companies in the audio world. I feel like the opportunity to uniquely distinguish oneself amongst the morass of audio companies is still pretty big. It just requires folks with enough balls and vision to not resort back to the same tired tropes. And those are pretty few and far between.
I agree w/Mr. Mottle about the ignorable marketing pap of the music industry. I just need a website to go to with specs and features to find out what I need to know about a piece of gear. If that info is intriguing enough, I'll hit the dealer and check it out.
That said, Shadow Hills has the most maddeningly obtuse, artsy-fartsy site in recent history. I'm all for doing something different, but if you make it too difficult for a visitor to get the info they may want/need, you've failed.
That said, WANT PHOSPHOR!!!!!!
Well. I would say they are like "Spinal Tap" :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Spinal_Tap
They always like the 11 out of 10 (even for Amps).
Check the trivia !
The Phosphor audio demos are the hotness.
Also, I'm glad you pointed out the irony of Spinal Tap jokes now largely being told by the modern equivalent of Spinal Tap characters.
Everybody please observe the merciful brevity of this post.
Don't say I never did nothin' for ya.
- c
like a lot of boutique companies Shadow Hills is an extension of the guy running it. I've known Peter since we were in high school and when i first saw the current site it made perfect sense. but maybe you had to be there.
@Chad - are you feeling okay?? I got through that post in less than 10sec! ;-)
He even left out a definite article to keep word count down. What a guy!
On the one hand, the Shadow Hills site is appropriate to what he makes. On the other hand, Flash sites like that are, like his general aesthetic, a relic of a bygone era. While I fully respect and endorse what he does, that Flash-O-Thon smacks of a certain kind of ridiculousness.
So I'm torn on that. There's something pleasing about big bakelite knobs and glowy VU meters, but I find it to be most pleasing on shit made in the 50s and 60s. On shit made in 2011, it's an affectation. Unless, of course, it's covered in cartoons of rabbits being anally raped. Everyone knows that's cool.
-CR
No one gets an MBA with a minor in Marketing then goes into the music equipment industry. Why would any educated person choose this low-rent industry.
Our industry is staffed by failed guitar players, whose dreams of the next big break slowly turned to dust. You're left with a bunch of old salesmen, who troll craigslist for guitars they'll never play worth a damn before drinking their way to a fitfull sleep, hopefully with dreams of that one breakthrough gig.
Well, I'm off to slit my wrists now. Thanks a bunch for the pep talk synthetic...
-William
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