PERMUTATIONS ALBUM DOWNLOAD FREE!

Starting today, you can now download my entire solo ep PERMUTATION(S) for free via this link @ Last.fm. Just right-click the track and 'save link as.'
Sure, you can download it on Itunes, donate what you want to below or donate to a charity or something of your choice--I like Free Arts for Abused Children, but there are a million and one different charities if you take a look. Just don't be scammed. My main goal for releasing the ep for free is to get you, the listener, to listen and give it to someone else! and then hopefully they'll like it and give it to someone else, etc. So take a listen, download it, share it and enjoy!

New Media & You

I hope everyone enjoyed the 10th podcast, feel free to comment on what you did or didn't like. My main goal is to become more of a moderator at this site than host. I want to open discussion to artists and audience alike! This post is dedicated to those entrepreneurs out there who wanna make a name for their band, site, blog, whatever. As Dylan said, the times they are a changin'. So let's say you have something to say. Something really important that has been eating at your very soul to be set free to the public. It could be an idea, I recently stumbled on an interesting one here to brew your own wine/beer for pennies per gallon. Can someone pllllllleaaaase buy these things and tell me if they work?
So you have your idea, but next you have to build a website. Easy enough if you know what you're doing. But many people don't have the slightest idea how to make a website. Luckily, it's super easy to do if you have a bit of free time on your hands.
Take a look online at this 25 minute video here on how to make a free full-functioning website. You can come back when you're ready, I'll still be here. If you want an even easier way, skip the video and go to the next part.

Informative right?
There are even easier ways if you are just looking to become your very own talking head, such as myself. You should start by going to the little tabs above and creating a blogspot account. You can pretty much get your own blog up and running withing a couple of hours. Tweak it for a couple days and put up some posts and release it to your public, start a facebook group and maybe even do that "twitter" thing CNN keeps talking about.
These are the first steps to joining the New Media Revolution.
But the thing about New Media is that it's ever changing. First you'll have a blog, but then you'll want more. Perhaps a podcast. Luckily it's pretty easy to do yourself these days, and it's free of course. I put up a fairly handy video on the subject a couple months back that you can view below.





Alrighhtyy then. A few more things and you will be equipped with the goods to take on the world with your idea. I can't wait to hear about it.
The next thing you have to do is figure out how the heck to get an audience. Sure there are some marketing tools that you can use, such as this one but one of the best ways to get your name out there is to use SEO.
What the heck is SEO, you might ask. It's short for Search Engine Optimization, and you can do it for free. Say you want to get your new beer fermenting caps off the ground. What you would need is SEO to bring your website up to the top of the google list every time someone types in "Homebrew" or "wine" or even "beer." You can get the ball rolling by going to this google SEO starter guide.
So these are only a few of the tips that you need to grab the bull by the horns to get your music, your product, your writing, and your self out and on top of the internet pile-on. Best of luck!

Starving Artist's Podcast Ep.10

Starving Artist's Podcast Ep. 10 featuring music by Jaydiohead, Asteroids Broke My Stereo, thebignothing and the Books. This podcast is most helpful for writers.

A Few Updates and A message

Hey folks,
Glad to see by the webtraffic that you are all enjoying the site...A quick update---you can now download all past podcasts by scrolling to the bottom of the page and it lists them all on the right hand side. As always, you can also subscribe to them (for free!) in itunes as well to automatically download the latest one. I'm still hoping to get an even bigger audience, but I need everyone to link/post/share the site with anyone you might know that is either interested in the subjects I talk about, or is a starving artist themselves!!! The site is useless without an audience. Thanks again to everyone that has checked out the site. I will continually be trying to up the bar with it and eventually will have some stuff for sale (I hope). But until then, PEACE!

Johnny

Jaydiohead--The New Gray Album? And other things.

The Next podcast features music by Jadiohead! Listen this Sunday to catch some more of this free Mash Up.



Yep, So I've recorded the tenth podcast and I want to get y'all excited about it, so I'm gonna give you a sneak peak of whats in store.
~Check out this independent artist's unique clothing line here.

~An Awesome Manifesto on how to make money as a self-employed blogger, entitled "279 Days to Overnight Succcess."

~An engaging original 1 act play called Artificial, written by Sean Kenealy.

~Music provided by Jadiohead.

~Download this free EP by Asteroids Broke My Stereo!


Check out the show this Sunday to see how I connect all of this together!

Delayed Podcast & an Interesting Article from CNN

So I was unable to get back to Brooklyn to get a podcast done this weekend. I apologize for anyone who might actually want to hear what I've been up to in the past few weeks--There is one in the works as I speak and I have it set up to be a great help to the writers trying to make it in this wonderful town.

In the meantime, Check out this Article on CNN which includes testimony from an ex-astronaut who claims that aliens are visiting our tiny little planet in this tiny little solar system in this tiny little galaxy. For those of you who are too busy to do any kind of actual reading, I'll give you a quote--

"Our destiny, in my opinion, and we might as well get started with it, is [to] become a part of the planetary community. ... We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there...The universe that we live in is much more wondrous, exciting, complex and far-reaching than we were ever able to know up to this point in time."

Inspiring, for sure.
Naturally, a spokesman for NASA denied any cover-up, quickly sweeping the whole thing under the rug.

For those of you who are curious about possible extraterrestrial visitation and close encounters of the 3rd kind, check out www.abovetopsecret.com or if you have some time on your hands, this video. Or if you ever corner me in a room, ask me what I think about extraterrestrials...

Vacation Part Two

Right now, I'm lying on bed on what is my final day of vacation, and because the bed I'm in is elvish looking in nature, I was reminded of this scene in Lord of the Rings. Granted, I don't have hobbits jumping dilly dally all over me, but I do have a pretty excited dog that comes in every once in a while to lick my face.
Anyways, this post isn't really about that, but rather what I did last night. It was a "Live Event" called Beer Wars, which was a documentary film about the beer industry, ie. who are the goliaths and who are the Davids. The film was sandwiched inbetween two live satellite feeds, one introducing the film and one with a live panel of the beer brewers featured in the movie. Granted, it was a one-off event featured in 440 theaters, but I still think that $15 dollars was a bit too much. However, my love of homebrew (I've got 1 batch fermenting, 1 conditioning and 1 that is hell-bent on being made before I get back to NYC this weekend) was enough to bring me to the theater. I have to admit, it was a great movie and it brought me up to speed on the current situation with Microbrewers trying to compete in an supersaturated Coors-Miller-Busch Dominated kingdom. And boy do the big boys pull punches. They are absolutely ruthless in their domination. One example was them suing the charismatic head of Dogfishhead Ale for using the word "Chicory" in one beer and "Punkin" in another for being to "vague". As Sam quips, "I guess 'Natural Light' didn't get their attention for being as vague as Chicory"
Beer Wars story is fascinating and well-edited, grabbing laughs and moments of sadness as you follow the story of "Moonshot" the only Caffeine Beer and its creator Rhonda Kallman trying to bring it off the ground (No pun intended). Every brewer is unique, but the standout is definetly Sam Calagione, creator of Dogfish Head Ale. Think Keanu Reeves from Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure, with a wicked sense of humor and a killer business ethos--To actually have fun while doing what you love to do, and treating your employees like extended family.
The after show was equally entertaining, partly because it was live and also because they did a dirty trick in setting Rhonda Kallman next to the brew master of Sam Adams Brewery and played a video clip of him dissing her saying "Moonshot is like craft beer, if you subtract the FT off the end and replace them with P. It's crap."
Then they cut to Rhonda, who handled herself well in the face of a brew snob. "People like to party." was her response. And I felt like drinking a Moonshot.
Truth be told, I've never had a Sam Adams that I was blown away by.
Too hoppy.
So while I wait for my batches to condition, this was a nice little vacation from reality and Beer Wars put a little hop in my step. Pun intended this time. I'll link up the dvd when it comes out.
Have fun out there, kids.
J$

Chillin & Grillin

It's no surprise to those that know me that I love a good vacation. Who doesn't? I got the opportunity to have the full week off to vacation in my reclusive upstate home, affectionately called "Moosehead Manor" (In other words, I've been mooching off my parents for the week.) I've spent much of my Easter vacation collecting ticks on my body in the deep woods behind my parents house, intruding on the local stream goddess' hidden lair. After working out some psychic miscalculations, I was able to get a significant amount of "work" done at my leisure, including sending out some resumes of my own to begin work at different magazines around the city. I also got a case of beer making supplies, gratis of course, from my Uncle, which I plan to begin work on forthwith. As I write this, I am also basking in the cool heat of the gaseous cloud known as solaris on the family sundeck.
Some of the more interesting things I've done this week include:
Getting fattened up, presumably for my own roasting, on Easter Day.
Partying in Albany with my high school friends
Getting a pair of kickass Pumas, courtesy of Chase Manhattan Credit Inc.
Going to the Book Barn in Loudonville, buying an old book on the Rosicruxian Order entitled "Self Mastery and Fate", "the Knack of Using the Subconscious" (1954), Contact and Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and a recent book on the Unified Field.
Bought a Salt-Lamp mined in the Himalayan Mountains that claims to have healing properties, most notably due to the release of Negative Ions(?) Tried it last night and it seemed to work, oddly enough!
Anyways, I figured that since these days my posts have been mainly regarding music and the arts that you culture vultures needed some old fashioned goss to keep your hearts palpitating.
peace love
johnny

ps read the music review below to get informed of a great new artist named ASA!

Asa--The Soul of a Starving Artist

Normally, I don't do reviews. I am a huge fan of just letting the people decide what they think of a new musician/comedian/artist/etc. But sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes you need to push people in the direction of what you think is going to be the birth of a new star. And here I am, about to do that about the new singer-songstress Asa (Prounounced Asha). Her style defies convention. Her voice shakes the walls that you've constructed within your head. Political insight? Sure. Conscientiousness? Yep. All around, feel-good music? That's the one! Once you hear her single "Jailer" once, you'll want to play it again. And then again. Fast forward a week and you still aren't sick of it. And that's just the first song. Get to the second and third and fourth and it's still rockin. On the second track, 360 degrees, her voice rumbles

"So drop the guns and your swords
And let us live all as one
We only need love and understanding
So drop the guns and your swords
And let us live all as one"

And you wonder, "Why the heck aren't the leaders of the world listening to Asa?"
Anyways, for those of you who are ready to move into the fifth dimension--the one that Asa lives in, check out her myspace page here or for those of you who got some allowance this week, buy her album on itunes here.
Enjoy.
New Podcast coming this weekend!

Where the Wild Things Are

It's should come as no surprise to those of you who know my that I am exTREMELY pumped to see the new trailer for Where the Wild Things Are finally make itself out there. For those of you that are still under that rock of yours, check it out above!
I have a song called "Max" on Permutations that was written in homage to the book.