You know that phenomenon where one year at age 12 you make an offhand remark at Christmas that you’re really into trains (or ninjas, or circus animals, or ladybugs, or whatever it was for you) and then for the next 22 years you get trains for every holiday gift. Into college you’re still getting little train mugs, posters, flatware, whatever. It’s just one of those things that happens.

I am pretty sure that’s the reason that every time I get a birthday card or a toast or some other all-office thing they reference the *same* thing, a certain tasty cold beverage. It’s just one of those quirky little things about life. Once people get something stuck in their heads as “your thing” they can’t let go of it.

It has nothing to do with anything.

No that’s not a camera phone picture of my desk as I’m writing this.

The concept of internet memes is most certainly not new. In fact it’s literally become the basis for real businesses by now. Go figure.

But the latest twitter meme sweeping the world about now is to near to our hearts as a conglomeration of music geeks to ignore. Concept is simple, a songprequel (or #songprequel) is just what you’d think it is. A prequel.

So:

“99 Problems” >> “100 Problems”
“Oops I did it again” >> “Oops I did it”
“Let’s Spend the Night Together” >> “Let’s Spend The Afternoon Together”

…and so on. Brilliant.

So, here’s our attempt, the results of an informal stream of consciousness poll of the office. Done with no cheating or googling by the way.

* Pregnant In The USA
* Here in Black
* Finding Parking Close to Heaven’s Door
* Grandpa Was A Stone
* I Am Glad You Are Here
* November Overcast
* The Intermission Of The Innocence
* Won’t Get Fooled
* Having My Religion
* London Dialing
* 95 Tears
* Romance Hotel
* 49 Ways To Leave Your Lover
* Real Empire

…and of course, the trio of U2 classics: “Zero,” “New Years Eve,” and “I’m Looking For Something”

What did we miss?

EDIT: This blog post was a hit on our Facebook page, here were some of the choice comments:

* I Crawl the Line
* Chicken Alive
* Thunder Driveway
* Lou Reed: “I Wanna Be Black” >> James Brown “I’m Black And I’m Proud”
* Friday Night’s Alright For Quiet Contemplation
* Android forgets prescription at home
* Open minded about the devil
* Among only a couple dozen kids in new york… See More
* Frequent ferry service over troubled waters
* A brick in the wall
* We’re running a strong second, my friend
* Sexual injuries
* My guitar seems like it’s getting a little upset
* I Would Do Anything For Love (including that stuff you saw on the internet)
* Me & Julio Really Close to School Property
* We just got a construction permit for this city and hired a general contractor
* A Reasonable Amount of Love
* Boy’s Don’t Start to Get Choked Up
* London Finally Bought a Cellphone
* Breathing Nitrogen Under Pressure
* Wonder-bricks-and-mortar
* Hard Day’s Day
* Find me (like you left me)
* When the levee springs a leak
* Achilles stupid idea… See More
* Babe, I’ll be around for a bit at least
* The breakdown of diplomacy in Evermore
* Bring it to Work
* Communication
* Celebration’s Eve
* Fool In The Breeze
* Nine years gone
* A pile of auspicious newel posts, balustrades, and treads
* Three sticks
* Acquaintances
* Calling travel agent re California
* The applying for a visa song
* Sick
* Black country adolescent
* Down on his luck Tom
* Living Maid
* Milk, sugar, egg yolks, flour, shortening, rolling pin, bowl
* Just got to the top of the hills
* In the afternoon
* The greater Tawi River region
* In my time of coming down with something
* Starter apartments for the devout
* Ramble
* The Song
* Devil looks at her closet but can’t quite decide which color of dress is appropriate today
* An Easy Night’s Day
* Nearby in the Universe
* Broken Up into Fragmented Groups
* And Your Bird is Taking Vocal Lessons
* Baby, You’re a Poor Boy
* Recently Left the USSR
* Why?
* Placed a Classified Ad to Purchase Love
* Currently Apart
* Get Choked Up, Baby, Choked Up
* Drive Alongside of Me
* Seven Days a Week
* Some People Are Trying to Be My Baby
* Bought Hole-Fixing Equipment
* For A Few People
* Pretty Good So Far
* Female Infant
* Good Evening
* Considering the Possibility of Having You in My Life
* A Cold Gun is Upsetting
* I Think I Might Need Assistance Sometime Soon… See More
* Her Duchessness
* It’s Dark Out
* A Couple of Places
* Honey Do
* I Feel Crappy
* I Know Fairly Well
* I’m Sort of Interested in You (She’s gaining weight)
* I Might
* I’m Not Winning Everything
* I’m Up
* I’m Slightly Sleepy
* I’m About to Look at a Face

It’s one of the oldest traditions on this here blog, and this seemed like a good Friday to bring back another installment. Pun intended, and just terrible, by the way. Sorry.

Anyways, you could make a full time job out of posting mash-up type music related videos off of YouTube, but this one struck me as particularly inspired:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLkOYHYQ2tc]

Death Metal and classic Armstrong, matching those two was just a matter of time right? I have to confess, though I did have a pretty serious taste towards the heavier side of rock as an adolescent youth with hair (first concert ever attended: Guns’n'Roses, 1987, opening for Aerosmith just after Appetite for Destruction came out, woo hoo!) I could never really get with death metal.

I kind of wanted to like it, I mean it seems so “real” in that absurd completely fake 13 year old worldview way at least. And one of my closest friends and fellow bandmates back in those days was a total fanatic for it — but well, taste is taste and you like what you like. I can sometimes get into the playing (especially some of those insanely fast drummers) but at the end of the day, I don’t own the albums.

But, it’s a good segue though to another great YouTube video to round out today’s installment. That aforementioned friend went on to grow up and be old like we all did, but did not compromise one bit and has continued to rocks the death metal to this day, a habit that’s actually responsible for one of the most viewed videos ever posted on YouTube, this stone cold classic:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJJHk4hSFB4]

Brilliant. And actually there’s an interesting story behind this video, well worth a read.

So here’s to a happy YouTube Friday, and may you have fields of green and skies of blue this weekend.

A brief non-sequitur diversion for this brilliant nugget of digital flotsam and jetsam that came across the transom:

It’s only a guess but I can’t help but wonder if Wayne & Garth are involved in this one, perhaps a prop from a deleted bonus scene just after the opening credits:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YDwj-BRKwc]

I hesitate to question art, in all its permutations, but I have to say if I had been this anonymous spray can wielder responsible I might have taken a slightly different tack on the wording, to dovetail with this masterpiece:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8a0asUbAcM]

Bonus side note, the latter song was the official processional at my wedding a couple years ago, live, acoustic, and instrumental.

Best part about using Metallica in an otherwise traditional ceremony? I enjoyed putting “Composer: J. Hetfield” in the program for sure. But I have to go with the pleasant smiles from Grandpa on the “lovely classical guitar” followed by high fives and “duuuuude…” from your 15 year old cousin with blue hair and piercings. Now that’s cross generational appeal.

But, um where was I? Oh right, cool mattress pic ain’t it?

If there’s one maxim in the world of tech media you can count on it’s that when Google sneezes, it’s news. So when Google makes a bold move to create a next-generation social media platform, it’s really big news. This week’s announcement and debut of Google Buzz was met with the expected level of breathless hype and cataclysmic predictions. Longtime commentator and internet celeb Jason Calacanis was among the first to weigh in with an unequivocal first impression:

BREAKING: Google Buzz is brilliant, Facebook just lost half its value.

My 30 second review of Google Buzz:

1. Google Buzz 1.0 is better than Facebook after six or seven years.

2. Facebook’s history is one filled with stealing other people’s innovations and doing them better (i.e. Zuckerberg has stolen every idea Evan Williams and the Twitter team have released). How ironic now that Google has out “Facebooked” Facebook.

3. Google has excellent privacy record and Facebook is a disaster. Most folks do not trust Zuckerberg and Facebook any more because of their privacy record (filled with lawsuits) and because they steal every good idea they see (i.e. Twitter’s innovations and FourSquare’s checking in).

4. Google Buzz auto generates your network–this is MUCH better process than Facebook’s.

5. Google Buzz is way faster than the sluggish Facebook–this is a HUGE advantage.

6. Google Buzz puts relies and updates into your GMAIL as threads–this is BRILLIANT and a HUGE advantage.

Facebook is going to see their traffic get cut in half by Google Buzz.

This really is game over for Facebook because you know Microsoft and Aol are going to copy Google Buzz as quick as they can. In fact, Aol would have a HUGE renaissance if they simply knocked off Google Buzz’s exact feature set. You would than have a reason to keep your @aol email address.

This could actually derail the Facebook IPO. It’s that serious. Facebook usage is going to plummet in the next year or two because of this. There really is no reason for non-game playing people who use GMAIL to log into Facebook.

If Google Ads social gaming to Google Buzz Facebook is 2012’s Pointcast.

Wow…. this is just stunning.

The “Facebook-killer” meme spread quickly (check Google News for proof) but is this revolution, or evolution? Let’s take a look at some of the key features, straight from Google themselves:

• Auto-following: You don’t have to build or rebuild your friend network, it happens organically as you send and receive email.
• Rich, fast, sharing experience: It pulls together a stream of information from your friends, media, photos, comments, in a dynamic way that feels more like a conversation.
• Public and private sharing: Self-explanatory, though it’s hard to see how this is a huge differentiatiator. Twitter is of course public, Facebook is mixed (and a bit opaque on this point), but nonetheless.
• Inbox integration: This is the “killer” that threatens to make this a killer app. Let’s face it, how much patience do people have to join yet another social network, especially a very generalist/aggregating one like this. It’s a tough hurdle to jump — but boy does it help to have 176 million unique users a month and a war chest of about $32 Billion in cash. Or so I would have to imagine.
• “Just The Good Stuff”: This sounds like marketing hype, and is to some extent, but they’re aiming for at least some substance with this point. The social media feed is prioritized, at least according to their claims it shows you the posts and updates you’re most likely to read, and buries the stuff you least likely to be interested in. An innovation, but interestingly also something that Facebook ramped up hard as well, just this month.

So then — what’s it like? Well here’s a quick overview primer:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi50KlsCBio]

And their five marketing points above leave quite a bit out. Integration clearly is core to the philosphy, leveraging Google’s basket of heavyweight online properties such as YouTube, Picasa, and Blogger. The mobile integration looks to be one of the most formidable aspects to Buzz, when coupled with a GPS enabled mobile phone it enables functions ranging from finding people near you (perhaps a little creepy) to your own private Google Map that’s like a bookmarks bar for the real world, geotagging your camera phone shot so you can remember where that little out of the way dumpling place was next time you’re in the neighborhood.

OK, so back to Facebook’s 400 million users and near total dominance of the core social network space? Is this a threat, a complement, an eventual also-ran? Here’s a little more of what the experts are saying:

Techcrunch sums it up well:

The Battle

Without having had a chance to play with it yet, it would seem that the core idea behind Buzz is to take on Twitter and Facebook as the easiest way to share content online. Google is offering a number of compelling features such as smart curation (it gets better as you tell it what you like and what you don’t), and a rich mobile experience including location.

Because of the features it adds on to what Twitter does, and its overall look, it’s hard not to compare Buzz to FriendFeed. That service was arguably the better product than Twitter, but never took off in the same way for whatever reason (though I would argue that simplicity was a big factor). You could say the same thing for Twitter rivals Pownce and Jaiku (which Google actually bought) in the past. But by adding it to Gmail, Google is giving Buzz a great weapon to succeed where all of those others could not.

The big question is: will Gmail users buy into this quick sharing? Google thinks so because it’s a part of the evolution from email, to IM, to status updates. It

I have been informed that if I am going to break the seal and post links to preposterous UK novelty hits then I have no choice but to inflict this upon you. Sorry.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCPSh47gHz8]

Here are 10 of my favorite quotes about music, collected over many years…

“Music should never be harmless.”
- Robbie Robertson

“Years from now, after I’m gone, someone will listen to what I’ve done and know I was here. They may not know or care who I was, but they’ll hear my guitars speaking for me.”
- Chet Atkins

“James Brown is the only human to develop a musical style that didn’t exist before him. He invented funk”
- ?uestlove

“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”
- Frank Zappa

“Never look at the trombones. You’ll only encourage them.”
- Richard Strauss

“Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.” – Ed Gardner

“I’ve always felt that blues, rock and roll, and country are just about a beat apart.”-Waylon Jennings

“You can’t play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn’t played”
- Miles Davis

“Music makes one feel so romantic – at least it always gets on one’s nerves – which is the same thing nowadays.”
- Oscar Wilde

“If there hadn’t been a Sam Phillips, I might still be working in a cotton field”
- Johnny Cash

“I don’t know anything about music. In my line of work you don’t have to.”
- Elvis Presley

“Hell is a half-filled auditorium.”
- Robert Frost