Mint Shows

The Snare Heard Around the World

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:05:00 -0500

About 3 months ago, I was bored and looking for something to watch on Netflix when I came across the Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home directed by Martin Scorsese. For anyone even remotely interested in Dylan, it would be well worth your time to watch it. The documentary follows Bob Dylan from the start of his career up to his famous 1966 “electric” world tour. The documentary closes on one of the most legendary performances of all time. The May 17, 1966 version of Like a Rolling Stone.

On this tour, Dylan performed the first half of the set in his traditional format, alone with only his guitar and harmonica. During this set he held the audience captive and earned unanimous adoration. For the last half of the set, he brought out his touring band, soon to be known as The Band. As soon as the guitars were plugged in to the amps, the mood in the audience quickly shifted. Bob Dylan and The Band performed the last half of the set to a mixture of cheers, boos, and jeers.

The Judas Moment

During the end of his May 17 concert at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, the jeering Dylan received became legend after an audience member shouted “Judas!” Dylan paused before responding “I don’t believe you … you’re a liar!”, turned to his band and said “Play it f*ckin’ loud!”¹. Mickey Jones, who replaced Levon Helm on drums for the tour, hit his snare as hard as he could, starting a vicious version of Like A Rolling Stone. That snare hit is easily one of my favorite pieces of recorded music.

Hear it for yourself:

Live a Rolling Stone [Live] by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

Here’s a nice video of the exchange.

Links:

Like a Rolling Stone (Live 1966) - iTunes
No Direction Home - Netflix
No Direction Home - Amazon DVD
Bob Dylan - Live 1966 “The Royal Albert Hall Concert” The Bootleg Series Vol. 4 - Amazon MP3

Trivia:

Mickey Jones, the drummer for this tour played a recurring role on the TV show Home Improvement.

There is some argument as to who actually said “Play it f*cking loud!” Some think it was Bob, some think it was a member of their crew. I like to believe it was Bob though. :) ↩

My Addiction

Sat, 05 May 2012 15:14:36 -0500

In my introduction post, I mentioned that the inspiration for starting this blog came to me after a self-evaluation of my time-management. This evaluation brought me to quite an unsurprising realization. I’m an addict. More specifically, I’m addicted to my inboxes.

My inboxes are not solely related to email. They are all the online services I use each day that are collecting data and beckoning me to check them. I can easily spend hours simply catching up with my twitter followers and reading blogs in Google Reader.

Shawn Blanc had this to say in a recent post about overcoming his inbox problem:

To be addicted to our inboxes is the path towards errors of omission. Or, to paraphrase Robert Louis Stevenson: Inboxes are good enough in their own right, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for work.

Those of you who don’t know me very well may not realize that I am a very compulsive person. Back in college, I wore a phone cord around my neck because I liked the way it clicked. I would fidget with that thing ALL day long. This compulsion quickly turns to anxiety when I feel that I may be missing something. This is why my wife finds me staring into the glass screen of my iPhone constantly. I’m always checking twitter, reading my Instapaper articles, reading blogs from my RSS reader, or checking my email. These are my inboxes.

My inboxes: Reeder (RSS), Instapaper, Facebook, email, twitter.

My goal this week is to reduce the amount of time I’m spending on my inboxes. The best way to do this is to reduce the amount of information flowing into them. Since I spend most of my time in twitter and Instapaper (reading articles I found on twitter), I’m starting there.

This morning, my twitter account was following 332 users, but after the first pass it is down to 211. The act of un-following over 100 accounts is actually quite liberating. This must be what it feels like when you throw away that last pack of cigarettes…until the withdrawals kick in.

For me to have time to write for this blog and not have it cut into family time and other commitments, I’ve got to do a better job controlling my inboxes. Twitter was today. Tomorrow will be some blogs in Google Reader. I look forward to seeing what I can do with this extra time.

print('Hello World');

Thu, 03 May 2012 23:24:00 -0500

Hey folks! So…this is a blog! I’d like to compose this short post to get the formalities out of the way. My name is Mint Shows. I’m a father, husband, software engineer, tech enthusiast, and music geek. I’ve always loved writing and thought that I would enjoy having a blog, but never made it happen.

Last week (after encouragement from my wife), I took an audit of how I spend my time and wasn’t too happy with the results. I realized that of all the non-family or work related things I do, none are a creative outlet. As a professional programmer, I’ve often considered my programming as a creative outlet, but lately I’m not getting the same satisfaction from my work. I hope my writing for this blog can become a creative outlet for me.

I’m working on a couple drafts for some future posts right now. Whether this blogging endeavor stops at 2 posts or 2,000 posts, I’m excited about the prospects. Wish me luck!