The Viral Video of the Week goes to Creative Agency, Droga5. Last week they posted this Guitar Hero video on YouTube.com, presenting it as a user-generated home video - getting a wide variety of reactions, both positive and negative. The negative response was because people blamed Droga5 of initially not being honest about the fact that it was their own creative design team behind the video. Instead, they kept silent, leading many to believe it was created by a bicycle-riding Guitar Hero fan. However, amidst the negative response, there’s been much more positive feedback, being the absolutely brilliant idea that it is.

This video was released last week and already has some 1.6 million views and more than 7,000 comments - most of which have absolutely no idea it is an ad. Genius.

Song: Prisoners of Society by The Living End

Keywords: viral video, droga5, creative agency, guitar hero, bike hero, youtube.com, user-generated, ad, video, honest, creative, design, bicycle, fan, views, million, prisoners of society, the living end, viral, advertising, marketing, YouTube

Tonight is one of Team Marmoset’s favorite Winter Events that we’ve grown a custom to attending for the past few years… Works Night at the Old Church. If you haven’t ever checked it out, you most definitely should make it a priority to be there tonight.

Not to mention the free food, wine, beer, and desserts, they do a dynamite job of featuring some of the best artists of the area, including some amazing music. Be sure not to miss Boy Eats Drum Machine and spoken word poet phenom, Robert Bruce.

My dear friend, Matt Curl, works his butt off to put this on, and somehow, it gets better every year. Nice work Matt! Here’s the details:

WORKS IV
A Celebration of the Creative Spirit
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
7-11:00 PM
The Old Church (SW 11th and Clay)
FREE ADMISSION

Intown Church presents the fourth annual Works Night, an evening of visual art, spoken word and musical performances. An event that has become a favorite tradition of the arts community in Portland and the community of Intown Church, Works Night showcases some of the best artists our city has to offer. Fourteen painters, sculptors, photographers, and filmmakers will be exhibiting work that examines this year¹s theme, which is “Change”. Artists include Chris Haberman, Nicole Gekov, Jared Spafford, Beth Myrick, and many more.

In addition to the visual art, this year’s event features several notable local musicians, including Chris Robley and the Fear of Heights, Boy Eats Drum Machine, Rachel Taylor Brown, and resident poet Robert Bruce.

More info available at: www.intownchurch.com/works/

Keywords: works night, intown church, matt curl, rachel taylor brown, chris robley, boy eats drum machine, robert bruce, works IV, old church, portland, pdx, pet marmoset, marmoset, art, arts, creative spirit

Our Flashback Friday video comes early due to the holidays. We here at camp Marmoset can’t imagine that we’ll be able to function tomorrow since we’ll be recouping from our Thanksgiving Turkey hangover.

The reason we chose this video from the Australian band INXS was becauase we were walking the downtown streets of our beautiful City of Roses and  decided that we needed to hear some 80’s music. We put on the 80’s mix in my iPod, and low and behold, “Need You Tonight” comes on,  and well it brings back all these great memories. Memories of MTV when they use to play videos. I forgot how great INXS was. Man those guys where good! We could write a lot more about this great band of the 80’s but  we’re being called to the kitchen to  devour some turkey and pumpkin pie.

Happy Thanksgiving!

INXS - Need You Tonight & Mediate

Posted by: Joe Solis | Team Marmoset

Nachos

Last night I joined some friends at Vendetta in North Portland to celebrate my friend Pierre’s birthday. It was a fun time and Vendetta most definitely has to be one of my top 5 favorite P-town spots. It was “Tall Boy Tuesday” - which means tall boys of PBR were only $1.50. During an economic downturn, that’s a deal worth taking note of! Of course, I couldn’t help take a look at the menu and see what they had to snack on….and low and behold, there was the six letter word that tends to do crazy things to my mind and belly….NACHOS. As soon as I read the word, I felt my temperature rise…a broke into a sweat…and a small pool of drool appeared on the bar. It was a full-blown nacho attack!

Vendetta’s nachos come on a small round plate, with chips and cheese and whole pinto beans stacked about three layers tall. They offer the nachos with chicken, beef, or veggies - but I prefer them with just the cheese and beans. They give you tiny sides of sour cream and salsa - which I wish they wouldn’t skimp so much on.

The nachos are good, while maintaining maximum simplicity. Despite how incredibly plain, simple, and relatively small this plate of nachos is, somehow they’re better than your average chips and cheese. Go during happy hour and get them for $3. Otherwise, I think they run $4.50.  I give Vendetta’s nachos a B- and a good value, given the ambiance and experience of one of the coolest bars in town. Vendetta is located at 4306 N Williams Ave, Portland, Oregon 97217.

Poor college students are being targeted again by the RIAA. Looks like students are being fined at least $3000 a piece for downloading music. What is the world coming to? Aren’t there some terrorists they can be chasing instead of students?

Here’s the story: Wisconsin students busted for downloads

Posted by Joe Solis | Team Marmoset

Maybe you’ve noticed - then again, maybe you haven’t… Team Marmoset has been a little off the radar the past couple of weeks, going a little light with content on the blog. Please accept our apologies for being so quiet. (Note to self: Driving straight through to LA and back is a bad idea) Here’s an update of what we’ve been upto…

First off, our buddy and designer/animator extraordinaire, Doug Blair, gave the regular Pet Marmoset website a nice face lift.  It still has a couple minor things that I need to work out, but overall it’s feels wonderful. Sorta that same feeling you have when you get a hair cut or lose 10 pounds. You know? Here’s what it looks like:

Last week, I took a road trip with some friends down to Los Angeles for the Western Region NACA conference. NACA (National Association for College Activities) is the organization of college and university activities organizers, where they get together and check out talent (bands, comedians, artists) that they may want to book to perform on their campus. This was Pet Marmoset’s first time exploring the inner most depths of NACA and it was quite learning experience.  Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I promise to dedicate a blog entry to “Everything we learned about NACA” and I’m more than happy to field some Q&A by email, if you have any questions. It was a fun time, although I think I slept a combined 15 hours over more than four days, including driving straight through from Portland to LA….and it destroyed me.

I was there with my best bud, Johnny Clay of The Dimes, promoting The Dimes in hopes of landing some college bookings for the Spring.  We also traveled with and spent the majority of our time with our friends, Debra Arlyn and Dave Milne, who were also there pimping themselves out the college kids. And I must say, I simply love Debra and Dave. They were a blast to spend four days and nights with, for sure.  Between Derba’s perpetual farting (she’s gonna kill me for writing this!) and Dave’s fascination with his own balls, I can confidently tell you that I know more about each of them than I had ever anticipated learning. But it was all good and tons of fun! Here’s some highlights:

This is myself, Debra and JC, straight cold chillin’ at NACA.

For those of you that know me very well… you know that while I don’t claim to be a full-fledged Portland coffee snob - I do have an obsession with good coffee. When not in PDX, I find it quite challenging to find a good cup of coffee anywhere, and I honestly don’t like stooping to Starbucks. Sure, they apparently treat their employees well, but they also are known for killing many good, mom and pop coffee houses…and they regularly burn their house coffee. Anyways…. I like to start my day with a French Pressed cup of joe. And apparently, the Starbucks in Ontario, California (right by the convention center) have never French Pressed a cup of coffee before. So, after some minor condescending communication (from me to them), I sort of gave them a lesson in French Pressing - which Johnny, Dave, and Debra thoroughly enjoyed. We captured the climax of the experience with photography:

Also while in the greater LA area, we couldn’t help but hit up some of the areas finest food establishments - including the likes of In-N-Out Burger and Chick-fil-A.  Question: Why am I the only one of our group who appreciates ordering an In-N-Out burger “Animal Style”? I think Johnny was sorta raised on Chick-fil-A, so he went absolutely nuts about it. Here is Johnny DEVOURING his chicken sandwich:

And you know I wouldn’t be completely honest with you if I didn’t confess my nacho experience on the trip. And let me tell you, this was the most DISGUSTING nacho experience of my life. It was about 2am and we were on a mission to find some late night food with some new friends from Utah State (Tyler, Emma, Kevin and Rachael). And low and behold, right there by our hotel was a big yellow sign calling our name (Denny’s). Although at first, I could not believe it, but yes, they actually have nachos on the menu. So I ordered the nachos (without meat) and continued to eat over half of them before I realized how sick I was beginning to feel. You see, these nachos were NASTY. They had a top layer of something resembling real cheese and a middle layer of some liquid nacho cheese sauce, which completely soaked everything they came into contact with. And… they topped it off with two ice cream scoop-sized helpings of real sour cream. And this sour cream had the density of Crisco. It was so gross that I’m seriously about to puke in my mouth as I type this. Here is my photo evidence:

Nachos from Denny's

More NACA fun fun:

Funny thing… Dave Milne took all of the photos, so unfortunately, he didn’t make it into any of these… Go to his website or his Myspace page if you want a look at his handsome mug. And I must say, he is quite the sax man. Being the Karl Denson fan that I am - Dave’s sound most definitely resonates deep down in my soul. Give him a listen at www.davemilnemusic.com

There’s a lot of other fun stuff going on with Team Marmoset these days…

• Derby is kicking some ass, promoting their new record, Posters Fade!
• The Dimes are in the studio, recording their next full-length record.
• I finally broke down and bought an iPhone. One word: wow.
• Driving Portland to LA is still a really long drive. Ugh.
• We’re still looking for some peeps to review some new music, which we’ll happily post on this blog.

That’s all for now. Time for a nap.

We heard about this but we didn’t think it could be true… we were wrong! Sarah, please don’t pardon us, or any more turkeys for that matter.

Thanks Johnathan!

Post by: Joe Solis - Team Marmoset.

It’s time for Video of the Week and Team Marmoset wanted to share with you this new video “Blue Lead Fences” released by one of our local favorites, Lock Lomond. 

Making her directorial debut Alicia J. Rose, photographer extraordinaire, with a keen eye for landscape and fashion, uses creepy,old time, sepia toned soaked frames to turn what appears to be and old time baptism into….well you can find out for yourself.

Be sure to watch it till the end!

Lock Lomond - “Blue Led Fences” 

Post by: Joe Solis - Team Marmoset

So Team Marmoset wanted to share one of it’s guilty pleasures with you. That’s right, The Cars! With their most successful album, Heartbeat City, in 1984. The first single, “You Might Think”, helped The Cars win Video of the Year at the first MTV Video Music Awards. . We hope you enjoy the video. Man we love the synthesizer, and the CG of the 80’s.

Post by: Joe Solis - Team Marmoset

Hey everyone… just incase you can’t stay up late like some of us here at Marmoset headquarters and missed Death Cab for Cutie’s performance on The Tonight show with Jay Leno, we thought we’d post it for you to watch at your own convenience…

xoxox

Pet Marmoset

Post by: Joe Solis - Team Marmoset

The New Hotness: FourTrack Audio Recorder for iPhone, iPod Touch!

Audio geeks and songwriters have another tool at their disposal: FourTrack, a well-designed app for the iPhone or iPod Touch that records, mixes and plays up to four tracks like a shrunken version of Pro Tools. There’s no way it’ll replace your main recording setup, but then again, you can’t put your main recording setup in your pocket.

FourTrack (iTunes link) is the work of Sonoma Wire Works, makers of the desktop recording software RiffWorks, and The Retronyms, makers of Recorder, the top-selling (single-track) recording software in the App Store. After a few days of pre-release testing, we can safely say that this is a solid, functional app that justifies its $10 price for musicians and anyone else who messes around with audio despite — or perhaps because of — its rudimentary, four-track-like functionality.

Legend has it that Michael Jackson devised the ridiculously catchy bassline for “Billie Jean” while sitting in a tree. Maybe, if he’d had this, he could have written the whole song up there. [Read more]

For this Friday’s weekly installment, we bring you something that simply rocks: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers in 1978 doing American Girl (video).

She could hear the cars roll by…out on 441…like waves crashin’ on the beach!

And speaking of Tom Petty… Our friends of PDX-based band, Deepest Darkest and Jacob Van Auken will be performing the music to Tom Petty’s Wallflowers record - in it’s entirety - on Friday, January 9th at Biddy McGraw’s in Portland. It will be sweet. Put that on your calendar.


Keywords: She could hear the cars roll by…out on 441…like waves crashin’ on the beach!, tom petty, petty, tom, the heartbreakers, american girld cica 1978, 1978, tom petty & the heartbreakers, tom petty and the heartbreakers, video, deepest darkest, jacob van auken, van auken, vanauken, jva, portland, oregon, biddy mcgraw’s, biddy, wallflowers,