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John Feldmann Discusses Producing Blink-182

Jason Tate

MusicRadar has an interview with John Feldmann about producing Blink-182’s California that contains quite a bit of information I hadn’t heard before:

To me, the essential Blink sounds are the band’s instruments. Travis has a total custom kit that’s been built from scratch using some vintage parts and some modern parts that him and his tech Daniel built from the ground up. Besides being the best drummer that’s ever lived, his passion for the instrument is key to his sound.

“All of Mark’s basses are custom-built Fender’s made to his specifications. Jerry Finn actually suggested re-routing Mark’s pickups to flip them because of the way Mark plays – he has this really interesting downstroke.

Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux

Tesla
Jason Tate

Elon Musk, writing at Tesla, has shared the second part of the company’s “master plan”:

By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.

Here is what we plan to do to make that day come sooner:

Musk aims high and then raises his own bar. Call it crazy, call it a pipe dream, but I still find his ambition nothing short of inspirational.

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Interview: Stephan Jenkins at the APMAs (Video)

Third Eye Blind
Jackie Cular

This year’s Alternative Press Music Awards were moved to Columbus, Ohio because the Republican National Convention was getting started in Cleveland. Stephan Jenkins, lead singer of Third Eye Blind, played with Mayday Parade and The Maine for the awards show and, well, we’ve all read about the band’s performance the other night. I spoke with Stephan on the red carpet at the APMAs and he talked about the band putting a new EP in the next few weeks and their plans for the rest of the year.

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Breaking Down the (Fake) Team’s Decisions in ‘Draft Day’

The Ringer
Jason Tate

If you’ve listened to more than a handful of episodes of Encore you’ve heard me rant about the movie Draft Day at one point or another. Riley McAtee, at The Ringer, breaks down the trades in that abomination of a movie and there’s just no way I can’t share this:

But the Browns’ owner (a how-did-I-get-here Frank Langella) wants Weaver to make a splash in the draft, and he’s infatuated with Bo Callahan, a quarterback widely expected to go no. 1 overall. And why wouldn’t he want him? A linebacker or a running back can’t SAVE FOOTBALL IN CLEVELAND. So when Seahawks GM Tom Michaels (Patrick St. Esprit) lays out a deal that would give Cleveland the no. 1 pick, it’s Weaver’s chance to … you guessed it: SAVE FOOTBALL IN CLEVELAND. By the end of the movie, Weaver’s made three deals and numerous other decisions. But did he SAVE FOOTBALL IN CLEVELAND? Let’s grade every major draft-related decision in the movie to find out:

This movie is worth watching just to prop up your local liquor store’s monthly take.

Unilever Buys Dollar Shave Club

Stratechery
Jason Tate

Unilever purchased the Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion. Ben Thompson, writing at Stratechery, has a really good analysis of the purchase and how it fits with the disruptive power of the internet:

Probably the most important fact when it comes to analyzing Unilever’s purchase of Dollar Shave Club is the $1 billion price: in the world of consumer packaged goods (CPG) it is shockingly low. After all, only eleven years ago Procter & Gamble (P&G) bought Gillette, the market leader in shaving, for a staggering $57 billion.

To be sure Gillette is still dominant — the brand controls 70 percent of the global blades and razors market — but there is little question that Dollar Shave Club is a much better deal, in every sense of the word.

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