Loved seeing Pete Townshend speak to a near-capacity crowd at the Hilton ballroom early on during SXSW. The guy still has his brain cells intact.
Here are a few excepts from his talk:
“What’s to stop us from having a festival at some point, having lets say at SXSW next year, an absolutely international web related moment that looks in all the things that happen, but allows the people out there that can’t get here to be here. Isn’t the internet somethign of an offer in that direction, we don’t all of us have to burn gas to be together. I think the human race muylktiples, music is about congregating, sharing, and knwoing who youre not like, as well as who you’re like. I need to know what class I’m in, the musical class. In hotel I’m stayinbg at, someone is sharing their librqary over the iTunes network, and it’s called Eat My Shit, Bitch. Right in the middle of it are two Cocteau Twins songs, Chrsitmas songs. I said I know I’m not in that class. it’s a nice class, I enjouyed going through it and discovering. but the gathering is meditation. you lose yourself when you listen to good music. musicians call it zen. you think tis going to be two hour gig and then its over. its a timeless zone and hopefully it can be that way for the audienc too.
even tho al gore has taken credit for it, you did invent the internet. with lifehouse,. but that notion of that kind fo scientific, magical communication that would bring the audience together was there.
i hadnt read this book, apapprently arhutr c clark described hwat i described, a grid whreeepole gatehred for survival, a grid, it was like real reality tv. a bit like a video game, writ large. but the otherside of it was the idea that was bang if everybodys connected, what woudl they shgare. what would they share muscially, and how would they produce the music that theyd share. and i came up wit this idea of the lifehouse method., a ssystem where you go to a computerf nad put a