:: The Park Paradigm ::

Markets for the Digital Generation

Great to see David and his team at Weatherbill line up another great deal - this time with Priceline, bringing the benefits of (weather) derivatives to Main Street:

Under the limited-time Sunshine Guaranteed promotion launched today, customers who book a qualifying Priceline vacation package between June 2 and July 17, 2008 and travel between July 1 and September 7, 2008 will be eligible for a refund if their vacation is rained out. For full details on Priceline’s Sunshine Guaranteed promotion, visit: http://www.priceline.com/promo/sunshine_guarantee.asp

Brett Keller, priceline.com’s Chief Marketing Officer commented, “Ten years ago with our Name Your Own Price® launch, and more recently with our elimination of booking fees on published-price domestic and international airfares, priceline.com has demonstrated a commitment to continually innovate in order to get great deals for our customers. Now we’re also offering them great weather. Best of all, these Sunshine Guaranteed vacations are available at the same great prices we offer for all of our packages. Our customers can book their Sunshine Guaranteed trips and rest assured that there’s a silver lining waiting if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate.”

There is no additional charge to book a Sunshine Guaranteed vacation package. Qualifying vacation packages must be 3-8 days in length. Travel must commence at least 12 days after a package is purchased. If it rains more than 0.50 inches per day on half or more of the days of a Sunshine Guaranteed vacation (including travel days), priceline.com will provide a refund for 100% of the cost of airfare, hotel, rental car and attractions and services components of the Sunshine Guaranteed vacation package.

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Keeping my promise that I wouldn’t bring you yet another girl with a guitar, this time around I thought I’d bring to your attention an incredible band - Los Lobos, and in particular a relatively obscure but amazing album - La Pistola y El Corazon (iTunes link.) One of my all-time top 50 driving albums.

Wikipedia describes Los Lobos as “…an American rock band, heavily influenced by rock and roll, Tex-Mex, country music, folk, R&B, blues, and traditional Spanish and Mexican music such as boleros and norteños.” From East LA, “The Wolves” formed in the 1970s but only rose to fame in 1987 when they recorded the Richie Valens cover La Bamba for the movie of the same name. The next year they released La Pistola y El Corazon, an album of traditional Mexican songs, entirely in Spanish. Despite it being a highly accessible window into a rich and joyous musical tradition, it sold poorly. I still think it is easily one of their best albums. Every song on the album is a corker but favorites include: La Guacamaya, ElGusto, Que Nadie Sepa Mi Sufrir and the title track, La Pistola y El Corazon. You can listen to all of them in their entirely on the media player on their website (flash so I can’t link to the individual tracks.)

Have a listen. I hope you like it. And I bet you it will have you reaching for a bottle of Dos Equis or Cuervo Gold and a box of limes!

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I think I may have intially stumbled upon Tina Dico via iTunes ‘Free Single of the Week’, and call me a sucker for live and unplugged performances, but like last time for Kate, I highly recommend her Live iTunes session as a great starting point to discover this wonderful artist. Adding to her appeal (imo) is her independent route to success:

Or… you could do it Tina Dico’s way. That the 27-year-old has beaten Coldplay and U2 to Number One in her native Denmark is impressive. That she has won the Best Songwriter Grammy and been voted Best Composer at the Danish Music Critics Awards is no mean feat. But the fact she did all this by putting out her music herself – without recourse to the marketing muscles of A Big Record Company – makes her unique. In an age of gimmicks and payola, text-in talent contests and image-first/music-second rock posturing, Tina Dico did it the other way: on the strength of her songs.

“I guess it is quite unusual to start your own label when you’re 23 and release your own album in the States when you’re 27,” she says. “It goes to show you what you can achieve.”

My favorite song is “One”:

Tina Dico – One

unfortunately I couldn’t find a video to post, but “Break of Day” is another excellent track which you can listen to below:

She’s originally from Denmark which, like Canada, seems to produce a disproportionate number of talented musicians and artists - perhaps its the latitude and the proximity of a culturally dominating southern neighbor…

(I promise for the next Music of the Week to deviate from the pretty girl with an acoustic guitar meme. But I also promise to come back to it at some point!)

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Inspired by Marc Andreessen and my excitement in discovering the brilliant Rodrigo y Gabriela (their cover of Metallica’s ‘One’ on this album is amazing) via his blog, indeed I went right out and bought their Live in Manchester album on iTunes. (It’s really too bad that iTunes doesn’t facilitate linking to artists and albums…)

Now if you are interested in my somewhat eclectic (a polite way of saying strange) taste in music, you could always listen to my last.fm radio station (available from my sidebar) which not only plays music in my library but also music it thinks I would like (and I must say it is amazingly prescient.) However, since this is probably a bit much for most (all!) of you, I thought I’d try to identify artists or albums in my collection that I think are particularly good and perhaps not so well known.

With this in mind, there was an obvious first artist; Kate Walsh is an incredibly talented young singer songwriter who has a unique and mesmerizing voice:

Kate Walsh is a British singer/songwriter from Burnham-On-Crouch, Essex, a small fishing village. Her music is characterized by her beautiful voice and life caressing vocals. She is an artist who takes you away from the rush and madness of the world. Her music has a timeless quality, making it hard to believe she was only 20 when she released her first album (she was 23 when her second album, Tim’s House, was released).

Kate is an example of an artist who skipped the traditional label publicity machine,and rose to popularity on iTunes. Her self-made album, “Tim’s House” rose to #1 on the UK iTunes store. Her Myspace page, however, claims that she owns no ipod or walkman.

She includes Longpigs, Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos, Rufus Wainwright, The Shins, Talk Talk, The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Red House Painters, Magnet, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, and Sufjan Stevens among her influences.

I first heard her at TED Global in Oxford in the summer of 2005 and I immediately bought her first album. But if you want a place to start I highly recommend her ‘Live in London’ performance on iTunes, which was recorded earlier on the same night she played this gig (which I was fortunate enough to attend) at the Water Rats Theater in London in May(this video is from a gig she played there in December 2006):

If you could buy shares in an artist, I would be getting very long Kate. Enjoy.

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