I’m not usually one for pop music, I tend to walk the more weird end of the musical road, despite my Elton John and Pink Floyd addiction, I tend to like their less popular, not commonly known tracks and albums. I’m funny that way. Ok, now that I’ve sufficiently buried the lead, I’ve been introduced to a new addiction, no not Tiny Empires, that’s a different post I guess, no FaceBook.
As much as I’ve become buried under various networking and blogging devices of late, this one is truly fun to use and has yielded some interesting results. Mostly due to my involvement in the organization of SLCC 2007, and other Second Life friends, I’ve added LinkedIn, LiveJournal, MySpace, actually WordPress (here), del.icio.us and Flickr to my list of places I post or can be found. While del.icio.us I don’t really get the appeal of, MySpace seems like blogging for bad web sites from 1996, and LiveJournal is used in general in a too personal manner for my taste.
Flickr, Snapzilla and PhotoBucket are all handy redundant in purpose tools that I end up needing all of them due to the different groups with which I collaborate or access those services. WordPress to me is as Blogger was before, but I like it’s current configuration a bit better than Blogger’s, and as I was collaborating on the SLCC blog through here, it was just easier, sorry Blogger, you were a happy home for many years. LinkedIn is to me the ideal online resume residence. It allows one to present a great deal of what one would prefer to get to say in a preliminary and even secondary interview, all there, in text, for easy review, and all network-able. Damn clever.
FaceBook, what is different about it? It encourages networking, much as LinkedIn and to a lesser extend MySpace do, but in a playful manner and primarily with those you know vs. spamming the heck out of the wider web. The interface is clean, uncluttered and easy to manage. No fixed background scrolling text overlays to break my eyeballs. (yes it can be done there are visual images too garish even for me)
I have my cousins to thank for introducing me to FaceBook. No, that’s not quite accurate they got me to USE it. moo Money certainly had talked about it enough and I’ve certainly seen it mentioned in the press enough. It sounded like an IM tool pasted on top of MySpace, thanks but no. Well that’s not what it is. It is a fun network of those you know and some silly little games that can replace interoffice scrabble games quite handily. Because of the ability to search for folks by topics, geography, employment and education as well as by direct connections through those you know, one can find folks that one has lost contact with pretty easily. Or make random friend connections as well through a shared interest. In a way it’s like Second Life that way, a semi-random internet cocktail party that everyone’s invited to attend.
Ok, back to the lead.
Valery Salazar is a young musician, born in Barranquilla, Colombia, raised in Miami, Florida, and I found her video “El simple placer” on my cousin’s FaceBook page. It’s a tight little pop album and here’s the link to her website (http://www.valery-music.com/). The songs are in Spanish and English, have nice poppy hooks and for the most part a rather upbeat pace. I’m not sure that she’s the next Juanes or Shakira but she’s worth a listen. “Welcome” has a definite dance-able beat and reminds me a bit of sped up Joni Mitchell somehow. “Brainwashed” carries a NIN-like industrial sound with a flat frankness to the lyric that reminds me of Blondie. Frankly, from her bio it sounds like we listen to a lot of the same things and it shows in her work. So I guess if you hate my taste in music, don’t bother, lol.
Oh and two versions of that video can be found on YouTube:.
It’s Been A Pleasure (English version)
El Simple Placer (Spanish version)
September 28, 2007 
