Van Gogh & Yorke...Separated at Birth?

Silly geniuses with their weird haircuts and manic eyes... just wait a couple years and Thom will be missing an ear. Granted these dudes were born more than a hundred years apart, 115 years to be exact, but these brothers-in-art share the same wildness that often inspires groundbreaking, out-of-the-box creativity.

Both Thom and Vince (as he will henceforth be known) are well known for their ability to conjure abstract expressions of the world around them from unique, albeit disturbed perspectives. Van Gogh wore his crazies right out on his sleeve- be it the bloodletting, ear gouging moments, or twisted works like Skull with Cigarette. Yorke's eccentricities, though subtle in nature, still scare the living hell out of you once you wrap your head around them. Take for instance his spine-tingling, deranged falsetto that sounds like frostbitten wind whipping through a desolate house. Or take the surrealism of "Jigsaw Fall Into Place":

The walls abandon shape
You've got a Cheshire cat grin
All blurring into one
This place is on a mission
Before the night owl
Before the animal noises
Closed circuit cameras
Before you're comatose

Yeah, not exactly "Love Me Do". This is the kind of stuff I'd imagine Dali painting after a long night of LSD.

But beyond the weird, there is at the heart of both these artists something that connects with us lowly, less deranged humans. There is this looming feeling that everything isn't in it's right place- that at our core there is something very fucked up in each and every one of us. Warm, isn't it? But that's the whole point- life can be a strange fate. It reminds us that for every Mick Jagger and Tila Tequila out there smiling for the camera, somewhere out there is a tortured artist tucked away in his room, pouring out less-than-pretty stories that we so often call life.

Futurology and the Music Machine

As daunting a task as it might be, I'm going to try to sketch out where the music industry is going to be forced to move over the next five years or so. At this point it's kind of redundant to say it's going to be 'online', so what shape will it take online? As information online multiplies like jackrabbits on speed, people are going to want their information customized and centralized. The rise of home pages like Google's iGoogle gives a hint of what the future of music might look like. Cooperative, customizable, and compilation-driven sites featuring streaming audio, video and news items will overtake storefront proprietors like iTunes and magazine sites like Spin.

Now onto the fun part- content. As best I can tell, a good one-stop-shop music homepage would utilize something like what Pandora currently does with it's stations, providing relevant information based on past clicked information and purchases. The compilation site will automatically feed in videos from sites like Youtube and songs from Imeem based on user access and interests, as well as automatically update information based on an RSS feed system taken from users desired sites. Instead of surfing through the entirety of the internet for relevant music and news, that information will be delivered daily to the users homepage. This homepage would include literally anything you point to online. There would be a customized digg feeds section, an AOL Music Sessions section, announcements/pics/vid from your favorite band, the list goes on.

Additionally, the homepage will have a ubiquitous presence online. Love David Fricke but hate Peter Travers? No problem. You can designate favorite writer's pages and blogs right on their page- much in the way digg and Stumble Upon are linkable right now. Your homepage will serve as a broad base of information culled from an unlimited number of places you specifically choose, blended in seamlessly with suggestions.

How about them cash-dolla-bills, y'all? Well, probably the most effective way to make money on a homepage site dedicated to customized information would be to provide advertisements also based on customized information, something like Google's AdSense program. Not only will users be able to purchase any and all video and music featured on your homepage, but all advertisements will come from places like LiveNation, Wolfgang's Vault, as well as major and indie labels that are compatible with user tastes.