It wasn’t too long ago that I found myself standing in the Las Cruces, New Mexico desert. It’s the second largest city in New Mexico, though you’d never really guess that from the largely deserted landscape (no pun intended). It’s not exactly a ghost town, but it has a serene old-school western feel to it that I haven’t really seen duplicated by many cities, especially those claiming to be large. To its credit, the city has a few Starbucks, a Wal-Mart, a Home Depot, a university – all the things you’d expect in any fair sized city. But standing out there on the airfield at the Las Cruces International Airport watching experimental rockets float on the horizon, I couldn’t help but think I was on some other planet.

I left that world behind a few months ago to pursue my music passion, but over the past few days I’ve had a chance to revisit that excitement and fervor, watching the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge webcasts. I’m not going to toot my own horn too much here, I know what I accomplished while I was at X PRIZE and I’m proud of it. But more than that, I’m proud of the efforts of the entire team that has pulled this off for yet another great year. The buzz, energy, and rabid fan behavior is something that is rarely seen for such an event. Such fanaticism is typically reserved for significantly more popular events, like sports or concerts or the Oscars.

Anyone who has ever watched a rocket fly (light that candle!) will tell you that there is nothing that can possibly prepare you for its brilliance. Sure, we watch planes take off daily. There’s a helicopter floating over my neighborhood on a nightly basis. But a rocket… now that’s a horse of a different color. What sets a rocket apart from an airplane takeoff is the frequency at which it happens, and the regularity with with we view these things.

What I think we’re seeing here, for perhaps the first time, is the rapid adoption of interest in an otherwise unpopular scientific endeavor, based solely on its accessibility. NASA TV deserves some credit for giving it a good go. The channel has been available through cable for an awful long time. I admit I’ve been victim to countless hours of slowly beeping nearly static shots of spacecraft orbiting the Earth. But the general public never really got excited about it. This has all changed, very, very rapidly.

The launches of Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, and Unreasonable Rocket are not only a true testament to the ability of man to overcome the limitations of this planet, but a testament to the ability of the web to tap an otherwise underinformed and undermotivated public. A generation of couch potatoes in front of a television never really caught on to the wonders of aerospace engineering, but I can watch as hundreds and thousands of people gather to see a couple of guys launch a rocket they built in their garage with just a little elbow grease and a dream. It may not be the audience of a space shuttle launch, but it warms my heart to know that we’ll have something to cheer for when those finally end.

Although very few things can compare to seeing a rocket take off in person, I’m happy to enjoy it from the comfort of my own home. I’m happy to follow the Twitter updates directly from the teams launching. And I’m happy to see the countless people chattering in rapt anticipation, white knucled with nails chewed clean. I wish everyone involved the best of luck. And to all those watching at home, from a former evangelist, keep fighting the good fight. Your interest makes all the difference.

I’m not even going to attempt to write about the many successes surrounding Imogen Heap’s new album Ellipsis in the social media space (Google it, there’s a bazillion good writeups out there). But I was happy to see the use of Soundcloud to allow users to listen to the entire album before its release, complete with links to her direct-to-fan shopping cart. I <3 Soundcloud.

Oh yeah, and the album is pretty damn good too.

Why should I care about Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore? I haven’t thought Demi Moore was hot since I was in 7th grade, and Punk’d is, in my not so humble opinion, a scourge brought upon the unwitting and unwashed masses by the Saurons of the television world, sitting atop their evil towers nestled high in the Hollywood hills.

I’ll tell you why: because they’ve made it a point to show the world that they are normal people through a number of social media. This all started when Kutcher’s production company, Katalyst Media, funded the Internet’s first ever live streaming reality show, 24 Hours At Sundance. Now let’s ignore for a moment that I think this experiment was a disaster (despite the powerful pairing of Qik and HP, the all-star linup with Kevin Rose, Shira Lazar, etc., and the inevitability of celebrity sightings at Sundance). Let’s focus on one really important thing: Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are now active social media users.

Certainly the Kutchers are not the first celebrities to dabble in social media. Shaq has had an active and thoroughly entertaining Twitter account for a while. MC Hammer is trying to revitalize his career with a social media startup centered around dance. And let’s not forget the plethora of newly minted Internet celebrities. Hell, all the major entertainment agencies now have divisions specifically for new media personalities. So what makes the Kutchers so special? In short, they are keeping it real.

For starters, those of us who have been following their Twitter feeds since the beginning have witnessed the slow learning curve they’ve exhibited. Demi can’t seem to figure out @ replies, but she’s learning:

It seems she’s a little confused about the retweeting function in Tweetie (which, by the way, is subject for a whole lot of discussion). Or how about Ashton’s confusion about how to stream video on Ustream:

And finally, let’s not forget the feuding between the Kutchers and Perez Hilton, all playing out publicly:

Why does all this matter? Because it clearly demonstrates what social media is all about: allowing anyone to communicate with everyone. It’s easy to forget that celebrities are people, especially since most of them intentionally hide behind communications firewalls. But as anyone in the PR field can tell you, the world has changed, irreversibly. And here are two celebrities unafraid to come out and show the world that they are just normal everyday folks like you and I. They post fun pictures to TwitPic. They livestream everyday moments to tens of thousands of viewers (what? you mean not everybody gets stalked by paparazzi?). This is the stuff my mother asks me about every day, the hurdles that users face when first dipping their toes into the wonders of sharing their lives on the web.

P.S. I’m not a stalker, I just find this stuff fascinating.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about the ways that social media have enabled even the smallest bands to create incredibly wide audiences with little-to-no startup capital.  And this excellent post by Marko over at echo has all but confirmed it: there are no indie bands anymore.

Ok, ok, I know, the term indie has essentially lost all its meaning, but let’s look at it piece by piece.  Once upon a time, there were bands who started playing in their garage, played a couple gigs, built a small fanbase, etc.  After enough time, these bands started touring, building a bigger fanbase, and maybe, eventually, they made a recording and released it through an independent record label.  These bands were indie.

Now let’s ignore for a moment that most of the labels that we think of as independent are far from it, given their complete reliance on the majors for distribution.  I realize that this fact alone essentially proves that there are no indie bands anymore.

That’s completely missing the point: the reason there are no indie bands is because there is no need to be indie anymore.

What exactly does this mean?

• The romantic notion of a band that no one else has heard of has disappeared.  I promise that if you find a band that you think has never been heard, they’ve already put their stuff on MySpace and at least a few hundred people have heard it.  While this isn’t exactly the same as going platinum, the appeal to the indie music fan of being the only kid on the block own that record is gone.
• Bands don’t need labels, not even indie labels.  I’m going out on a limb here, of course, since the fact remains that most bands don’t have the wherewithall to produce, market, and sell their own recordings.  But if bands decided to devote even a small amount of time to building a community of fans through various social media, they can easily turn their passion into a career.  As Marko points out, nobody sets out to be small, but hard work and dedication almost always pay off.
• There are people that will do this stuff for free.  They are called fans.  Most bands completely overlook the power of their fans to motivate others.  They can do this through any number of ways: sharing content, sending emails/IM/SMS/Twitter/etc., putting your band’s stickers on everything they see, wearing t-shirts, you name it.  Fans love to do this stuff.  Why?  Because it makes them feel connected to the music that they love.
• The flipside of the previous point is that fans will NOT help you to market yourself if you FAIL to connect with them.  This idea has been stressed time and time again by every social media guru on the planet.  If you fail to engage then you fail to inspire. Fans want to feel as though the bands they love actually care about them.  They need to feel, for lack of a better term, loved.  And this holds true for every community of fans, not just bands.  Take a look at Target, or Virgin America, or, hell, Coca-Cola…. all of them connect directly with their fans, and it pays off in dividends.
• This stuff is not as hard as it sounds; the hardest part is making good music.  There’s really no other way to say this, but if your music sucks, then you can’t expect anyone to listen.  Sure, there’s something out there for everyone, and every band will have a group of devoted fans.  But if you really want your music career to take off, you have to start with the basics.

There really is no reason why a band should ever be without a fanbase.  Given the incredible wealth of resources at our disposal, every musician should be able to connect directly to the people who matter most, the fans.  And I suppose in this sense, my original premise is no longer valid.  There are no indie labels anymore, and therefore no indie bands.  And the stratification and categorization of indie v. major really doesn’t make much difference. Really, this just means that every band – from the high-school punk rockers to major-label hip-hop superstars – are as independent as we’ve seen in the history of music.  Because now it isn’t the labels that sell the music, it’s the artist engaging their fans on an unprecedented personal level.

Oh the wonders of social media: I had been planning to hang out with Ashley at Amoeba, thanks to a little IM exchange last week, but then was sidetracked by an event I heard about by @iancr, and then I get this little gem in my Twitter stream:

@theroxy: tonight! ezra furman and the harpoons (next big thing), phonograph, and grace potter – first to hit us up gets a pair!

And since I have an itchy Twitter finger, I managed to snag a couple of tickets to the show.  I’ll upload some photos tonight (maybe tomorrow).  In the meantime, enjoy my favorite Grace Potter and the Nocturnals album.