We like new things
Professional Musicians React - click to see conversation about Nirvana’s “Smells like Teen Spirit”
From time to time, Jack Conte and some of his musician friends sit down and listen to some songs and talk about what they like and don’t like, what makes the songs “tick” and often how jealous they are of the artists and their skills.
Easily digestible, fun, a little insightful and feel good.
Soft White Underbelly - click to see conversation with Matthew who is a heroin addict
Mark Laita, a professional photographer, interviews and portraits people from the underbelly of life. Drug users, prostitutes, pimps, gangster, hillbillies…sad and at times shocking.
Mr. Laita tends to pay his interviewees some amount of money to film them and he has been criticized for taking advantage of people who are already marginalized. While it’s easy to see how these videos can be seen (and consumed) as social pornography, I still find that many of them bring a level of insight and perspective that I rarely see elsewhere.
For me, these videos are a strong reminder of how, behind all the statistics, news stories, punditry and scary images, are real people with real lives. How easy it is to imagine a similar destiny for all of us, were we dealt a similarly bad hand as most of the interviewees have had.