Cos Luccitti, the award-winning Copywriter, Creative Director and eventual CEO of De Pasquale is having his last day at work today. A kinder, more talented colleague and friend could most probably not be found. Good luck Cos, we’ll miss you!

About a year ago Seth Godin wrote that “maybe you can’t make money doing what you love“. I forwarded that post to every musician, artist and manager I know and they all smiled, nodded and agreed. If you’re an artist at heart I recommend you read that post, and re-read it every few months to remind you what you’re doing. To refresh your memory, here’s the gist of it:

A friend who loved music, who wanted to spend his life doing it, got a job doing PR for a record label. He hated doing PR, realized that just because he was in the record business didn’t mean he had anything at all to do with music. Instead of finding a job he could love, he ended up being in proximity to, but nowhere involved with, something he cared about. I wish he had become a committed school teacher instead, spending every minute of his spare time making music and sharing it online for free. Instead, he’s a frazzled publicity hound working twice as many hours for less money and doing no music at all. Maybe you can’t make money doing what you love (at least what you love right now). But I bet you can figure out how to love what you do to make money (if you choose wisely). Do your art. But don’t wreck your art if it doesn’t lend itself to paying the bills. That would be a tragedy.

That, for me, is the reason music is just a hobby. My ultimate life goal is still multinational rock and roll superstardom, but I’ve learned, over time, that you can’t really count on making it in the music business. No matter how hard you try, that one is up to fate. There’s nothing you can do to make it happen, the stars just need to align, and for most people they never will.

That’s not to say I sit on my arse and wait for superstardom to happen, I’ve got talent, I’ve written songs which have made it to the radio, I’ve toured around Australia numerous times and I’ve played the Big Day Out. A lot of work has gone into all of that, I’m just not counting on it leading any further than it already has. I don’t want my music to be something I mix in with my day-to-day life. That would suck all the joy out of it. That’s why I rarely write about it… Just in case you were wondering…

So as of 4.30pm this afternoon I cease to be a homeless vagabond and become a home-owner. I thought I’d try and get to grips with the concept by having a picnic in New Farm Park last weekend because it’s my new local spot of grass. I’d been to the park many times before of course, but it wasn’t until last weekend I realised it had a website, and these cool signs.

I’m sure other parks have a website, and I’m sure other parks in the world have cool sign art, but I can’t imagine too many parks have both. If they do, they certainly don’t have The Powerhouse as well. That’s why I love Brisbane. It’s a city of the sun, but it has the arts at its heart, and since it can’t rely on a harbour to get by, it does a brilliant job of marketing itself.

…Even if they ripped off NY

I love MadMen, of course. They’re doing a great promo for the new US season premier where you can ‘MadMen Yourself‘. It’s kinda fun and a lovely example of a social media viral. It’s clearly working if I’m taking the time to blog about it. Here’s the results - what do you think?

Real Matt                                                    MadMen Matt

It’s no secret that I’m a gigantic MasterChef fan. I won’t invade this blog with my culinary musings because I have a whole other platform to do that with (see the content dilemma post below), but I thought it was rather interesting how the Google Zeitgeist has started showing results for a ‘masterchef’ search in Australia. Google makes page suggestions in a website you search for based on their own algorithms for what is popular. Julie was the winner, Chris was the favourite, Poh did exceptionally well, but only one contestant makes it into Google’s page suggestions list. Is it a coincidence that she’s pretty and blonde? Google is a remarkably reliable gauage of popular culture. My money is on Justine to go on to the biggest and bestest things.

No complaints from me, but hands up if you think they’re trying so hard it ends up looking templated and insincere?

—

Dear Matthew,

Hi, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Sourabh and I’m going to look after your enquiry today.

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Your E-Mail Specialist Team

1. Ryan Adams - To Be Young (is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)

2. Midlake - Roscoe (beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve Remix)

3. Massive Attack - Teardrop

4. Beth Orton - Stolen Car

5. The Cure - Lullaby

6. Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

7. Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling Stone

8. David Bowie - Rebel Rebel

9. Jimi Hendrix - Castles Made Of Sand

10. Radiohead - Karma Police

I thought I’d put all the clips in one post and see what it sounded like if they were all playing at the same time - the Matt Granfield symphony if you will. It doesn’t sound very good, but the results would be better if record companies would permit embedding of the official clips. Most of them don’t seem to these days. They must think that by forbidding me to share my ten favourite songs with you it will make them more money. Aren’t they clever.

I had to leave some brilliant songs off, and I can’t believe The Rollings Stones or Rage Against the Machine didn’t make the list, but there you go.

Voting opened today in Triple J’s Hottest 100 of All Time poll. What makes it into your top ten?

The back door to the office is usually propped open with a wooden doorstop so the smokers can duck out for a puff without carrying their keypass thingos. Today I saw this:

…And it made me think that there are probably a lot more redundancies on the way. Here’s ten things that no-one will do offline in ten years time (list includes bonus interesting links):

1. Looking up a word in a dictionary
2. Reading the newspaper
3. Finding a local business
4. Getting directions
5. Making plans
6. Writing a diary/journal
7. Email
   
8. Going into a Government-run office for day to day stuff (even if you’re an old person).
9. Whatever the last thing you did offline was.
10. Going out on a Friday night. (All entertainment will either be online, or we’ll all have Swine Flu and be stuck indoors).

I could see the rain pouring down outside the window yesterday but I was so preoccupied with work I didn’t leave the office until 9.30pm after the Gruen Transfer (which featured my sister agency Gallery De Pasquale doing ‘The Pitch’) had finished. (Jeez I like long sentences). It had stopped raining by then and I live on a nice high hill, so I was kind of oblivious to the damage, at least until an email did the rounds of the office today with a whole bunch of images of the damage. There were so many it was alarming, but this one of Breakfast Creek overflowing near the hospital about 1km up the road from where I work in Fortitude Valley really hit home.

Scary stuff. Glad my house isn’t on the other side!

Anyway, I just had another email from someone else in the office mentioning that CityCat services will be stopping at sunset tonight because there’s so much debris floating on the river it’s too dangerous for ferries to be out.

This proves a few things:

• If you’re going to live near a river, live on a hill
• At $20 a pop, gumboots aren’t a bad investment, but buy them when it’s dry
• Email is still good for spreading stuff, especially lots of random pics