Tuesday, December 15, 2009

You're In The Jungle, Baby.

As 2009 comes to a close, many arts organizations take this time to reflect on the projects and programs of the past year as well as visualize organizational goals for the coming year. We here at the MF are no different, but I'd like to take this time to touch on a key performance and motivation metric pertaining to my department, which is loosely defined as Development, but more affectionately referred to simply as The 3rd Floor.

The 3rd Floor houses the Membership, Development, Grant Writing, Marketing, Public Relations, New Media and Graphic Design departments. Sounds huge, but it's essentially just me, Lindsay, Shannon, Emily, Claudia and our wonderfully overworked/underpaid interns. As you can imagine, there is an amazing amount of work to be done by all of us and therefore time management, the ability to multi-task and an überly fast-paced work environment are key to pushing projects out the door. Enter one of the greatest rock bands of all time, Guns 'N Roses (pictured to the right).

In 2009, The 3rd Floor played Appetite for Destruction by Guns 'N Roses in its entirety every Friday at 4:00 PM. You're probably asking yourself how this relates to producing world-class contemporary art, but bear with me for a moment, there are several reasons for our weekly ritual. First and foremost, the motivational nature of the songs on this particular record are extremely conducive to work output. The pace is perfect; the highs & lows and peaks & valleys are perfectly in their right places. It's also almost exactly 1 hour long and like an olympic long distance runner it consistently brought us rocking into 5:00 PM, a reliable and energetic close to each week in 2009. Some of our best ideas and execution came between the opening guitar lick of Welcome to the Jungle and the final breakdown in Rocket Queen.

So, having said all of this, we all feel we're due for a change in 2010. This is where you can help us. Much like we did with choosing the name for the MF softball team last Spring, we're going to leave it up to our blog readers, MF Twitter Posse and MF Facebook Mob to crowdsource our 2010 "Friday at 4:00 PM" listening ritual.

Here's the deal. Through this Friday, we'll take any and all album suggestions in the comments below, or via Twitter & Facebook. The 3rd Floor will then meet to select a cross-section of 5 potential albums, which we'll post here on the MF Blog next week as a reader poll. The album with the most votes by 12/31/2009 will be the winner and the person who submitted the winning record will receive their choice of three awesome MF prizes.

So have fun suggesting albums and be creative with your recommendations. We're looking forward to hearing your submissions.

Jeffrey POSTED BY JEFFREY
Read All Posts by Jeffrey

10 comments:

Brother Anthony said...

I commit to listen to the selected album in my office every week.

I'll be back with some nominations.

zatopa said...

Band: 3 Leg Torso. Album: Astor in Paris. Tune you'll catch yourself humming when you're trying to get three things done at once: Frog ... Secret Agent.

Richard McCoy said...

It's so Easy, so f'ing easy.

Bob Dylan's epic 1997, "Time Out of Mind."

It's a bit long at 72:50, but since your time will be out of mind, you'll just stay a bit late working away on Fridays.

The 16 minute "Highlands" is totally worth it (Bob talks about Jung and drawing with a waitress).

Brother Anthony said...

Ok, here are my nominations for winding down the work weeks and winding up weekends:

Decksanddrumsandrockandroll by The Propellerheads

Stripped by Christina Aguilera

Marquee Moon by Television

Live Through This by Hole

Hellbilly Deluxe by Rob Zombie

Supa Dupa Fly by Missy Elliot

Master of Puppets by Metallica

Erik said...

Elliott Smith “Either/Or”

Neutral Milk Hotel “In the Airplane Over the Sea”

Bright Eyes “I’m Wide Awake, it’s Morning”

Belle and Sebastian “Dear Catastrophe Waitress”

Fionn Regan “The End of History”

Jimmy Eat World “Clarity”

Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins “Rabbit Fur Coat”

Wilco “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”

Richard McCoy said...

Master of Puppets is a nice choice, but then it becomes impossible to chose between Kill 'em All and Ride the Lighting. In the end, I'd go for Kill 'em All.

So, now I'm gonna say I have 5:

1) Time Out of Mind (Dylan)

2) Kill 'em All

3) Operation:Mindcrime (Queensrÿche)

4) My Mother's Hymn Book (J. Cash)

5) The Key to the Kingdom (W. Philips) -- listen to "Wouldn't Mind Dying if Dying Was All" http://popup.lala.com/popup/648799894384171415

Jeffrey @ the MF said...

Okay. The finalists have been selected and there is now a poll widget in the sidebar. This poll will be live through 11:59 PM on December 31, 2009, at which time the the album with the most votes will go into our Friday @ 4:00PM heavy rotation.

And the nominees are:

"Clarity" by Jimmy Eat World (Nominated by three different people via 3 different platforms - 1, 2, 3)

"Hysteria" by Def Leppard (Nominated by @aerdin via Twitter)

"Ill Communication" by the Beastie Boys (Nominated by Claire Milto via Facebook)

"Master of Puppets" by Metallica (Nominated by Brother Anthony)

"Time Out of Mind" by Bob Dylan (Nominated by Richard McCoy)

The person, or persons, who submitted the winning album will receive their choice of 1) a 2010 Membership to the Mattress Factory & this rad T-Shirt, or 2) Two VIP tickets to the 2010 Urban Garden Party. So vote early, vote often and send us rocking through 2010.

c-mon said...

ill communication fer sure!!!

seth said...

Like Ma Bell, I got the ILL COMMUNICATION!

Jeffrey @ the MF said...

ILL COMMUNICATION FTW!!!

Thank you all for participating and I welcome you to join us this Friday at 4PM for our inaugural play of this great album.

Happy New Year!