Protect Ya Neck <- And Know Ya Rig
August 26, 2010 | No Comments
By now you might be picking up that we have a penchant for live, street-level musical performance. Full disclosure: we just fully realized it ourselves.
So here’s our latest fixation along those lines:
This quick little glimmer in the turbid shallows of YouTube caught our eye earlier this week (thanks Alex!) and has clearly stuck with us. Besides our apparent love for street performance (and less apparently and unanimously, Wu-Tang), Lewis Floyd Henry’s rendition of Protect Ya Neck inspires us on deeper levels too. For all of our combined love and devotion to Apple and Adobe (please stop fighting, you two, it hurts to watch), this video reminds us that it’s not always about having the most or best equipment. In fact, creativity itself never is. What’s truly essential to any great performance – street, stage, office, or otherwise – is heart, talent, wit, and grit. And, as illustrated by Mr. Henry: knowing the tools at your disposal, no matter how new or how few. It’s so very easy in our line of work to get sucked into the world of the latest, greatest, fastest, and sharpest–in other words, to lose focus. The tools are about design; design is not about the tools. As creatives, we can spend all day creating and tweaking the perfect drum kit, but sometimes we should just strap a tom to a tambourine and go be awesome. It’s no secret that some of the brightest, most innovative solutions in our field (or any other problem-solving arena) come from working within very tight and rigid limitations. Whether they’re self-imposed or come from above, Lewis here makes this foot-stompingly clear. That, and that you just can’t go wrong with a dark suit and shades.
Thanks again for watching, listening, and reading,
- BZ