David Byrne played Davies Symphony Hall Tuesday night in San Francisco. This show focused on his work with Brian Eno, including the first three Talking Heads recordings, and solo work, most notably their excellent new release “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today“. Right off let me say that this was a very inspirational show, delivered with incredible energy, and built from a perfect selection of songs. From the first track, members of the audience began migrating down the ailes up to the front of the stage to dance. By the fifth track, a slow burner from the “Remain in Light” album called “Houses in Motion”, the rest of the audience were on their feet.  And then something happened which is rare - at the end of that song, the entire audience cheered so vigorously, and for so long, that the band was actually taken aback and had to pause the show for about two minutes (which seemed like an eternity!) to let the roar subside. Chills. Cool, still avant garde, and highly recommended - if this comes your way don’t miss it!

 

Okay so this might be a bit excessive, but I am a major fan of all things sprung from Split Enz and the Finn brothers in general.  So off we trod last Sunday night to see Tim Finn at the Great American Music Hall, even though we caught his show earlier this year at the Independent.  Tim & Neil Finn are the equivalent of the Beatles but from New Zealand, with Tim playing Paul’s role. The majority of what Tim played was from the Split Enz days, from his stint in Crowded House, and from his most recent solo release.  The only disappointment for me was that only 1 track was covered from his first three solo releases but that was overshadowed by the unique interpretations of the rest of the selections. The show was wonderful and highly recommended.

 

At the end of last month I went to the Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate park in San Francisco.  This is the first year of many (we hope) annual shows by these promoters.  Each of three days ended with a headliner - Radiohead, Tom Petty, and Jack Johnson.  Highlights included Wilco, Beck, and Steve Winwood.  For me, the best of the weekend was Radiohead.  The set included a number of tracks from their last release “In Rainbows” along with highlights from their long career.  While the overall show broke no new territory for the dedicated fans, it was a perfect encapsulation of their craft.  Download their latest “In Session” videos on iTunes for a better look!

 

Came to Ingres and Opened Up Shop

One of the reasons I was excited to join Ingres is the fact that the management team was dedicated to the idea of supplying all of our business applications via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions and everything else using open source software (OSS) solutions, including our own Ingres database. I had just gone through 2 years of painful but not uncommon downsizing effort at another company, taking IT spend from $8M down to $4M annually. I became convinced that the right way to provision IT is to maximize variable cost and get far away from large up-front capital expenditures. So I joined Ingres and we adopted a solutions sourcing strategy which included the 100% SaaS/OSS goal.

Lots of Solutions on the Menu

We started down this path with salesforce.com already in place for the sales team. We then selected Intacct Financials, and ADP’s HRIS system, all SaaS players themselves. Along the way we implemented SaaS based software from eProsper, Xactly, and others. (more…)