The project began with the Che Underground blog that depicts the San Diego underground rock’n'roll scene of the 1980s, where Sceneroller’s co-founder, Matthew Rothenberg, explored his own musical youth. Of the multiple bands that existed back then, only a few were visible online in historical records, and most had disappeared completely, while memories of tunes, thrill, and dramas still linger in the minds of the regulars involved in that scene – and influence newer generations. Albeit ephemeral in nature, music builds lasting bonds – so much so that three years later, the Che Underground site welcomes 16,000 visitors/month and has resurrected most of the San Diego scene. While working at it, Matthew, Jason Brownell and Jonathan Goldin (the other co-founders of Sceneroller) experienced the limitations of the linear blog format, narrated by one voice, and, where people can contribute, but are still dependent on an author. What came out of the blog was a desire from users to explore the scene in any direction they wanted. As a result, the founders of Sceneroller decided to better reflect the tribal world of music by also mapping the interconnections between bands, musicians, venues, and gigs (which they, in turn added to Che Underground) and let users participate in this encyclopedia at whatever level they could. As I looked randomly, I came across this map, showing the complex interconnections of a San Diego band that was active between 1984 and 1987, The Morlocks.

Bands are represented as blue planets that contain members (red stars) who can be musicians, people from the crew, and even fans. They perform in venues (green rectangles), which are themselves containers for gigs (yellow triangles). This approach addresses the limitations of standard family trees and enables readers to see how bands are related through shared musicians and gigs, and their audience within venues. By enabling users to navigate non-linearly, Sceneroller reveals connections that we may not even think of – and that the participants of those bands themselves may have been unaware of.

Sceneroller shows the long tail of the countless bands that never got signed to anything, got signed to independent labels or even to major labels, but never really made it — a sweet spot that basically corresponds to the music scene as we all know and enjoy it even if we attend the shows of famous bands now and then. The unknown or not-so-famous bands can last for years, even decades, either because their musicians have a day-job or made surviving from hand-to-mouth their lifestyle. But more importantly, they create the breeding ground from which a small minority ends up blossoming, where they honed their skills, or got their inspiration. Kurt Cobain, for instance, was a roadie (and remained a big fan) of The Melvins who started in 1983 and still exist 28 years later… And Sceneroller will also be a catalyst for musicians to meet again, much like with the Che Underground prototype: “We had a reunion concert in May 2009 in San Diego,” says Matthew emotionally. “We hadn’t gotten together in 26 years.”

As I am exploring this extraordinary product, I can’t help thinking that Matthew, by recapturing the ceremonial aspect of the music scene and its surprising intricacies, is doing on a different register something that is somewhat reminiscent of what his father, the extraordinary American poet Jerome Rothenberg did with his ethnopoetics. Small or short-lived, larger or long-lasting (such as Manual Scan whose two main players started to play together in 1976), these unsung bands have framed the largest part of our music oral culture, whose structure and idioms result from the interactions of musicians, people, and places over time.

Sceneroller is in the making (still in Beta), and the company is fixing bugs or interface details. Graphing the music scene is a huge enterprise, so do not expect to find everything you are looking for. Don’t be pissed but, instead, contribute! You will undoubtedly already find gems that will make you smile: Roger McNamee, for example, or the indirect relationship between Siouxie and the Banshees and The Flowers of Romance via Budgie who played for The Slits with Palmolive … So help others discover such gems! For example, “the map of The Morlocks,” Matthew insists, “is based entirely on input from registered users. ANYONE can help curate music history as long as they’re registered. For us, the participatory nature of Sceneroller echoes the do-it-yourself ethos of local music scenes themselves. This is a digital version of the sort of conversation we all had in our respective music scenes when they first happened!”

Today, Sceneroller starts with rock’n'roll, simply because the founders are rock’n'roll musicians, and reaches back 1949 as the earliest date, but as Matthew puts it “There is no reason why this should be limited. I want jazz musicians to start to tell their story because I want to be open.” And then, Matthew added Philippe Kahn right under my eyes!

Just received a review copy! Everything about this book makes you feel well!

1) The title is downright uplifting: You’re better than your job search. Most people look for a job these days may be somewhat nervous. More often than not, there is a “better” candidate. With hardships, self-esteem tends to go down; so the idea that one would be better than one’s job search can only help.

2) The design of the book by Priest + Grace: We are getting so used to improvised covers, hasty layouts, inconsistent graphic guidelines that this book comes across as a courteous homage to the reader – and the divider pages separating sections look like great summary posters.

3) The two authors Marc Cenedella, the founder of the Ladders, and Matthew Rothenberg, the Ladders’ Editor in Chief are sincerely “rooting for you” as they guide you through the job seeking process.

4) And, of course, the content and the author’s straightforward approach. The book is more specifically targeted towards people earning 100K+, but is a great guide for everybody. So “before you jump the gun and start applying for jobs (…) take a little time to read this book.”

Regardless of where you stand on the totem pole, looking for a job is always nerve-racking. Sometimes, it’s like shopping for clothes. You see a suit in the windows and you believe that it’s exactly right for you, soon to find out that something that goes amiss. It doesn’t perfectly fit, because of a little something in the design or a little something in you – and as you ponder over possible adjustments, another person comes by and the suit slips through your fingers. The book takes you through the eight key steps of a job search.

- Starting your job search: Take the time to think about all the aspects of the process, from defining your goal, crafting your personal elevator pitch, to becoming aware of how long it will take you to actually land a job, and all the steps in between. So from the very beginning, go through the checklist related to all the components involved.

- Your resume: You want to survive Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). Yes, your resume must include all the relevant keywords, but don’t think that you can outsmart them that easily. It’s a machine, but a machine that, in the end, often reads humans quite well. Also, if you want to gloss over a few snags in your job history, don’t forget that credibility matters.

- Personal branding: You want to impress, no doubt, so show the excellence in you and as you want it to be perceived; express your arete, an ancient Greek term that the authors quite relevantly use, and dress the part.

- Networking: You need to leverage all available resources to reach out to people and to be reached. Social Media tools are a powerful way to expand your field of vision as well as your visibility, provided that you have a clear strategy and know what you want. Optimize your profile for search, but never forget that in all cases, you must create trust.

- Interviewing: Great step forward – but it’s easy to blow it. Come prepared to the teeth about the company for which you interview. The meeting is not so much about you, your life and your exploits. It’s primarily about what you can do for others, and make sure that you adjust well to the environment that is used for the interview: phone and Web interviews are now common (I would add that they are far trickier for foreigners than for native speakers).

- Work/Life balance: Another interesting chapter. Not quite what you would expect, but a great way to look at your time between jobs. Don’t let stress paralyze you, be flexible, and stay in good shape mentally and physically: “if your job hunt is getting you down, take the weekend and blow off some steam.”

- Salary negotiation: Yes, few professional conversations are “more awkward,” so glean the authors’ tips to establish some comfort zone in you.

- First 90 days in the job: That’s the happy ending. Prepare to feel stupid, though, if you don’t want to come across as an awful brat.

Books related to job search can’t be too fancy – understandably so. But they can be more of less informative and more of less efficient at convincing you to reflect on the current best practices (not quite the same as ten years ago!) and  to apply them to your personal case. Even if you want to believe that you know it all, read this excellent book first: you may be convinced that you are a “highly experience,” “seasoned,” “world-class,” superlative executive. That’s not enough: Make sure that others are convinced too after you sell them your story!

A Jew Among the Indians: this year’s BMOP’s winning composition: The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), a major orchestra dedicated exclusively to performing, commissioning, and recording new music, presented its 11th annual Boston ConNECtion concert on January 17th at Jordan Hall (Gil Rose, conductor) featuring works by William Thomas McKinley, Michael Gandolfi, Peter Maxwell Davies, John Heiss, Kati Agócs, and Matti Kovler’s Cokboy – A Jew Among the Indians. Right after she saw this final version of Matti’s piece, my daughter, Sophie Delphis, sent me an enthusiastic email, of which this is an abstract:  “I have seen Matti’s piece in a number of transformations this past year: with piano, with a small group of non-classical musicians, and now with an orchestra. In this third version, the wider palette of sounds available to him has apotheosized his vision. The reaction I hear from the majority of people about him, and specifically this piece, is their surprise at the broad range of sources that find themselves into his music. It is certainly not every young, contemporary composer who has the knowledge and the courage to explore both “schmaltzy” and abstract motives, and incorporate them so easily into the same piece. It is only fitting then, perhaps, for Matti to work with a large ensemble, wherein the breadth of soundscape can corroborate the breadth of his material. Cokboy is in many ways an epitome of Matti, the man: sensitive, Romantic, part mystical, part comical.”

Meet with Matti Kovler: Matti Kovler, 28, was born in the Soviet Union and
 spent his childhood in Moscow, where he started to play the piano and write small
 pieces. When he was 10, 
his family emigrated to Jerusalem and he encountered the Hungarian-born composer Andre
 Hajdu (who studied at the Paris Conservatoire National de Musique under Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen). By his late teens, Matti was already a successful composer and had an opera already staged, Ami and
 Tammy, inspired by the story of Hansel and Gretel. Following his army service in Israel, he received his
 bachelor’s degree from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (working with Menachem Wiesenberg and Michael Wolpe). He earned his master’s degree from the New England Conservatory (NEC), and is currently working towards his Ph.D., also at NEC.  His teachers and mentors in this country include John Heiss, Anthony Coleman, and Michael Gandolfi, to name a few. He was a 
Tanglewood Fellow in the composition program in Summer 2008.

Many high-tech entrepreneurs bootstrap their companies. Artists bootstrap their entire existence and live from their ability to express themselves – and can do this quite successfully. This is the case with Matti, who makes a living as the current director of the
 NEC Children’s Choirs, teaches privately piano and composition, receives scholarships and gets commissions for his compositions, the latest one being the commission of a large scale vocal orchestral work from Carnegie Hall for the Osvaldo Golijov and Dawn Upshaw Workshop (to be performed on May 9 &10). His goals? To work even more and be able to create a touring company one day.

Sophie Delphis & Marylene Delbourg-Delphis 

More about Matti Kovler:

http://www.myspace.com/mattikovler: This site offers an earlier version of A Jew Among the Indians as well as Shoresh Nishmat, performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall during a concert celebrating Israel’s
 60th anniversary, as well as his Clarinet Quintet. Upcoming performances include his
 string orchestra piece Nineveh, scheduled to premiere in Boston on
 January 31, 2009. 

http://www.mattikovler.com: More compositions are offered on this personal site, especially  Enosh, a rock opera, and the The Escape of Jonah, an oratorio that was performed at the
 Jerusalem Music Center in June 2008.

www.newenglandconservatory.edu/prep/ensembles/children_chorus.html

More about Jerome Rothenberg: Born in New York in 1931 from Polish-Jewish immigrants, Rothenberg is certainly one of the most prominent American poets, and an amazing translator and anthologist. He is the author over seventy books. For details see:

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/rothenberg/bio.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Rothenberg

Incidentally, for high-tech readers, he is the father of Matthew Rothenberg, who worked for Ziff Davis for a number of years and is now the Director for editorial and content at The Ladders (http://www.theladders.com).

More about Zoomorama: http://wla.zoomorama.com (Special thanks to Franklin Servan-Schreiber)