The Make You Wanna Holla Presentation

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I can't speak coherently and I can't write at all -- let alone stay on topic.

 

Subsequently, I’m already prepared for the electronic picket signs and the “haterific” rants about selling out, wasting time or "dummy-it’s-called-an-I-pod" responses.

 

Or maybe I’m just feeling myself and the readers of this post may indeed have imbibed their “acc-rite jooce,” before reading this, in which case I have nothing to worry about.

 

Today’s subject, kiddies, is how to throw a boss summer patio party or eclectic dinner party in the technological age - I mean really do it up – without digging in the crates.

 

It occurred to me, shortly after myself and a then prospective female No. 1 companion were exchanging YouTube links and trading songs via e-mail. It was a veritable, “well, what do you know about this," contest where she hit me with everything from the soul stylings of Tyrone Davis to old recordings of Chicago and Muddy Waters. I put her up on Average White Band and hard-to-find Isley Brothers recordings as well as grooves from Marvin Gaye she never heard. Gotta love technology and what Roger Troutman would call "Computer love."

 

The metaphoric Sylvania danced above my head. Party Time.

 

The ingredients: a PC or MAC – laptop or desktop will do -- with a plug-in port for a large LCD screen or an up-to-date TV set and Internet access.

 

I’m not inventing the wheel or even thinking up an original idea here but why get a Bose wave radio and thumb through your I-pod. Like the man James Brown says, “get involved, get into it.”

 

You can go from Beethoven to Coltrane to Snoop Dogg to Eric Clapton with a quick search without digging in the crates, calling XM Radio tech support or getting carpal tunnel syndrome setting up random music joints on a CD changer because the disc holder decided it doesn’t want to slide out for you.

 

Three keys to a YouTube party.

 

1)      One-Upmanship is the key. Find a unifying theme (i.e. Jazz Night, Vanilla Ice, Retrospective, Tantra, uh John Tesh anyone? ) Have fun wowing and surprising each other.

2)      B.Y.O.D (Bring your own document with the links to your jams already in it -- Excel and Word files will do).

3)      Rotate, Rinse Repeat: (The host should have a list, where they designate a typist for 20 minute intervals to jot down their own jams. This is wilding out interactive style to elicit groans or “oh snap” reactions).

 

For you dweebie html-jocky hipsters who wear Converse All-Stars with tweed thrift shop pants (don't trip, I love the pants), here’s how you can save your links and embed them for repeated use in a prepared file.

 In a realm where the DJ is dead and many spend more time texting and e-mailing than talking, defeat the Borg with a little bit of imagination. Plus if you've got your joint on a reliably-fast free wireless network, it costs no money me hearties.

Have fun, but just don’t let me see anymore headlines like this: Family beaten after YouTube party invitation. That situation -- where a “teenager was airlifted to hospital and his father left with a broken nose after 100 teenagers gate-crashed a party where an invitation appeared on YouTube – was unfortunate.War is not the answer, only love can conquer hate. That’s Marvin from the 1971 title track to the seminal soul album “What’s going on?” You might want to get your game right before you try this at home.

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