Remembering John Lennon, Oct. 9, 2008

One of the great advantages of working for MediaNews Group Interactive is that our office, on the 9th floor of the same building that houses both the Denver Post, which we own, and the Rocky Mountain News, is that we have a terrific view. Located at the corner of Broadway St. And Colfax Ave., our building overlooks Civic Center Park, which is surrounded by us, the City and County Building, the Denver Art Museum and Denver Public Library complex, and the gold-topped Colorado State Capitol. Off in the distance to the west beyond the City and County Building rise the mellow foothillas and then the already-snow-dusted Rocky Mountains. With the sun shining and the air crisp with early fall — a rarity here, since fall is often skipped in the rush from summer to winter — it’s easy to remember why we love living in Colorado so much.

Today, the view off our 9th floor balcony of Civic Center Park showed some event going on. The summertime Farmers Markets had already stopped, and beside, they were held on Wednesdays and this was Thursday. You could hear the amplified sounds of music wafting up off street level, though, and a weird-looking tower was spitting out soap bubbles. There was a large, colorful peace sign drawn on the grass of the park, so I figured it must be an anti-war demonstration of some sort.

During lunch, I wandered downstairs and crossed the street to check it out. It turned out to be a peace-and-art event, and a celebration of the late musician-activist-Beatle John Lennon’s birthday. Lennon was born in Liverpool, England on Oct. 9, 1940. Continue reading

Flipping for the Flip video camera


I know some of my friends think of me as a gadget freak, but I only get crazed about a new toy every once in a while. iPods, for instance. Or digital cameras before that. Walkmans (Walkmen?) in the ’80s.

Here’s my newest gadget recommendation: We recently bought two Flip video cameras and we’re having a blast with them. I had checked out the Flip last year when they were first introduced — Costco sold them for a few weeks and then stopped carrying them.
Several months ago, our pal Bill Imada, founder of the IW Group media and advertising firm, held up a Flip after giving a presentation to the Colorado chapter of the National Association of Asian American Professionals, and told us we have to get one.

At Denver’s Cherry Blossom Festival in June, my brother Glenn Asakawa, a former photographer at The Denver Post now working for the University of Colorado, held up his Flip, and I was reminded that I wanted to get one.
Continue reading

A musical perfect storm: U2 live at Red Rocks

I know exactly where I was the night of June 5, 1983: I was freezing my butt off, soaked to the bone but ignoring my discomfort because I was in musical heaven, surrounded by huge sandstone rocks on both sides, a stormy sky above and a hungry young band called U2 just hitting its stride in front of me, its members playing their hearts out despite the crappy weather.

That concert was captured on an EP (for you post-CD fans, “extended play” releases were vinyl records with fewer songs than a full album but more than just a single with a flipside) and a video, both titled “Under a Blood Red Sky.” The audio recording was actually a compilation of tracks recorded at Red Rocks and elsewhere during the same tour; the video was all filmed in Denver.

The combination of the two established U2 as world-class big-time rock stars, not the scrappy new-wavers who played clubs and small theaters. MTV loved the energetic performances amidst the dramatic, almost otherworldly, setting. Radio stations caught on to the band’s talent, and U2 hit their stride. In the years since, the concert was hailed as a seminal moment not just for U2, but for pop music: Rolling Stone magazine named it to its list of the “50 Moments that Changed Rock and Roll.” Continue reading

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the Sitar, George Harrison, The Concert for Bangladesh and Me

I’m a born-again Asian American. Most of my life, I was oblivious to my rich roots and Japanese heritage. I was a banana — yellow on the outside, white on the inside. So probably more than some Asian Americans, I like the idea that May is officially “Asian Pacific American Heritage Month” in the U.S.

There’s a part of me that finds it irritating that APAs get noticed once a year and we’re practically invisible the other 11 months. But I’m glad that former transportation secretary Norm Mineta drafted the legislation to establish this month-long celebration when he was a Congressman. I’m pretty immersed in the APA community now — not just Japanese American, but also the dozens of other Asian ethnic cultures and how they’ve evolved as they’ve become established in the U.S.

APA Heritage Month makes me think of times when I was less connected to my own roots, and not interested in the vast wealth of culture throughout Asia.

When I was a kid, I was into Japanese and Chinese (or more correctly, Chinese American) food. That’s what my family ate when we weren’t eating hamburgers, steak, spaghetti and pizza. This was before I developed my voracious appetite for Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Cambodian, Singaporean and Filipino food. It was pre-dim sum. And, it was way before I grew to appreciate all kinds of Asian music, both traditional and Asian American.

(Note: For those of you non-Asians who are Asiaphiles, I want to make the distinction that though we Asian Americans appreciate our heritage and understand how we’re steeped in traditional values, we’re all about the mix of being both Asian and American, or perhaps more accurately, being Asian in America.)

One very clear example of my growth and awareness of Asian culture today as opposed to when I was younger, is my appreciation for one particular track in George Harrison’s landmark recording, “The Concert for Bangladesh.” The track is the Indian music performance, “Bangla Dhun,” by the sitar master Ravi Shankar. Continue reading

Listening to oldies when they were new

“Time-shifting” is a new media term for the ability of technology to allow us to consume media — whether it’s video or music or text — at any time. The most obvious example is people recording TV shows on the DVRs to watch later, at their leisure.

You can hear a teleseminar via podcast any time after the fact (for instance, on a plane flight to SF, which is when I listened to a class on my iPod).

And this morning, I’ve been both time- and PLACE-shifting, by listening to an archival re-broadcast of Casey Kasem‘s “American Top 40” radio show, which was originally broadcast on April 14, 1973. It’s kind of spooky because it’s very possible I was listening to Casey Kasem’s affable voice that Sunday morning, and yet here I am, “tuned in” to hear the show all over again, in a San Francisco hotel room but hearing a stream from Denver oldies radio station KOOL105. All I need is the newscasts and commercials of the time, and I’m a 15-year-old kid all over again. Continue reading