Along with the team at Drexler and our good friend Neal Shaffer, we’re really excited to launch this new venture this spring and bring something really cool to Baltimore. Take a look at the site and be sure to sign up for important updates via email.

You can even watch the trailer video that we shot, directed and edited ourselves.

Confirmed Stock Teaser from Confirmed Stock on Vimeo.

This is the one post I write year after year and enjoy more every time. I think my favorite part is the discussion and friendly arguments it always starts and the great suggestions I get for albums I missed. So, thanks for reading. Hopefully you also find something great that you missed or turn me on to something new.

Beach House - Teen Dream

I got Teen Dream the day it came out (ok, maybe a few weeks before it came out) and didn’t put it down all year. The songs on this album are beautiful, lush, rich and feel perfect for those cold winter evenings. This video (I didn’t shoot it) is from their May Webster Hall show that I had the pleasure of attending.

The National - High Violet

The National is one of those bands that people either love or hate and I think it really comes down to Matt Berninger’s baritone voice, which I happen to really enjoy. On High Violet, The National pulls together a masterful collection of great songs. I saw them this summer and was impressed by how much energy and rock they add to these songs live.

The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

The Suburbs was probably the most anticipated album of 2010. Funeral is still one of my favorite albums, so I was really looking forward to this new record as well. While there are some really great songs on The Suburbs, I found myself not really drawn back to it after the initial 2-3 weeks that I had it on repeat. But, it’s the Arcade Fire and the album is really strong, so it deserves a high rank. Plus, they collaborated with Chris Milk and Google to create one of the most amazing and emotional videos I’ve ever seen. Watch below, or experience it for yourself.

J. Roddy Walston and the Business - Self-Titled

J. Roddy Walston and the Business is rock n’ roll. Complete and utter rock n’ roll. There is no better way to explain their music and what they do. I saw them open for another band recently and after their face-melting set, the other band’s fans cheered like maniacs until they came out to do an encore. Those of us who have had the good fortune of seeing them at the Ottobar have known about J. Roddy and the Business for years, and now the rest of the world is starting to catch up. I fully expect them to be the biggest rock band in the world within 5 years.

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

I haven’t cared about Kanye West in a long time. I liked his first few albums but the last one, along with his behavior over the past year or 2 really turned me off. Then, when I first heard his song with Bon Iver, I really wanted to hate it. But, when you listen to this album, you have to be a bit in awe of what Kanye has pulled off. Their is an intensity and a drive on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy that is so engrossing. It feels like everyone on this record is pushing themselves and being pushed by Kanye to deliver the best performance possible. Whether it deserves a 10.0 or not is irrelevant. This is a great record.

Jonsi - Go

Something pivotal must have happened in Jonsi’s life recently. Whereas early Sigur Ros albums (while insanely amazing and trance-inducing) were usually slow and had a feeling of significant weight, his more recent work is uplifting and joyful. To me, the best way to describe Jonsi’s record is that it sounds like joy dripping out of the speakers. This record is a Friday afternoon in the early summer with the windows down.

The New Pornographers - Together

The New Pornographers are what pop music can be. Fantastic song writing and perfect arrangements, with unexpected and original touches make The New Pornographers the band that any other pop-rock outfit should look to as inspiration.

Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People EP and The Age of Adz

Sufjan not only put out a 60+ minute EP this year, but also rattled the indie-rock internet with his album The Age of Adz. I still can’t figure out why people had such a strong reaction to this album. Yes, there are some electronics involved, but the songwriting and the arrangements still feel very Sufjan. The Age of Adz probably takes a few listens, but is a really good record and much more interesting than if he would have just written another album that sounded like his older work.

S. Carey - All We Grow

Most of us probably originally paid attention to S. Carey because he’s Bon Iver’s drummer. And while All We Grow definitely has a similar feel to Bon Iver, it stands on it’s own as a well-written, atmospheric record that deserves heavy rotation, especially during the winter months.

Girl Talk - All Day

After his last effort, I remember Gregg Gillis saying that his next album would be more of a headphones record and less of a dance party one. I think that’s what he has accomplished with All Day. Plus, Girl Talk records are just fun. I’m a bit torn between Cecilia and Color Me Badd for my favorite sample on All Day. I commented recently that when my grandchildren ask me what it was like to live in 2010, I will show them www.alldaysamples.com. This site is a great example of the collaborative, remix culture that we live in. First, Girl Talk makes an insanely complex album using samples from hundreds of songs. Then, his fans listen intently to pull out all of the samples he used. Finally, another fan creates a simple site so listeners can see all of the samples being used at exact points in the album. It’s a collaborative effort that makes the final product even more fun than the original.

So, there you have it. My favorite albums of 2010. There are at least 4-5 other albums that I had a hard time not adding. But, when it came down to it I just hadn’t listened to them enough or enjoyed them quite as much as these.

Now, it’s your turn. What albums did I miss?

I also really enjoy the challenge of not using a flash or any lighting other than what is already available in the environment. While the photos sometimes lack a bit of clarity, there is a depth and wonderful grittiness that I just can’t stop staring at.

This afternoon I had the pleasure of checking out the fine goods at the Pop Up Flea. The Pop Up Flea experience is a nearly overwhelming level of awesome. Defined by its creators as, “part flea market and part pop up shop”, the Pop Up Flea featured both well-known and smaller brands, all selling excellent menswear.

With the caveat that I really know nothing about fashion, the Pop Up Flea was, to me, exactly what men’s fashion should be. The clothes sold there were all high quality, classic, and without pretense. I also really enjoyed getting a chance to talk to some of the guys who actually made the clothing and learn more about their companies.

Congratulations and thank you to Michael Williams and Randy Goldberg for putting the event together. I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did.

Here are a few photos I took today.

And here is a look at what I picked up today.

LL Bean Signature tweed jacket.

Levi’s Vintage 501s

Tanner Goods leather belt

Higher resolution images can be found on Flickr. viagra

And this is a great thing. If someone has an issue or is unsatisfied, we have the chance to rectify that and show that we care about and appreciate them as a customer.

The problem, though, comes about when trying to determine which people talking about your brand are customers with an actual gripe and which are just outsiders indulging their inner critic. The most obvious recent example of this was the new not-long-for-this-world Gap logo. As soon as the internet found this gem, every designer, marketer, and Twitterer who hasn’t stepped into a Gap since college jumped on the bandwagon of critiquing it to death. All of this was with good reason. The logo was bad and Gap needed to hear that from this specific community.

But is this the audience they should have looked to for approval to keep the logo?

When Gap reverted back to their old logo, they stated that they made this decision after listening to their customers and following their wishes. But did they really? Or did they merely listen to their peers? Did Gap talk to actual customers and find out what they truly thought about the new logo? Or did they just look at tweets and reports and decide that they couldn’t live with the bashing they were receiving from their marketing peers?

And let’s be honest, while most people hated the logo, did they really care? Is this something people would have still been talking about weeks later? Was a bad logo going to cause ardent Gap fans to boycott the company? As the saying goes, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. We all saw what was happening and we wanted to be part of it too, at least for the moment it was happening.

Last night, I was watching the TBS post-season pre-game show and the host asked panelist Cal Ripken, Jr. whether he and other athletes pay attention to the things being said about them in the papers and on TV. I don’t remember the exact quote, but it was something to the effect of, ‘If we paid attention to everything being said about us, we would never be able to perform and do our jobs on the field.’

That statement is relevant to all of us. It is critical to pay attention to what your customers care and talk about, but you can’t rely on what the rest of the world has to say. If we are too focused on these outside critics, we will never have the guts to make tough decisions and stick with them.

While most of us will never be the recipients of a Twitter Riot on the scale of the Gap fiasco, we have to be careful to place the proper value on outside critiques and not allow them to determine how we react.

Since that day, now nearly 10 years ago, I have always been interested in and surprised by how often people attempt to begin relationships based on common hatreds. Perhaps hatred is the wrong word, because I don’t mean actual, pure hatred. I mean hate in the way we all saw, “I hate this.” “I hate this band, they suck.” “I hated this event/commercial/website/whatever.”

What we really mean when we say we hate something this way is, “I am part of the group that doesn’t like this.” Or, “I could have done it better.” It’s not so much hate as a an attempt to connect with people or a veiled promotion of the image we are attempting to present.

This behavior is even more prevalent on the internet. Go to your Twitter feed or a favorite blog and count how many times people you pay attention to say they hate something. When you read that, do you feel a small sense of camaraderie if you also hate that thing? Are you more likely to reply that you hate it too?

Whether we are intentional about it or not, we are relational creatures and we want to create bonds with people that we like and respect. In social settings, hating something together can feel like an easy way to start that relationship. The problem, though, is that relationships based on common hatreds, dislikes, or annoyances are not real relationships. They are, at most, thin bonds. And thin bonds don’t last.

Sharing things that you truly enjoy, are interested in, or have been a part of creating tells people something true about you. Merely critiquing the work of others only shows your worst side and is most likely not an accurate representation of you anyway.

Strong bonds are only created through time and shared experiences and interests. Hating things together often feels like a short cut to these real relationships, but all it really does is distract us from the strong bonds we could be creating.

“You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your f-ing Khakis. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.”

You are not a personal brand.

If Fight Club was written today, I imagine that famous Tyler Durden monologue might include a simple reminder for us that we are not, in fact, personal brands. As so often happens, the marketing world has latched on to this idea of people becoming their own brands. On the surface, it sounds simple enough. But if you dig a bit deeper, the concept of a personal brand becomes something much different than what most people actually want from their lives.

Brands require promotion. So, if you consider yourself a personal brand, that means you have to spend time promoting yourself. Like any brand, if you do something good, you need to tell as many people as you can, as many times as you can.

A brand has to advertise, be written about, have a large following, and be patronized in order to be significant. But the most significant people are those who go about their work without fanfare and praise from people they don’t know.

The people that matter - your parents, your husband or wife, your kids, your friends, your colleagues - these people don’t give a shit about your brand. They care about what you do and how you treat people.

We already have the right word for personal brand. It’s reputation. Your reputation is built by doing good things, caring about people and your community, and working hard.

Reputations are built by what you do. Personal brands are built by what you say.

Now, this may sound like arguing over semantics. But I think there is an important distinction here. If you view yourself as a brand, even a personal one, you end up acting like a brand. Instead of doing something for your community because you feel it’s the right thing to do, you do it because it’s a mini, personal PR stunt.

You are a person. You are not a brand, no matter how hard someone tries to convince you that you need to be.

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He was famous for these stories. Or perhaps infamous is the right word. There was never a family dinner that did not end with a 20-minute story about his life or a tale about a long-deceased family member.

As a young child, I remember being fascinated by these stories and playing them out in my head as he spoke, picturing every vivid scene and thinking about these stories long after he was done telling them. As I got a bit older, as so many of us do, I grew low on patience and was anxious to leave the table and do whatever it was I wanted to do. I guess, in my mind, I had more interesting things to do than listen to old stories.

I’m not sure quite when it was, but maybe 7 or 8 years ago, I was sitting at that same table listening to my grandfather tell the story of losing his mother when he was still a very young man. There was something about the humility and emotion with which he told this story, more than 60 years after it happened, that I just had not experienced before.

My grandfather was not a soft man. Most of his stories sounded like they could have been the basis for an epic Hollywood action movie. Thomas Walbert was born to a middle-class family in Western Maryland, but soon found himself the man of the house when his father left the family before his 10th birthday and amidst the Great Depression. At this young age he quit school and began working to support his mother and younger sister. Before his 18th birthday, my grandfather was traveling the country as a professional boxer. A few years later, as an Army Ranger, he stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

These were the stories that I had heard so many times throughout my childhood and I admired my grandfather for living such a brave and amazing life. But it was the story about the death of his mother that captivated me like none of the others.

Like I said, my grandfather became a professional boxer at the age of 16. One night, he was fighting in Detroit and after the fight, his manager told him to get back to Maryland as fast as he could. His mother was on her deathbed and did not have much longer to live. He told us, with tears in his eyes, how he raced home as fast as he could, and was able to tell his mother goodbye just before she passed.

It was this story that really made me appreciate the gift of storytelling that he possessed. From that day on, I listened intently to every story he told and prodded him to tell more. And it’s through many of my grandfather’s stories that I learned not only about my family and where I came from, but about the desires within myself to live a life worthy of great stories.

My grandfather would not have been able to tell these stories if he had not lived the way he did. You cannot tell a story of bravery unless you have acted bravely. You cannot tell a story of loss unless you have suffered it. And, you cannot tell a story of love unless you have experienced it completely.

Bucky Walbert, as he was known to his friends and family, passed away on Saturday at the age of 90. While we cannot possibly remember every detail of every story, I will always remember the lessons these stories taught me and will continue to be inspired by them to live a life worthy of great stories.

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But you can never gain one thing without losing something else. The web experience at large may benefit significantly from this, but it will be at the peril of the actual Facebook experience.

First, let’s look at who comprises the majority of a typical person’s Facebook friends. Most of our friends lists include not just family and good friends, but also former and current coworkers, some people we went to high school with, and a few random people who snuck through our approved friend requests. Whatever the reason, we are connected to these people because we, at least on some level, know them.

The point here is this - Most people care about the things shared on Facebook not because of the content itself as much as because of who is sharing that content. For example, I don’t necessarily love looking at pictures of babies, but will gladly spend time looking at pictures of my cousins baby because I love her. What I am not interested in, however, is seeing every site my cousin ‘likes’ across the web that features pictures of cute babies.

In the same way, I might enjoy seeing occasional updates from an uncle or former coworker. But what if this guy is a huge Tea Party supporter and bombards his friends’ News Feeds with countless articles about the Tea Party and Glenn Beck clips?

Just because you are friends doesn’t mean you care about the same things. People may argue about this, but Facebook is based on personal relationships, not on shared interests.

The thing is, people don’t want more information, they want more relevant information. In all honesty, most of your Facebook friends don’t care to see all of your Twitter posts or every restaurant you check-in to on Foursquare. If they did, they would follow you on those networks. That’s because different sites serve different purposes. For that reason, people use the sites and networks that they find the most interesting and valuable. Bringing all of your action from the web into one central location may be good for you, but it’s horrible for all of your friends.

As in any group, our Facebook friends break down into a few categories. There is a small group that never post anything, a large group that posts occasionally, and another small group that posts incessantly. Now, Facebook News Feeds will be completely taken over by the friends that feel the need to share everything they see on the web with everyone they know. So instead of the Facebook experience becoming more valuable, it becomes nearly unusable. That one post from your good friend you haven’t seen in a few months is now buried beneath a bevy of hipster pets and Justin Beiber gossip.

The open graph will create tremendous opportunities for developers to make the web much more interesting and personalized. Facebook is trying to do something huge here, and they may succeed. However, if they are not careful about protecting the user experience on Facebook itself, Facebook could be something that is only used on the open web, and no longer at Facebook.com.

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