Carnegie Hall, Baba Yetu Music Video, The Beatles, And Me

Well, I just had pretty much the most fun night of my entire life.

I got invited to speak on a panel at Carnegie Hall last night. The subject was video games and music--a topic that I know a little bit about. It was moderated by Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, and the other panelists were Alex Rigopulos (CEO and founder of Harmonix), Grandmaster Flash (father of hip-hop), Melissa auf Der Maur (Smashing Pumpkins, Hole), and Meghan Asha (technology blogger and media personality). We had a fun, sometimes crass, and occasionally enlightening conversation about the video game industry, and the present and future of music.

I also got to debut the brand new music video of Baba Yetu to the sold-out crowd. The video is a collection of footage taken from the Civ games, and expertly cut together by director Brooke Hanson. It's terrific, and very moving--very much in the spirit of the Civilization games. I'll post it here soon.

And to cap off the panel, we did a live demonstration of Rock Band: Beatles for the audience. I played bass (and no, I did not play it left handed, like Paul did). Since I love Rock Band, and the Beatles are my favorite rock band, that made the evening complete. And besides, it's every musician's dream to play Carnegie Hall, right? Well, I finally did... granted, it was on a plastic bass with little colored buttons, but whatever.

I have to give thanks to the Carnegie organization for doing an amazing job of taking care of me, and handling every detail. It was just a first class experience from beginning to end.

I'll post pics later this week... and sometime next week, I'll also post the video!