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Geez, I’ve really slacked off the blogging this year — but I’m trying to get back in the swing of things. Of all the things I’ve done this year though, I really need to make a note of going to the Brighton Festival to see another three sets of Brian Eno’s “Pure Scenius” performances. If you’ve read this blog before, you might know that last year I went to Australia for a few days to catch the Pure Scenius performances at the Sydney Opera House. That was my first time seeing Brian Eno live, and it crossed a big to-do off my “things to do before I die” list. But one thing I thought I may have been hasty about with Australia was going for two days. I spent 26 hours in the sky and less than 48 on the ground.

Brighton Trip vs. Sydney Trip

In Brighton, I chose to actually stick around for a few days. Since there were a number of installations around town and a handful of other concerts I wanted to see — it was a good opportunity to do a bit more than catch a show and jump back on a plane (my usual approach).

For the Brighton Pure Scenius concerts, I also got a little brave and recorded about an hour of video from my iPhone 3GS. It’s a shame I didn’t have the iPhone 4 at the time, as I could have recorded HD video — but it’s a lot more video than was ever posted on YouTube for the Sydney shows. Here’s one of the videos I’ve posted to YouTube below.

Brighton Performances vs. Sydney Performances

As for the quality of the performances, I thought the Brighton sets were a bit better than the Sydney equivalents. The performances felt a bit tighter and there was less aimless wandering, looking for a solid piece of material — they were more driven. I was pleasantly surprised to see that some of my favorite elements of the Syndey performances were repeated in Brighton — such as the “two pianos” piece and the one proper song they performed “Pink Moon”.

All in all, three Eno performances was a great way to kick off my week in Brighton. In my next posts, I’ll talk a bit about the installations at the Brighton Festival, The Books performance, my 18-hour trip to Amsterdam and Philip Glass’ “Music in 12 Parts”.

Regardless of what kind of work you do, it’s likely you encounter this type of project – high expectations, critical deadlines, limited resources (often too limited to deliver with). While this is a tough spot to be in, it’s certainly not the end of the world. Actually, some of my favorite projects over the years had these types of constraints. Projects like these have the potential to really bring a group of people together on both the agency side and on the client side to deliver something nearly impossible.

Project Heaven

The nice thing about a project like this is that there’s just no time for the types of things that can get in the way in a normal project. There’s no time for politics, no time for endless deliberation. I often use the phrase “it’s a marathon, not a race” but in these projects – it’s a race.

The difference in making these projects the best or worst experiences of your professional life is entirely who you’re working with, who you’re working for and the tone you set for the work together. I’ve had projects where everyone on both the agency side and the client side checked their egos at the beginning of the project and dove in to do the work as a single collaborative team. The agency/client division all but disappeared and everything was shared – both the failures and the successes. There’s laughter and there’s stress, and no one is in it alone. And at the end of every day, everyone can feel good about the time that was put in on the project.

Project Hell

The other type of project is where there’s no shared ownership, no sense of a collective team. People aren’t collaborating, they’re “put on the hook” for things – and are more often than not, they’re set up to fail. Every day is met with dread. Every day it’s own small failure.

Not a day goes by that I don’t feel lucky to work with the folks that I work with today – meaning both my fellow designers, writers and developers as well as the clients we get to help. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything but that first type of project and I hope I never have to to back to an environment where the second kind is the norm.

Coachella has released this year’s lineup, and as usual – it’s a tough call. There are a few bands I haven’t seen that I would love to – namely, Thom Yorke, Gorillaz, The Dead Weather, Devo and a few others.

But then again, there are a few acts I have no interest in seeing at all, for example: Jay-Z, Muse, Faith No More, Spoon, Pavement, etc.

But for the most part, the lineup looks pretty solid with bands I’ve seen before, enjoy and would like to see again. These include: Vampire Weekend, Grizzly Bear, Echo & the Bunnymen, Ra Ra Riot, The Raveonettes, Tokyo Police Club, Beach House, Yo La Tengo and King Khan.

This is where the difficult decision kicks in. At this point in my life, I’ve seen a ridiculous number of bands and attended more music festivals than is practical. I’ve been to Lollapalooza, Pitchfork and Coachella more times than I care to count. The more festivals and bands I see, the more difficult it is for something to really stand out from the crowd.

But all of that is in the past. What matters is what’s happening this year, what I can experience next. And Coachella is easily my favorite music festival, hands down. It’s not even a close race.

That said, if I’m going to make a big to-do about seeing a festival this year – will it be Coachella or the Brighton Festival in the UK? Coachella is a great event, but Eno is curating the Brighton Festival, which is sure to include some interesting events. In particular, a performance of Eno’s album “Apollo”.

Decisions, decisions.