Take My DAM Away

Berlin

I got an email today from my pal, Andrew Mannone. I’ve known Andrew for years. I consider him to be one of the world’s most talented and creative DAM admins.

In today’s email, he said that he and his coworkers at America’s Test Kitchen (creators of recipes that make me fat) were taking the day to clean their offices. While cleaning, they were listening to 80s music. And while listening, Berlin’s Take My Breath Away came on. He thought of me, so he sent me the email. In turn, I got to thinking about that song (which I never liked) and I couldn’t help myself.

Andrew, this version is for you, my friend. Sing it freely as you walk the halls of ATK. May it bring you strength when you need it most.

Installing every update in this stupid database.
All the endless the errors; features oh so out of place.
Turning and returning to support queues every time;
Never gets much better; ruins all my days and nights.

Take my DAM away…

Watching, I keep waiting, still anticipating work.
Never hesitating, overlooking all the quirks.
Turning and returning to support queues every time;
Watching in slow motion; stupid progress bar won’t climb.

Take my DAM away…

Through the user group I begged you;
Bugs won’t go away.
When the upload crashed I called you,
And yearned to hear you say:
Only one more day; the fix is on its way.

Take my DAM away… 

Lost in the DAM

While recording Berlin’s second record, we ended up with a few too many tracks. You know, albums and cassettes had their limitations. One of the extra tracks was called Lost in the Crowd. I loved this track because it was one of the few on which I played guitar. I was officially a keyboard player for the band; but I was actually a better guitar player than I was a keyboard player–go figure. (Somehow, it made sense at the time.)

Anyway, because this was considered a “throw away” track, we got to have fun with it. For me, this meant bringing out my inner Blue Oyster Cult. You can hear my guitar at the opening and during the outro (3:30). But the most interesting part is at about 2:15. Right after our real guitar player, Ric, finishes his solo, I sort of stepped out of bounds. The part I added ended up in a feedback-sustain that actually caused an argument in the band. Some argued that this wasn’t Berlin. They said it stepped on Ric’s “new wave” guitar part that was more who were were. Others saw it as being cool.

Ultimately, all my noise stayed because, after all, this track wasn’t going to be on the album or cassette. It would be only on the CD player thing, and no one had a CD player.

So, here we are, just a few years later. I find myself writing a new piece for CMSWire that discusses how mandatory metadata fields or having too many metadata fields, and a few others things, can actually lead to content becoming lost in the DAM. Now, I know that this is going to piss off some people who are believers in these things. But I’m getting used to this social media-staged warfare. In fact, the anticipation sort of put me into the same rebel mood I was in when we recorded Lost in the Crowd, back in 1984.

So, I’m ready for it. Tell me I don’t understand DAM policy. Tell me my experience is theoretical and not practical. Tell me all about it. All I know is that my guitar was howling that day. It was so loud that it was like a taste of World War III. And by adding this track, we didn’t know what to expect. Would our synth fans abandon us? Would real rockers make fun of us? I remember hearing it all.

But sometimes, you just have to turn things up to 11 and deal with the consequences. Sometimes you have to admit when something isn’t working and either be ready to fix it or walk away.

Read Lost in the DAM here.

And thanks to the fact that there are others who are willing to shake things up, we have YouTube, so you can actually hear my inspiration too. (And another thing, David, new-wavers aren’t supposed to have facial hair. So lose the Clark Gable mustache.)