McFreedom

As many of you may be aware, since April of 1998, I've been EMusic.com's Executive Vice President of Technology. Back in July of that year, I put together EMusic's first system (the original ancestor of the system in use until June 17, 2002). We had one track available: "All My Ghosts," by Frank Black and the Catholics. Frank Black was with the Pixies, an influential early proto-alternative band. I have to confess that I'm too square to have heard of him, but when I told my youngest brother - then involved in college radio - that we had our first new artist, and he was Frank Black, he replied, excitedly, "From the Pixies?!?"

On June 17, 2002, they threw the switch, and transfered control to Vivendi Net USA; the old technology team for mp3.com is now responsible for EMusic.com, and I'm not, for the first time in a long time. Jason Woodward - one of the first people to help me on the site - and I went down to San Diego (where they and many of the old EMusic employees are now based) to wrap up a few things. We also got to go to the closing party. Frank Black played, with an acoustic guitar (it was decided it wasn't worth the expense to fly all of the Catholics along). In his set, I was very happy to hear "All My Ghosts," a song I'd listened to over and over back in July of '98 when I'd been writing the site. I remember that you purchased it by "putting it in your shopping cart," but we didn't actually have a shopping cart per se. It was all just static HTML that looked like a shopping cart - why bother writing a full-blown shopping cart if there's only one item you can buy on the whole site?

After the show, I got to meet him, and asked him if he knew that "All My Ghosts" was the first track we'd sold on EMusic. He didn't, but replied that he "really liked that song," and it always seemed like he ended up playing it wherever he went. I know it's my favorite of his music.

Jason and I said our goodbyes, and decided to hit P.F. Chang's China Bistro on the way to the airport for dinner. We both had the Kung Pao Chicken, extra spicy, and it was very good. After the meal, the waiter brought me the last dinner check that I'll ever put on my EMusic corporate Amex, and two fortune cookies. Mine read, "YOUR TROUBLES WILL CEASE AND FORTUNE WILL SMILE UPON YOU".