Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Better know a subscriber: Bayreuth11

Ask and ye shall receive. This profile of a subscriber is by request, left in the comments on this first "better know a subscriber" post. As I hinted, I was hoping somebody would request to be profiled, so cheers to Bayreuth11! And jeers to everyone who didn't. Yes, I'm looking at you.

So, who is Bayreuth11?

My convoluted, twisted speculation:

His (or "her", but I'm already assuming "his" because the name doesn't indicate female, and on the internet male is the default) profile picture:




Joined: October 12, 2007
Last Login: 1 day ago
Videos Watched: 540
Subscribers: 0
Channel Views: 65
Country: United States
Interests and Hobbies: Playing Ukulele, Running


Not a whole lot of info to work off. Also, he hasn't posted any of his own videos. Tough to get any personal info on just this.... but... things start to get a bit more interesting in his lists:

Movies and Shows: Donnie Darko, Fight Club, The Life Aquatic, The Shining, Rebel Without a Cause, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development


Ok ok, now those are all pretty damn good movies and shows. Especially the shows (and I love watching Fight Club). The male/female question is still out there, but I'd have to say these are mostly "guy" movies and shows, so if I had to make a wild assumption I'd still go with male (although... Jake Gyllenhaal, Brad Pitt, Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson, Owen Wilson, James Dean... this could still be a girl's list of favorite movies...). But it's the music list that really makes things interesting:

Music: Beirut, New Order, Belle and Sebastian, Voxtrot, The New Pronographers, Neutral Milk Hotel, Echo and the Bunnymen, Joy Division, The Dirty Projectors, Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, The Postal Service, Noah and the Whale, The Decemberists, The National, The Replacements, Wolf Parade, Broken Social Scene, The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Of Montreal, Okkervil River, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Feist, My Brightest Diamond, Jeff Buckley, The Smiths, The Cure, Gang of Four, Breathe Owl Breathe


The ones in green are bands I think are amazing, blue are ones I think have a few great songs and nothing I really object to, and the ones in red are ones I've never heard of, or haven't heard enough to form an opinion yet. The key here is that there are NO bands I have heard and don't like. That is highly, highly unusual for me. (Sonic Youth is the only questionable one, but I realized I don't know enough about them to say either way). But the fact that every favorite of his is either a favorite of mine already or I haven't heard it before means two things:

1) He's in the right place for learning ukulele songs he'll enjoy.
2) I need to check out those bands on the list I've never heard of.

Now, back to figuring out stuff about Bayreuth11.

He's involved enough with YouTube to have organized playlists, a customized background, and a nice picture of his uke as a profile pic. So he's savvy with YouTube, but at the same time he has none of his own personal videos up. That says to me he has not embraced YouTube in the way that teenagers of the day have (those wacky young people will put up videos of anything), so he's a bit older. Maybe late twenties or early thirties?

Then there is the name. Based on the fact that a) Beirut gets top billing on his music list and b) one of his playlists of videos is the entire Beirut Blogotheque video series for Flying Club Cup (which are amazing, as I have mentioned before), I think "Bayreuth11" is either a homonym for Beirut or a reference to the city of Bayreuth, Germany. Most likely it's a bit of both, but mainly a reference to the city, so I'm going to guess he's got German ancestry or family. Bayreuth and Bayreuth1 are already taken, at least one of them by a German.

He has 7 playlists, mostly related to music, either uke or other. Bayreuth11 loves music, and good music at that. And he's organized, at least for music. I don't know of too many people that would take the time to organize themselves playlists with descriptions, so I'd guess he likes to archive and list things as much as possible, just to organize the musical obsession in his life.

He has two friends: longrangeforce and luminoussoul. Not a lot of help there, except that they are both in the U.S., have similar music tastes, and luminoussoul is maybe a 47 year-old woman who plays piano. It is somewhat possible these three are all the same person, but the musical tastes are just different enough that I think it's unlikely (luminoussoul likes a bunch of Sting). It's more likely that Bayreuth11 and longrangeforce are the same person. longrangeforce lists his/her age at 69, which is probably just a joke (since most people around that age either a) don't know how to move "that little arrow" on the "computer machine", b) have forgotten their age, or c) are busy running for president). And he signed up three days before Bayreuth11, so it was probably just an alternate account with a name he didn't like as much. If he is longrangeforce, he's probably interested in astronomy or physics (long range force being a physics term for gravitational forces with stars and galaxies, I believe), so he might be a grad student. That's a bit of a stretch, but hey, there isn't much to work with here.

Oh my god. Looking at his favorites, he has TWO out of twelve favorite videos devoted specifically to Age of Consent by New Order. And one of them is this amazing ukulele cover.

Age of Consent might be my favorite song of all time. If it's not number one, it's certainly top 3 and shifts in and out of the 1-spot. God damn it's a great song. It's official: Thumbs up for Bayreuth11.

My final analysis:

Bayreuth11 is around 30 years old, an American of German ancestry who may have done (or is still doing) advanced studies in physics or astronomy. He also has a deep obsession for music and the ukulele. He loves indy music, 80's music, and psychedelic folk, and he tries to find and consume as much as he possibly can. He keeps an organized collection of music, and it would be tough to name a band in the genre he hasn't heard of. Maybe Paleo is obscure enough? Music invades on every part of his life, like a life soundtrack. He loves to run, and he brings an iPod and has a few playlists specifically made for running. He loves to run to Arcade Fire (those mixes should really have some Violent Femmes if they don't already). He was almost as excited to find Ukulala as I was to find Age of Consent on the uke in his favorites. He's already bookmarked Ukulala, and he's going to check the site every week or so to see what song I post next (and when I do post it, he's going to like it). In the last weekly poll, he voted for "The Penalty by Beirut".

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So that's my (somewhat lengthy) take on Bayreuth11. Could be completely wrong, I have no idea, but that's what I've got in my head now so THAT'S THE FINAL WORD. Better know a subscriber #2! Leave a comment here (or anywhere) if you want to nominate another subscriber. Bayreuth11, if you see this, feel free to correct me, insult me, or berate me... or to praise me as the Sherlock Holmes of the ukulele world!

6 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I certainly appreciate all of the praise offered in the profile, but I am afraid that many of the conjectures about me are incorrect. I am indeed a female, although some of my lists might indicate otherwise. I would love to post some videos of myself playing the ukulele, but I am still a beginner (I started learning ukulele in February) and have not got any songs that I feel are up to par for a real performance. Right now I am focusing on playing Postcards from Italy, Debaser, Age of Consent, and Five Years Time. Hopefully, with summer vacation in effect, one of these songs will be ready for a video in the near future. Oh, and the uke picture in my profile is my dream instrument, which I will probably never be able to afford. My real uke is a much more humble device. I am quite a bit younger than was guessed, much closer to the just-barely-reaching twenty age bracket than the early thirties group. The YouTube name is a total reference to the band Beirut, which I came across when looking at a map of Germany for class. Any sort of German ancestry on my part is questionable. The two friends I have on YouTube are family relations, not me…but I do like physics. Paz, the one specific detail of the profile that is spot on is the Arcade Fire and Violent Femmes comment. I would listen to Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) every day last summer to get pumped up for cross country practice and I’ve seen the Violent Femmes live. I really am excited about ukulala and can’t wait for the next video! I think that the “Better Know a Subscriber” post is highly entertaining speculation about who I am based on my YouTube profile.

Thanks Sherlock Holmes!
Bayreuth11

Paz said...

Haha, oh man, I was WAY off!

Fight Club was really the movie that decided your gender for me. Most girls it's come up with were pretty 'blah' about it... or maybe I need to reassess my whole concept of gender.

I wish I had specifically mentioned Neighborhood #3, cause that was exactly the song I was thinking of. It's one of my all-time favorites and what introduced me to them, but I haven't found any way to play it on the uke.

That's great to hear you're working on playing age of consent. As soon as i saw that video, i started too. I hope i can figure it out and do a tutorial. Everyone should be playing that song.

And if people think having my every guess and assumption undermined, rebuked, and proved false will make me stop making wild conjectures and profiling people with broad, sweeping generalizations based on tiny bits of irrelevant superficial information, then THEY are way off. That's not the America I live in.

(and it's too much fun)

Christian Herwitz said...

Bahahaha! Everything about this post and the reaction to it is entirely awesome.

Unknown said...

you should listen to the replacements. wearing pants.

Paz said...

but... I don't like to do anything wearing pants...... :(

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