I know I do, and I’ve played guitar in numerous bands for the past 20+ years, I have a recording studio in my house, an angel investment in an indie record label (About Records) as well as my own boutique label (Toothless Monkey Music), and my band Soul Patch (which includes my partner Jason Mendelson on drums) is about to release our second album in January.
My band in college, Where’s Julio? (see the link to the album in my righthand sidebar) included three of the six Excite founders, and we got to play some fun gigs during the bubble era, including one at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore for a benefit for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where we got to share the stage with Roger McNamee’s band, The Flying Other Brothers. Roger is probably the highest profile investor who is also a musician and somehow manages to maintain a fairly active gigging schedule with his new band Moonalice. Heck, one of Roger’s partners at Elevation is Bono, so Roger’s rocker cred is pretty unassailable at this point.
Well, there’s a new kid on the block now. I had the pleasure of working with my colleague Heidi Roizen at Mobius VC over the past eight years, and now Heidi’s stepped back into her entrepreneurial shoes (jeans?) as CEO of SkinnySongs. A few years ago, Heidi generously hosted a party for About Records at her home, where she met About’s CEO George Daly, a long time record industry A&R veteran behind acts such as The Cars, The Tubes, Vanessa Carlton and Tool. Heidi penned all the lyrics on this album and teamed up with George Daly and super-producer David Malloy (who has over 40 Billboard #1 hits to his name) to create Skinny Songs, an album full of well-polished, genre-hopping pop tunes aimed at motivating women to lose weight.
Heidi herself is a great endorsement for the product and has slimmed down considerably over the past six months while she put together the album. Read more about the SkinnySongs story in this Forbes article or this article in the Merc. Heidi, best of luck with your new gig, and may SkinnySongs go platinum!