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Debate Review: Ted Cruz knocked this one out of the park

So another debate in the US Presidential race. I'll keep this short. It was the Republican debate and it got quite feisty at times. I think Ted Cruz had an excellent debate and I grade him with the A. Very good attacks, very very good defenses, and didn't come across as calculating as Marco Rubio did at times. Strong conservative themes and even the surprising gambit that he's the voice of reason between extremes of Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. Ted showed that he's very fast on his feet as a debater. 

I think Chris Christie and Donald Trump had good debates too. I'll give Christie the B+ and leave the Donald with a B. Christie connected better and communicated better and was not rattled Trump was good but also at times not reading the room well and got a bit defensive. Trump was under more attacks than he's been seeing in recent debates, but still it wasn't anywhere near as much as I expected, so Trump kind of got away without much damage.

Marco Rubio came in prepared but he's showing signs he has set pieces he's memorized and he bristles easily when attacked, Marco seemed more defensive today, I give him a B-, not his best debate but it wasn't bad. Just he wasn't in the top tier today.

Then of the losers, well, I think I'll give Jeb Bush a C, and John Kasich a C-. Jeb is just almost ok, but not quite. He shakes his head a lot, he repeats many same words, he sounds goofy. He makes at times good points, even very mature sensible points, except he can't land a good debate answer if his life depended on it. He just waffles. Meanwhile Kasich didn't sound angry at all this time, but he was just boring boring BORING and didn't contribute to the discussion at all. He repeated himself a lot and.. who cares. Meanwhile Dr Ben Carson, he is not even trying now. On several of the answers he just punted saying he'll get the best people to think about it... I can't give Carson an F because he didn't actually have a career-ending debate gaffe but Carson is so out of his depth and sinking fast, I grade him a D- the lowest possible passing grade, on literally the brink of failure.

What should be the polling (and voting) impacts. Cruz should see a bump, and that would come at a perfect time as some Iowa polls had just given the lead in Iowa back to Trump. Cruz needs to win Iowa or else Trump runs away with the nomination. Trump played to his base, they will love what he said and this reinforces their support but ever increasingly reinforce the ceiling he is having now that is becoming very hard at 35% nationally. There was more of a sense of the whole rest of the field ganging up against him, showing at several stages where Trump is not fit to be President, sensible voices will find that appealing, some of Trump's soft support might even switch to .. Cruz, Christie or Rubio. Trump should be relatively flat out of the debate, but I think its more likely he sees a modest decline than a modest increase in support.

Christie I think did his run a lot of good, sounded smart, not too hostile but quite determined. I think those moderates who can't stomach Trump or Cruz, who were leaning towards Jeb or Kasich or even Rubio, will find Christie today to be a compelling candidate. I think Christie should see his national polling improve and while he won't be a threat in Iowa, Christie should see himself rise to fight Rubio for second place finish in New Hampshire out of this debate, a two-way race where Kasich and Jeb would fall further into the pack to fight for the fourth place finish (with Ted Cruz in that mix in NH).

Carson will continue to see a slow erosion of his support. Jeb is so destroyed there isn't much left to go, its almost Bush family members now who are his last supporters. Kasich's chances to steal a victory I think are just about vanishing too. The race will be among the four of Trump, Cruz, Rubio and Christie from now on and likely Iowa won by Cruz and NH won by Trump. The others (including kids table) will of course still continue but their relevance shrinks to trivial support in the first two states to vote in a few weeks from now.

If anyone quits before Iowa, I think the only one would be Rand Paul, who could refocus just on his Senate race (but I don't think it will happen, I think he'll stay in the race for quite a while, hoping to win some caucus states on March 1). I think the most vulnerable campaigns to quit immediately after Iowa are Carson, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. And unless they can finish in the Top 5 out of New Hampshire, I think Jeb, Kasich and Carly Fiorina could be dropping out after NH. It is really a four-way race now, and of the moderate voters who will pick a new favorite, I think Christie will be more appealing than Rubio for many, bringing Christie into the mix as the darkest horse of the four (and depriving Rubio's chances to really rise to the level of Cruz or Trump). Interesting times. Can't wait to see the first votes tallied.

David Bowie Was Sound Track to My Growth From Child to Adult

David Bowie died today. He was 69 years of age. He leaves us with a massive music legacy where he mostly not just performed but wrote his own music, with classic hits spanning decades. Bowie created 27 studio albums of music (plus countless live and compilation albums). He released 111 singles. He entertained us with 51 music videos across 13 video albums. For me, Bowie happened to be relevant to many significant changes and evolution to my life, growing up, that his sound was the only consistent sound track to me growing up. I want to take note of those here. Some of my older readers may have lived through similar changes.

BOWIE CAREER

From David’s first released single, Liza Jane (as David Jones with the King Bees) in 1964 to his last relased while still alive, Lazarus last week, Bowie created fresh music for 52 years. But he also made hits. His first charting song in the UK was the Laughing Gnome in 1967 (peaked at number 6), and he still had a Top 10 hit in 2013 with Where Are We Now? (also peaked at number 6). He was not a one-hit wonder, Bowie was on the charts for literally 46 years. A pop star if there ever was, like Bowie was quoted early in his career "I am in instant star, just pour water."

If we say a hit song is one that charts into the Top 30, then Bowie had 47 hit songs in Britain in his career, essentially averaging one hit per year for his whole productive period. But Bowie was not the smash song creator. He only topped the charts ie with a number 1 hit in the UK only five times, the first time in 1969 with Space Oddity, and the last time in 1985 with Mick Jagger, with their duet cover version of Dancing in the Street. If you think thats a bit unfair, then Bowie’s last solo hit in his home country of the UK was two years prior, in 1983 with Lets Dance. Very prolific and lots of hits but rare superhits. Bowie tried hard to succeed in the USA and had hits there too, but only two number 1 hits, Fame in 1975 and Lets Dance in 1983.

Fame, what you like is in the limo
Fame, what you get is no tomorrow
Fame, what you need you have to borrow
Fame

What Bowie did which is far harder, was to also be successful with the hit album. From 1973’s Aladdin Sane (an album title I always loved because of the play on words, 'a lad insane' ie crazy boy - you know me, I love being mad) to 2013’s The Next Day, Bowie had six bestselling studio albums in the UK plus one of his compilation albums also topped the British charts. In the USA his albums didn’t do as well, his 1976 album Station to Station was his best peaking at number 3 on USA album charts. But its also fair to say, his most successful period where most of his best-known songs came from, was the time that he was on the top of the single charts, from 1969 to 1985. I was nine years at the start of that period and 25 years old at its end. He was the music artist who provided more of the soundtrack to me growing up than any other music artist. As an adult for me and my music tastes, Prince and Madonna have taken over and Madonna manages to continue to this day to have her hits feature among my musical faves. But Prince and Madonna came to my musical life after I turned 20. Bowie was there when I grew up from being a child to a young man. And now, that he died, I was looking back at Bowie’s discography and posted some Tweets about him. And I had forgotten how much Bowie was with me, and usually slightly ahead of me, where I evolved as a young man. So I want to take this moment to look back at how Bowie impacted me.

MY PRE-BOWIE YEARS

Bowie’s superstar status started when his 1969 song about the spaceman Major Tom lost in space, Space Oddity hit number one in the UK. Bowie released the song on the week man walked on the moon but the BBC refused to even play the song until the Apollo 11 crew was safely back on earth. I do remember watching the TV broadcasts about Apollo 11. Living in Finland, as a 9 year old, I had no idea who David Bowie was and never recall hearing that song until years later (I do like the song).

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows

I started to appreciate ‘pop music’ or ‘rock music’ about at the age of 11. The first band I liked was British glamrock pop/rock band The Sweet, which was grouped with Bowie and other glamrock artists at the time, like T.Rex, Mott the Hoople, Slade, Alice Cooper, etc in that style of music. What I may have heard of Bowie never struck me as particularly noteworthy except that he apparently had a weird hairdo. Please remember in Finland at this time we had nearly no pop music on the radio, so it was very rare to even hear any pop or rock music, especially as a poor young teenager. The only way we could hear pop music was to go to the local bar and play the jukebox. Shall we play The Sweet Poppa Joe again, or maybe Wig Wam Bam? Maybe we’ll rather play Hot Butter’s instrumental, Popcorn instead or Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime. For me this all changed in the summer of 1973, when my sister and I were sent to a horseriding camp in England (turns out, I am extremely allergic to horses and most animals, so the riding ended after the second day of continuous sneezing). That summer I got to hear the 24 hour pop music played on BBC. I felt this was heaven, this was ultimate nirvana. I was so envious of the British who could get all that on their radios, for free. And that summer I heard Bowie’s Life on Mars, and for the first time I grew to recognize this particular glamrock artist and knew of one song of his.

Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

Note, Life of Mars was not my fave song that summer, not even close. I liked Suzi Quatro’s 48 Crash and Nazareth’s Bad Bad Boy and Gary Glitter’s Leader of the Band much more than Bowie’s Life on Mars, but I also liked that Bowie song. But now, I wanted the chance to hear music ‘always’, in Finland, like they had it in Britain. So back home in Finland, I did some study of the weird and wonderful of radio, discovered Medium Wave AM radio broadcasts, which reach quite far, and on those wavelengths, I discovered Radio Luxembourg, which at the time was doing ‘pirate radio’ broadcasts into the UK, with DJ’s speaking English and playing British popsongs, all night. The sound was not in stereo, and it had some noise as AM radio often does, but I found a way to listen to pop music ‘for free’ and to record new pop songs, from a clone of British pop music radio, from Luxembourg. Radio Luxembourg broadcast the weekly Top 20 chart every Tuesday night and rebroadcast it on the next Sunday. So I also was now permanently exposed to the newest pop songs that would then arrive to Finland often months later. I would tape-record the songs to cassette, even with the lousy sound quality and hissing and whine of AM radio, I would learn the lyrics and know the pop tunes well before my friends in school even knew that artist had a new hit song out...(Radio Luxembourg would eventually become the media empire of RTL)

HOW I BECAME THE VIDIOT

I am probably the person who has collected music videos (pop music songs with dedicated video performances, not recordings of concerts) the longest of any person on the planet. I like to joke that I am so addicted to video that I am a vidiot. And yes, I far prefer the ‘artificial’ music video to any live performance of any band, ever. Yes I do. And I hate it if the artist has cut up the song with say talking in the middle of the video, or if they’d mixed in audience noise from some live event. I love music video as an artform and entertainment genre. So whats all this about ‘longer than any person’? Well, you can’t collect videos without a video recording technology. Before DVDs and YouTube videos, it was the VCR, the video cassette recorder. The most famous VCR standards were VHS and Betamax but the first consumer VCR was produced by then-world’s largest consumer electronics giant, Philips, on their VCR 1500 cassette system, which appeared in pre-sales promotional ‘semi prototype’ limited run in the autumn of 1973, when the first run of VCR units was 50, they were only on the European PAL broadcast standard(s) and Finland received two of those home VCR units. They were quite massive, heavy and extremely expensive. The VCR cost more than the largest, most expensive color TV that Philips made at that time. And you couldn’t buy one. Philips brought only two units to Finland to start the promotion of this tech to eventually sell, so it was brought to the various trade shows, and at other times was a highly popular object at Philips’s flagship store in mid-town Helsinki.

So my stepdad was the CEO of Philips’s Finland subsidiary. So he of course took the other of the two units to ‘test’ at home, to see if he approved of its sale to the Finnish market...  haha... so yeah, we had one of the only two home VCRs in Finland, from literally the world’s first production set of 50 units that all went to Philips main stores or the CEOs of the various Philips local affiliates in Europe and to several of the top execs at Philips HQ in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. But lets talk about the TAPES.

The video cassette tape was so expensive to make and so rare, that we only received 5 videocassettes in total to Finland. There were two lengths to the tape, one was 30 minutes, the other was 45 minutes in total length. Yes, there was no one-hour tape at the start. So you could not even record a one-hour episode of a TV show, far less a two-hour movie. There were literally only 5 video cassettes in Finland in September of 1973. And one 30 minute tape was in the store, and one 45 minute tape was in the store, for demo purposes. The other 3 tapes (two 45 min tapes and one 30 min tape) came to our home... :-)

The three tapes together were so valuable back then, that they cost more than the VCR. The price at that time was such, that for the cost of the VCR and the three tapes, you could have bought a good used car. It was incredible luxury for that period (anywhere). And one of the three tapes, in fact, one of the 45 minutes tapes, my parents decided to give to us kids, my 11 year old little sister and myself, at age 13. We could record anything we wanted to our tape, as long as we didn’t interfere with the tapes that had programs our parents had recorded. They thought we’d record cartoons (so did we). But then Bowie happened...

Sits like a man but he smiles like a reptile
She loves him, she loves him but just for a short while
She'll scratch in the sand, won't let go his hand
He says he's a beautician and sells you nutrition
And keeps all your dead hair for making up underwear
Poor little Greenie

In September 1973, Finnish broadcast TV decided to launch a youth-TV program, not kids program, but youth program, called ‘Iltatahti’ (Evening Star). Yes, a pop star TV show. The first edition of Iltatahti had two performances of music that we today would call ‘music videos’. At that time such word did not exist, they were called ‘film clips’, promotional short films that some musicians had started to produce, to help promote sell their music. That first episode had two famous international rock artists doing one song each. David Bowie did The Jean Genie and Alice Cooper did Under My Wheels. And I was sitting at the VCR, like I did for the nightly Radio Luxembourg pop music broadcasts, knowing, start to record the moment the song starts, don’t wait to determine if the song is good. You don’t want to miss the beginning, if its a good song. If its a bad song, you can rewind and record the next song over that one... So we also caught both songs essentially from their very beginning. And to see what it was, let me show you the link to YouTube videos of those songs:




David Bowie early music video of The Jean Genie



Alice Cooper early music video of Under My Wheels

Note that while Finnish broadcasts were already upgraded to color at this time, the youth programming was considered of such low value, the music show was broadcast in black-and-white, so those two above videos, when I recorded the, as the first two music videos ever recorded by a consumer into a music video collection, they were broadcast - and thus also recorded - as black-and-white versions. So if your video player or laptop can adjust the colors so that the above videos become black-and-white, thats how they were seen in Finland on Iltatahti TV show, and saved onto our pop music videotape. And funny coincidence relating to The Jean Genie and my then-fave band, The Sweet. Many thought The Sweet's hit Blockbuster, was plagiarizing Bowie's song (Sweet's hit was at number 1 while the slightly older Jean Genie was still on the same chart at number 10) but both sides accepted the guitar riff was pure coincidence and there was no lawsuit (I liked both songs..)

Now, I cannot imagine really anyone else, in any of the other Philips CEO families in other countries at that time, giving tapes to their kids, who would then use that incredibly expensive and rare media format, to save something as frivolous as ‘music videos’ haha. I do not know for a fact that I was the world’s first collector of music videos, but its highly likely that I was. The third song to that tape was from the second Iltatahti episode the next month, and it was Suzi Quatro doing Can the Can. The next TV show to produce pop music content also for our tape beyond the monthly Iltatahti was the next broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest, which in 1974 featured a particularly iconic music video artist in its international TV debut, Abba, doing Waterloo, which was also the first time we had any pop artist recorded in color to our collection. And the rival TV station in Finland would then launch a music video show of its own, called Levyraati which would give us even more music video content. I don’t need to tell you, our VCR and that tape, was the highlight of any kids visiting our home, and after any new song being seen by our friends, they’d call us and ask, did we record it, can they come over to watch it.. Our home in the Westend of the suburbs around Helsinki (technically in the municipality of Espoo) was the place of the awesome music video colletion, and the best parties...

From 1973 till today, I have continuously collected music in ‘music video’ format, in addition to other formats like LP records, C-Cassettes, and later CDs, MP3s etc. Still today I carry on my smartphones a collection of music videos. I still like the music and artform format. I would later also turn this into a semi-professional endeavour, evolving my DJ gigs to eventually mixed DJ and VJ (Video Jockey) gigs, where I also played dance music videos, mixed in with songs from record/CDs. The last time I DJ’s with videos was in 1997 at the age of 37. But it started with David Bowie’s The Jean Genie in 1973. For 43 years I have collected music videos. Bowie’s was the first in my collection, probably the first of any consumer who ever collected music videos as a hobby.

And Bowie clearly invested in this new artistic opportunity. He put a lot of effort into his early videos, when most artists tried to recreate a ‘concert-like’ feeling to their videos. There is no real ‘inventor’ of the music video, as one artist who started it. By the time MTV launched with their famous first video (The Bugles doing Video Killed the Radio Star) the format already existed. But I, as a serious music video collector haha, would say the three early pioneers of roughly as much contribution to the young artform were Bowie, Abba and Queen. By the time Duran Duran came along and somewhat took the experience to new levels, the basic idea was invented, that you don’t try to pretend to perform on stage, and you should not just be lipsynching the whole song pretending to play your guitar, you can act various short stories within the music video format like little 3 minute movies. And you can see the clear difference in the above two clips, how much Alice Cooper is just on the stage, but Bowie took the camera also to the street doing his little hand gestures and tomfoolery with the camera not just singing. By the time MTV was looking for greatest music videos ever made, several Bowie videos were always ranked highly, with his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes considered one of the greatest of that era.

Do you remember a guy that's been
In such an early song
I've heard a rumour from Ground Control
Oh no, don't say it's true

They got a message from the Action Man
"I'm happy. Hope you're happy, too.
I've loved. All I've needed: love.
Sordid details following."

So then when videotapes got a lot cheaper (and I had moved on to VHS) in 1983 I decided it was time to expand my collection of just collecting (many tapes of) music videos and I decided I needed to create the 'ultimate best music videos' tape, to show random visitors, and not necessarily dance-related music vids. The first song I recorded to that tape was.. Ashes to Ashes. Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf came next. So these were now the first time I invested videotape to have DUPLICATES of some of the 'absolute best' videos and yes, David deserved his place to start that collection too.

FIRST ALBUM

(I always laughed to myself singing that line, 'I'm heavy, hope you're heavy too') So Bowie launched me to a bizarre new hobby nobody else had, or ok, he happened to be the first artist featured in that first TV show broadcast in Finland when we just had received the brand new VCR and I had barely learned how to operate it (BTW it had no remote control, you had to sit next to the VCR to press the heavy buttons to start the machine or stop it. There was no pause in the first Philips VCR unit). And then I immediately also experienced that powerful reaction so many early ‘victims’ of music videos had, you had to go listen to the artist, the album(s) and buy the music. I would now go to the record stores and listen to music albums including several by Bowie and Alice Cooper etc. Then as a very broke 14 year old, I would save money in 1974 to buy my first album, the freshly released Diamond Dogs by David Bowie. Note, Bowie was even at this time not my favorite artist. It was still The Sweet. But Bowie’s ALBUMS were far better in total, than those by The Sweet who were only good at making a hit pop single and then did crappy albums (of which I later bought several, regardless, in fact The Sweet’s Desolation Boulevard was my second album I bought but I ended up buying many more Bowie albums). So Bowie was again there, when I started my music collection also as a paid hobby.




(cover art of Diamond Dogs)

 

The Halloween Jack is a real cool cat
And he lives on top of Manhattan Chase
The elevator's broke, so he slides down a rope
Onto the street below, oh Tarzie, go man go

I loved the prologue to the title song Diamond Dogs, itself a great tune, and the album has many great tracks. Rebel Rebel is my favorite track from Diamond Dogs. The title to the song Rebel Rebel in very many ways captures me as a teenager (and well into my adulthood)..

Hey babe, your hair's alright
Hey babe, let's go out tonight
You like me, and I like it all
We like dancing and we look divine

SCI FI FAN

I got early into reading Science Fiction, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinelein etc. As we did not see the full run of the original Star Trek on Finnish broadcast TV, when James Blish released his paperback books covering several Star Trek episodes per book, it was a kind of ‘printed book video collection’ of the TV show and I devoured those too. It felt funny seeing rerunds of original Star Trek when I know I have never seen this episode, but I remember how it ends...

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds

So what do most popstars sing about? Love this and love that. Lost love here and passionate love there. But what did Bowie sing about? The Starman, or about Major Tom in Space Oddity, or asking is there Life on Mars? Or telling us about post-apocalyptic nuclear holocaust worlds in Diamond Dogs, where "fleas the size of rats, sucked on rats the size of cats..". Bowie told us stories, stories about space and fantasy. Marc Bolan also sang weird songs of fantasy (his band, T.Rex, early had the same producer as Bowie, Tony Visconti, hence perhaps a similarity to the sounds of both bands early on, plus Bowie and Bolan were at least friends, some rumors said they were gay lovers for a while) but Bolan’s songs were weird, to the level of being severely stoned for them to make any sense. But Bowie’s songs were stories we could understand. Stories about space, before anyone had seen the first movie about Star Wars and suddenly space stories were cool.

BETRAYAL

So I was really liking Bowie. He wasn’t my top star, by now I had switched from the glamrock band The Sweet to another glamrock artist, T.Rex (with frontman Marc Bolan) but hadn’t abandoned The Sweet and Bowie was always in the mix. Then he did his first major pivot in his various style changes, when he abandoned the starman ‘Ziggy Stardust’ image with the red hair, and shifted to the dance music direction. What later would be called ‘disco’ and for a while seemed like every rock band had to do, from Queen (Radio Gaga) to ZZ Top (Sharp Dressed Man). But Bowie was just about the first major rock artist to make that pivot, and developed a rock-dance fusion sound, which started in 1975 with Young Americans. Then he released Fame, and Golden Years, all in that dance music ‘disco’ type of sound. Soul music sung by a white middle-aged English guy who didn’t even know how to dance. For me at that time, it felt like total betrayal.

Some of these days, and it won't be long
Gonna drive back down
where you once belonged
In the back of a dream car
twenty foot long

Funny story. Bowie’s tour came to perform in Helsinki. I had seen the others of similar glam rock era artists who did Helsinki like The Sweet, Suzi Quatro, Gary Glitter, Mud etc, but when Bowie came, because of that ‘betrayal’ in his new music style, I decided to boycott that concert. There! That’ll learn him! My classmates all went, and they told me I should have come, because (of course) Bowie played all his big hits, not just the new stuff, and I would have loved it. Yeah... we don’t regret what we tried, we regret what we decided not to do.. I shoulda gone :-)

JUST AHEAD OF MY TIME

But remember, I am 15 years old at this time, just getting into the dating thing, at very early stages, not knowing what really is what. And I of course had zero idea what it is that women want... So in our class, at that time, we had two American girls, Vicky Coopwood and Jackie Clement. Both were very good dancers. And as a peculiar ‘lets be nice to the Finnish boys’ kind of gesture, one class party we had, the two girls decided, they’ll teach all the boys of our class to dance. And they assured us, girls like boys who know how to dance. (young impressionable teenage boys... very easy to convince with that argument haha). So they taught us all, a couple of dance moves that were easy and these were taught.. to soul music. We did KC and the Sunshine Band’s Thats the Way (I Like It) and Van McCoy’s The Hustle and Hues Corporations Rock the Boat etc (oh, and that horrible Kung Fu Fighting by Karl Douglas). Now..... shortly AFTER the Bowie concert, I ‘discovered’ the ‘magic’ of dance music.. how it REALLY did work, with the women. They did like a guy who can dance. And my life changed.

I am a D.J., I am what I play
I got believers (kiss-kiss)
Believing me

About this time punkrock appeared as a musical response to the over-produced Abbaesque sound of pop and dance music. And I liked many punk bands and songs, and would play some when DJ’ing but I had moved on from traditional hard rock type rockmusic to my new interest - soul music (and what soon was to be called ‘disco’ music). Now my fave bands became artists like Hot Chocolate, Silver Convention, Baccara and Chic. And now.. a year or more after Young Americans, Fame and Golden Years, the Bowie disco songs were actually VERY GOOD indeed. That I would often play, as well as his newer dance stuff like TVC-15, Sound and Vision, Boys Keep Swinging and DJ. Again, Bowie was not my fave dance artist, but he created much great dance music, alongside others who specialized in that area. None of my youth’s fave bands managed this transition. Queen came a bit later, and is the only other one of the early pop/rock bands who did good dance music too, after they made their pivot. Bowie did, however, shine a light into a direction I was determined never ever to follow. And after some encouragement by some young women, I soon rushed to that path in my musical evolution. Bowie went there first. I never thought I would, but I did follow. And I love those songs of his now just as much as his earlier stuff.

FROM ENGLAND TO USA

Another interest very strong with Bowie, but not by any means unique to him, was the desire to succeed in the USA, obviously a far larger market. John Lennon moved to New York. Paul McCartney and his Wings did a massive USA tour just to break there. So this was not unique but not all British artists obsess about it. Bowie did want to. And he even wrote songs to work that way, like Young Americans. At this time I felt that the best pop music came from England and American bands (like say Yes, Eagles, etc) were far worse than British bands. That wouldn’t change until I fell in love with dance music, then I soon found the massive collections of Motown music and the more modern American dance music (such as Prince and Madonna) and then from 1979, the new concept of rap music. But when I grew up in the 1970s, I did feel that Britain and London was a kind of utopia for a teenager, because of the best music was made there (all my fave glamrock bands) and they had it for free on the radio. A similar epiphany happened to me then in 1979 when I visited a relative in the USA, and suddenly discovered the ‘black music’ stations that played DANCE music 24 hours a day. I found artsist like the Gap Band and Shalamar and SOS Band and Midnight Star and Rick James who were far better than the occasional Europop disco bands I had been listening to like gosh, Boney M.

You ain't a pimp and you ain't a hustler
A pimp's got a Cadi and a lady got a Chrysler
Black's got respect, and white's got his soul train
Mama's got cramps, and look at your hands ache

So in 1979 I shifted the definition of utopia in my mind, from being London and Britpop music to being New York and ‘black’ dance music (soon to include rap, hiphop and house music too). This was a major reason why I never considered going to study at University in the UK, but had to go to study in the USA. Now, who was the guide to this transition for me, who first showed the way, that no, its not England, for all thats great about it, the musical nirvana is.. the USA, and its dance music heritage? David Bowie of course.

There's a brand new talk, but it's not very clear
That people from good homes are talking this year
it's loud and tasteless and I've heard it before
You shout it while you're dancing on the ole dance floor

At this time Bowie was doing some of what I consider his very best work such as Fashion, Lets Dance, China Girl and Blue Jean. And again, true to Bowie, his videos were also always excellent. At this time I would definitely rank Prince as my fave artist but Bowie kept doing great work and his songs were often among my faves while never the best song of that moment. And most of his songs were incredibly dancable too (perhaps most glaring exception is the utterly undancable Modern Love that the video tries desperately to peddle as a dance tune, illustrating once again that Bowie was a white British dude, not a black guy, so he could not know HOW to dance, even if he liked the style of music).

Then we arrive to the end of the 1980s, I got my MBA and I went to work. The time of youth was over, my student years were done, and also Bowie’s place on the top of charts came to an end. He still made many good songs, but nothing that really touched me that much. And it does now, looking back at my life, really touch on several of the main influences to my life, changes to my life, moments in my life, that Bowie was there, or led the way. My first album. The first music video I recorded. Then the shifts from rock music to dance music and the shift from considering London the ultimate place to live, to considering it to be New York instead.

I don’t think Bowie actually propelled me to where I ended up going. He was just a musical muse who went into that direction before me, that I ended up following. Now as I look back at my life, I can see the Bowie soundtrack was the only one who was with me from a young teen 13 year old, all the way past puberty, early girlfriends, dating, dancing, moving to America and college years, till I ‘grew up’ and as an adult, started to work. Bowie is the only musical constant through those though changes and yet songs as different as 1984 (from 1973) is from China Girl (of 1983).

She could've been a killer
if she didn't walk the way she do,
and she do
She opened strange doors
that we'd never close again
She began to wail jealousies scream
Waiting at the light know what I mean
Scary monsters, super creeps
Keep me running, running scared

MUSICAL MEMORIES

And now I’m thinking of Bowie. What a massive catalog of music. So many memories. What were my absolute faves? I mentioned several already. The Jean Genie is a great one. Under Pressure (with Queen) and Cat People (Putting out Fires with Gasoline) are great. Lets Dance was massive. I really liked the Little Drummer Boy as perhaps my all-time fave Christmas song, so of course its the only classic Christmas Song that Bowie would do (as a wonderful duet with Bing Cosby just before he died). Dancing in the Street (with Mick Jagger) is a rare case where the remake is better than the original.

Hey man, Henry, don't be unkind, go away
Hey man, I can't take you this time, no way
Hey man, droogie don't crash here
There's only room for one and here she comes
Here she comes

I have to mention the awesome Scary Monsters and Super Creeps. Just a great great Bowie tune often forgotten. Ashes to Ashes I would rank as his best music video but if you wanted to see a Bowie Video not often seen thats truly excellent, I would rather show you Fashion. Of songs for which there is a music video, I would pick Rebel Rebel as the best (even as its video is crappy, very early nerdy-tech video gimmickry and boring as a video but that was made 8 years before MTV went on the air). But of all of his songs, what would most get me into a super mood, just the best of his many awesome songs. Its Suffragette City for which he never made an official video and the live versions are lame. Here is the link to sound-only version of Suffragette City total David Bowie classic from 1976, from his album ChangesOne. It doesn’t get better than this.

My James Bond Selfie Collection Part 3 - At the end of 007 Selfies but does that include SPECTRE?

So this is the last part ie part 3 of my James Bond Selfie Collection. The question becomes, with the latest movie out but not on DVD yet, does it include 007 SPECTRE? I started my peculiar ‘James Bond Selfie’ collection about 5 years ago. I posted a blog about my early 007 Selfies here in 2013 and then added part 2 of more Bond Selfies in the summer of 2014. I said I wasn't trying to visit every scene of every location Bond has been to, but that I would want to have at least one selfie from each movie. Now I will conclude my series as I’ve now reached the practical conclusion to this weird collecting hobby, as I have placed myself into a spot where James Bond has been, at least once in each of the 24 official movies done so far. But the previous two blog postings were quite popular, so lets celebrate one more set of pictures with our favorite spy.

What is a Bond Selfie? Its a selfie - picture you take of yourself - where you stand today in a spot where a James Bond actor has stood in a past movie. Freeze-frame the DVD and try to find that exact doorway or that exact street corner or that exact restaurant, etc. And try to get the scene so ‘perfect’ that your background matches (or as close as practically can be done with cameraphones considering camera angles and telephoto lenses etc) the background in the original movie scene. You’ll see in just a moment, here a picture truly speaks better than a thousand words.

So to ‘my way’ of doing the collection. Because 007 is a British spy always on international adventures, I didn’t want to just go take a few pictures in London and get half of the movies ‘covered’. So while yes, I do have a lot of my 007 Selfies shot in London, I also ‘decided’ that I will not consider a given movie ‘done’ until I had at least one Bond Selfie from a scene that was shot outside of the UK. With this, we’re revisiting a few of the movies I had shown you a Bond selfie before, but now having the non-UK picture. And this being the last edition of my Bond Selfies, I will show you a few extra pics, as some of my absolute faves, even if we had seen something from that movie before. As in the two earlier editions, I will do the movies in chronological order.

Dr No, 1962 (Sean Connery)

I showed you the Bond Selfie in the first set, at Kingston airport in Jamaica.

From Russia With Love, 1963 (Sean Connery)

We did this last time in the second set, with 007 and the defecting woman spy in Istanbul on a boat on the Bosporus. But I want to show you another picture, as this starts the Bond tradition in the movies of pretending to be somewhere, where the actual actor was not. So lets do the ending scene. You remember Bond takes the girl on the Orient Express train through Yugoslavia, then they get on a speedboat to Venice, where they end the movie kissing under the Bridge of Sighs. This scene:

And here is the real James Bond at the Bridge of Sighs in Venice




So whats the problem? When you watch the film closely, you see its not shot live on a boat in Venice. The Venice scenery is trick photography, someone else was in Venice, shot the scene from a boat, and they projected that. Sean Connery and the woman were in a studio, not on the water. By modern standards its quite crude trick photography, at the time this was common and considered high quality. Its visible to the naked eye. So once again, I have been to the real place where 007 only pretended to go. Not bad, eh?

Now while we talk about Venice. Venice is the only place apart from London, where you can get yourself to three different movies (and 007 selfies with 3 different Bond actors) in just 10 minutes. The Bridge of Sighs is right next to Piazza San Marco the main square of Venice. If you start here where I was (one block from the gondola parking lot outside Piazza San Marco), then walk towards the Piazza, you will pass on the right, a building that Roger Moore ‘drove past’ in the gondola-hovercraft in Moonraker. This building:




Then walk into the square and past the cathedral and to the furthest point of the square, diagonally to your left, to the last corner there. Thats where Daniel Craig looks for his wife at the end of Casino Royale (when she’s emptied their bank account). Daniel Craig runs from the hotel to the piazza to this spot:




There you go. One romantic visit to Venice, one of the most historic and gorgeous cities of the world, and you also picked up 3 James Bond movies, and 3 Bond actors in just 10 minutes... congratulations.

Goldfinger, 1964 (Sean Connery)

What many consider the best 007 movie (and for older audiences also the best 007 actor), Goldfinger we had done before. It was the scene with Oddjob the Korean driver and bodyguard for the villain, Goldfinger, at the Kent Golf Course in England, where the Korean decapitates a statue, throwing his hat like a frisbee. We all love that scene, one of the best in the whole 24 movie series. But like I said, its a British scene. I did want to find an international scene out of Goldfinger. Well, this summer on my world tour, I rented an Audi in Germany, drove to Vienna in Austria (pics coming below), to Venice in Italy (the above pics), and then back to Germany via Switzerland. And on that leg, I drove the gorgeous winding road of the legendary Furka Pass. The efficient Swiss have long since built a tunnel under the mountain, so the road sees very little traffic. But its the spaghetti-twirl road up the mountain we see Bond chasing Goldfinger’s Rolls Royce (and the racing duel Bond has with the woman assassin in the Mustang, remember, the Aston Martin shredding the tyres?). Anyway, a picture tells you what I mean. This scene:




Yes, and here is the real James Bond, on the exact same spot of the road, on the Furka Pass in Switzerland.




Note that I got that angle by using a selfie-stick.. This is my favorite pair of the whole Bond Selfie collection. It shows the 007 actor, Sean Connery the original Bond. It shows the villain, Goldfinger down as a tiny spec with his Rolls Royce. It shows the CAR, the gorgeous Aston Martin DB5 which was only introduced in this, the third of the Bond movies. It has one of my favorite stretches of road (I had driven Furka pass several times in past years, and again on this day, drove it up and down twice). And then the cool camera angle shows the rifle of the woman assassin. This picture kind of ‘has it all’ if you’re a Bond fan.

BTW if you are looking for the picture on your rental car, start from the bottom of the mountain and climb up Furka Pass. You see the river there on the bottom. Then climb two turns of the corkscrew road and you’re at the spot I took my picture.

Thunderball, 1965 (Sean Connery)

We did Thunderball already in the first set, Nassau city center in the Bahamas.

You Only Live Twice, 1967 (Sean Connery)

Then James Bond died. He was killed at the start of the fifth Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, shot by some gangsters in Hong Kong. And we see Bond, a Navy officer (007 has a rank of Commander in the Royal Navy) given a burial at sea, in Hong Kong harbor (Hong Kong used to belong to the UK back then, remember). And then, we audience members can relax, its a hoax burial, Bond has underwater breathing gear, he is taken to a British submarine, and the actual movie can move onto Japan where we have the villain with the hollowed-out volcano etc (which was a world record at the time for the most expensive movie set).

Ok so I showed you in the second set a 007 Selfie from You Only Live Twice, the scene in Tokyo at the Osato Chemicals headquarters building (and the fabulous white convertible Toyota 2000 car). But I do want to revisit this movie. First off, how often do you have the lead character of a 24 movie franchise killed in the fifth episode? So the death scene is something special. Plus its in my hometown haha, so lets do the Hong Kong burial scene. Bond isn’t visible but they suggest its happening at the warship here at Victoria Harbor:




And where was the real 007? I was at Victoria Harbor at the same spot only 49 years later:




So yeah, can’t actually ‘see’ James Bond in the wide angle shot but I already had my ‘Bond actor’ view from the movie. However, this is the only scene we can see identifyable Hong Kong in that movie. But then I do want to do one more from the movie. This was the helicopters Bond flick. It has ‘Little Nellie’ the gyrocopter that Bond flies to fight chasing helicopters. It has the giant flying crane helicopter that uses a giant electric magnet to lift the gangster car off the road and dropping it into the sea. And Bond flies with another helicopter to the Japanese Secret Service ninja training school, supposedly at the historic landmark Himeji castle. So Bond is here (see castle in background)




And here is the real James Bond at the same field where the helicopter landed.




The reason I really like that Bond Selfie (apart from the stunningly beautiful Himeji castle itself) is that Sean Connery is seen inside the helicopter as it lands (and he steps out of it). This was mid 1960s and helicopters were very cool (and quite high) tech for the time.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969 (George Lazenby)

Then we get the only movie by George Lazenby. OHMSS was the one with Telly Savalas as the villain and much of the action was in Switzerland atop the mountain. I showed you the London selfie from the movie in the first set, and showed you last time in the second set, that I had rented an Audi, driven to Schilthorn, that mountain where Piz Gloria the rotating restaurant is, and arrived too late, the lifts up the mountain had closed for the day. So I said I had to go back. Now on my trip last summer, not that far from Furka Pass actually, is Schilthorn, so I tried a second time. I wanted this picture:




Thats yes Telly Savalas as the villain Blofeld, and George Lazenby as 007, outside, at the helicopter landing pad, at Piz Gloria the restaurant atop Schilthorn.

And here is the real James Bond at the same location. So I met for the first time another person who collects Bond Selfies, at this mountain. That man in his 30s had only recently started and had 5 movies done, but he hadn’t yet thought of the ‘exact positioning’ into the movie scene as a freeze-frame from the DVD. Its like what happened with me and Amsterdam at the start of this collection five years ago, with the Magere Bridge, as I explained. I didn’t notice which angle the movie scene was shot, and thus I had ‘the wrong spot’ for my selfie. I helped my friend by showing him the freeze-frame of the above scene so he could also now get the correct picture. We of course spoke quite a lot about our shared hobby.

I was on the Schilthorn in the summer and it often is rainy and foggy and the view was not clear. If you can, arrive to the mountain in the winter, then most days the skies are crystal-clear and you can get ‘the shot’ with the 007 scene from inside the revolving restaurant. They’ve even tagged the appropriate window with 007 so you can’t miss it (and you’ll get the 007 logo onto your picture haha, for those who want such nonsense).




As you can see, the mountains behind me are quite obscured, so I can’t show you a reasonably similar selfie with Bond and the gorgeuos ladies dining at that spot in the movie. But yeah, it was the same spot, regardless. BTW the place is very well 007 branded, there is a 007 themes shop and the cappuchino even comes with 007 branding:




The one thing I was hoping to find, inside the restaurant, was the golden decoration at the circular staircase, very memorable from the movie. This one:




And would you know it, the real James Bond was also there




Haha, ok George Lazenby has been done more than enough. And finally I have a Bond Selfie also from OHMSS that is not taken in London. So lets move on.

Diamonds Are Forever, 1971 (Sean Connery)

We did Bond at LAX, Los Angeles airport in the first set.

Live and Let Die, 1973 (Roger Moore)

Then we switch bond actors, Roger Moore took over but I showed you two Bond selfies from this move in the first set, one of Manhattan Bridge and the other of the imaginary country of San Monique.

Man with the Golden Gun, 1974 (Roger Moore)

I showed you the Bond Selfie in Bangkok at the Democracy monument in the first set. But I want to show you one of the special ‘catches’ I have tried more than once, and it finally worked last year. Its one of the most famous, most luxurious and most expensive hotels in the world, the Hong Kong landmark of the Peninsula Hotel. James Bond follows the woman from Macau and the hydrofoil ferry ride to Hong Kong and she jumps into a green Rolls Royce and Bond chases that car to discover its a courtesy car of the famous hotel. And then Bond follows her into the hotel. And he brings a bottle of champagne to the lady, in Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel, room 602. Like this:




So has the real Bond been to the Peninsula Hotel, often yes, I’ve had many meetings there but never stayed overnight at the hotel as a guest. But have I been to the door of room 602?




Yes I have! (the hotel has been totally renovated of course in the previous 41 years, but this is the same room and same door. So the walls are still the same but now the doors are no longer white, they're now painted black). So how did I do it? I’m an international man of mystery, how hard can that be? I positioned myself near the elevators, was dressed, as I always am, in a sharp suit so I looked just like any other guest. I arrived at a moment when a nearly-full amount of people were getting into the elevator, and the polite gentleman that I am, I let the others enter first, then I went in. And luck was with me, someone else was already going to the sixth floor, and I got into the hotel and the floor without actually having an electronic key to get to ‘my floor’ haha.. Again, let the other person walk to their hotel room direction first, then I quickly seeked the door to room 602, snapped the selfie, and then quickly took the elevator down to the lobby and out.  Sneaky. But yes, I had attempted this ... more than once ... before.

The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977 (Roger Moore)

Next we have Roger Moore’s best Bond movie. I showed you my pic at the Grand Pyramid, not exactly the same spot as Roger Moore but close enough that I won’t bother to fly there just to retake that picture (and its seems from careful study of the freeze-frame that the Pyramid scene was shot in the studio, not live on the spot. Jaws was definitely there, him with the Sphinx in the background, but Roger Moore maybe wasn’t there for the Pyramid shot. The pyramids don’t look quite ‘right’. I think that was done in the studio).

Moonraker, 1979 (Roger Moore)

Then from the best of the Moore Bonds to the worst. Moonraker starts well and then deteriorates to a farce, set in space. But lets ignore the merit of the movie, it is a Bond movie and its set in one of my ultimate fave cities, that I often visit, Rio de Janeiro. So now on my world tour of my summer holiday I of course stopped in Rio and took some Bond selfies. I’ll only show two. Here the classic gorgeous Rio shot on top of Sugarloaf mountain, where the Jesus Christ the Redeemer statue on top of Corcovado Mountain is seen in the distance.




And here is the real James Bond on the same spot




Mountains don’t change haha. Gosh Rio is gorgeous. But I also particularly like those Bond Selfies that are shot indoors, not outside, and are still identifyable. So Moonraker is the one where Jaws fights with Bond on the cable car and bites the cable. And here is one gorgeous freeze-frame of Bond and the babe inside the cable car:




And has the real Bond been also inside the Sugarloaf Mountain cable car, at that same segment of the car ride, of course I have:




Note its the same backdrop, so this is also the same segment (there are two separate cable cars going through an intermim stop half-way). And note, the cable car itself is a different model now, 36 years later. Look at the windows. They keep fitting larger cabins to the cable car system. And here pro tip, if you want this shot, its from the top (highest you can go, ie the second ride) and the way to get the pic of you alone in the car, is to wait until others have left or are just departing the cable car. Position yourself in the middle of the car, just as others leave, before they open the door for incoming people to go down from the mountain, snap your selfie. Be quick, you only get one chance, but it will work if you’ve planned it well. And it seems like you’re alone in the cable car haha. If you wait until the doors open and everybody rushes in, they will rush to the windows and crowd out your view from the cabin to the beautiful Rio scenery outside.

But I do want to do one more selfie from Moonraker, because this was not formally mentioned in the reference materials I saw, about where Moonraker was shot, on location. The movie mentions it was shot in Brazil but not that they also shot part of it in Argentina. And as I love waterfalls, on this trip last summer I also fulfilled my long desire to visit Iguazu Falls (largest waterfalls in the world). This place:




So yeah, gorgeous place on the border where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet. Absolutely breathtaking place that I will definitely go back to. But yes. Bond? In Moonraker if you remember, Bond is chased on a river by Jaws, when Bond suddenly has a hang glider appear from the roof of his speedboat. Bond flies off into the sky, while Jaws has his boat go over the waterfall. That waterfall is actually the Devil’s Throat part of Iguazu Falls. And then Bond lands his hang glider and calmly walks into the jungle to discover the villain Drax’s rocket launching facility. Roger Moore actually walks from this angle in front of Devil’s Throat:




And now that I’ve been to Iguazu Falls, I can verify, that is not the Brazilian side. It is only possible on the Argentinian side. No amount of mirror image or anything can create that image from the Brazilian side. Roger Moore was in Argentina, literally, physically, and had his passport stamped. He was in Argentina but most record of where Moonraker was shot (and any other movies of James Bond travel) have never said he visited Argentina. But we have evidence he did. Oh, how do we know?




Here is the real Bond at the same spot. That, my dear readers, is the Argentina side of Iguazu Falls. Yeah this has been a fun hobby, combining love of James Bond movies with world travel. Lets move on

For Your Eyes Only, 1981 (Roger Moore)

We did this selfie last time out of the monastery in Meteora

Octopussy, 1983 (Roger Moore)

This movie we did in both previous editions, in the first set I showed the Sotheby’s auction house in London, the second set had the two selfies from Udaipur in India.

A View to a Kill, 1985 (Roger Moore)

Roger’s last and quite tired Bond flick was A View to a Kill, a bit of a world tour from Paris to San Francisco, with Grace Jones the black supermodel as the chief hench(wo)man. I showed you in the first set pictures of me at the Eiffel Tower, and at the Golden Gate Bridge but long ago, random holiday pictures (with my car). I said I’d have to revisit to get better pics. Now we have it finally. So in Paris you remember the chase on the Eiffel Tower, when the killer escapes by doing a base jump with parachute, and Bond steals a taxi to chase the parachute and the Renault car is split in half, so the front-wheel car arrives as a 2-wheel vehicle to the bridge, etc... That chase scene. When 007 arrives to the taxi to steal the cab, we have this scene of Roger Moore below the Eiffel Tower:




And here is the real James Bond at the same spot underneat the Eiffel Tower




Gotta luv this hobby. Ah Paris the city of love and romance (And of James Bond). Getting Bond Seflies in all my fave cities, New York, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro and Paris, what could be nicer? I took a lot of selfies of Bond’s romp in Paris but lets leave it at that one for this public collection. Now we have AVTAK also done for my final collection.

The Living Daylights, 1987 (Timothy Dalton)

The we swap Bond actors to Timothy Dalton. I showed you the selfie from The Living Daylights taken at Gibraltar in the first Selfie set. But now I want to show something not exactly a Bond Selfie as ‘I was in the same spot’ geographically, but rather, I was ‘in the same car’ haha. Early in the movie we have the Soviet spy chief wanting to defect. He is driven by James Bond in the trunk of an Audi 200 (aka Audi 5000 for American market). Here Timothy Dalton is with his sniper rifle, getting to the car:




And have I driven that car? That exact same model (and color) car? Did I OWN that car? Yes. Here is the real Bond and his beloved Audi 5000 CS Quattro Turbo:




So the geographic location obviously is not the same, Bond was in Bratislava Slovakia in the movie (actual scene shot in Vienna Austria) and I am here with my Audi in Helsinki at the Senate Square, note I still even have my New York licence plates on my car (Bond has never visited Finland it the movies, but has in one of the books). I loved that car.. But yeah. Lets move on

Licence to Kill, 1989 (Timothy Dalton)

I showed you two selfies from LTK, one from Florida Keys, Hemingway House, in the first selfie collection. Then I showed the other from the imaginary country of Isthmus, in the second selfie collection.

Goldeneye, 1995 (Pierce Brosnan)

Next we swap to the last real James Bond and who became my new fave finally surpassing Sean Connery, ie Pierce Brosnan. He wasn’t at his best in Goldeneye but kept getting better in each of his four outings. He was robbed, he should have gotten at least one more Bond movie. But yes, I showed you the selfie in the first collection, of Bond in St Petersburg Russia (which was actually shot in London). But I do want to bring another shot of Bond in the movie, because in that movie Bond went back in ‘his history’ to the old Soviet Union, and Arkhangelsk. The movie starts with James Bond running on top of a dam, then bungee-jumping down the face of the dam, to then enter the soviet weapons laboratory. Memorable opening scene. Well, they did not shoot that in Arkhangelsk. That dam is in Switzerland, its the Tusker Dam (also known as the Locarno Dam also known as the Verzasca Dam aka the Contra Dam) and its a real person who does the jump (not Pierce Brosnan but a competent base jumper) so thats not done by trick photography or CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery). So the opening when we first see the new Bond, who became my fave Bond actor started with Pierce Brosnan running atop the dam like this:




And have I been to Arkhangelsk? On top of that same dam? Check it out?




Yeah. I was there (obviously at Tusker Dam in Switzerland). And were you to doubt this really is a place where they actually DO the James Bond bungee jump, check this out:




Now. I would have wanted to do the jump myself. Honestly. But I was in a hurry to the airport to return my rental car, and this shot was taken early in the morning just after sunrise. The bungee jump organizers hadn’t even arrived by the time I had to drive away, North towards Germany.

Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997 (Pierce Brosnan)

We did two 007 Selfies from TND in the first set, one from Hamburg Germany (shot in London) the other from Ho Chi Minh City ie Saigon of Vietnam (actual scene shot in Bangkok Thailand).

The World Is Not Enough, 1999 (Pierce Brosnan)

And we did one selfie from The World Is Not Enough (Bond’s family motto), the boat chase scene of London starting at the MI6 offices, in the first set in 2013. But that was a London scene. So I wanted a non-London scene. The ending scene of the movie is in Istanbul, at the Maiden Tower, where Bond is tortured and the bad guy brings the stolen Soviet nuclear submarine they intend to detonate in the harbor. So Bond is taken to Maiden Tower on the boat in this scene




Have I been to Istanbul, on the Bosporus, near Maiden Tower?




You betcha. So TWINE is now also ‘properly done’ for my collection.

Die Another Day, 2003 (Pierce Brosnan)

And then we get Brosnan’s last Bond movie, Die Another Day. I showed three selfies from it in the first collection, the secret door to the spy office subway station in London, the Cuba beach with Halle Berry aka Jinx, and the shot of Hong Kong harbor after Bond escapes from the hospital and swims ashore with his beard. But that shot was at night, and my selfie was in daylight, so of course, I went back and shot the night time shot which I shared in the second set. Easy to do, living in Hong Kong haha. But I want to do one more selfie from 007 DAD. Again, this is a special one, from inside in no explicit geographic location, simply somewhere above the Atlantic. But inside a particularly fave place for me (and for Bond no doubt). So Bond has been in Cuba chasing the bad guys, then he gets his invitation to come back home to London. So he flies what? British Secret Agent? British Airways of course, in First Class.




James Bond inside British Airways Boeing 747, in First Class, in seat 04D. The old BA First class interior, with the lovely wood finish. And has the Real James Bond flown a British Airways Boeing 747 in First Class? I think he may have:




I have actually flown in the seat 04D and noted it was the James Bond seat, but I didn’t think of taking a selfie in that seat at the time (now the interiors have been updated, that movie was 13 years ago) and the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet is being phased out of BA service. But I do have a picture - not a selfie - of myself in the First Class of Boeing 747 of British Airways, with the old interior:


So I was sitting in the same cabin but in this picture, I am flying in seat 04H. In the Bond picture, its the woman in the white coat on the left of the picture, thats my seat. And the picture was taken by a gorgeous lovely BA cabin attendant.. so its technically not a ‘selfie’ but hey, BA is not just my fave airline, its the World’s Favourite Airline and of course its James Bond’s favourite airline too - the only time we’ve ever seen 007 inside a commercial airliner, in the 24 movies, was this time in DAD. He’s flown Pan Am, Lufthansa, etc but only once we saw him inside a commercial airliner. BA. And in First Class (of course).

Casino Royale, 2006 (Daniel Craig)

Its time to switch to the current Bond James Bond, Daniel Craig. He started with Casino Royale. I showed you the Bond Selfie shot in the Bahamas at Paradise Island in the first set. Now I will do a second selfie from this movie, because it was such a hassle to get this picture. So, in the movie, after Bond has played poker and won the Aston Martin, the villain rushes to Miami to go blow up the new prototype giant commercial jet airplane. And Bond walks into Miami airport, this scene:




And I often fly through MIA airport so I figured thats as easy an Selfie to get as the LAX selfie was when connecting through Los Angeles airport. And I walked all through the airport looking for that picture and could not find the spot. And by now, I’m pretty good at spotting what kind of stuff is easy to change and what doesn’t change. So I was hunting the OUTSIDE, to find THIS spot from the movie, the exact entrance for Bond:




And you know what. It kinda looks like MIA except it is not. And no, Miami airport has not been totally renovated in the past six years. I was there only about three years after this movie came out, and no, there clearly was no such place. This is the real MIA airport (from 'that' angle above):




So I went back to do more research and found out, oops, no. The Miami scenes once again were fakes. The movie producers didn’t get permission from Miami to shoot their airport carnage terrorist scene at their international airport. So what did the producers do? They found another airport that kind of looked like Miami, brought in some American cars, and faked it. What else is new, this is the movies. Grand illusion. Where was it? Check out me in Prague:




Yes, what they called Miami Airport is clearly Prague Airport in the Czech Republic. And now I have my inside picture easily, finally, that matches the Bond pic.




Quantum of Solace, 2008 (Daniel Craig)

We did Quantum of Solace in the second set, the scene from the hotel in La Paz Bolivia

Skyfall, 2012 (Daniel Craig)

Skyfall wasn’t even out when I published my first Bond Selfie set. But in the second set I had two scenes from it, the Shanghai hotel interior scene (in reality shot in London) and the Dead City in Macau (in reality shot in Nagasaki Japan). Which only leaves us one more movie to do. The DVD isn’t out, so this is kind of an ‘unfair’ attempt but can we do a Bond Selfie out of SPECTRE?

SPECTRE, 2015 (Daniel Craig)

Haha yes we can. We can take the TRAILER from the movie !!! Now did I happen to visit Mexico or Switzerland or Algeria in the last few months? No. But I did happen to visit Rome Italy haha. I was in Rome just a few weeks before I saw the movie. I had seen the trailer twice, but not more, and didn’t try to pick the scene from the trailer. I rather went by the known movie shooting permits in Rome, and took a lazy afternoon and evening wandering through all the locations, starting with the Colisseum. And took whatever I thought seemed like a Bond-ish spot. I wanted to see if I could anticipate the shot. So in the movie there is the big chase scene with James Bond in the prototype Aston Martin, chased by the baddie in the prototype Jaguar? Along the river? That scene. Its in the trailer:




And was your real Bond able to anticipate that scene?




Yes, on the same spot. Now, I knew they had permission to shoot at that explicit bridge in Rome, so I just too about 30 selfies in every direction and was lucky to nail this one haha. But yes, I even have already one James Bond Selfie conforming to a freeze-frame of 007 SPECTRE even before the DVD has been released... not bad. My collection is thus ‘complete’ and this was the last edition of my pictures. The quick stats? I have now a total of 154 selfies including at least one from each 007 of the 24 movies made so on average 6.4 selfies per movie. In my Selfies I visit 45 claimed unique locations in 29 claimed countries of the movies. By this I limit any one city as one location even if multiple Bond movies visited that city. To get those 154 Bond selfies, I actually physically had to visit 35 actual geographical physical locations (such as different cities) in 23 countries. If we say the collection took about 5 years, it means on average 30 Bond Selfies collected per year or 2.5 per month.

BOND AS FREQUENT FLIER

While we're on it, lets also do the summary of James Bond as a Frequent Flier. Bond doesn't always fly on commercial airliners but he often also does. So if we assume he goes home to Britain after any movie unless the next movie picks up where the previous ended, and except for where he is seen or known to travel by some other method, lets assume he flies commercially when he suddenly appears in another country. Also, am assuming he flies the most direct route but using flights which exist where at times a direct flight is not available. With that, the six Bond actors have averaged about 16,800 airmiles per movie (27,000 km). The Bond who has flown most on average was Pierce Brosnan at 23,800 miles (38,100 km) and the one who got to fly the least was George Lazenby who only got to fly 9,100 miles (14,600km) in his one movie. In terms of a single movie with most miles, its Brosnan's Die Another Day at 40,100 miles (64,200 km). The spy who flew the least was Sean Connery in From Russia with Love which only stayed in Europe and he crossed countries by train and boat so he only flew 2,300 miles (3,600 km). So lets do the full table eh?

BOND FREQUENT FLIER MILES BY ACTOR AND MOVIE

Sean Connery 
Dr No (1962) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,340 miles
From Russia With Love (1963) . . . . . . . . 2,274 miles
Goldfinger (1964) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19,687 miles
Thunderball (1965) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,170 miles
You Only Live Twice (1967) . . . . . . . . . . . 5,990 miles
Diamonds Are Forever (1971) . . . . . . . . 22,839 miles
TOTAL CONNERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69,300 miles (average 11,550)

George Lazenby
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) . .  9,140 miles (average 9,140)

Roger Moore
Live and Let Die (1973) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11,558 miles
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)  . . . 19,480 miles
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) . . . . . . . . . 6,776 miles
Moonraker (1979) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32,625 miles
For Your Eyes Only (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,777 miles
Octopussy (1983) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20,003 miles
A View to a Kill (1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,623 miles
TOTAL ROGER MOORE . . . . . . . . . . . . 108,842 miles (average 15,549)

Timothy Dalton
The Living Daylights (1987) . . . . . . . . . . . 12,508 miles
Licence to Kill (1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12,328 miles
TOTAL TIMOTHY DALTON . . . . . . . . . . . 24,836 miles (average 12,418)

Pierce Brosnan
Goldeneye (1995) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17,878 miles
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) . . . . . . . . . . 17,604 miles
The World is Not Enough (1999) . . . . . . . . 19,666 miles
Die Another Day (2003) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40,089 miles
TOTAL PIERCE BROSNAN . . . . . . . . . . . . 95,237 miles (average 23,809)

Daniel Craig
Casino Royale (2006) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34,323 miles
Quantum of Solace (2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30,122 miles
Skyfall (2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,584 miles
SPECTRE (2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,395 miles
TOTAL DANIEL CRAIG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93,429 miles (average 23,356)

TOTAL ALL BONDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,779 miles (average 16,699)

So thats the mileage of our spies. In rough terms there is growth if we look at the average of the actors. And a few interesting observations. Bond has visited 53 countries (including 2 imaginary countries). He's been to five of the six inhabited continents (never visited Oceania ie never to Australia or New Zealand etc). He's been to seven areas of the USA but never to Canada. They tend to come up with new countries that Bond hasn't yet visited, so its likely he'll do those countries in the future. And while the movie has visited South Africa (Diamonds Are Forever) James Bond himself didn't go there in the movie, so he hasn't visited that former British colony either. Ok. Now I will end with the two points I made already before. First if you happen to be the wife of a millionaire whose husband is a huge Bond fan...

If anyone out there among my readers happens to be a billionaire or multi-multi-millionaire, who is a huge Bond fan, and wants to visit real 007 locations and has the jet fuelled and ready to go, I'll be happy to be your guide. If there's a wife of such a rich dude, who knows her husband has already bought anything he might ever want, but the wife wants to give a once-in-a-lifetime experience to her Bond-fan husband, I've got the perfect week around the world, or two weeks, or how much time you can get your hubby to spare. And wouldn't you know it, while I might help your husband find the exact scene for Bond, you might prefer to spend your time in that town at the shopping malls in such shopping mecchas as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, London, New York and San Francisco. Or if you prefer the beaches, then Bond's been to just about all the paradises from Phuket to Bahamas, from Rio to the Keys, from Cote d'Sur to Jamaica... Drop me a note.

Finally, to be clear. As I wrote in both of the previous blogs, for the legal issues about copyright. I have already contacted the owners of the Bond movies and asked for permission to use these screen shots of the movies. I did that more three years ago, and I have not heard them saying I could not use the screen shots. I have of course purchased each of the DVDs (except for SPECTRE for which I used the official trailer video on YouTube and will be buying the DVD the moment it is released). I am using this blog article only for research use - a reason which exists for exception in copyright law, allowing 'fair use'. I am researching and documenting the exact camera locations for these sites, and sharing, totally free and with no commercial or other gains to me, those locations for other Bond fans to also be able to find and enjoy. No such complete record exists as far as I know. I have no subscriptions, no registrations and no fees to this blog. I have no interest in selling anything Bond-related. My blog is about technology and as I am already rated by Forbes as the most influential expert of my field, I cannot possibly have any reason whatsoever to try to create more traffic to this blog (this blog is not for sale, will never be). This blog article cannot in any way be seen as damaging to the Bond franchise but can only be seen as a love-letter to the movies and one that encourages Bond fans to experience their passion even more deeply. But if Bond licence holders contact me and instruct me to take any of the screen shots off this blog, of course I will do so immediately. My contact information is tomi at tomiahonen dot com.

(CORRECTION - this was mistake. I read wrong news item) - NOT TRUE - Top Ten Rivals: Xiaomi Sold 61M will be ranked between 5th and 7th for 2015

Sorry. My bad. I read an old news story. Xiaomi has not given their final 2015 unit sales number yet. I am sorry. I will leave the text as I wrote it, but am striking it out. (Thank you to our regular reader Piot for pointing out that I must have been reading old news.) We do not know what Xiaomi's sales were nor their ranking nor market sahre in the race for 2015, yet. I will return with the numbers when we know them.

Now we have Xiaomi's final count of 2015 smartphone sales. They didn't come anywhere close to their goal of hitting 80 million unit sales. They were actually flat vs 2014, selling only 61 million, according to their CEO statement out today. Well, who told you so, haha, this phone business is hits-driven and you have to have global distribution to capitalize on successful phones. Xiaomi couldn't do that. So their sales were flat. It means for the full year Xiaomi will be somewhere in the rankings between 5th and 7th (depending on final LG and ZTE sales numbers. Lenovo (with Motorola brand) is likely to be well above 61 million and the bottom end of the charts, the Coolpads, Oppos, Vivos, TCLs etc are a bit too small to reach to annual sales of 61 million. So expect Xiaomi to be somewhere between 5th and 7th largest smartphone maker with a preliminary market share for the year at 4%. For the fourth quarter, he lustre of the suddeny-popular Xiaomi brand seems to have gone the way of Coolpad just before it, their Q4 sales levels look to be around 8 million only. Thats nearly as bad as Lumia-Microsoft-Nokia or Sony Xperia haha... Ok, lets see as more numbers come in.

Smartphone Wars: Full Year 2015 and Q4 Numbers, first up: Huawei hits 108M for full year (secures 3rd ranking)

So the quarterly results period has started in the smarphone wars. First up among Top 10 is Huawei. They revealed that their full year 2015 unit sales were 108 million smartphones. This is up from 75 million in 2014 so a growth of 44% in one year. That locks third ranking for Huawei. They can't catch Apple (nor Samsung) ahead of them but they also are safely above what Lenovo, LG and Xiaomi behind them could possibly do, meaning we know the full year race, for one ranking. Huawei of China was the world's third largest smartphone maker of 2015, congratulations. Its not the first time Huawei has been ranked 3rd. They jumped from 5th largest in 2012 to 3rd largest in 2013, but then in 2014, their Chinese rival Lenovo leapfrogged ahead of Huawei by purchasing the Motorola business. This return to 3rd ranking must taste particularly sweet for Huawei in that they achieved that position by organic growth compared to the acquisition method used by Lenovo last time. In terms of market share my preliminary estimate for Huawei is 7% for the full year, down from 7.8% in 2014. Huawei has become only the fourth smartphone maker ever to record a year of selling 100 million smarthpones (Samsung does three times that, Apple twice that, and Nokia once sold just over 100 million just before new CEO Stephen Elop destroyed the company's smartphone business).

Now for the Christmas quarter... that is not as good news for Huawei. They seem to have sold only 27 million smartphones, which would be flat compared to Q3 while the Christmas buying season has been on, and the smartphone quarterly market should be up quite dramatically. The reason I use the words 'would be' is that we do not have an official Q3 number from Huawei, only the estimates by the big analyst houses. Huawei only gives a half-year number and said they sold 50 million smartphones in the six months from January to June. Based on that, their half-year sales is up 16% which is far less than the annual increase of 44% they have year-on-year. But it does mean, that its more likely that Huawei's Q3 sales was lower, closer to say 25M than 27M and then there was still some growth from Q3 to Q4. Again, the real race is the annual race, and the quarterly results give us only some views and snapshots to the state of the race. If Huawei actually did only sell 27 million in Q4, it could have a quarterly rank below the 3rd position. We have to see how that goes. But as I said, the far more relevant number is the full-year sales than the last quarter and as Huawei's Q3 number is not definite, for Huawei the Q3-to-Q4 'growth rate' measure is particularly fuzzy.

PS our reader Teemu pointed out that actually this blog has known for a long while now that Samsung has won the year for 2015 and Apple finished second. So actually the Top 3 rankings are known. Their exact unit sales numbers and market shares are not known. The rankings below he Top 3 are not known but we do know the year 2015 largest smarphone makers Top 3 is Samsung, Apple and (now we also know) Huawei, in that order. Thanks Teemu. I didn't mean to suggest there is any doubt about who won the year, Sammy or Apple, even as there is a lot of interest in their Christmas quarter performance. The race now is for who finished 4th for the year, Lenovo or LG or Xiaomi or perhaps a dark horse like ZTE, Coolpad, TCL-Alcatel etc. We know it won't be one of the past glory giants like Sony, HTC, Blackberry or (Nokia) Microsoft haha. None of those former Top 3 giants will even be in the Top 10 for 2015.

Ok, thats the first of the Top 10 brands. More news as it trickles in. I hope to have the full  year 2015 final numbers to report in February. Both of the last two years that blog story was posted on the 13th of February.

If Your New Year’s Resolution Is ‘Mobile’ (or perhaps, ‘more mobile’) - Mobile mobile, uber alles (Expanded)

Welcome to my occasional ‘new year’s blog’ about the big picture, written for executives considering some new strategies for the new year. So you decided you’ll get into mobile now? Maybe convinced to try ‘mobile first’. Well, welcome. This is your primer. I will explain the big picture of why 'mobile first' in 2,500 words.

BIGGER THAN YOU THOUGHT

- more than TVs, PCs, cars
- more than credit cards, bank accounts
- more than people with running water, electricity
- more than wristwatch or pen and paper

More mobiles than humans yes, you had read that. But that is unprecedented by any tech, more people have mobiles than TVs, PCs or cars yes. But also more than credit cards or bank accounts. More people have mobiles than have running water or electricity or even have a roof over their heads. More people use mobile phones than wear a wristwatch or have any use for paper and pencil. But even illiterate people can use a mobile - and do. Homeless people have mobile phones. Refugees who abandon everything else, bring their mobiles. There has never been anything like mobile. You thought you were prepared and had internalized how massive mobile was. You miscalculated. Its far bigger.

FAST FASTER FASTEST

- faster than landline phone
- faster than internet email and browsing
- faster than social media like Facebook and Twitter

The telephone made the world move faster. Telephony gave us such tech as the fax. The internet was far faster than the phone with tech like email and the browser. Social Media is faster yet, led by Facebook and Twitter. Mobile is all that. Only faster. Telephone calls went to mobile. The internet is shifting to mobile. Social media is almost totally mobile already. Mobile does all that but only faster still. Everything you ever learned about the power of faster, applies to mobile only its even faster still. Only 20% of emails are opened. 97% of SMS text messages are opened! Average response time for email is 48 hours. Text messages get average response in 3 minutes! Your competion? They probably already knew all this.

MOST VERSATILE

- Not just PC and internet
- camera, media player
- payment instrument
- clock and alarm

The PC was the most versatile tech that humankind had seen. The internet supercharged that. Mobile is both a PC and the internet, but mobile is much more than what the PC and internet are, or indeed can ever become. A selfie camera? A payment instrument at Starbucks? An emergency flashlight when the lights go out? A map with perfect GPS positioning? Your alarm clock? Mobile is by far the most versatile gadget that humankind has ever created. This means its the ultimate ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of do-anything, be-anything miracle machine. Yet mobile is still young and evolving.

MOST COMPLEX

- adding complexity to telephony

- adding difficulty to the computer

- adding challenge to the internet

- adding abilities not on landline phones, PCs, or the internet

Mobile is versatile. That means its complex. The Mobile industry is the most complex major industry on the planet. Consider it has to do all the telephone industry did, but do it now with full mobility (and globally). Consider it has to do all the PC industry did, but without a keyboard or mouse, all on touch-screens. Consider it has to do all the internet did, but on a far smaller screen and wirelessly. Yet it also does payments, cameras, location-precision, etc. The most complex industry ever. And far more difficult than rocket science. That means a lot of confusion, bad info, mistakes and poor judgement. It means also huge opportunities. As the mistakes are plentiful, and the growth rate breathtaking, it means some win big (Google, Apple), others fail miserably (Yahoo, Nokia). You cannot afford to make blatant, obvious mistakes when the stakes are so high.

USED WITH ALL OTHER MEDIA

- used with all other media
- creates feedback channel that most media do not have
- used to measure audiences and participation

This is a weird one, but should give you pause. Do you listen to your radio while watching a movie in the cinema? Do you read a newspaper while surfing the internet? Do you carry your TV with you while reading the ad on a billboard as you drive across town in a car or bus? Sometimes we may have the radio on for background music while reading a newspaper. We may have the TV on while surfing on the internet. But no media or tech has ever been participating - participating simultaneously - in our consumption of ANOTHER media. Television asks us to vote via mobile phones. Radio asks for audience opinions via mobile. Newspapers ask for readers to send in ‘citizen journalism’ photograps via mobile. What happens if you lose your password to your email service? They will send the security code.. to your mobile phone! When a movie ends in the cinema, the first messages are sent while the end credits are rolling is, telling friends if that movie was worth seeing. Even billboads are building interactivity, through mobile. There has never been one media that interjects itself into all other media! Mobile (and only mobile) already can be used with all other media. And that is only spreading and expanding. Partly because nothing is as easy to measure as mobile. I call mobile the magical measurement machine.

221 TIMES PER DAY

- as addictive as cigarette smoking

- we look at phone 221 times per day

Mobile is the most addictive tech there has ever been. University studies have measured the mobile addiction to be similar to that of cigarette smoking. TV, radio, even the internet do not get that level of addiction. This is not hype. This has been measured in university studies across the planet. As addictive as cigarette smoking. There is no going back. Our mobile habit will only get ever more involved and ever more intense, ie more addicted. The average mobile phone user looks at his or her phone 150 times per day. For smartphone users, its 221 times per day. No other gadget or media or tech produces as intense relevance nor as intense withdrawal symptoms if we are without it. When ranking possessions and valuables, mobile trumps wallets, credit cards, tablets, and family heirloom photographs. All this has been tested and reported. Which means, the relevance of mobile to humankind is only getting more intense, personal and powerful.

FASTEST GROWING GIANT INDUSTRY EVER

- one of rare Trillion-dollar industry size

- fastest to Trillion, ever
- still growing at fastest rate

- fastest way to wealth

Mobile is one of rare Trillion-dollar sized industries (1,000 Billion dollars in annual revenues). TV, cinema, personal computers, videogames, newspapers, the internet, etc are nowhere near that size and never have been that big. What are so big? Cars are a Trillion dollar global industry. Armaments are a Trillion dollar industry. Food, construction, banking, healthcare.. about a dozen industries rank in the Trillions. Mobile became a Trillion dollar industry in only 29 years from launch. That was a world record (it still stands). Mobile is literally, the fastest-growing giant industry of the economic history of humankind. You understand strategy. You undestand money. The fastest-growing industry ever? It means, mobile also has produced, and is producing more wealth than any industry ever in any comparable time. More millionaires, more Billionaires. More successful startups and more success to big corporations. Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy two decades ago. Today its the most profitable company that ever existed. Apple didn’t build its profits on the Mac or iPod or iTunes or iPad. Most of Apple’s profits come.. from mobile. If you are not going to pursue the mobile side of your business, your competitors will bury you.

MOST COMPETITIVE

- tech companies
- media
- retail
- credit cards

As the opportunity to ‘get rich quick’ is set to a whole new level with mobile, that attracts every conceivable rival. Not just tech and media giants like Apple a computer maker, Google an internet giant, BBC a broadcaster or Sony a home electronics giant; but companies utterly outside the realm of possible competitors to Vodafone, Verizon, China Mobile, T-Mobile and Telefonica. Companies such as Starbucks, the second largest restaurant chain on the planet whose CEO says the most important thing to its future is.. mobile. Starbucks has just become - in only 3 years - the most used ‘stored value’ mobile wallet provider on the planet. Home Depot, the world’s largest retailer for tools, says mobile gives it an ‘endless aisle’ where it can sell 10 times more tools than in its largest superstore. Visa the largest credit card company says the future of payments is not plastic nor electronic cash, but mobile. Car manufacturers, airlines, hotels, almost any industry is suddenly racing into mobile. Pepsi just launched a smartphone in China. The unprecedented breadth of competitors means, you can be destroyed at your own game. In year 2000 the world’s largest camera manufacturers were Minolta, Nikon, Konica and Canon. That year Nokia, Apple and Samsung didn’t sell any cameras. Only ten years later the most used cameras on the planet were on phones made by Nokia, Samsung and Apple. Meanwhile, Minolta and Konica had quit the camera business.

MOST USEFUL

- identity
- government

- money
 
The government of Singapore offers all government services through mobile except for passports. Estonia was first country to hold a national election where citizens could vote via mobile. UAE became the first country to issue national driver’s licences in mobile versions. Kenya will let you register your company by mobile. Spain was the first country where contract signatures could be signed by simple SMS text message. Norway became the first country where you can file your tax return not just with mobile, but for most taxpayers, by simple text message. Sweden intends to become the first country to eliminate cash; 80% of its bus tickets for example are paid by mobile. To eliminate cash. In our lifetime. Cash has been around for over 3,000 years. We will live to see its end. Not killed by plastic credit cards or Paypal or bitcoins. Mobile will kill cash. Not my words, the words of Visa the largest credit card company. Coca Cola, the largest beverage company has already launched a virtual currency as part of its loyalty program... of course on mobile. The mobile industry is the most creative technical and business opportunity that ever existed.

MOST VOLATILE MEANS BIGGEST RISK

- rapid shifts from top to oblivion and reverse

- never to this extent in any other industry like cars, airplanes, PCs

- big risk of failure brings also big risk of huge success

The rapid speed of the industry, the huge complexity, the rapid evolution, and the ever increasing number of rivals and competitors, keep shifting the landscape and changing the rules, creating unprecedented volatility. No giant global industry has ever seen in a 2 year period its number 1 player fall outside the Top 3, simultaneously its number 4 player leapfrog numbers 2 and 3, to become number, 1 unless some kind of massive corporate fraud was involved (Enron) or a catastrophic incident (Pan Am bombing). Nokia was the world’s largest smartphone maker in 2010. Blackberry was number 2, Apple number 3, Samsung number 4. Nokia was four times the size of Samsung. By 2012, in two years, Nokia was out of the Top 5 and Samsung was number 1. This didn’t happen with Ford, Toyota, GM and Volkswagen. This didn’t happen with Airbus, Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas and Tupolev. This didn’t happen with HP, Dell, Compaq and Lenovo. When there is a change at the top of any other major industry, it is a slow process that is signaled well in advance and the number two becomes the new leader and the past leader only falls to number 2, etc. But mobile is literally the giant industry of the greatest risk. Risk to fail, but also risk to succeed - beyond one’s wildest dreams. You have to be bold, and you must have a clear strategic focus.

EVERYTHING ELSE IS SUBSERVIENT

 - Cloud: mostly through mobile
 - Social Media: going fully into mobile

 - Internet of Things (IoT): cannot live without mobile
 - Big Data: needs mobile

So you hear all the other pitches. Someone says you need to focus on the cloud, or on social media, or on big data, or on the internet of things. Or whatnot. There is one unifying theme to all those hot tech stories. Yes, that is only mobile. Cloud computing will be pretty worthless without mobile. Its like building an airplane without the wings. Maybe a comfortable tube to sit in but it isn’t goint to take you anywhere. Social media is already mostly mobile and going fully mobile, so say all its leaders starting with Facebook and Twitter. The Internet of Things will not be all mobile, but most of the connectivity across the ‘things’ will transit mobile part of the way if not all the way. The internet of things without mobile is just things. And Big Data. Having Big Data without mobile is like having a car without its gasoline (or diesel, or ok, electric car, without electricity). Whatever other big tech projects you have, mobile is integral to them or supersedes them (or both).

UNPRECEDENTED

Largest, And fastest. Also most versatile. And most complex. Also the most addictive. Only one used with all other media. Also fastest-growing, as well as most competitive. Plus its most volatile. Finally all other major tech trends are either subservient to, or superceded by.. mobile. Any ONE of those ten reasons alone, would justify you to increase your focus to mobile this year. But nothing in human history has been this pervasive nor this impactful. Not water viaducts, not the steam engine, not electricity, not the telegraph, not the telephone, not cars, not airplanes, not rockets, not the computer, not nuclear power and not the internet. Nothing has changed humankind as much as mobile has done in the past two decades - and we are not even at full speed yet. The best days of mobile are only now starting. Largest, fastest, most versatile and most complex. Most addictive and used with other media. Fastest-growing, most competitive and most volatile. And the other hot tech topics, Cloud Computing, Social Media, Internet of Things and Big Data - all depend on or will be replaced by.. mobile.

Nobody else explained all this to you, so thoroughly, comprehensively, and yet simply and powerfully. If this article turns out to be true, your life now changed and this is the one article that opened you eyes and changed literally everything. (You’re welcome.) So that was 2,500 of the most powerful words you've read in a long time, maybe ever. Now what? May I offer you 2,500 words more on 'what next'?

NOW YOU GET IT

- Understand
- Involve
- See
- Plan

So now your eyes have been opened. Now let me summarize your mission. You need four things. You need to understand, you need to involve, you need to see, and you need to plan. You, personally, have to understand. You do not yet understand. This blog was only your first real step to ‘fully’ understand. Congratulations. But its only a first step .If Mobile was so easy you could get it in 2,500 words, everybody would master mobile by now. No, you need to now study it. You will need to re-read this blog several times in the coming days, weeks and months. Its far too overwhelming to get it all in one read. So obviously bookmark this, and right now. Read it again - but gosh darn it, this is the roadmap to the rest of your life. READ IT FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE WITH TIME AND THOUGHT, this time. THINK as you read. TAKE NOTES. But thats not enough. This is only the teaser.

Your eyes have been opened but you yourself do not yet even know or understand. So you need to get the facts, numbers, case studies relating to mobile... for your industry. I cannot help you with that. I am not an expert on airlines or restaurants or banking or cars or apparel retail or cosmetics or beer or farming or fishing or forest management. Your industry already has some mobilistas and some are reporting the relevant numbers and case studies for you. That is where you need to go next, starting tomorrow. But today. Just take a pause. Your life has been shattered beyond recognition. Now let your mind take it in, go do whatever you do to relax, play golf, jog, swim, drive, read a fiction novel, whatever relaxes you. Don’t try to get more crammed in, today. Its too much. Let your subconscious get to grips with how totally all your plans were wrecked just now. You won’t be making rational decisions until that is back in balance. So yes, re-read this article once, end up there where this 4-point action plan starts. And then go think. Take the rest of the day off, relax, and let your mind absorb it. Sleep well. Tomorrow come back and re-read this article to ensure you haven’t been mistaken. And if tomorrow you still feel, your life has now changed, then seek the insights and real knowledge beyond this short article or ‘teaser’ if you will.

Then secondly, you have to get your team to also understand. Some of them will think they do. They have no idea. You now know, that they cannot know (except perhaps the one who led you here to this blog). Yet they will think they do. Its your biggest challenge, to open their eyes enough, that they see it as fully as you now see it. Unless they all read this article (and essentially memorize it) they will not be onboard on the journey you will lead. If they do not ‘get it’ about mobile, they will slow you down and cause friction on the journey. So your biggest challenge is to get them to read and believe this blog article. But once they have internalized it, hold onto your hat. Then its off to the moon, no its off to Mars, no; its off to Alfa Centauri.

Next, thirdly, you need to understand what comes next. Anyone bright enough can explain what HAS HAPPENED up to now. It takes a totally different level of competence to guide you into the future. You might want to consult first what the most accurate forecaster of the most complex industry, and fastest-growing industry, and most volatile industry, yes the most accurate forecaster of mobile has written. This is your bible to the immediate next few years: TomiAhonen Mobile Forecast 2014-2018

And finally, fourth, you will need a plan. At first it need not be very precise, you have to get going and into the right direction. Your plan must be flexible and seize emerging opportunities as they inevitably emerge. It must be relevant to your industry or organization or project. Your team will help when they’ve read this blog (and the Forecast). But don’t try to invent it all now. If you have the time, read. My book Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media could be a good intro volume if you enjoy traditional hardcover books (don’t worry its not too technical). I will list here a series of my blog articles that might also be of interest. But it depends on your focus area, you may be far better served by consulting the ‘top mobilista’ of your industry rather than some generalist like me. So if you’re in healthcare, read what David Doherty is writing. Or if you’re in banking, what Dave Birch is saying. Or if you’re in religion, read what Antoine RJ Wright preaches about mobile, etc. There is a mobilista for almost any industry by now.

If you are in a position to control a budget, then your best investment right now is to get professional guidance to get your staff up to speed the fastest. The assistance of a true expert now, at the start with your team, is of most utility. Later when your team has been at it for months or years, the value of such gurus is far less, while it can still be remarkable. Right now, if you possibly can afford it, get professional help. Remember, the most complex, fast-moving and volatile industry. Its far too easy to be led astray.

THE GURUS

There are tens of thousands who claim to know mobile. Many talk a good game. Most don’t know mobile even rudimentally enough to answer correctly HALF of the points I made in this short blog. In other words: buyer beware. There are thousands who have credentials that seem at least on paper to be good. Many are. Many more are not. There are hundreds who have joined me as authors. Some books are brilliant. Others are bullshit. You won’t yet be able to tell which is which because the industry moved so fast, that even the reviews on Amazon can be misleading. But there is a small class of supergurus who really know this industry and who tend to be known - and trusted - and quoted - by all the others. Who have lived this industry from before the advent of the ‘Jesusphone’ by Apple. Most of these are authors so their peers have read their thoughts and these are still standing while many others who wrote some silly book somewhere, have long since vanished into oblivion, banished from our industry as fools.

This is a starting point for you to consider when seeking true mobilista supergurus, indeed rockstars, who can guide you (in totally random order, I actually ran them through random number generator so I wouldn’t give bias), such as Paul Berney and Gerd Leonhard and Jonathan MacDonald and Peggy Anne Salz and Michael Becker and Chetan Sharma and Kei Shimada and Ajit Jaokar and Lars Cosh-Ishii and Russell Buckley and Jari Tammisto and Dan Appelquist and Kim Dushinski and Jouko Ahvenainen and Christian Lindholm and Voytek Siewierski and Madanmohan Rao and Martin Feldstein and Zahid Ghadiali and Helen Keegan and Milind Pathak and Antti Ohrling and Walter Adamson and Gary Schwartz and Ralph Simon and David Birch and Rory Sutherland and Peter Bruck and Tony Fish and Yomi Adegboye and Kerstin Trikalitis and Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald and Johan Ragnevad and Christopher Billich and Sami Makelainen and Olof Schybergson and Benjamin Joffe and David Wood and Dorothy Gordon and Mark Curtis and Dan Virtopeanu and Andreas Constantinou and Barbara Ballard and Bruce Burke and Martin Wilson and Caroline Lewko and Rohit Dadwal and Gibson Tang and Jan Chipchase and Martin Geddes and Andy Zain and Mark Bole and Paul Golding and Michael O’Farrell and Scott Seaborn and Andrew Grill and Rafe Blanford and Agustin Calvo and C Enrique Ortiz and Raimo van der Klein and of course many more that I now just forgot to mention. But from the above list you should find several good candidates who also specialize somewhat in the areas you work in, and who also are probably near you or can handle the major international languages that you may need if not English.

If you can find a slot of time in my calendar, even I can be brought to run a workshop or seminar or strategy session with your team - probably with one or two of the above gurus joining us. (I’m not cheap but I will come to wherever you are, if we can find the slot in my calendar. I’ve been to 112 countries and counting) (PS. If your company happens to sponsor Formula 1 or is involved in some way with James Bond movies, or NHL or world championship ice hockey.. then.. I might suddenly find extra room in my calendar even for new clients haha)

MY FOUR BLOGS FOR YOU

 - What is ‘mobile first’
 - What is coming in next few years
 - Why Big Data is most profitable part of mobile future
 - Digital Convergence and Mobile

Now if you want four LONG articles. These are typically well over 10,000 words in length or a full chapter in one of my hardcover books. I have four for you. I urge you to read them in this order (and I apologize, they do have considerable repetition as they are intended to be self-contained and weren’t designed to be read in a sequence, differing from say chapters in my books). They are so long, you should not read more than one per day.

Article 1 - What is Mobile First. Many talk about mobile first. But then they do dumb things under that intention, often led by clueless idiots who are themselves new to mobile. So listen to the man who wrote the first services and apps book to mobile, and who wrote the first business book of mobile, both published 14 years ago. Both bestsellers into multiple printings, both translated and both widely referenced by others. Both considered must-reads of their time. I am still here, Forbes ranks me the most influential expert in mobile. I was there, when the mobile data industry was born. I was mentored by the father of the mobile data industry, Matti Makkonen, inventor of the SMS text message. When I tell you what is Mobile First at least I do know what I am talking about. My article of what is Mobile First, is here.

Article 2 - What is Coming Next in Mobile. I have been providing statistics, analysis and forecasts for this industry from its birth. I have chaired numerous forecasting conferences for this industry. I am also the most accurate forecaster of mobile. All my major forecasts are made into the public domain and I always come back to review my past forecasts, to see if they came true and when they went wrong, why that happened. Very few of my peers bother to remind their audiences and customers how often they were wrong. I have never hid from any forecast and keep all published forecasts live on this blog, including all that went wrong. Past performance is no guarantee of future accuracy in forecasting, but for the past decade and half, I have been the most accurate forecaster of mobile, including totally current matters. I was the first published expert to suggest this will be the moment of ‘peak iPhone’. And did you notice how much that is gaining traction in tech stories now in late December and early January? I was literally the first to suggest this is the time. So with that, if you need a good map into the next few years, read my summary of whats coming, on this blog.

Article 3 - Big Data and Mobile. While mobile is the fastest-growing giant industry, as a consultant and analyst, I have always felt intellectually curious to discover the ‘best opportunity’ within this fastest industry. In other words, whats the pinnacle, the culmination point, the eye of the storm. Its been different things at different times and I’ve been reporting on those in the past like SMS text messaging, ringtones, MVNOs, ringback tones, social media, mobile money, and virtual goods (aka ‘in-app purchases’). Currently the most important element of mobile that no expert, project or team involved in mobile should ignore, is ‘Big Data’. I published the world’s first MEASUREMENT of the performance of a Big Data system powered by mobile, going against a legacy massive database about consumer info based on demographics and consumer surveys. I gave the lessons to both Big Data experts and yes, mobilistas. This is the ‘secret sauce’ that differentiates the merely rich from the millionaires, and the millionaires from the Billionaires. The sweet spot of ultimate mobile opportunity is ‘Big Data’ and you do not have to be physically a giant corporation to use ‘Big Data’. Its not the size. Its HOW the data is mined and used. A five office hairdresser saloon chain can use Big Data to devastating effect to boost its profitability and build incredible customer loyalty. But read the article and be amazed. Big Data and Mobile is here.

Article 4 - Digital Convergence and the Long-Term Future of Mobile. I led the world’s first fixed-mobile digital service bundle project twenty years ago. So I have been part of the digital convergence journey literally from its birth and I wrote the first book of a national digital convergence project, about the South Korean digital miracle, called Digital Korea (yet another of my bestsellers). Digital Convergence is a regular theme on this blog and on my Twitter feed. But I also was the first expert to catalog the full extent of the digital battle and how it converges to mobile. To see my latest thinking, on a view into the next decade and the one after that, read last my article of this four article set, which is about Digital Convergence.

TO ANY JOURNALISTS

Any journalists, bloggers, consultants, etc - feel free to quote anything from this blog.

ADDENDUM 1 (2 January 2016) - Ewan Spence over at Forbes referenced this article already, He quoted one paragraph from it and linked to this blog. Thank you Ewan! And any other journalists and bloggers out there, feel free to make your versions of this story, or add to this story, or quote from this blog.

ADDENDUM 2 (2 January 2015).David Doherty, at mHealthinsight.com wrote a summary also about this blog, but he created a great infographic, which added mobile heatlh related matters too, and selected highlights of this blog - including pictures! You may enjoy that as a variation of this blog. Thank you David! Here is Summary of Why Mobile in 2016 by David Doherty

SO WHO AM I

At this point, do you care? I know fully well, that as of January 1, 2016, nobody has written an article with all that I just told you. But ok, fair point. Why trust me? I wrote the first services and apps book for this mobile data industry, published 14 years ago. I also wrote the world’s first business book for this industry. Both books were global bestsellers, both went into multiple printings and were translated. Since then I’ve had a total of 12 books published (and several more coming) so it wasn’t a fluke. The all-time fastest-selling telecoms book was also written by me. But the true test is whether my thoughts had any merit. 140 books written by others have already quoted me. I doubt there are three other authors in mobile who have been quoted more than 100 times in other books, in this very young industry. So if there could be an ‘ultimate’ endorsement, I’d say it is that my thoughts have gotten into so many books by my peers. And Forbes measured me as the most influential expert in the mobile industry. Maybe that can settle any worries on whether this article is written on solid facts and decades of knowledge or if its idle ramblings of a forgotten blogger.

PS - Shortcut for the smartest fastest strategic minds: The TomiAhonen Mobile Forecast 2014-2018 is here.