Beautiful Teams

"You Realists Can Stay the Hell Out of Our Office!"

I can easily say that my fondest memories of MP3.com stem from sharing an office with David and GK. For starters, we decided that rather than have someone sit with their back facing the window, all three of us would set up our desks adjacent to each other so that two of us were sitting perpendicular to the window—just look 90 degrees and you have a view—and the third facing toward the window, forming three sides of a square with the window as the fourth and our jungle arrangement of plants in the center. Next, we brought in musical instruments—GK brought a guitar, bass, and didgeridoo, Dave brought a guitar amp, and I brought my bass amp, and, well, we were wired, instruments hanging from hooks on the wall, just calling out to you anytime you had coder's block and needed a few to get your neurons to fire around the problem instead of slamming your head against the wall.

A completely unintended consequence of this was due to the large number of amazing musicians who worked at MP3.com. I can still remember the first time Rattlesnake Ray Matthews, currently a web designer, walked into our office and, without saying a word, walked past where GK and I were sitting, picked the guitar off the wall, plugged in, and let loose with this amazing blues lick for something like two minutes before unplugging, hanging up the guitar, and leaving. Un. Fucking. Believable. I don't think any of us had even known that he could play before that. This ...