Rocktober 4: BloombergRewind Rocking Out
Last night, both Bloomberg Rewind guests must have been feeling the pull of Rocktober because they both came up with great rock picks for host Matt Miller’s Song of the Day segment, in which he asks guests to pick a song that best sums up the mood of the market.
Greylock Capital CIO Hans Humes went grunge rock with Rooster, a 1993 song by Alice in Chains that guitarist Jerry Cantrell wrote about his father’s Vietnam War experiences. Cantrell’s father was nicknamed The Rooster as a child because of the way his hair stood up. Humes said he picked the song because the market is the rooster: you can throw all the bad news you want at it and it keeps going. Then in some show banter, they also decided the pick could be appropriate because of Alice In Chains’ well documented heroin problems could also mean that the market is just a heroin (aka stimulus) junkie.
Philadelphia Trust CEO Michael Crofton went psychedelic rock with The End, a 1966 song by The Doors that Jim Morrison wrote about breaking up with his girlfriend of the time. In 1969, two years before his death at age 27, Morrison offered this more ethereal explanation of its origin:
Everytime I hear that song, it means something else to me. It started out as a simple good-bye song. Probably just to a girl, but I see how it could be a goodbye to a kind of childhood. I really don’t know. I think it’s sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be.
Crofton said he picked this song because “this nonsense has to end and markets will return to reality after the election and we need to get the market back to a sustainable growth path.”
Both songs embedded above and linked below.
And for anyone wondering why I write about music on a housing blog, this piece I wrote in July explains why.
In it, I talk about Bloomberg’s Song of The Day segment, and I’m proud to say it earned me a special shout out by Matt Miller on his show. Here’s the clip (scroll to 40:10) of Matt and guests discussing the whole process of picking market songs, with my piece as the backdrop. A fun highlight for me this year.
So cheers once again to Matt for that and for keeping his BloombergRewind guests sharp on their music picks.
If you don’t already, you need to watch Matt’s nightly market recap/preview show at 5:00 p.m. Pacific. And hope you check back into The 31 Days of Rocktober tomorrow…
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Reference:
– Rooster – Alice In Chains (youtube)
– The End – The Doors (youtube)
– Why Matt Miller’s Song of the Day on Bloomberg Is So Addictive
– Follow Bloomberg’s Matt Miller on Twitter