Bruce Nazarian – The Digital Guy

Originally Posted on February 13, 2011 by the guy who originally asked the questions - Brent Logan, aka Brent Black
You should ask him the real reason he took it down from his wesite... not the reason he posted... 

Photo from Wikipedia.

Bruce Nazarian – The Digital Guy.

Never at a loss for words or an opinion; Nazarian has a most interesting background and after a few Facebook conversations agreed to field a few questions for us.

Briefly, Bruce is a funk and rock music producer; former guitarist with Brownsville Station and has a killer website www.thedigitalguy.com and www.digitalguy.net broadcasting into over nine million homes worldwide.

To get started I asked Bruce; ” How in the world did the “Digital Guy” come to pass?

If you mean the nickname, it grew from my older nickname, “the DVD Guy”
I started as a DVD consultant very early on in the life of DVD (1999),
and that moniker just stuck – later on, I  changed it to The Digital Guy
when I finally realized that I had spent nearly my entire musical career
at the intersection of art and technology – and it just “fit” 

I was a digital musician BEFORE there was MIDI!

I went on to ask Bruce about the budget cuts that are on the horizon for the
National Endowment of the Arts in an attempt to reign in government
spending and spread the responsibility across the board.

I think budget cuts with respect to the arts are a huge mistake. it’s one of the reasons I created The Digital Guy Foundation -
to find private financing to pick up the slack in exposing kids to the arts – mostly music, but all the arts – the arts are an
essential component in the development of a well-rounded human being, not just a programmer, math wizard, or game freak.

Bruce and I had previously discussed the whole “smooth jazz” label – a help or hinderance in regards to what most of us consider a dead format so I asked him to share:

I’m neutral on it – I don’t think a label harms nor helps, other than to perhaps identify what KIND of Jazz it is…
Frankly, to me there are only two kinds of music – GREAT, and the other kind – stuff I won’t play on my radio show, or in life as a musician

Another topic we had hit on previously are the slacking sales of Compact Discs since many feel they are not going to return; have we truly “flipped” digital?

Doubtful on CD sales - Our society places a premium on portability,
which is why the whole MP3 revolution caught the CE industry
a little unaware – given the choice between an iPod or
a Super Audio Cd player, which would YOU choose?
Exactly.. Q.E.D.

To go a bit further I asked Bruce if our society was going for
“immediate gratification” more so than a real admiration or following of the artists…

only until kids grow up, then they appreciate artists instead of beats

Finally – Where is our digital future heading?

THERE’s the 64,000 dollar question -
Many say “the Cloud” but I think it may be a combination of local storage and cloud services…
hard to say – everyone wants to know the right answer, and there really isn’t one yet…
But you notice that Apple isn’t really big on DVD or Blu-ray any more - it’s all “create it, edit it, publish it on the web”
THAT should tell you something!

Bruce’s background, especially with technology, is extensive and
both his digital guy web site and radio show’s are a must if you enjoy
jazz and keeping up with the latest information!

Thanks Bruce!

Please check out the web sites I listed;