Monday Memories: Charles Bristol, the metaverse bluesman who changed my career

Video: Toxic Menges

at Charles Bristol’s Metaverse Blues: An 87-Year-Old Bluesman Becomes an Avatar-Based Musician in Second Life (2009):

When Charles Bristol was born in 1921, electric guitars did not exist, slavery was still a living memory, and grandparents worked under the whip. But as fate would have it, Mr. Bristol will nevertheless watch a black man become president and, perhaps unexpectedly, he will see himself transformed into the Avatar. This allowed him to expand his decades-long music career into what is called the Metaverse.

Second Life becomes Mr. Bristol’s latest venue thanks to another blues musician, known internationally as Etherian Kamaboko, who lives near him in North Carolina.

A chance encounter with Mr. Bristol, who played blues, changed my career.

During my time Create a Second Life I was asked to speak on a book tour by a Los Angeles design group, and during sound check I casually asked to see what people do in Second Life for fun. I mentioned that many musicians performed live in SL and were randomly teleported into a seedy nightclub filled with dancing patrons.

And there CharlesEBristol Xi was performing in front of a large crowd who were delighted to hear him play, but hardly surprised that such a rare individual was there in the first place. And what really shocked me was this: until then I had no idea he was in SL, and now I just lucked out and met him.

I wondered who else was in there and how a relatively small virtual world could attract such rare people.

I tell the rest of Mr. Bristol’s Metaverse story at the end of my latest book.