“I wanna dance with somebody who loves me”: the lyrics on this record suggest vulnerability, but who are they kidding? It’s pure titanium, stadium-ready dance music backing a singer on juggernaut form. I’ve talked a lot in the 80s entries about how bigness for its own sake often misfires as a strategy but if you can do enormity well then you’re laughing. And thanks to Whitney this track pulls it off – the producers can conjure up as much space and scale and decoration as they like and throw it at her in the knowledge her voice can rise above it.

So the record can start with one of the great kick-off-your-heels-and-dance promises, that electro stutter and revved-up blurt of synth trumpet, and Houston totally delivers on it. Foghorn when she wants to be, sweet and strong when she needs to be: the way she sugars then bites off that long “heeeeeeeeeeea-t” mid song just the peak of a tremendous performance. It’s all so strong it can be somewhat bludgeoning, but luckily there’s laughter in it too – that husky chorus of galley slaves chanting “DANCE. DANCE.”, encouraging Whitney through the delirious coda. It’s a shame that we didn’t often hear this kind of delighted fierceness from Whitney after “I Wanna Dance” – ballads were her great showboating strength and this kind of party belter is a style she seemed happy to let others run with.

THE HACKNEY PODCAST: 16

*It was MA research for my dissertation on plays based on films. And my conclusion in this case was IT WAS A BAD IDEA! But at least I got to look at the theatre.

Count Magnus is yet another of James’s second hand tales, this time our narrator is telling the tale of Mr Wraxall, a learned but potentially slippery writer of travel books. As is often the case James is comfortable with having his leads as academics, researchers or authors, but you get the feeling that Wraxall is seen in a less favourable light than Alberic’s Dennistoun. Wraxall is nearly a fellow of Brasenose, and yet his only published work seems to be of his travels in Brittany. The almost imperceptible sneer in the text about Wraxall’s achievements has the effect of making us care slightly less for him – useful if he is going to come a cropper later in the tales. And even Wraxall’s version of the exotic seems a touch more mundane than Dennistoun’s trip to France. The heathens here are Scandinavian’s. Sweden in particular, which gives the story enough exoticism whilst also imposing a set of values around the hero – here the cold, crisp landscape and helpful people hides something more sinister.

Wraxall goes to research his book, comes across yet another one of Europe’s endless creepy churches, this time with a mausoleum containing the count. A spooky tale within a tale about the diabolical nature of the Count’s life and we are set up for repetition, deviation and in the end someone being frightened to death. Wraxall appears to summon up not just Count Magnus but potentially his whole satanic entourage, and by the time the party returns to England, Wraxall has taken his life. But then what has been summoned up is significantly scarier than the ghostly hand of Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook. Or so we are led to believe because this is where James appears to invent the entire career of Lovecraft.

The problem with monsters and unspeakable evils in literature is that the more that is written and described, the less they can scare. Fear of the unknown is most of what this kind of tale trades on, the more described the easier it is to rationalise. The traditional Gothic ghost story would often be quite happy to talk about its evil, think of how much we know about Dracula by the time Bram Stoker gets him to London. James understands that the more you know, the less scary it is. But this causes a problem for latter points of a tale. The monster has to have some sort of effect, has to attack the hero somehow, but in doing so it shows its hand and thus becomes underwhelming. If there is a way of maintaining the mystique, without neutralising the evil, well that would be the secret. It strikes me that James up to this point had figured out part of this via the second hand nature of many of his tales. By having his stories narrated via the interpretation of someone elses papers there is a get out around the time of what could be called the attack. If the protagonist is killed, they are unable to write about the moments of death, how they died and potentially how they were dispatched by the monster. Just a flip back to our storyteller matter-of-factly telling us “he was found dead, and there was an inquest; and the jury that viewed his body fainted, seven of ‘em did, and none of ‘em would speak to what they see, and the verdict was visitation of God”. It strikes me that this kind of ghost story is the only time when tell not show seems to be the rule of order.

This came to mind when watching Paranormal Activity last night, the ultra-low budget horror which trades on its verisimilitude. A couple of key quotes of James of what he believes a decent ghost story requires are central to what makes Paranormal Activity work.
“Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo.… Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage.”
There is nothing more normal than a suburban house and suburban couple. And to James, there would have been nothing more normal than scholarly research, or fieldwork. Its a device to take Wraxall out of his comfort zone so that the second key point can be made:
“Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story.”
This is certainly the case in Paranormal Activity – a film which slowly deals its hand to its terrific conclusion. Interestingly whilst I didn’t find it all that scary, much like James, I can see how it works and enjoy the chills even if they don’t chill me. And of course part of this comes from its handheld cheapness, its subtle crescendo and then its unseen, unknown horror.

The unseeable, unknowable, unspeakable horrors is also what Lovecraft’s Cthuluan hordes trades on – that and a horror so unspeakable it drives the protagonist into madness. This happens here in Count Magnus when the Count and his party have materialised. We get a few descriptions of these constant companion to Wraxall, but none really explain the dread he has of them. But then this has already been set-up by the building blocks of the tale. There are two key developments as the story winds on that leads us to the final outcome.
a) The breach of Count Magnus’s sarcophogus
b) the tale of the Black Pilgrimage and the landlord grandfather.

Both of these show an escalation in how M R James tries to scare us. As opposed to the general creepiness of the church in Alberic, we have a crypt, sarcophagus with a bizarre carving where James is going for as much shock value as possible.
“The only part of the form which projected from that shelter was not shaped like any hand or arm. Mr Wraxall compares it to the tentacle of a devil-fish”
Tentacles! There is something remarkably reductive in describing the fiend as being like a devil-fish, if you consider how the devil-fish was named. And yet just by throwing that in and the strange form of a fiend it is clear that James wants us to be in no two minds about the evil of the Count. We are post Count Dracula here, so we are probably well disposed to counts being evil anyway. And that is before the fairytale like repetition of the three locks dropping off of the sarcophagus. Three knocks on the doors, five Candymen in the mirror, repetition drives it home and when Wraxall turns up in the crypt for the third time we all know what is going to happen. Of course James does not really know what to do about the opening of the coffin and just gets Wraxall to scarper to be pursued by unspeakable horror. Probably better off than a smackdown with a dusty old zombie corpse that even stuffy Wraxall could win.

The tale of the landlord grandfather and the Black Pilgrimage is really a case of James having his cake and eating it. He gets to slip an old school folk horror tale within his more sophisticated tale and laugh at superstition. The sucking of flesh off the bones is now a standard horror (and even kids film) trope. Premature aging, going pale, fainting, the walking dead all tied with a pilgrimage that hasn’t exactly got a subtle name. The Black Pilgrimage needs little explanation, because we know Count Magnus is a bad ‘un and ITS CALLED THE BLACK PILGRIMAGE. In unreconstructed days with less thought of the meaning of this word, this is just more black magic, black cats and the devil is involved (and indeed sends a minion back).

Count Magnus is a good tale specifically because it does throw the old and new at us. Wraxall is a classic M R James hero, but for once we seem to have a fully fledged villain too. It is a bit of a pity that the ending relies so much on a fade out, another mysterious death left for us to mull over (though the story has no doubt about what was responsible for the death). But it is also the beginning of a kind of end for these kind of stories .A fiendish tentacle can only become more tentacles, glowing eyes, smells of sulphur. The mysterious presence of the walking dead can only become less mysterious. Once you start showing, you have to keep showing. I am interested to find out if M R James does follow this line or whether he retreats to the subtle cosier air of the previous stories. He may have locked himself on course, but the locks can always drop off, one by one, by themselves. A tencaled push will help though.

Graun journalist spends all day reading nme.com and fails to really read the glastowatch story she links to which shows a screencap from metcheck when it said that SEVERAL MILES of rain would fall per day, temperatures would top 2000°C and the wind would be over 1000mph….

Also Science dude in the original Times story is relatively reserved, basically there’s this weather pattern that happens kind of at the end of June, but really isn’t that predictable and it’s not really a real monsoon, really…

The accuweather.com forecast will DO ME FINE to be honest (it currently says no rain after monday night, overcast but reasonably warm all weekend)

It has been tested on non-researchers, viz my wife and in-laws, all of whom kindly said it was interesting and even comprehensible.

This post is my contribution to the “Cluetrain Plus Ten” project, in which 95 bloggers provide commentary on each of the 95 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto. I chose Thesis 15, which runs as follows:

As it happens, I was working on a brochure when I first read The Cluetrain Manifesto. I’d already realised that being “the internet guy” in a curious but not tech-savvy department gave me certain leeway to break from my duties. The Manifesto required a longer break than I generally risked, but it was worth it.

The brochure languished. I started proselytising. Then I got a different job, started my own blog and online community, and spent a few years grappling with the grubby reality of conversation online. I forgot the Cluetrain Manifesto, but when I heard about this project I jumped at the chance to revisit it. So – Thesis 15: let’s go!

1. I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris

“Talleyrand soon perceived that power struggles would no longer take place on a chessboard where one move followed the other with ceremonial slowness, but within a stream far stronger than everything it swept along.” – Roberto Calasso, The Ruin Of Kasch

“The 18th century French court”: this is a curiously specific comparison for a business or marketing manifesto to make. It also turns out to be a very rich one. It may be that the Cluetrainers just picked it because it’s loaded with age and fustiness and, well, Frenchness, but if so they got very lucky.

Because the 18th Century in France is famous as the “Age Of Conversation”. Paris and its surrounding estates were home to a series of glittering salons – generally centred on well-born ladies who would invite guests from literary, cultural, political and aristocratic circles to come and talk. The salons were characterised not just by their dedication to conversation and the prominence of women, but by a relative lack of hierarchy.

What was the relationship of salon to court? The court, of course, was the epitome of hierarchy, a pyramid of deference whose apex was an absolute monarch in the shape of one Louis or other. Communication up and down this pyramid may well have been rigid, difficult to initiate and highly ritualised – and this is the sort of thing the Cluetrain Manifesto is reaching for with its metaphor.

2. Time To Hear (Who’s Listening)

But of course that’s only half the story. Within any institution conversation occurs naturally as well as officially, as the Cluetrainers recognised. Every company contains what the blogger Rands calls “the Pond” – the pool of ambient, unrecorded but essential information that on-site workers can tap into but remote workers find hard to access. The same applies at court: however regimented a court is, you find out a hell of a lot more being there than not.

(There’s a reason so many of the great classical writers – like Ovid and Thucydides – were exiles from the centres of power: the ancient world’s “remote workers”, cut off from the Pond, they had to rely on the written word as an information vector so their writing became extraordinarily nuanced and detailed.)

So in the 18th century opposition of court and salon you have an early model of the two conversations the Cluetrain Manifesto outlines: the one happening within the organisation, and the one happening outside it, separated by a wall of convention the Manifesto sought to tear down. Court is where a lot of the useful information happens, but its surface doesn’t reflect that – you have to live in the Pond to access and understand it. The Salon, meanwhile, raises conversation to an operating principle, but who’s listening?

The question is, how opposed were these institutions? This is the subject of some controversy among historians, which this Wikipedia entry nicely summarises. Basically, one argument is that the salon model created an idea of a literary and cultural “public space” which didn’t exist before the 17th century. The other says that the salons were far more closely tied to the court – they were often founded by aristocratic women, after all, and some accounts suggest they largely talked about court politics.

This historical disagreement may not seem to have much to do with 21st century business. But one of the ways historians argue that the conversational salons drew on the closed court is in terms of language – which brings us right back to Thesis 15.

3. Perverted By Language

The words the salons used to describe their ethos – politeness, honesty, civility – are self-consciously courtly. This is because the salon enjoyed a dual role vis-à-vis the court. It was a zone of freedom and opposition to court life and hierarchy, but also an alternative, a court-in-exile waiting for its chance to inherit and reform the institutions whose style it sometimes aped. It’s similar to the uneasy relationship through the 00s between the blogosphere and “mainstream media”: a mix of contempt, half-forgotten admiration, envy and impatience.

The tenets of the salons are also strikingly similar to the stock advice offered to businesses engaging with social media: be authentic, be transparent, always be polite. And so I wonder if the relationship between the new marketing and the old business isn’t like the relationship between the salons and the court.

What’s happening isn’t as simple as business learning to be informal. At the same time as the idea of engagement, of re-establishing personal connections, filters through to business, so the would-be inheritors of business – the self-described mavens and connectors who throng the salons of web 2.0 – themselves adopt some of its airs and graces. The bullet-pointed, Digg-optimised language of marketing blogs; the vogue for “personal branding”; initiatives like Seth Godin’s “Alt-MBA” – these things are pure salon formalism. Rather than the revolution in language predicted by Thesis 15 we’ve arrived in a kind of hybrid zone where a stilted, aphoristic faux-informality predominates and Tweets and blog posts read like business books in waiting.

4. The Sound Of The Crowd

So business – and marketers – still ain’t speaking human. This is a shame, if only because the Cluetrain Manifesto takes such obvious joy in its own impish language (even though the gonzo, post-beatnik style it’s aspiring to is as much a product of a time, place and society as anything heard at Versailles). But the Manifesto also bears some of the blame, because of how easily its central metaphor – “markets are conversations” – slipped down.

“Conversation” has become a cliché at best, a fetish at worst. I’m not suggesting another word would do better, but this one has significant problems. Like “community”, “conversation” has certain overtones of amity, civility, a willingness to seek a resolution or work together. In the “Markets Are Conversations” chapter of the Cluetrain Manifesto book, the writers present a stirring picture of the original markets, in which men would look one another in the eye and honestly discuss the merits of goods on sale.

This is certainly how a lot of people – me included! – would like conversations to work, but markets were also places where you might fight, flirt, steal or be stolen from, get a cudgel on the head and your purse cut, rabble rouse, accuse and make demands. None of which stopped markets working, but they weren’t pre-lapsarian utopias of fair debate and exchange. Similarly, ‘conversations’ online in the last few weeks have involved angry hashtag swarms, pandemic panics, viral videos of rogue employees and a battle between a TV station and a TV star to see who can raise the biggest online crowd. Just another couple of weeks on the Internet, really.

As The Cluetrain Manifesto hits 10, the main question I’d ask of it is “how do you have a conversation with a howling mob?” – or more prosaically, “do conversations scale in a realtime web?” When we hold up the 18th Century French Court to ridicule, it’s worth remembering what happened to it. And those well-to-do thinkers gathering in the salons to preach the gospel of conversation? When the revolution came, it wasn’t much to their liking either.

(If you liked this post, you might want to look at my market research/social media blog, Blackbeard Blog. Most of its entries are shorter than this, too!)

For some reason I keep getting suckered into clicking through tinyURLs to things like this old Mashable piece, in which someone lists their reasons for NOT following people on Twitter and then all the comments crew slap each other on the back for realising that Twitter is like “a business networking event”. Since business networking events are some of the grimmest and most insincere occasions on earth it seems odd to want to recreate that vibe online without even a complimentary vol au vent, but each to their own.

Reading it though I thought some positivity was needed. So here are the reasons why I would follow back a complete stranger on Twitter. Of course I should point out that there’s no reason said stranger would follow me in the first place: beardy blokes working in social media are no scarce resource online! But in the event that a slip of the finger lands @tomewing on your list here’s what I’m looking for.

1. AN AMUSING ICON: Or at least something that isn’t passport photo meets nervous grin. Ideally it’ll be a kind of visual signature that makes you stand out amongst the rows of drab mugshots in my ever-unfurling tweetdeck.

2. STUFF I DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW: Doesn’t have to be about my job. It could be a fact about a 13th century Antipope for all I care. Far better someone who can make me interested in something I didn’t know I could be, than someone retweeting orthodox opinion on stuff I spend half my day thinking about.

3. AN INTEREST IN MORE THAN ONE THING: Parliamentarians used to call it a “hinterland” – the stuff you do when you’re not on the job. Chances are if you can be engaging about the rest of your life you’ll be interesting about the professional stuff too.

4. A MANAGEABLE FOLLOWS LIST: This is purely selfish – if you follow more than, say, 1000 people, what are the chances you’ll give a monkeys what I have to say?

5. YOU’RE HUMAN: Obviously it’s easy to spot Russian Spambot Hotties but there are more subtle pointers to your being a replicant: for instance, one dead giveaway is if you use a cliche like “passionate” in your bio to describe your job. Ah, I know, you think it makes you sound more human, but that’s because – yr a lizard! I can see it in your flickering green eyes.

You don’t have to tick all these boxes – and even if you tick none of them I might follow you anyway. And who cares if I do or don’t – I’m a nobody and Twitter is a cocktail party for passionate entrepreneurial experts who are going places! Yeah! No, sorry, I meant: there’s no right or wrong way to use the service and Twitter is a rainbow flower gathering full of sharing and conversation. Phew – glad we got that sorted out!

I’ve been really enjoying writing for it lately, and I think it’s got rather good. I try to do stuff that’s interesting whether or not you’re in the marketing loop. Some posts, I admit, are craven attempts to write in the punchily stupid style favoured by the modern business dude, but some of them I’m pleased with. Here’s a little digest of the best recent Blackbeard stuff:

- Humanists and determinists battle for the soul of research.
- The Twitterphant in the room
- The “Bulworth Effect” and the limits of representativeness.
- What we used to believe vs what we now believe about teh internets (this is part of a series called “Digital Colonists”)

I’m putting on a black American headliner, who’s absolutely terrific that’s going to appeal to those people.

so if you are “those people” i’m sure you’ll have a lovely time. Speculation is RIFE about who this person might be, from Little Stevie Wonder to Natalie Cole, but we can EXCLUSIVELY reveal that one major star has, in fact, attended Glastonbury previously, although he did encounter a few challenges or, some might say, “problems”, which we list for you below:

· Jay-Z’s gold chain has fallen off in the mud in front of a portaloo.
· Jay-Z would like some real ale but it’s a 20 minute walk to the workers beer tent by the acoustic stage and by the time he gets there Nas will be doing his acoustic set and might diss him on stage.
· Jay-Z has tripped over a guyrope.
· Jay-Z has forgotten to bring a tin opener
· Jay-Z has camped next to a group of young people who’ve kept him up all night with their n1tr0us-related antics
· Jay-Z can’t decide whether to see Billy Bragg on the acoustical stage or Stewart Lee in the comedy tent
· Jay-Z has a bit of a dicky tummy from eating a dodgy spring roll
· Nas has stolen Jay-Z’s wellies
· Jay-Z is unable to pitch his tent anywhere other than right next to the New Bands tent.
· Jay-Z has been queuing for a cashpoint for 25mins now and is only half way down the queue and is in desperate need of a wee.
· Jay-Z’s mobile phone battery is dead and he’s not sure where is friends are and the only alternative is standing around vainly near the Other Stage mixing desk while Mika is playing.
· Jay-Z has forgotten the words to “Ticket To Wine”
· The bottom bit has come off of Jay-Z’s dadstool.
· Jay-Z has just run into his ex’s new other half who is really nasty to him, and he has to go back to his tent for a cry
· Jay-Z is relying on Twitter to meet up with his friends.
· Jay-Z can’t decide if it is worse to have soaking wet legs or risk Nas seeing him wear his sensible waterproof trousers.
· Jay-Z’s Dad stool has a bent leg.
· Jay-Z has been waiting for the coach for four hours in the rain when the single person in charge of all of the London lines gives an ambiguous instruction, and the already tentative queue collapses altogether and turns into an angry scrum.
· Jay-Z has just finished his second two litre bottle of perry

the “what are Jay-Z’s 99 problems?” game was invented by several of your FT regulars at a delightful boutique festival we attended last summer, and is an hilarious way to spend the rest of your life an hour or two, please feel free to add more glastonbury-related problems in the comments box

Simon Reynolds’ homepage: love the back-to-98 aesthetic. He’s still going, of course.
Tangents: “They believe in a passionate, personal version of Pop where we sometimes prefer to bow down to the Top 40, but they also believe in great music writing and the fanzine ethos.” – closed its doors after ten years (!) writing mostly about indiepop. Very fondly remembered.
Dancing About Architecture: “A more ‘rockist’ version of Freaky Trigger” – frozen in 2001, very angry about the Strokes. I’m a bit amazed they’ve kept the homepage up.
Pitchfork: “inasmuch as there is a collective Pitchfork mindset, it leans towards ambitious, overcooked Statement Albums” – Well said!!
The War Against Silence: “tastes are pretty much the opposite of mine” – well yeah. TWAS finished with #500 though updates irregularly with year-end polls: Glenn M.’s dense columns married the personal and the musical more intimately and honestly than pretty much anyone’s, and sometimes I thought he was bonkers – he feels a very ‘old internet’ figure, sadly – no side or snark to him.

Moving into the actual blogs:

Josh Blog: still going, I’m pleased to say. Mostly shorter entries now. Good explanatory post here. ‘Often cited’ because he is the grandfather of all!
Plasticbag: “even the odd bout of graceless linkmania done amusingly” – still going. Looks now to have a media/2.0 focus. As you might expect, father of UK blogging etc. Boy done good.
Misfit City: “eloquently complex writing and an avant/prog musical agenda”. I don’t remember this at all. “New home” link leads to a dead site :(
The Horse: “a caustic mock news page and some excellent film reviews” – now an ad for a web hosting site.
Surface Vs Depth: Gareth from ILX’s page, now a big picture of a post-industrial English landscape.
Elidor: efforts to look at music in a social, historical and fresh context – Robin Carmody’s first website – he is still active on LJ and the Elidor archives remain at the link.
Linkmachinego: “a no-nonsense link blog” – still going, still looking and reading precisely the same as it did in 2000.
Prolific: Dutch (?) weblog, in English. Still going, still very similar in outlook and interests. It’s interesting that so many of the really old-school bloggers (pre-Blogger.com and early users of that site) are still blogging or at least net-active. I was expecting to find more dead links than I have.
Pearls That Are His Eyes: Still going! Though now here. I am really delighted by this, partly because I never reviewed or responded to the mixtape she made me (at my request no less!). Sorry! I like Spoon now!

“I wasn’t yet aware of the dread stranglehold indie rock has on web music writing…”

Kempa.com: still up, infrequently updated but obviously still involved in music. Nice and clean looking as ever!
Eurorance: still going! I honestly think that Euroranch might have been the first MP3 blog. It’s now a bit more indie than it used to be, or maybe everything is.
Steal This Blog: ended in 2003 with an imprecation about Hooverphonic records. Fred S may still be blogging out there somewhere…?
Skykicking!: “the best dance music reviewer I know online” Tim is obviously still an active critic and I saw him in London a couple of months ago – latest web address I can find for the blog is
Catherine’s Pita: now doing the same thing but looking unbelievably swanky at catherinespita.com.
Jejune: “breezy and lively” – and still going!
Splendid: stopped in 2005, on the same day as NYLPM in fact.
Us Against Them: “does what a proper indie rock weblog ought to do, spreading the word and ruffling some feathers in the process” – dead link.
http://spoonbender.org/amplified/: Amplified to Rock, the first site I saw using the Greenspun software, is now a link to a lame porn search engine.

“A vow I’d taken when I started blogging was “no personal writing, no personal sites”

maura dot com: still going, of course! Now a real actual tastemaker at Idolator, which is awesome and deserved.
notsosoft.com: “The lynchpin of UK blogging” – Not So Soft is now a search engine offering Ani Di Franco ringtones.
Lukelog: “infectiously likeable with a fearsome update rate” still up, last upate in May 2007.

The “Indie Zineblog Wars”:

Wisdom: “cantankerous, funny” – and now nothing but a huge picture of a Yeti!
Indieshite – dead link. Will the full story ever be told?!
Popmatters: surviving and presumably thriving. As crammed looking as ever.
Drawer B: now primarily a blog, reviews and MP3s, cursory glance suggests the artier end of indie.
Monosyllabic: “literate Pitchfork spinoff” – now just an index page.
Motion: “What if The Wire were good?” – dead link, so the question must go unanswered.
Rockcritics.com: now in blog format, Scott Woods’ continuing exploration of the meta which come to think of it has served as a handy link between the old print media criticism and its online inheritors.
Popjustice.com: you know about this one I think!

2000 – The First Summer Of Blog:

Bitch: still up (kind of amazed Fortunecity is still going), last entry November 2000 though. Snarky sleb comment before its time.
Kerplink: last update 2002, about Cornershop. This incidentally was the “Sophie” who contributed to FT a couple of times – someone was asking me about this a month or two ago having found a post of hers.
http://steakandwhiskey.com: now a search engine for marinades.
April’s Pita – apes.pitas.com (half of steakandwhiskey) now redirects to a little internet store selling badges and silkscreens! Hurrah for dotcom entrepreneurialism! I can’t remember anything about April’s blog but my original write up sez “pop fanzine energy and spark” so this is good to see.
Millie’s Pita: the other half of steakandwhiskey – how come dead pitas are so much more stylish than other dead blogs?
Metascene: “an freewheeling supply of original links and often hilarious commentary” – redirects to a kind of half-arsed attempt to start a sex blog.
Geegaw: still going, still the same charm, maybe a little more open than it used to be (I certainly don’t remember Geegaw having a *name*!). Very pleased to see.
The Laboratorium: still going – reviews, internet culture, law, commentary. Looks very good.
http://www.psn.net/~blue/scrubbles.html: Scrubbles – now a search engine for PS2s. Shame as this was one of the better-designed blogs I used to read.

This section could be called “Killed By ILX”:

http://www.empty.org/review/index.html: In Review – Sterling Clover and Jimmy The Mod’s old domain, now another search engine.
Ra Ra Ra: Nicky D’s short-lived blog, last update mid-2001.
Sink: absorbed into FT, kind of.
http://members.fortunecity.com/bitchcakes/: Bitchcakes – Ally K’s blog, now a PC hosting ad.

“the arrival of Blogspot has doubtless been greeted with horror by people who consider weblogging a debasement of the internet self-expression dream…”

Lapels And Lollypops: last updated November 2000 – funny Aussie blog.
Starry Vs The Baddies: “flamboyant, funny and fizzy” – dead link. Whatever happened to her eh?
Bloglet – dead link, though I know Catherine was still around as part of the extended Barbelith message board ‘scene’ cos I saw her at a club night once!
Hellsbelle – dead link. I can remember nothing at all about this!
Wherever You Are – dead link.

And that’s it. What to possibly conclude? Probably nothing much – I hope all the people whose links are dead are, erm, not themselves dead, and I’m pretty heartened by how many of the blog dudez who plugged away at it early on are still doing so (if only because it makes me feel less odd) – also how some of the indie people have stayed involved in good old indie rock. I will try to actually migrate some of these over to current sidebars. I could cut and paste my original thoughts from 2000 but they just said “blogs r graet yay”. And they are too.

But he is better than Russell Grant. Who was number 8 in the top 25 Grants. Beaten by the Sea Grant of North Carolina, the Grant of Executive Clemency and of course the eventual winner: A generous Arts Council Grant.

And lo, there WAS such a brand – The Officers Club! Except I never thought a lot of its clothes were any good, but hey, this is branding we’re talking about.

The Officers Club brand was extremely simple to understand – SEVENTY PERCENT OFF EVERYTHING. Off what? Some specious ‘full price’ which supposedly was being charged at “at least six” retail outlets elsewhere in the UK. Needless to say, nobody has ever seen a full-price Officers Club shop, and nobody would ever buy from such an establishment anyway. But nonetheless there’s something winning about such a naked grab for attention on a price basis – a refreshing shamelessness no matter how fictional the reductions might or might not be. It’s a way of saying “this stuff is really cheap” without drawing attention to the cheapness, which in the clothing market means drawing attention to i. how quickly it falls apart ii. the undoubted sweatshop practices required to drive prices down. The idea that Officers Club gear is smart stuff that’s just been reduced is a transparent figleaf to the conscience.

The actual clothes Officers Club sold* were….well, they were OK. They were better than Asda George, about as good as Tesco. Until I got too fat for it I had a bottle-green shirt from there which was one of the cosiest things I owned. Their boxer shorts and socks weren’t exactly comfortable but they were pretty solidly made and rarely prone to holes or tears. I never risked the suits or anything ‘high-end’. Their cheap T-Shirts had particularly rubbish logos (serious fashion qn: why do plain T-Shirts, polo shirts etc. without a pattern cost more than ones with a crap pattern? They can’t be more expensive to make, right?). But in the end the product wasn’t the thing – it was the warm glow of satisfaction you got from seeing your fashion-illiteracy pandered to, and the illusion of a bargain.

*I say “sold” because the Officers Club, online at least, is undergoing a rebrand – it is now O Club, aiming at yer urban youth by the looks of the website. This is a bold but foolish move – even though it was never exactly clear which Officers were meant to be involved with the Officers Club the name had a certain shabby snootiness, unlike O Club, which sounds like a slapdash saturday morning kids show.

If it is illegal for a prison officer to strike then one assumes said prison officer will be arrested (or perhaps his Union leaders). OK, this is going back to the dark ages of labour relations, but it is not unheard of someone wanting to risk imprisonment for belief in their cause. But hold on. Imprisonment? Where? In prison. Imagine how well enforced (and indeed how strict) any serving prison officer would be on another prison officer incarcerated for fighting for the rights and pay of serving prison officers. Same with police officers. Who arrests the police officer who strikes on behalf of his fellow officers.

If you’re expecting society to continue on the goodwill of union scabs, and indeed an entire prison run by scabs, then I fear the crumblin’ fabric is already riddled with cracks.

The K is for its founder, Phillip Kives. The Tel was for Television. Hence me showing you the logo where you often saw it.

K-Tel was not JUST a record label. It also made some “handy” gadgets which we never knew we could live without. They still do: look at the Clever Cutter here which makes “Food preparation easier, quicker and safer with less mess”. How does it do this? Well they appear to have made a pair of scissors with one blade and one chopping board side. Its a mental idea which was probably invented in a shed by someone who never does any cooking, and then flogged to K-Tel who saw a niche in the market. And that niche in the market is mentals who buy stuff off of TV ads. Click through on that link to watch the K-Tel masters of advertising in action. There is never a device that is sold on just one key point. There is always an “And that’s not all…” . K-Tel like Ronco were the masters of pointless devices flogged via the tube. One assumes for the simple fact that if you ever saw any of these devices in a shop you would not the flimsy build and obvious design flaws. In the Clever Cutter alone:
a) Anyone see that onion shooting across the room when the scissors hit a curved bit of skin
b) All the onion bits falling on the floor
c) The food gunk getting caught in its works.

Never mind the quality though, watch the ads. And the ads I particularly lover were those for K-Tel records. Tatty compilation after compilation promising 20 Number Ones!!! Super Hits!!! And these were original artists, 7″ mixes like wot you would hear on the radio (though often mastered lower so they could fit them all on the thin grooved records). All contributing to some sort of secret war between K-Tel and Ronco*. TV advertised though also availible in the shops (no fear for the quality there), K-Tel hoovered up the rights from small labels and stuffed them on to all we had before Now That’S What I Call Music came along. Now albums were the same idea as the K-Tel hits compilations, but had stuff from major labels too – thus muscling K-Tel out of this market. But they continued through the eighties and nineties, slightly daunted, pumping out rave albums. And every now and then on eBay you’ll see and album like the 20 Great Truck Driving Songs, which makes you want to stop and wallow. (And learn how to count, as it notoriously has 24 tracks on it, possible recycled from an earlier trucking compilation).

These days K-Tel is floundering a touch. On the one side it should be able to make a bob or two from all those music rights it snaffled in the seventies and eighties, and is doing deals with iTunes left right and centre. At the same time it is well aware of its own slightly kitsch legacy, which is bad thing. The classic K-Tel website referred to in this interview has been bought out by K-Tel themselves, and now hides in web limbo. AND THAT’S NOT ALL!

Actually it is.

*Who I actually preferred for their tremendous film themed compilations such as Raiders Of The Pop Charts (NOT a double album, rather Buy One Get Two for Free!).

Dove’s “Real Beauty” ad campaigns since 2003 have helped turn the brand into a huge marketing success story – sales up 700%. The success has been attributed to its radical change of emphasis – advertising moving from trying to make women feel guilty about their physical imperfections towards a more celebratory tone. But is this actually Dove’s game?

At a marketing conference I went to this year, an interesting paper focused on the Dove campaign. The paper was about testing consumer ads, and involved videoing consumers watching two Dove ads, then asking them about the product and the campaign. The women interviewed were all very positive when they spoke about Dove, but frame-by-frame analysis of the videos showed flickers of disgust on their faces when they saw the various women on the ads showing their ‘saggy bums’, ‘fat tummies’, cellulite etc.

The presenter interpreted this as meaning that consumers actually don’t agree with Dove’s message, and that the brand is treading on dangerous ground – essentially, his interpretation is that the post-viewing interviews were lies, and the flickers of disgust are the truth. I thought at the time that he was wrong (and sales figures suggest that the message is doing something right).

My interpretation would be that the Real Beauty campaign isn’t about making women feel good about their natural beauty, as opposed to bad about their imperfections: if you’re naturally beautiful, why buy a firming cream? It’s about making women feel bad (or guilty) about feeling bad about themselves, and others. The assumed linkage – feel bad equals buy something – remains fully intact. The flickers of disgust are an anticipated and intended reaction: positive thoughts about Dove are a redemption of that reaction, not a contradiction of it – Dove becomes a virtuous buy because it occupies a higher moral ground than its consumer. (This is what most ethical brands do, obviously.)

Or that’s my theory of their theory, anyway. Whether I’m right or wrong, dropping the emotive bomb of using recovering eating disorder sufferers – presumably identifying as such, and talking about the disorders – is raising Dove’s stakes considerably. I don’t know what I think about it, and I don’t even feel qualified to think about it until the ads run (possibly not even then) – but professionally and personally this is shouting “BAD IDEA” at me quite loudly.

It’s a tube tunnel with the long line as the tube, oblique.

It’s the deck of a Routemaster, low set with a wheel in the middle.

It an old school commuters head, bowler hatted, on the way to work.

CIRCLE and LINE: it’s the Circle Line.

It is the London Transport logo and it is without a doubt one of the best logos ever designed.

For all the innovations of London Transport (first tube, double decker buses, the tube map) one of the most surprising is this fantastic and continuing emphasis of brand and design. They even have their own FONT, and it is as recognisable as everything else on the network. For all the other city rip-offs of the Tube map design, the London grid still seems the most elegant. The intersection points on the map is yet another re-occurance of this ubiquitous logo design. The art team seems to constantly innovate in poster designs, and yet everything seems to fit within the branding. A trip to the London Transport Museum will emphasise that. And then there is that logo.

The drowsy zero.

Saturn in oblique.

The circle with a line through it. Genius.

What is most remarkable about London Transport as a brand (even as Transport For London, or its constituent bits), is that there is no reason for it to be as good. When centralised it should have been as poor as any other public sector communications: as stuck to the whims to changing controllers as any government publications. Think of those various NHS logo’s in full, the sundry attempts at public communications. Unchanged by the years, with only minor touch up, it has survived unchanged, ageing but ageless. After mini-deregulations it surely should have just splintered. Why does it even need a strong brand identity? What competitors does it have?

I think the strong brand identity softens the constant blows the crumbling system gives those of us who use it every day. The clarity of communication that their posters give us, the omnipresent logo with its built in smile, makes it feel like a friend. A friend who is often useless, but something on our side in the maze of the city. Because whatever else they do wrong, London Transport has always been there for us, and will be again. The simplicity of the logo shows the strength of a truly great brand: it becomes part of your life: trusted if not trustworthy.

All from a circle and a line. Magic!

Add this to the HMV wobbles and THE DEATH OF MISTER CD, and we are starting to see a trend here. Ebay has killed the second hand shop, but Amazon is killing the discount record purveyor too. Drunken browsing will never be the same again.

1. “Father knows best” autocratic owner increasingly getting in to bed with commercial interests that seem to have only negative impacts on the punter

2. Said punters being treated like cattle with little thought for our comfort or welfare

3. Increasing costs and declining facilities

4. Being constantly told by media/controlling interests that you’re part of the best festival in the world, when you can clearly see the cracks round the edges

5. The complete lack of feedback mechanisms for us to get our views across to those in charge

Yes, being at Glastonbury is exactly like being a football fan, and what have football fans done about this? Formed Supporters Trusts, by the hundred!

So, this is my plan, form a “Supporters Trust” for Glastonbury, so that those of us who care about the future of Glastonbury can have a real constructive input into how things move forward as there seemed to be some glaring oversights in the organisation this year. I don’t want this to be about picking the bands, I don’t even really want it to be about ticket-pricing/allocation (although I still think Simon’s ideas on No Rock & Roll Fun three years ago were spot on), I want it to be about:

Making sure there are enough toilets in the right places
The dance village in particular is appallingly served, but also simple things like urinals by The Glade and John Peel Tent would be the easiest way to stop people (ok, men) pissing in the streams. I saw a portaloo urinal in the middle of the markets, why weren’t they everywhere?

Making the bottlenecks and metal paths wider
I know some places are as wide as they can be, but there are some places where work could be done. The best example is the back left corner of the other stage, heading towards dance where it could easily be made 10-15 yards wider, by just moving a couple of stalls and stopping people camping on the far side, there seems to be no attempt to help traffic flow at the busiest times beyond “hey dudes, just take a breather for ten minutes, then the crowd will go”.

Making National Express treat us as they would other customers, not scum of the earth
Seriously though, a six year-old with a bunch of crayons could come up with a more workable way of getting off-site than the current set-up, and that’s before we even start on the SeeTicket bus catastrophe. It feels like Glastonbury doesn’t care about us once we’re out of the gate and “so what” if we have to stand for three hours in the rain or sit for eight hours in our cars. The festival doesn’t end ’til we’re at home in the bath Michael, not as soon as we get orf your laaand…

Making the total capacity of Glastonbury 20,000 lower
The increase in capacity this year was a dismal failure. The idea that the extra 30,000 people would all merrily troop up to The Park to watch Kate Nash rather than the Arctic Monkeys was naïve to say the least. To continue the football analogy, the extra 30,000 are just increasing the prawn sandwich/premiership element of the crowd, not the non-league heart of the festival who will happily see no bands on the Pyramint all weekend.

Making the ale last ’til Sunday night
OK, slightly joky one this, Workers Beer did their usual stirling work, but there was an issue where there was pretty much nothing but Carlsberg left by Saturday afternoon (excluding The Red Flag, but even that was down to just Wherry by 4pm Sunday). Maybe this is because people don’t like Carlsberg, that our tastes have moved on and this should be reflected. This isn’t Reading where the kids will get smashed on whatever you put in front of them. But, where do we voice these concerns? Has the festival ever done a customer satisfaction survey? Wouldn’t that be a better use of our email addresses than sending unsolicited mail for other festivals?

So, these are just my five things, I bet you’ve got five things too, but how can we make sure we’re heard? The festival claims to be about opening people’s minds to climate change, water pollution and all the other worthy aims we hear about all weekend, but has no democratic mandate itself. If the tinpot dictators of the premiership and football league can cope with the idea of fan representation on the board, surely Michael Eavis can as well?

Who? Doctor The Who?
– Pete, Sun 19:40

VITALiC! Fucking COME ON!
– awesomewells, Sun 19:30

Ooh my feet! Mark Pompom and then Vitalic and then potential bin death. Only the calamacho can save me now!
– Pete, Sun 18:15

We’re sitting having a lovely pint of real ale about 10ft from whisperin’ bob harris
– Carsmile, Sun 17:15

Sweary old Dame Shirley has got this party started
– triffidfarm, Sun 17:10

I have realised what glastonbury needs! A “supporters trust” so the concerns of the fans can be articulated to the management
– Carsmile, Sun 12:00

Morning! Everyone shd come see DRAGONETTE, dance east 1pm, they are so cool :)
– Carsmile, Sun 11:00

Dragonette @ tha Queenz ead midnite. R u alive? Good
– Pete, Sat 23:50

I went to the tartiflette stall and bought another sausage. It was necessary. I feel the sausage and I have achieved closure and can move on now
– awesomewells, Sat 21:30

– kat, Sat 20:55

Dance music officially dead, billy bragg being played in dance tent
– Carsmile, Sat 20:45

Am finally vertical and at the Dance East Tent for the Mark Ronson after being taken out all day by a raw potato
– triffidfarm, Sat 20:40

I lost my sausage :-(
– awesomewells, Sat 20:20

fvck off blue bullet! Worse than dead fish :(
– Carsmile, Sat 10.00

hurrah! Got to leftfield just in time to see cud doing rich & strange! Kill! Yr! Television!
– Carsmile, Sat 0.00

Mummra are great for a new tent band! Going for an acoustic beer then to leftfield for nostalgia fest
– Carsmile, Fri 21.30

OMG simian mobile disco = amazing live
– awesomewells, Fri 20:35

It pissed down! Waterproof not so! Back to tent to dry. Ggb v good tho: tick
– Pete, Fri 14:30

At Pyramint Tree to see the Soul of Winebobs – curse the rain. It dilutes your beer.
– triffidfarm, Fri 14:30

Currently debate and confusion over over correct waterporoofing and randomly rainysunny weather
– triffidfarm, Fri 11:00

Morning everyone! Yesterday, we drank Perry and did some bosh. This morning it is like a sauna in my tent.
– triffidfarm, Fri 10:13

[These are the reports coming in from our covert agents strategically installed throughout the site. This post will be regularly updated, blog style.]

So Apple Records. That is beatle band record label. Why is it so important, its only a record label. Well Apple was one of the very first stabs at a creative entity (the Beatles) owning the means of production and distribution. Being able to set up a stall and rake the money in directly. To ignore THE SUITS and do what the hell they wanted. Of course it was just a shame that what the hell they wanted was Mary Hopkin records and The White Album, but then such is the way with truly innovative ideas. And as a brand Apple was very easy to understand, there was that nice picture of the Granny Smith on the label.

The downside of Apple was that everyone wanted a go. And so twenty years later, you didn’t sign a band, you signed their record label who exclusively produced THEIR records. So Thousand Yard Stare were on Stifled Aardvark records. Not exactly a great legacy for Beatles band. But then many of the Beatles legacy’s are looking pretty tarnished now. The concept albums?

So to Apple then, the record label. A branding success because it was clear what it was all about, without being derivative of the core (ha!) Beatles identity. But really really good due to the record labels being different on the a and b-sides. The a-Side with the shiny Granny Smith (above), and the B-side with the flesh and the pips (below). Which gives us one of branding true secrets – a good brand has more than one face.

Having said that netweather.tv are predicting MUCH BETTER weather than the Gibbering Weathermongs (©GWW) over at Metcheck whose forecast dramatically changes every 6 hours or so and, not only that, but who have markedly different forecasts for “Glastonbury” and “Shepton Mallet” (have to click on the 8-13 days forecast)

Of course, the met office are FAR too scientific to predict more than 5 days ahead so can offer mothing more specific than

There is a possibility of the weather gradually becoming more settled from the southwest towards the end of next week. Probably still rather warm in the south at first but temperatures are expected to fall to nearer normal in most areas

Thanks for that then…

Even bbc somerset are hedging their bets (and, eff me, that page took a bit of finding) and Angwin hasn’t made a single prediction yet.

It does look like it’s going to be raining in the vicinity this weekend though, so I shall definitely be packing me wellies…