I’m going to try and get new Popular entries up too, but there will be a LOT of writing about pop by me this week on the One Week One Band blog, which I’m taking over for a second time – this time to talk about ABBA. Rather than pick songs to write about all by myself, I asked people on Tumblr for suggestions, so I’ve got a very eclectic range of assignments – from “Soldiers” to “Happy Hawaii”. I’m starting later on today – wander over and have a look!
Tom in FT • 5 Comments
Marcello and Lena have both reported getting either “you just posted that” (when they didn’t) or “You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down” messages from the WordPress bots. Is anyone else routinely getting these? I had a quick trawl through the support forums and this issue seems widespread (tho not very recently). I don’t understand the explanation myself, but I didn’t expect to.
(If you’re having trouble posting in this comment thread, email me! marksink3r at g00glemail d0t c0m)
There’s been some discussion on the latest Popular post about 1993 being a particular musical doldrum. I was 20 at the time – so enormously biased of course – but I don’t remember it like that, so I’m republishing an old post I wrote on my Tumblr about it.
1993 in Britain was the apex of scene-a-week genremaking by the UK music press: history focuses now on the proto-Britpop stuff (because it ‘won’ and because it was pretty good) but at the time that wasn’t such a sure thing at all and there was a forest of other stuff going on.* Such as!
New wave of new wave – reputationally poor punkiness, aggressive and political (SMASH, These Animal Men) – all the bands involved released second records which were apparently a lot better than their first ones but by that time Britpop had come along and their fate was oblivion.
Collision pop – sample-heavy ravey rock, hip-hop influences, aggressive and political though also danceable – Senser, Back To The Planet, Chumbawamba, Credit To The Nation, Hustlers HC
Any excuse for a Back To The Planet picture. more »
Tom in FT • 31 Comments
It struck me this morning that it has been a while since I saw an article comparing social media to punk rock. This is a shame. For a time articles comparing social media to punk rock were one of the great growth areas in our dynamic knowledge economy, as the parallels were obvious. Both were about people doing stuff themselves and to hell with THE MAN, unless the man is Mark Zuckerberg. Also – Lurkers! The Lurkers! Need I say more?
But nothing lasts forever – in today’s disruptive environment you must ADAPT OR DIE, and this even goes for blog posts making vague comparisons between technology and music. If comparing social media to punk rock has run its course as a “meme” – to use a bit of socal media jargon – then something else must take its place.
Social media is all about sharing, a bit like hippies – NO WAIT that can’t be right, a bit like living in a squat and listening to Crass. So here are some social media and music articles you could go away and write yourselves: I’ve even included example sentences to get you started.
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW NEW ROMANTICS: “Like the Blitz Kids of the 80s, today’s youth construct fleeting but highly visual images of themselves. Gary Kemp wore a curtain: his 21st century descendant simply ‘pins’ it on Pinterest.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW SHOEGAZE: “Kevin Shields took 30 years to update his status, today’s “scene that celebrates itself” do it every 30 minutes. Like shoegazers, they’re in love with otherworldly effects – but from Instagram filters, not guitar pedals.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW HIP-HOP: “Gen Y grew up with the idea of ‘sampling’ and now they apply it to every part of their rich media lives as they curate and ‘remix’ media. But instead of turning snippets of tracks into a beat today’s young people take a tiny loop of video and make an ‘animated gif’.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW DANCE MUSIC: “Today’s millennials are DJs, cutting and mixing seamlessly between platforms and screens as they try to ‘move the crowd’. But instead of hands in the air it’s “likes” and “Retweets” these social DJs crave.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW MOD: “Today’s mobile generation seek authentic social experiences, but instead of scooters they have iPhones, and rather than gathering in cafes or clubs they mark their territory with Foursquare check-ins”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW INDIEPOP: “Today’s young creatives may have Tumblrs instead of fanzines but both rely on a ‘culture of making’ whose heartfelt honesty is a challenge to the old business models.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW CRUSTY: “These days it isn’t soap young people fear, it’s privacy. The layers of encrusted data their elders want to strip away are what defines their identity.”
Next: How Dubstep, Chillwave, Witch House, Vampire Weekend and Black Metal Are A Bit Like Facebook If You Think About It
Tom in FT • 4 Comments
(WARNING: Very VERY wordy piece still in a rough-ish state: really REALLY don’t read unless you’re an obsessive too! And to explain a little: all this is an ancient passion for me, the tale of how Captain Scott was beaten to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen in early 1912, and failed to make it home. As far back as I can recall the elements in the story called out to me, even as a small Lord Sukrat laying on my grandparents’ snug yellow fitted carpet in mild-weathered Shrewsbury, leafing through the gorgeous photographs in their battered old blue copy of Herbert Ponting’s The Great White South, spooking myself with Ponting’s extracts from Scott’s final journals, or his image of Dr Atkinson’s hideous frostbitten fingers, and dreaming of fabulous bergs and snowponies and famous men who would never return. In 1979, a change in the way the tale was told, catnip to a bolshy teenage Sukrat. Polar historian Roland Huntford published Scott and Amundsen, which upended all pieties: to such a scandalous degree that in the mid-80s it was renamed The Last Place on Earth to coincide with a television dramatisation (feat.Martin “Dub Dob Dee” Shaw as Scott and Sylvester “Who7″ McCoy as Bowers, and scripted by ultra-lefty playwright Trevor Griffiths, whose Comedians I admire enormously). I’ve read and reread LPoE dozens of times over the years, growing oddly fond of Huntford’s abrasive and occasionally lumpily repetitive style, repelled by (but also drawn to) the sheer violence of his name-making dislike for Scott, and fascinated (if not always convinced) by his unsentimental examination of conflicted in-group dynamics, what went sour in each party, and the immediate and long-term tragedies arising. So when — a little over a year ago — this controversial historian returned to his break-out subject, with Race for the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen (RSP), aggressively recapping almost all his earlier debunking assertions — well, I was always going to be writing something. I just didn’t quite expect it to have to be so much. Skip to the end for an acronym-glossary, and to the footnotes for how this all fits in with my other interests, if it does [1: note -- footnotes not yet written]; for the vast and still somewhat unvarnishedly bleurgh sketches-to-self of what I have to say and how I think, sketches I vaguely hope of a much better piece than this yet is, read GINGERLY on... ) more »
So what was that poll all about then? (This poll, the one I linked on Twitter and Tumblr – a basic tick-the-box job on the best-selling music acts of last year)
Well, the truth is it was trying something out for my day job. I wanted to try out DIY split-testing tool Optimizely and see how easy it was to run basic experiments. more »
Tom in FT • 6 Comments
I shall quietly grumble about this no more. The time has come for a wobbly to be thrown ungracefully across the laminated floor tiles of the internet about a terrible injustice being done to our nation’s fauna and flora.
As the hedgerows are decimated, another important ecosystem is dying. An unsavoury and slightly scary one and one I would not want to put my face near (then again I’m not that keen on having my nose bitten off by a badger, either) but one that is necessary for certain aspects of modern life: the pub carpet.
I salute you, festering menace
Hazel in FT /Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
(Apropos much social media rumbling on Erotic Choose Your Own Adventures and the appearance of whatever Heineken think this is)
1. You enter the club and head to the floor, roll a 3 or higher to light a fire and make it hot (proceed to 3 or if roll too low, 2)
2. The club can’t even handle you. You see them watching you, roll a 6 to go all out and proceed to 7.
3. Decide whether to take pictures or shots by rolling two dice; if the total adds up to 7 then it’s shots and straight to 5. If it doesn’t add up to 7 then console yourself at 4.
4. Apologise for party rocking. Rate your sincerity by rolling one die- if 4 or higher then you head to the bar at 5, if 3 or lower proceed to 7.
5. Determine how many shots you need to take by rolling the die. If number is 5 or higher then proceed to 6, if 4 or lower proceed to 2.
6. Dirty Bit.
7. You encounter David Guetta. Decide if he will turn you into a nubile robot by rolling two dice; 6 or higher and you will be asking Where Them Girls At as the optical processing systems are not yet advanced enough to give you clear vision, a total score of 5 or lower means an accident during the splicing process leaves you wondering Who’s That Chick.
Hazel in FT • No Comments
<--- Jane Eyre‘s Mr Rochester, in Charlotte Brontë’s (digital) mind’s eye.
From Brian Joseph Davis’s The Composites: “Images created using law enforcement composite sketch software and descriptions of literary characters”
