Tuesday, April 24, 2007
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The riff that keeps on giving

From David Essex's Rock On to the Stone Roses' Fool's Gold via Eric Random's Skin Deep.

Monday, April 23, 2007
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Close-up on Midlake

Awesome show by Midlake at the Botanique last night (Saturday). The band were on great form and the venue - la Rotonde - is conducive to the creation of a very special atmosphere indeed. Being two metres from the band and almost at eye level was rather different from my previous gig - Bob Dylan at the Forest National on April 6th - where, if it hadn't been for Dylan's unique voice, I would have had no idea who it was on the stage 200 m away.
Midlake previewed one new track, the excellent Children of the Grounds, which takes the Van Occupanther sound and adds more rock guitar. By the time the band is touring Europe to promote the next album they could easily be playing venues of the size of the cavernous Forest National (or at least the Ancienne Belgique). Another reason to treasure the opportunity to see them in such an intimate space. Ta, Stuart.

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
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This town ain't big enough

Earlier: eating a hamburger and drinking a perry in a Wild West Saloon, Kenny Rogers on the jukebox.
Now: Clattering away in a billiard hall-cum-cybercafe, Dido on the radio.
The joys of small-town Sweden!

Pods & Blogs II

In the end, Radio Five Live's Pods & Blogs show last week didn't include my interview about the Blogging4Business seminar (see earlier post). Fair puppies, I guess. However, one thing that struck me, both at B4B and listening to a stream of Pods & Blogs last night, was how 'the blogosphere' seems to operate like a giant tips file for real journalists to follow up, but one that is also public at the same time, with all the dangers that implies. Consider a report on P&B from one Mark Graber, the man behind a blog called Balkinization. Graber has posted a tale of a profesor refused entry to an American Airlines flight, allegedly because he ended up on a terrorist watch list for criticizing Bush policies on the Iraq War. Whether the story is true or not, Graber fails to apply the principles of good journalism (check facts, ask for a response from the other side, etc) before recounting the tale. For many other bloggers, it also seems to be a case of post first, ask questions (invite comments) later.
The 'amateur journalist' aspect of the blogging game was really brought home to me by a guy from Microsoft who was a panellist at B4B. This man, who blogs under the name Office Rocker!, explained how many tech bloggers had been engaged in furious debate over the rights and wrongs of being given laptops by Microsoft to try out a new operating system. Real journalists deal with this kind of thing all the time. The purity and naivety of those bloggers is both quaint and ridiculous.

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007
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Four minutes of fame

While chatting with James 'Aerial Telly' Donaghy earlier today on the occasion of his birthday, I learned from Jim that he has been approached by a literary agent about writing a book. When I questioned whether this meant his late 90s magnum opus, Loving the Alien, would finally see the light of day, he said he would only release that work, which features a character not dissimilar to yours truly named Timmy Hudson, "when there's a nuclear attack."

Thursday, April 12, 2007
On this day:

Not Going to a Go-Go

Listening to the sublime, 'The Frog and the Princess' from Grace Jones's 1985 'Slave to the Rhythm' album the other day, I started thinking about Go-Go, the Washington DC take on funk that was briefly fashionable in 85/86 (a number of renowned Go-Go musicians played on the Jones LP). Looking at the entry for Go-Go on Wikipedia, I was surprised to learn not only that this style of music is still being made, but that it is a source of tension between the black community and law enforcement agents and municipal officials in the US capital and surrounds. In March of this year, so the story goes, nine Go-Go clubs in Prince George's County, Maryland, were shut down because of the number of police calls they were generating.
Earlier this decade, Go-Go also spawned a stripped down sub-genre called Bounce Beat. Examples of both contemporary Go-Go and Bounce Beat can be heard via the Washington Post website. And one advantage of downloading these files into Quick Time is you can play around with the speed and pitch control, giving Little Miss Muffit by TimesUp a 1992 'Ardkore style makeover in the process.

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Sunday, April 08, 2007
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Spezialismus

You can tell something about a place from the specialty shops it attracts. In Munich the other week I was kinda surprised, but in an 'oh yeah, it makes perfect sense' kinda way to see a high street shop selling fire extinguishers.
And what better proof that the English are 'a nation of shopkeepers' than a shop selling cash registers? I used to pass one on my way home every day when I lived in Nottingham. Any other examples anyone?

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Thursday, April 05, 2007
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My Marriott Cake Hell

Fascinating day at the Blogging4Business seminar in London today (even managed to get myself interviewed for BBC Radio Five Live's Pods & Blogs show - starting in about 30 minutes, I'm told).
One highlight of the event came when one delegate recounted the tale of how two months after posting a blog entry titled 'My Dell Laptop Nightmare', she was contacted by Dell customer service and the offending item replaced. When the event caterers today ran out of desserts I jokingly suggested writing a blog post titled "My Marriott Cake Hell' and seeing how long it would be before the free gateaux arrived. I'm waiting...

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