The Great Caller

I’m a bit of a self-proclaimed (if novice) audiophile (though my hearing is a little too bad from too many loud gigs to be critical of sound quality), and a true music lover. Something I’ve been tussling with a lot lately is that I feel that I’ve been listening to the same things over and again – the music in my library is too well listened and comfortable to me. This is something of a problem for me, I don’t like too much ‘comfortable’, it makes me feel shut off from the world. I can’t stand anything that gets played on the radio these days, and as a medium radio is polluted with adverts and idiotic DJs, lending their two-cents on things they don’t understand, or singing over the last 30 seconds of the only good song they’ve played on their 3 hour show, ruining anyone’s enjoyment of the track.

So I need new music, something that isn’t churned out by the pop-plastics machine that is the popular music industry, and something different from those artists I’ve listened to over and over for the past 3 years – yes I’ll get their new albums, because I enjoy what they do, but even if they excel themselves above their previous offerings, that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t gain the same sense of satisfaction that I do from discovering someone with an entirely new sound. When I was younger – around 16 to 18 years old – I used to make a regular habit of visiting record stores and buying something unusual or a-typical, that was reduced or cheap to start off with. This gave me a distinct sense of satisfaction and superiority over those unadventurous types who would walk in and go straight to the ‘Top 20’ wall (as previously mentioned, why would anyone want that processed tripe!?), and even over my fellow metal-heads, goths and rockers who would buy the latest album trending amongst their friends, in the local metal club and in Kerrang! magazine. I was, after all, being more adventurous, right?

Well, I was certainly taking more risk. Considering that I’m not a gambling man, not in the traditional sense anyway. I certainly bought some awful discs sometimes. At the same time I did pick up some very good ones. What I feel was most important and influential was that the range of sounds I managed to listen to fuelled my appetite for and inflated my expectations of what I could get out of music. This, as you may have noticed, has turned me into a bit of a music snob – I enjoy complexity and experimentation in music. I play an instrument myself to a reasonably proficient standard, and simply put, I like hearing people with greater ability than myself playing!

When it comes to classifying or defining what sort of music I enjoy I usually tell people that I’m into prog rock and metal (which is true), but my musical tastes are far more complex than that – there are bands in both genres which I don’t like despite peoples’ expectations that I would. And artists I enjoy that one wouldn’t expect. This is clearly reflected in the music I listen to on a daily basis, and over a few months becomes very evident (I listen to music in cycles, depending on my mood and how long it’s been since I last heard an artist).

So you’re probably asking yourself by now what exactly it is that I’m trying to get at? Well, about 6 months ago I (re)discovered and decided to install Last.FM’s Scobbling software onto my PC. I clicked through a few things on the website and had a little play with the software at the time and then forgot about it about a week later – but most importantly I left the software installed and set to run at start-up, so that whenever I was listening to music, it was keeping a record and adding the information to their database.

Fast forward to about a week ago: I begin having this ‘no new music’ crisis again. (This happens on roughly an annual basis mind.) So what do I do? Well I’ve been relatively isolated these last few months (compared to when I was at uni, where it’s impossible to avoid meeting people and hearing their ideas and influences) so I hadn’t an awful lot of input to look back on and consider potential suggestions from, and I don’t have the liquid funds to go out and blindly purchase unusual albums at the moment – so where do I get some direction from?

This is where Last.FM re-enters the fray! Bear in mind that I haven’t clicked this inconspicuous little disc that always sits in the bottom right corner of my screen every single day (and has become camouflaged merely by its continued presence) for 5 to 6 months – and I’m not sure what it was that caused me to wander towards it this day, or what even reminded me of its presence. All the same, I opened it and started my ‘recommended tracks’ playlist. I have to say, I was impressed – I liked the first track it played, and the second – not so much the third, but skipping it taught Last.FM this and I’ve liked everything I’ve heard since.

I now have a list of artists and tracks that I like –names that I never would have thought of looking at previously – and it does it all for free. I have back the opportunity to browse the unusual and uncommercialised music, returning an enjoyment that I haven’t had since my days of teenage bargin-trawling.

Saying you ‘live off music’ or that silence will kill you is ludicrous. So of course my claiming that Last.FM saved my life is absured – what it has done though is revive my exploration of music and expanded my scope for aural stimulation. And music is a huge part of my enjoyment of life – so yes, Last.FM did save my life!

G’day all!

May I offer my apologies for last week’s omission in literary output on my behalf. I am about to lend you a selection of excuses, please feel free to take your pick of the most poignant one, or a combination of them all, or ignore them at all and criticize my (lack of) dedication! All in all, this is just a bit of a rant, a vent, so onwards!

I’ve had a project to de-build and rebuild a friend’s bike, which has taken rather longer than anticipated due to delays in acquisition of parts, but that has occupied a chunk of my evenings across the usual writing days of last week. There were a range of job opportunities to apply for, including comprehensive (or at least, carefully worded) covering letters to write. And let’s not forget the enjoyable weather! So real life has had to take a certain priority of late and has been rather hectic with job hunting and planning of the move.

This aside, the real reason for having not written anything: It was too warm! I’m a very temperate person, certainly without the genetics for the near-Mediterranean temperatures we’ve been experiencing here in the UK this month. I have a naturally high tolerance to cold in the winter and very warm blood all year ’round. Of course this includes the warmest of the months! With temperatures spiking here in the South West around the middle of last week I spent the majority of my time stuck in an office, swelteringly hot and constantly tired, and unable to concentrate as a consequence. From well before I was born I have been known as the ‘furnace’ by my mother (she’s the total opposite to me – very sensitive to temperature shifts – but found herself wearing summer clothes in winter when she was pregnant with me), so this is a well anecdoted issue in my family, but very difficult to explain to those who haven’t gotten so close to me.

However, in short – the sun broke me!

Excuses aside, I’m well on the way to having a post prepared for this week, and I promise normal service will now resume!

Over and out!

Mahgniklaf

I was in Bristol this weekend gone, just for a day. I’ve been before, but it’s been with friends and I’ve generally gone to the same one or two areas on those occasions. I’m moving there shortly and the purpose of my visit this time around was to do some field work on the job hunting front, so I covered quite a large footprint of the city. In this time, combined with my previous experience, something struck me: this City has a split personality.

                I take a bus from a student suburb – the area I will be attending university in a few months time, and where I slept at a friend’s flat following arriving last night. It appears a reasonably affluent area: the buildings are sound and well maintained; the trees and grass in the park are neatly cropped and green; the cars on the street are generally new, clean and devoid of the tell-tale nicks of careless driving; and you can practically see the happy haze of mild hangovers of the few well-dressed, young people (generally all students, or new graduates, I’d wager) who’ve made it out into the streets before mid-day this weekend. I have a light hangover myself.

Yet while I stand at the stop, situated out the front of a large pub with a grand stair leading to its door, waiting for my bus to arrive, those I find dotted about me present a different aura.

One man, who looks to have not quite an even number of brain-cells remaining from the atrophies of underuse in his latest decades, with unkempt and thinning (but moderately long) strawberry-blonde-grey hair and creases in the oddest of places, smells distinctly of hash. Between mumbles, he calls intermittently – in a voice of, now entirely decrepit, gusto – a series of non-sequesters to some friends (or bar-side acquaintances) of (slightly) greater self-composure. One: “…do you want a cigarette?” (Those his inquisition is directed towards are discussing yesterday’s football.) “…does he want a cigarette?” to the second acquaintance – they look to be treading their first upon the same road our protagonist has stumbled along. “No, Pete, he already has one…” they snigger, the second man holds up his rolly in evidence, “thanks though!” I think they see him as being as much of a peculiarity as I do, though they somehow also recognise an association – a likening of fate – to themselves. They resume their ham-handed analysis of yesterday’s football (though to this layman it seems no less informed than a professional commentary).

An older woman, still determined in her independence – though probably not through choice, but hereditary neglect – sits stooped on the shelter’s bench: in her hands a large bag jitters tentatively on the concrete between her feet.

Stilted words in the vein of conversation don’t flow together like water, but seep through and about each other like a variety of inexpertly conjured custards. While there’s nothing intimidating about this, the viscosity still makes me uncomfortable.

The bus ride goes quickly; I feel comfortable enough to sit on this bus at about half capacity with my phone clearly out, browsing the internet to pass the time. About half way into the journey a woman who gets on the bus catches my attention: she isn’t attractive, the reason I look, and look again, is that it’s impossible to tell how old she really is – my best guess would place her anywhere between 28 and 45 – my puzzlement entertains me until 5 or so stops along the road, where she finally steps off the bus. With a fug of bemusement I return my attention to my phone.

In town I disembark at Cabot Circus. This is a large new indoor and outdoor shopping centre development which sprawls over several acres (at a guess) and is a maze of interesting modern architecture. However even here there seem to be abandoned shop units – these are mostly down the smaller alleyways, purpose-built seemingly to create character and atmosphere for the more adventurous shoppers, and were probably independents that opened up earlier on, attracted by low upstart rental rates. Instead, due to being hidden, these earlier start-ups to have gone un-noticed for too long, leading them into bankruptcy. Their windows are white-washed out, interiors dusty and junk post piled up behind their barred doors. Beside them the more successful stores glow out through the windows of their modern units.

In market squares all over the city are fairs, mini-festivals and sales demonstrations. In Cabot Circus in particular there is a huge screen – apparently 15’ diagonally corner-to-corner – where people can play Bowling on the Nintendo Wii.

I take another lap of Cabot Circus, to make sure I haven’t missed any work worth considering, and turn westwards to Baldwin Street – this is where all the pubs and clubs are based, and I’ll be looking for bar work. In a haze (the air about me is starting to heat up now under the bright sun, and my hangover, closing in about me also, can’t handle the increase too well) I wander out of the bright glow of white stone pavements and pastel buildings, but I don’t notice much. There’s a guy stood in a doorway, he finishes off his cigarette, crushes it into the pavement and wanders back inside his shop – it is a large skate and surf fashion and shoe shop, garishly decorated inside but white-washed externally.

When I pass it again later in the day, walking the opposite direction, along the other side of the street, it stands out significantly. The added distance gives perspective and allows for more simultaneous context. This is a strange place for this shop; it looks as though it should be in the main shopping precinct alongside all the other bright and open store doorways. Instead it is behind everything, framed by grey concrete and air-conditioning exhausts: a tidy beauty spot on the arse cheek of the city. This area is run down and neglected – simply bare. Dotted about the bare walls that make up this maze of back-buildings there are night clubs and the entrance to an oriental restaurant, though I suspect it might be a little seedier than the exterior suggests: this is a peculiar place for a metropolitan restaurant to have set up. Down the next road there is an underground bar open, hosting a sale of retro clothing – a hand-scribed sign draped over the back of an old, battered chair highlights its presence, but there is no other signage or markings about the doorway; further along a small basement room has been converted into a make-shift art gallery for an exhibition and sale of local artwork, a similarly unassuming presence to the previous bar.

These places seem to drift about this city. They are only seconds walk from the huge development and modernisation projects, but they are the schizo-syncronicit ballast, the creativity, that keeps the city so interesting and great. In Bristol you really can have your cake and eat it – it is a large, sophisticated and modern city which is social, comfortable and safe; yet at the same time it is slightly unsettled and will happily spend hours musing and giggling to itself in a corner, while it lends you coy and reassuring glances.

This is, after all, the city where I was asked by a hippy from the outdoor concrete garden/den they constructed for themselves behind the newly built apartment block where my brother lives, if I had “nine-pence spare please, friend?” I seriously consider that if I’d given him a ten pence piece I would’ve received change. Now I can’t wait to move there permanently and get a real feel for how the city will treat me!

Dear all,

Today’s post is going to be a little later than usual (as in it’ll be this afternoon sometime) as I went out drinking last night instead of doing what I should by staying in to write!

In light of this, I now have a hangover to punish me for my idiocy. It is also severly hindering my ability to put word to keyboard. Nonetheless, I shall soldier on and present you my latest offering before sundown!

So my appologies to those (who can be bothered) reading this! There shall be worthy words present in this space shortly – in the interim, I’m affraid this shall have to suffice.

Yours appologetically,
Mahgniklaf

@BPGlobalPR, on the infamous social networking site Twitter, has now become a staple of almost 150,000 fellow Tweeters and they are making their way into conventional media because of it, with @BPTerry (a spoof BP marketing director) appearing in an interview here, and Leroy Stick (the alias of the man directly behind @BPGlobalPR) giving this exposé. Though something makes me suspect they are in fact the same person…

So, is it too soon to make jokes yet? Well no, not for this guy(s)!

Twinned provenance aside, the effect they have had upon the public awareness and perception of the BP oil spill has been influential and far-reaching. They have been a current and imaginative source of satire and humour, lightening the psychological drag created by this huge human-induced environmental disaster, while still assisting in real terms through their donations from the sales of their “free ‘BP Cares’” t-shirts – priced at $25 each.

What Leroy Stick has really achieved here though, is to prove the value of internet communications, and social networking in particular, as an invaluable device in PR.

BP themselves provided sluggish and hollow reports of their progress and intentions regarding the disaster through the conventional media, leading to frustration and uproar from all avenues – people wanted to know what was happening, who was taking responsibility and what was going to be done about it. Instead what BP seemed to do early on was sit on their haunches and try to pass the blame, over and over again. Yes, there are other organisations involved in this disaster, however BP are the public facade to the whole affair – the ones selling to the public – and it was therefore inevitable that they would receive the blame. The best thing would have been for BP to take the initiative, get their partners on-side and deal with the situation in a swift and organised fashion. Of course this sort of disaster has occurred before, albeit never on such a global-media-sensitive stage, so these big companies didn’t know how to react. They’re used to being able to pay off any intrusive or troublesome officials, who in turn work to keep the journalists away. Clearly they couldn’t do that in this situation. So instead they just got caught up in a spiral of naive bickering and finger-pointing, allowing an obviously negative public opinion to foment, while thousands of gallons of crude oil flowed freely into one of the most media-sensitive areas of the world.

What they overlooked was that, in only the past 5 years or so, there has flourished a fast moving and globally interconnected communication network whereby news travels the entire world in seconds. The perfect forum for complex public opinion to develop at a never-before seen rate: the internet.

The internet is blamed by powerful corporate bodies for the downfall of various things – the music industry, newspapers and the postal service spring to mind as examples here – however they’re all still about, and lucrative. What they forgot was that the progression of technology is irrefutable and creates demand by its very existence – here human nature, not corporate profits, is in control. The key to success is to change to adapt and make the most of the same medium that they blame for destroying them in the first place. It’s an age old saying, but I guess some things can stand the test of time – ‘fight fire with fire’. 3^rd to 4^th generation electro-communications technology is an exciting prospect, and the best thing those industries feeling threatened by it can do is to keep with the curve.

This is where BP has fallen flat. They simply weren’t ready for such articulate, swift retorts. On Twitter (through their account @BP_America, controlled by CEO Tony Hayward) they have less than a 10^th of the followers that @BPGlobalPR has. Of course the satirical, comedic feed has drummed up the most attention – that’s entertainment – but such a huge disaster should attract more official attention than this, and this statistic must be a disappointment for BP. The modern press, to keep pace with the internet, has increased in frequency from daily to hourly or faster turnover rates as a result of the global public’s ability to now react instantaneously. In short, BP’s complacency and arrogance has finally caught up with them, and thrown them face-first into their own mess.

But this has been a failure on every level, not just with communications. The fact that the company have made bad decisions from the very outset with regards to dealing with the crisis was the first huge mistake. They were too caught up following pre-set procedure - using capping methods designed for shallower depth situations for example - and rejected any of the proven effective options available to them. These are things that are being brought to light, over a month after the start of the leak, by the very men who initially contacted BP with the intent of assisting them. If @BP_America had had something worthwhile to tweet about in the first place – such as having gained control of the problem within the first week – then @BPGlobalPR may never have been created, as it wouldn’t have had anything to stoke its fire with.

As it stands, I think we’re about to see a explosive trend in disaster and corporate error response through mediums such as Twitter, all following Leroy Stick as their trail blazer. He has made a wonderful job of the humiliation and exposition of BP, in fewer than 140 characters, at every turn. And BP’s response of reportedly requesting Twitter to close down @BPGlobalPR is simply the sluggish and uninspired – dare I even say idiotic – response of the lumbering corporate behemoth that BP really is.