And Start West: 2013

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Internet (not my) problems

...So I write this blog on 'blogger.' A site purchased by Google in 2003. Now Google is not exactly a company without blood on its hands, despite the fluffy advertising, their 'fun' offices etc. Their biggest fault appears to be privacy - http://www.precursorblog.com/node/1647 Though as their revenue is routed through Ireland I guess I cannot complain: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/20/google-uk-tax-avoidance . Though as Google continues to gobble up companies like a hungry caterpillar eats junk food we are pretty much all using it if we go online - especially as it is still the best search engine out there, and has been since I remember first using it with a sense of joy in 1999. They are even planning on dominating the browser market with their ongoing massive promotion of Chrome and withdrawal of the advertising slot on Firefox. I started this as I wanted to point a finger at Amazon, like Google setting out to monopolise the online goods sector. It, like Paypal (more on this later) has its financial base in Luxemburg in order to avoid Tax - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/04/amazon-british-operation-corporation-tax, but like rich people who set up offshore accounts you can't really blame them for being so rich and powerful the can afford to do stuff like this - it is really up to us and our Governments to get together and make them pay their fair share, while showing our distaste for such attitudes by finding alternate retailers. However here is another problem Ebay, the monopoly auction site (which has a significant 'buy it now' online retail sector that is competition to Amazon marketplace), its international base in Switzerland, completes most of its transactions through Paypal, the monopoly online payment system/bank, which it bought in 2002, and has been based in, yes you guessed it Luxemburg, since 2007: http://www.newstatesman.com/business/technology/2012/10/ebay-accused-tax-avoidance.

Now I had my fingers burned as an Ebay seller a few years ago so I boycott both Paypal and Ebay, but given the monopoly on selling second hand goods that ebay has it is pretty frustrating. I sold some cherished toys to a buyer, neglecting to offer registered postal delivery - despite paying for insurance I sent the item, worth about £300 unregistered - two days after posting the buyer, realising my error and knowing a loophole raised a dispute, had his paypal payment reversed and claimed to not have received his goods, despite never contacting me to see when and how it was sent. I even had proof of postage which I believed was enough to protect me and make the buyer liable as they did not pay for recorded delivery - this was not the case so the buyer got his goods for free, and I had to get a my insurance claim from Royal Mail - essentially the UK taxpayer. Despite leveling a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman about this issue where I felt Ebay and Paypal were failing to close a buyer loophole this was all upheld, hence my ongoing boycott.

Amazon is and has become even more of an ever growing virus of business as the online retail sector grows, and it seems to be following the 'No Logo' rulebook of cheap labour: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-neonazi-guards-to-keep-immigrant-workforce-under-control-in-germany-8495843.html
Without Google, Ebay, Paypal and Amazon it is often difficult, more expensive or time consuming to find what you want on other websites or, if anyone still does this, from shops in the real world. Without Facebook we feel it would be impossible to know what is going on in our Friend specific world. However with Facebook floated on the stock market it is now increasingly clear that the company is looking for income streams, and it looks increasingly likely that popularity will be something that needs to be purchased, and that your network of friends will no longer see your posts due to fancy algorithms that decide how valuable your posts are to Facebook in terms of generating user input. An apparently free method of promoting events, sharing your music and communicating with people, friends and acquaintances has already become a business based on user input - that is people generating content that other people want to see or use - the same as Youtube (owned by Google), bandcamp, Last FM, Vimeo and among countless others all the blogging sites that exist.

The internet was a beautiful vision of pure freedom, of fair trade and commerce, of unrestricted information, crowd sourcing, user based content and collectives of like minded people.
Instead it is rapidly becoming the terrifying microcosmic mechanism of monopoly and control that it was feared it could become. Sites can track you, massive corporations can follow your purchase history, profile you, your identity can be easily stolen. It all makes entities like Anonymous and the Gay Nigger Association of America understandable. Despite all the progress and usefulness of the internet it often feels like life was somehow better before... And so I have decided to move my blog to a more independent blog community like Wordpress...

Sunday, February 17, 2013

How 'The Foals' and Damon Che managed to kill math-rock...(Almost).

I remember them. 2004? Supporting Oxes and Part Chimp at the Windmill in Brixton. The technically excellent Edmund Fitzgerald (Jack Bevan, Lina Simon and Yannis Philippakis), bright young things of the UK math-rock scene. I remember Yannis's complete disregard for mosh pit etiquette, doing that thing people who understand such things cannot stand - thrusting your elbows out in an attempt to crack ribs and chin those trying to have a good time. I remember you Yannis, during a show at Bardens Boudoir with the re-formed (and totally disappointing) Don Caballero when, like some sycophant hanger on you got backstage to hang out with the band. Oh the heady days of hanging with the 'stars,' of playing and forming bands, of seeking the 'new sound.' With obscure influences, 'The band’s musical influences are varied, with the band members citing minimal techno, Arthur Russell, the Irish based math rock band The Redneck Manifesto, Krautrock bands such as Harmonia, and Talking Heads as well For London (previously known as The Jester People) as their main sources of inspiration. Their musical style, however, can be more directly linked to various genres such as math rock, indie Rock or New rave,' and Dave Sitek recording them in New York it seems the blending of private school education, parental support and a little talent has given the Foals success with an ultra cleaned out, commercial sound that is merely modern, high-in-the-mix vocal driven pop with afro-beat rhythms. In fact they now sound like a really bad version of 'Saturday Night' era Bee-Gees. Che had meanwhile destroyed all credibility for his reformed band - this was not Don Caballero, with layers of unpredictable guitar sound, brilliant syncopation and incredible tension and unrivaled complexity of structure all worked around Che's brilliant, tribal, Ginger Baker complexity meets John Bonham loudness drumming. This was Don Caballero, playing what sounded like covers of their old (good) material with new songs just derivative hard rock. Deeply disappointing and an obvious cash-in rather than an attempt to push the good name of the band in new, interesting and creative directions. The Slint reformation and cash-in had similar overtones, however Slint was essentially all original members, and as they never played any post Spiderland shows in the first place they were certainly entitled so some amount of cashing in on the album that effectively began the genre of not just 'post-rock' but also 'math-rock' - a fact that most so-called math-rock bands would do well to examine. Both terms refer to taking rock music and doing interesting things with the genre - going beyond 4/4 beats and loud guitars. My issue is not with selling out per se, it is with the soulless denigration of a useful categorisation into meaningless, and frankly poor, pop music. As Kurt Cobain would have said "Where are the songs?"
Oxes resolutely did not sell out - one of their number moved to Italy - they still get together occasionally and sound just as good as they always did. Part Chimp have adapted to the UK scene, playing sporadically and releasing possibly the best UK LP and 7" of the past five years in Thiller and You Decide respectively. Yannis would next be seen snorting coke onstage at an ATP performance in the UK. What a guy. They did say that they wanted to have more "fun making their music". With young fans following his every move, with Foals covered in NME, winning awards and sound-tracking episodes of Skins this guy is just appalling. He was an asshole in 2004. He's still an asshole now. And what is the significance of the name Foals. Isn't that just the name for a baby horse. Why the fuck should I care about what a baby horse is called?
'The Thick of IT - Malcolm: "A pony isn't a baby horse. It's a foal. A fucking foal is a baby horse."'

Shelf-Stacking beats Geology / Killer Whale Kills Trainer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21490542

Funniest thing so far this year. According to Ian Duncan-Smith Terry Leahy (former CEO of Tesco and effectively the inventor of the free marketing information device - the loyalty card - where customers give ultra cheap, free and accurate marketing information to companies) came out of his mothers vagina stacking shelves (certainly puts his input into Tescos in context) and that 'many "smart people" overlooked the importance of effective shelf-stacking' - I don't know about you, but I'm always quite relieved to find things to buy on supermarket shelves - though I wasn't aware one could do it any more effectively than actually putting things on the shelf rather than the opposite - not putting things on the shelf. Is Geology more important than stacking shelves? Without Geology the supermarket would probably have been built on a peat bog and have sunk, or a build up of methane would have blown it up - both effecting OECD statistics negatively. Also when a court of law says that something that obviously is forced labour actually is forced labour I guess it's not that surprising to hear an unforced Conservative saying that it isn't. I like the fact that he treats 'emergency regulations' like a terminally ill dog (particularly in the context of 'Poundland') - '"I've already put emergency regulations down, and that's ended it," he added. '

I also like the way unemployment benefit or 'the dole' as it used to be known has changed from being money given to those without work so they can exist, to being money given to people who can actively prove they are looking for work (the clue being the word 'Jobseeker'), to being pay for working at Poundland - which surely then stops it actually being a benefit at all, but rather a new minimum wage - right? He then actually apologies - not for his 'slavery for corporations' policy, but for that fact that people don't want to be slaves - Smith states, 'I'm sorry, but there is a group of people out there who think they're too good for this kind of stuff,' - you know people like Spartacus, and the entire African-American population of the United States. Apparently, without any evidence, and having done no research 'most young people love" their work experience placements.' Hmm, stacking shelves in Poundland, I have some doubts here...

The imaginatively titled 'Back-to-Work' scheme is apparently the government's "most successful," ahem, back-to-work scheme, he said: "It's been so successful that over half of those kids have left benefits." Assuming he doesn't mean 'behind on the bus' or 'to their next of kin' I'd say it is certainly the only 'back-to-work' scheme that I've heard the Department of Work & Pensions implementing, so it clearly doesn't have much competition. He fails to mention what those kids who have left benefits are doing now? Living off bank on mum? Life of crime? Suicide? 'The scheme had been launched to help young people trapped in a vicious circle where they could not get a job because they did not have any experience on their CVs,' now they're trapped in a vicious circle where they could not get a job because they were working for free in a job where the employer is paid by the taxpayer to employ staff and pay them nothing thereby negating the need for that employer to employ paid staff and create jobs. Following on, 'once you commit to doing that programme, because companies have to make arrangements around it, then if you don't do this you may suffer a benefit withdrawal because you have messed them around and they are therefore going to suffer as a result of that."It's a point that anyone out there listening to this will know. You have to learn early that if you commit to something, you stay and do it,"' (like studying at the University per Stranieri I suppose). This implies that employers will be really suffering as a result of losing one free labourer, like they are not used to a high turnover of staff anyway - whereas an individual, without even a basic safety-net, must put up with this belittling experience regardless of their feelings about the experience. This is akin to saying - 'you are an out of work dole scum - work for nothing or we'll make you homeless - your opinion is of no interest to us' - a direct contradiction of his previous anecdotal point about young people loving their work placements.

In this interview he completely fails to acknowledge the DWP's total incompetence in failing to provide adequate regulations to back up this appalling policy, he fails to address the fact that Miss Reilly was doing socially beneficial voluntary work (Big Society anyone?) that has some relevance to her degree that she invested 3 years hard work and tens of thousands of pounds to achieve - surely something that should be commended in a modern society rather than denigrated as being wishy-washy due to not being Economics, Business Studies, Science, Medicine or Engineering, and, fatally, that she was incorrectly told (probably by an unpaid work-placement young person at her job centre) that the work placement was not compulsory. All amusing give the fact the IDS doesn't seem to know what qualification he actually has or where he got them -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/12_december/19/newsnight_ids_cv.shtml

Appalling treatment like this occurs every day as the DWP and hence Job Centre Plus does not have a handle on how (or an incentive) to help people get back to work, and it seems IDS's only interest is giving corporations free labour while creating a narrative that the Conservatives are forcing those 'scroungers' to work for their money like performing whales trapped in a more depressing version of Sea World. Which is saying something. Slave rebellion anyone?
http://www.break.com/usercontent/2010/3/5/sea-world-killer-whale-kills-trainer-video-1769392

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Music Journalism

'Its adventurous structure alternates between melodically rich verses and powerful instrumental interludes, essentially passing the torch to Googe and drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig when she clears way for a spine-tingling solo of clanging distortion' (http://www.obscuresound.com/albums/my-bloody-valentine-mbv-2013/)

'Indeed, primitivism is a reoccurring theme for IBG, both in the sense that their music is an obvious devolution of the conventions of rock music and also simply because their songs are gargantuan epics which inspire images of rumbling volcanoes and thundering dinosaurs trudging across vast swathes of borderline ineffable terrain.' (http://pocketjury.net/2011/09/im-being-good-mountain-language/)

Before I start into a torrent of swearing, lets just discuss the state of music journalism at this moment (specifically the UK, but this is pretty universal I think). Magazines like NME and Kerrang continue to plough their furrow, but with dwindling sales and the ongoing switch to online it is difficult for these formerly ubiquitous publications to produce good quality reviews, articles and interviews and it is also increasingly difficult for them to made significant dents in record sales and downloads, wheras there was a time when a front page meant a dramatic rise in sales and a dedicated fanbase this is not necessarily the case anymore. The schism has continued, and can in alternative music terms be traced back to Everett True's move from NME to Melody Maker, whose subsequent demise led to NME's monopoly of the broadsheet music press, an untenable position as without competition quality declined. True's subsequent decreasingly excellent magazines Careless Talk Costs Lives and Plan B saw a dwindling readership further alienated by esoteric articles, obscurantism and just plain high-brow Nathan Barleyism. We are now faced with an array of poorly produced, largely locally produced glossies and papers like Stool-pigeon, Bristol's Crack magazing and Fear of Fiction, the dominance of shock mags like Vice and a bewildering cornucopia of online blogs and forum things like Drowned In Sound that now live on user generated content. There is apparently no professional 'alternative' music journalism. What we now have to put up with is apparently the above style of infantile hyperbole and extravagant metaphor alongside attempts to describe the music using a hopelessly inadequate vocabulary that as it speaks seems to fear alienating the reader before seeking out a turn of phrase that hopes to impress. What is even worse is when a blogger tries to give a track-by-track description of an album, after a paragraph or two introducing the biography of the band before finally summing up the album in a neat phrase. Please spare me. Not only do I not have time to be bothered to read such effable air, I am irritated that someone took the time to do so, and post it on their blog for all to read. The case study here is the recent release of My Bloody Valentine's third album 'mbv.' So keenly awaited was this that the moment the band streamed it on youtube (in low quality format) then blog reviews started appearing. The band's website is offering preorders of the LP, and state clearly that pains were taken to record, mix and master the album using analog technology. Therefore any non-analog reviews cannot be regarded as having listened to the album 'properly' in the first place, so it appears that the main motivation for putting a review up so soon is to get traffic visiting your blog. How can this kind of motivation be conducive to good writing. I'll admit my blog is not as thoroughly researched or edited as it could be but its point is to be spontaneous and free. Besides anyone who begins a sentence with 'Indeed' wants shooting. In the foot. So it'll take them ages to die of loss of blood. Assuming I don't resuscitate them to prolong their agony indefinitely.

See also: http://www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk/features/news/an-a-z-guide-to-music-journalist-bullshit.html

I wanted to get this rant out of the way so I can have a go a writing my own music blog, on my own terms - and I want to avoid all the bad elements I have described above. Thank-you.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Snowmageddon

Let it snow, let it snow, let is snow...No. Sometimes I think the UK media is close to realising its power to manipulate the population, but like a hive of bees or nest of ants it finds itself too unwieldy to exert its true power to transcend its existence and evolve to a higher form. This month I have noticed, despite being really busy, that the UK has had some snow (as I believe it had last year, and certainly did in 2010 and 2009. In fact I believe snow has occurred with some regularity, going right back to the last ice age ). You would expect that after a few years of significant winter snowfall that the novelty would wear off, that airports, councils and traffic agencies, like most private companies , would have been prepared for it. In the main it seems they have; football matches went on unabated, the country did not come to a grinding halt, but wait - on facebook many people in the UK seemed to feel the need to post that it was snowing - like it was something hugely exciting and out of the ordinary. This tendency was apparently stimulated by a similarly overexcited media reporting that people should all 'stay indoors, and only travel if it is absolutely necessary' like there had been a chemical leak or something. Ian Hislop blamed the media for creating 'snowmageddon,' and he was not wrong, like a feeding frenzy the media take up the idea and run with it for as long as possible. Countries that often have snow, like Switzerland, certainly enjoy it, and enjoy a certain amount of childish excitement about it, however their response is measured and reasoned, they have cars with a specific 'snow' setting, they go out prepared for what can happen with snow, they are respectful, and most of all their Cantons take the clearing and gritting of roads seriously, with the knowledge that the people expect everything to carry on pretty much as normal, with the exception of extra precautions and care taken. Another key factor is that Swiss roads, pavements and drains are professionally constructed, to a much higher standard than the pothole ridden, poorly maintained highways of the UK. Swiss roads and pavements are flatter and tougher and are much easier to clear of snow with snowploughs and periodic gritting, even at temperatures at -20. Media reporting of snow is kept to the weather report, and off the main news and discussion programmes, as it is no big deal. The UK should learn a lesson. It seems the problems are caused by a culture of people not wanting to take responsibility, extra care or precautions in a snow environment, so blame can be apportioned. The media gets sidetracked by its childish glee, forgetting its social responsibility and the effect it has in creating panic and irritation. Like an ant colony that has found some honey, it cannot and will not be stopped. But I find that the UK public on the whole should understand that their media cannot be trusted any longer (post-Hutton report, post-phone hacking, post-Saville) and start taking more responsibility for their own lives. And actually go out and enjoy the snow properly rather than sending their crappy photos of snowmen in to crappy TV shows...
See:
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/21/why-is-europe-still-so-unprepared-for-snowmageddon/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/21/snow-school-closures-travel
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21195257

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

And Start West

Ireland. The Emerald Isle. The home of stereotypes, potato blight, leprechauns, lucky charms, stout and the colour green. Thoughts of Irish culture recall Swift, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Stiff Little Fingers, The Undertones, Therapy?, MBV, and Father Ted. Unfortunately Riverdance, Colin Farrell, Westlife, Boyzone, U2 and Susan Boyle are there too. More recently there is the Rubber Bandits:

who seamlessly manage to blend all these elements into one unpleasantly catchy whole.

My first week in Cork, the Republic of Ireland's second city, located on the south coast to the west of Dublin has been okay. It is winter and when you are near the coast, in damp air, it feels colder - I was out in minus 20 in Switzerland and it feels worse here at minus 2. Houses are poorly built (unlike Switzerland, and a little worse than the UK it seems), our rented house has no loft or cavity insulation so it acts like a big fridge. It doesn't help that electricity and gas prices are super-high too. Post economic crisis everything is super expensive, worse than in Switzerland for a number of reasons as I see it: 1. Infrastructure: There is no effective train network here, the bus system is hampered by a bad road system and is overpriced. 2. Everybody drives - more so than the UK even, despite a road tax system that penalises emissions, a car is required if you want to travel anywhere conveniently - therefore there is no drive to improve public transport. 3. Tesco's. Tesco has a monopoly on out-of-town, 'low-cost' supermarkets, so their version of 'low-cost' means competing on some lines with Aldi, with everything else priced however they want it to be - no Sainsbury's, Asda, Waitrose or Morrisons here. Also, quality is poor too, as it is generally with Tesco's in the UK, and totally unlike the great quality of the cooperative supermarkets in Switzerland. Luckily there are numerous health-food shops in Cork so being a vegan is not a drag, though is super expensive, despite this nascent competition.

My first record shop experience nearly made me cry. I was taking my daughter to a lunchtime family cinema screening of a french film (The Life of A Cat) at the local art centre - a beautifully converted church, that has a record shop incorporated: 'Plugd'. Walking up the ramp with my daughter the record shop guy actually acknowledged me and my daughter, saying how great it is to have all theses kids coming in the shop, he then approached me and my partner and daughter, being friendly and asking what kind of music we're into and where we had come from. I checked out the selection - Tortoise, Trans Am, Ox Scapula, Don Caballero, Rudimentary Peni - just some of the great LPs I picked out. Very emotional. In the UK a record shop guy usually sits behind the desk staring at his feet while playing some ultra-hip god-awful rubbish, and responds to questions either with grunts or a sneering, cynical look like your question about an Amon Duul II record was like you farting loudly in their direction. Not so here, and I look forward to my next visit...must check out the book shops too...