Archive for the ‘music’ Category

The best gig of my life

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

It’s 2003 and I’m playing the best gig of my life.

The graduate slacker persona is getting old and we can no longer ignore the need for paying jobs, so it’s one last hurrah for old times’ sake. Local pub and a sympathetic crowd. I play the guitar, as all seven-year indie veterans do. A Stratocaster. Never did like Les Pauls. The mic craning in front of me indicates I drew short straw with vocals too, which I avoid by writing mostly instrumental songs.

A final nod and we hurtle into the opener we always play too fast. I realise that the weight of a typical performance is gone. No more worrying about whether people will come to see us again. Only the minutes matter.

We’ve abolished pauses between songs to sustain momentum and delay the audience response. It works. Our transitions are tight and the audience knows full well we’re teasing them. I see them grin. The songs sound demanding, you see, but they’re deceptively simple to play. The complexity is all rhythm, abstract numbers and melodic set pieces. Without fear of getting it wrong, a performance can rely on expression, not mechanics.

We pull into the new song on another wave of feedback. Two basses and a weighty tempo. As the intro builds, I keep my fingers away from the strings. We’ve practised so much that my fingers are sore, and I want to pounce at the last minute.

Then the kick in, blatantly telegraphed but somehow still a surprise even to myself. I shout something indecipherable and punch the pedals. It’s ecstatic. Not just the sound and the emotion, but the feel of the instrument. Frets worn down to just the right spot, strap lowered an inch a year as my confidence grows. I’m trying to beat the shit out of this thing and it’s responding. It could rebel at any stage, but it knows me and acquiesces. Even as it screams around the room, all fizz and distortion, I know I’m in command. I strangle its enthusiasm at the count of four, muting it sharply and jumping on the pedals with both feet. I hear a yell of appreciation, but it’s not for show this time. It’s a way to remind my guitar who’s boss.

I’ve never felt so in touch with a machine in my life, and I doubt I will again.

Posted in music | 1 Comment »

The melancholy death of Selectadisc

Monday, April 6th, 2009

Empty Selectadisc Last week, Nottingham’s legendary Selectadisc closed its doors for the last time.

For many residents, it was the epicentre of the city’s music scene, which continually punched above its weight. Bands formed from accidental meetings, gigs were posted, albums were bought on impulse, hipster haircuts were admired. For me, it was something of a spiritual home, where even the aloof staff couldn’t detract from the pleasures of rifling through the New Releases with a modest paycheque burning a hole in my pocket.

But these were the days before bandwidth, when even a dial-up shriek was still a rare luxury. The world doesn’t need record shops any more, and Selectadisc wasn’t in the happy position of receiving a government bail-out to cover its outdated business model.

Still, we can look back and pour a 40 on the kerb in honour of our fallen heroes. Farewell Selectadisc, and farewell to the idea of record shop as social object.

Posted in music, personal | 5 Comments »

CDs for sale

Monday, September 15th, 2008

I’ve decided to finally make the move to digital, so I’m selling all my CDs. Before I go down the eBay route, any of you lucky folks want to buy any? Full list here (pdf) – £3 each, £1 for EPs. First come, first served: leave a comment or hit me up at email [at] cennydd [dot] co [dot] uk.

Posted in music, personal | 12 Comments »

My new filing technique is unstoppable

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

It should come as no surprise that, as both an IA and a music snob, I keep my ID3 tags pretty much immaculate. Correct spellings, title case throughout, even proper diacritics, until they were ruined by the iTunes v7.7 update.

As part of my curatorial approach, I classify for optimal findability – which means, since I have an iPhone, that I arrange my artists the proper/anal way – by surname for solo artists, and by name for bands. The definite article is of course excluded and appended as a suffix. Hence:

Mitchell, Joni
Smiths, The
Add N To (X)

But those last.fm upstarts think they know better than me. National, The “is an incorrect tag for The National. If this non-artist appears in your charts, do last.fm and yourself a favor. Fix your artist tags.” Also – the injustice – a big red image imploring me to adhere to their wrong-minded tagging policies.

Non-artist? The cheek! They’ll regret this, I tell you. Oh, and favor? They’re based in Shoreditch! Grr!

Posted in music, user experience | 4 Comments »

Digital rights in a restrictive age

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

One of the difficulties of working in the internet industry is we sometimes feel like we’re fighting a losing battle against regulation. Despite the new horizons the digital age offers:

state databases of our information are growing, yet our access to public information is being eroded,
copyright is becoming more restrictive, making a criminal out of a bedroom DJ who creates a mashup of old songs,
the songs, films, phones and hardware we buy are so crippled with copy protection and DRM that we sometimes can’t even use the damn things legally.

None of this is necessarily the government’s fault. In the absence of their own technical knowledge, legislators regularly turn to Big Business for advice. Unfortunately, some of Big Business (not all) profits by keeping these very restrictions in place. The customer, the end user, the public misses out.

The Open Rights Group was set up as the voice of the other side of the debate. They don’t want anarchy and piracy on the open internet seas; just a chance to protect civil liberties wherever they are threatened by the poor implementation and regulation of digital technology.

Of course, ORG is a volunteer organisation and needs funds. As they’re on a big recruitment drive, they’ve asked supporters to help spread the word: so, without wishing to be too brazen, I do recommend you check them out if you’re not familiar with them, and maybe consider whether you could support the consumer side of an often under-reported and one-sided debate.

Posted in links, music, privacy, web | No Comments »

Vive la FIP

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

At last I have broadband. Too many stories to relate, but there’s one I’d particularly like to share.

While setting up my bedroom basics (alarm clock, airbed – thankfully now usurped by a real bed) I chanced upon a French radio station playing some very listenable French hip-hop. I stuck with it, and over the next couple of weeks it remained my humble alarm/snooze companion until, late last week, I took a short lie in and actually listened to it properly.

Brilliant! No ads, no DJs, just a very short hourly news update; and otherwise totally dedicated to a spectacularly diverse playlist taking in The Divine Comedy, Chopin, Parisian indie (Cocosuma, apparently), Prince and old music hall numbers. Yes, it’s a little Radio 2 and as such there’s a little ‘Ceefax music’ in there too, but it’s always of the quirky arpeggiated strings variety rather than the xylophone variety.

Curiosity piqued, I turned to Google and learned that I was listening to FIP (France Inter Paris) Radio, which turns out to be something of a cult Brighton institution. Instead of floating across the Channel as I’d first assumed, it appears that it’s rebroadcast in the city. Legend (well, the local rag) has it that the perpetrator was previously stopped by Ofcom, but vowed to return. Either he kept his word or my neighbours have a very powerful iTrip. Brighton’s love for the station has even stretched to a website set up in its honour and a Bastille Day FIP club night which I’m dying to go to.

Delighted, I immediately concluded that any city that shares my love for this quirky station has to be a good one. And that was the moment I felt at home in Brighton.

FIP Radio online

Posted in music, personal | No Comments »

Muxtape

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

Muxtape may not last all that long. Its beauty and simplicity will probably put paid to that, as it collapses under the weight of piracy and lawsuits. Until then, I’ve uploaded a handful of songs I’ve written, should anyone be interested.

Posted in music | 1 Comment »

Bulk discount

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

I’ve not yet stopped buying CDs because I like having the physical artefacts. Mostly because I have a pretty decent hi-fi setup that trumps any MP3 in quality but, candidly, also thanks to mild music snobbery: the narcissistic chance that some visitor to my home will examine my collection and be suitably impressed. It does happen.

But my modest (615 CD, according to iTunes) collection pales into insignificance compared to this astonishing 3,000,000-strong record collection being sold on eBay. Reserve price: $3 million. Beyond my means – until, that is, eBay generously decided to offer $10 cashback.