Various crap imported from various areas of my life and interests...
Created by thespiderhill on 13/08/2008
Last updated: 11/03/10 at 01:49
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stuartfowkes: Amazing. Birthday cinema trip and there is NO ONE ELSE in the cinema at all. Must stress I am not alone however.
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/6663925448
stuartfowkes: @crouchingbadger How can they not realise it's SO BADLY put together and un-user friendly? That's what amazes me.
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/5373567683
stuartfowkes: arctic monkeys support are some kind of supergroup featuring Dave grohl and Josh homme. quite good.
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/3562051447
stuartfowkes: Heading off to take some photos since the sun's out. Might catch the sunset with any luck.
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/3291524136
stuartfowkes: Attempting a one tweet review of each band at #truck09 today. Calories are competent and plodding yet oddly likeable.
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/2852075132
stuartfowkes: New blog post: Grain silo number one, Oxford http://shortna.me/546c2
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/2603395580
stuartfowkes: @geospizafortis @garrettc sounds good! Better add some photos to the group then... No one's mentioned telephoto lenses yet. oo-er.
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/2280068574
stuartfowkes: Laughing @Newcastle united.
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1903915424
stuartfowkes: This is quite satisfying, in a sub-Ed Ruscha euphonic word-worship kinda way: http://wordsarenice.com/
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1603217588
stuartfowkes: w00t. Fashion shoot coverage by ME on p.49 of today's The Sun tabloid newspaper. http://tinyurl.com/axahn6
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1288437802
stuartfowkes: OxfordBands: The Bad Habits: Demo: In a shocking case of a pot calling a kettle black, The Bad Habit.. http://bit.ly/RBDqc
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1245139980
Hello all
I'm not going to be posting here any more, as I've bought a URL and some web space and am going to make some attempt at doing this thing properly. My new blog is over at www.thespiderhill.com, so please readjust your bookmarks, feeds and very kind links accordingly.
The new space is going to be principally getting me back into doing what I love most, which is listening to loads of music and then spewing out bile or joy dependent on my reaction. There'll be the odd bit of other stuff in there, but it's mostly a space for me to go on and on AND ON about music until you're all sick of me. ENJOY.
www.thespiderhill.com
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/the-spider-hill-is-dead-long-live-the-spider-hill/
stuartfowkes: Ha! It's going to snow next week buy I'll be on holiday in the gambia. Face, everyone.
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1164184816
stuartfowkes: OxfordBands: Jessie Grace: Asleep on the Good Foot: Yes, it is a crummy title for such a good record.. http://bit.ly/u7O
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1159709496
Our next show is in Aylesbury on 30 January. Here's the flyer. Do come along.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/?p=431
The recording continues apace. Yesterday was a day in the studio recording drum and guitar parts for three tracks, ending at 11pm... this morning we kicked off at 10am recording synth and bass parts, then we'll move onto rough mixes.
Here are a few photos from yesterday's recording session...
[gallery link="file"]
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/from-light-to-sound-recording-day-one/
I've been messing about with Storytlr today, which to all intents seems to be an altogether swisher and nicer-looking way of aggregating your online activity than the somewhat utilitarian Friendfeed. It's kinda neat - plug in your networks, from Flickr to Last.fm, give it a date span, and it produces an editable 'story' made up of pics, links and your general musings. Very interesting to stick in a week or so and see what your online life looks like - here's one from me.
Unfortunately, since basic Wordpress seems to hate you embedding anything, I can't stick it directly in here, which is quite frustrating. Go and have a play, though.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/messing-about-with-storytlr/
Exciting times ahead this weekend, as my new band From Light To Sound (although it's been going for a year, so I should probably stop calling it 'new') goes into the studio this weekend to record our first tracks together.
It should be an interesting process for me particularly, as I've never done a 'traditional' recording in a proper band with live drums. Recording with Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element simply means me separating out all the individual electronic drums sounds into separate tracks, which I can do from the comfort of my own bed, then playing some guitar and synth parts over the top. A bit like a techno-guitar Milli Vanilli.
And recording with The Evenings I overdubbed my keyboard parts (have a listen over here) on top of band recordings already done without me being there.
This time around, we'll mic up the drum kit, put everyone's guitar parts through amp modellers/pods, play through headphones while we record the drums and scratch guitar tracks. Then re-record each guitar part properly, at volume. And we have eight hours to nail two or even three tunes, which will be tight.
Sunday will be mixing at my house, interspersed with Mario Kart Wii and a nice roast dinner being cooked by the bassist.
I'll report back with some pictures and stuff, and of course the finished tracks when they're done, but in the meantime here's a rehearsal recording of one of the songs we're recording, called 'Compliance'. It was recorded with a little MP3 recorder in the corner of the practice room, hence the distinctly lo-fi quality.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/recording-my-new-band/
stuartfowkes: @ihatemornings @AZIndependent Cheers guys, I'll check that out...
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1117974586
I've been messing about with Storytlr today, which to all intents seems to be an altogether swisher and nicer-looking way of aggregating your online activity than the somewhat utilitarian Friendfeed. It's kinda neat - plug in your networks, from Flickr to Last.fm, give it a date span, and it produces an editable 'story'
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/?p=387
stuartfowkes: Does any phrase make the blood run colder than 'project implementation plan'?
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1104098812
stuartfowkes: OxfordBands: Matthew Kilford – House on the Hill: This is a decent one. Opener ‘Zurich’.. http://bit.ly/eB0q
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1101782760
In the absence of anything better to write about, ravaged as I am by a minor illness, here's a collage of some nice pics from today's Nice Country Walk out at the White Horse in Uffington...
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2009/01/02/nice-country-walk/
stuartfowkes: BLOG: Nice Country Walk http://tinyurl.com/7wwcq3
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1092090783
Wow. Assuming I've not messed this up, I'm now posting my first blog entry of 2009 from my iPod. The future is here and I claim my free hover car.
Hope you had a great new year. I've promised myself I'll post at least three times a week, so more over the next couple of days.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/the-future-is-here/
stuartfowkes: BLOG: The future is here http://tinyurl.com/8co8tv
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1090345035
Thi has really been the year when I've become 100% geek, partially due to my job now necessitating it, and partially because it was always brewing under the surface. Aside from the Flip video, Twitter, RocketDock, DeskSpace, Freemind, Twhirl, Photosynth, Dipity, Vimeo and all that, I've become pleasantly obsessed with the wonderful tweakability of Firefox. So here are ten add-ons that have made my life easier this year, in case it's of interest...
adblock plus
fast dial
firegestures
twittytunes
url fixer
cooliris
Morning coffee
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/?p=378
Looking back over my records at the end of the year as usual, I was pleased to see that I had bought/been exposed to loads of new stuff this year, which makes a top ten worth bothering with. I also noticed that there was loads of stuff from this year that I keep meaning to buy but haven't got round to, like Fennesz, Bon Iver, Stereolab, TV on the Radio etc., so this list might have looked a lot different if I'd managed to get hold of everything I meant to listen to.
Any other highlights of 2008 you could recommend for me to check out?
1. Portishead - Third
This was going to be number one in my list from the first moment I heard it. It's magnificent, groundbreaking music with everything from krautrock and Silver Apples to scratched old soul records and swish futuristic techno. It made me think differently about music to some extent, and I can't praise it any more highly than that.
2. Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull
This is just wonderful - big, long droning monoliths with every single note deliberate and crystal clear. It's doomy and sludgy, but manages to combine that with beauty and a real light touch.
3. Avrocar - Against The Dying Of The Light
Affable ambient Brummies who quietly go about creating some of the most gorgeous electronic music in the world, while virtually no one notices. This is superb stuff, and, even better, accompanied by a lovely hand-written letter from the band when I bought the album. You just don't get that from Brian Eno.
4. Zombie Zombie - A Land For Renegades
I first heard of this band when I was offered a show by them on their UK tour last year, but we didn't have space to put them on. But the press material got me salivating. So here's a band with 'zombie' in the name TWICE, who are synth-driven krautrock lovers from the same musical school as Holy Fuck? Yes please! Daft Punk meets Neu!
5. Glasvegas - Glasvegas
Allow me to join the massed ranks of critics gathered to worship at the feet of Glasvegas. I fell in love with 'It's My Own Cheating Heart' as soon as I heard the demo version. They were terrific on the three occasions I saw them live this year (including a show at the little Jericho Tavern that I'm sure will drift into Oxford music folklore in a couple of years). And the album is so good that it doesn't collapse beneath the weight of hype dumped on top of it before it was released. Anyone know if the Christmas record is any good? All the record shops here have run out of copies...
6. Fujiya & Miyagi - Lightbulbs
Absolutely more of the same from Fujiya & Miyagi. I'd have no trouble believing these songs were done at the sametime as Transparent Things - they're so similar to the first record. Thankfully the first record was terrific and this is also great. Not for me to worry about where they head next, and 'Knickerbocker' is my favourite sing-along-in-the-shower pop song of the year.
7. The Bug - London Zoo
An album I bought purely on the strength of critical praise and the fact that your man there had something to do with Techno Animal/Godflesh, apparently. And it's a real treat, going from pretty brutal breakbeats and seriously heavy bass to lighter, ragga-inflected stuff, frequently within the same track. This is far and away the most, umm, 'zeitgeist' record on the list, for want of a better term.
8. American Music Club - The Golden Age
Not a patch on Love Songs For Patriots as far as I'm concerned - it really seems to lack some of that heartfelt despondency and rawness. But what it lacks in that area it makes up for in being really rather pretty and charming, and 'Sleeping Beauty', 'Decibels and the Little Pills' and 'Windows on the World' are up there with any of their vintage material. Shame there's a fair bit of filler on there too, though.
9. Kid606 - Die Soundboy Die
Technically only an EP, but in here because it is EXCELLENT. I've already reviewed this and you can see what I thought of it over here. Bags of fun, basically, and his live set at Audioscope was bang on form.
Kid606 live at Audioscope from thespiderhill on Vimeo.
10. Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element - More Than 20 per cent
Yeah, I know. I'm in the band. But if you can't put your own record into your own top ten records that affected your life this year, then something's up. And there's some good stuff here - the live tracks sound good and clangy, and there are some great remixes. My favourites are by Karhide, Space Heroes of the People and Kosmische. BONUS TREAT for blog readers - get your hands on some free Sunnyvale MP3s over here.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/top-10-albums-of-2008/
As I was compiling a top ten records of the year (more to come), I was thinking about how my music taste might have changed over the past year, so I logged onto last.fm to see what it had to say about my listening habits. The answer seems to be 'not much'.
If you take From Light To Sound and Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element out of the mix (at # 2 and #4 in the list respectively), because I play in those bands so end up listening to band practices, live recordings, demos and all sorts all the time, then my top ten looks like the list below. Bit skewed, as itobviously only takes into account what I've listened to in front of my computer, and also lots of what I happen to have on my work laptop (loads of Mogwai apparently):
1. American Music Club (hmm, will they ever not top one of my lists? I'm such a sap for Eitzel. Plus I stalked them on tour and now they are close personal friends*.)
2. The Paper Chase (new entry after seeing them live for the first time and going WOAAAH, and also after listening to them on repeat during a bad start to the year.)
3. Cat Power (I really don't remember listening to her much this year, and I didn't like Jukebox.)
4. Stereolab (Definite resurgence this year, and off to see them live tomorrow, yay! Hope they play the krauty exciting stuff not the louche boring French-pop.)
5. Mark Eitzel (see 1.)
6. Kid606 (New EP is outstanding, and got a revival once we booked him for Audioscope.)
7. Mogwai (Don't even like 'em that much, just have loads on my PC for some reason.)
8. Killing Joke (I have no memory of listening to them loads this year.)
9. Death Cab For Cutie (Whining indie sap.)
10. Einstuerzende Neubauten (Must have been during a clangy April/May.)
So there you go - a mostly- meaningless chart that isn't a true reflection of what I've loved this year, and which took a year to compile. I wonder how this would compare with a top ten list I drew up from memory...
*Or quite possibly afraid of me.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/listening-habits-in-2008-apparently/
Looking back over my records
1. Portishead - Third
2. Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull
3. Avrocar - Against The Dying Of The Light
4. Zombie Zombie - A Land For Renegades
5. Glasvegas - Glasvegas
6. Fujiya & Miyagi - Lightbulbs
7. The Bug - London Zoo
8. American Music Club - The Golden Age
9. Kid606 - Die Soundboy Die
10. Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element - More Than 20 per cent
Yeah, I know. I'm in the band. But if you can't put your own record into your own top ten records that affected your life this year, then something's up.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/?p=355
About a month ago, I picked up a Flip video camera, as much to trial it to see if it'd have useful applications for my work as anything. Having played about with it for a while, here are a few thoughts on its performance if you're thinking of buying one. I've tested it out mostly in two environments: dark, loud music venues, and out in Rwanda on a recent trip.
Size/practicality
Great. It's small enough to slip into your pocket and quick enough to boot up that you won't miss things that happen quickly - compare this with mobile phone video, which often means you pressing seven or eight combinations of buttons before you even get into video mode. It runs off AA batteries rather than a bespoke battery that needs charging up, iPod style, which is hugely beneficial if you're travelling, and also don't want to be carrying around yet another charger with you. Similarly, the USB arm flips out of the side of the camera, so again there are no extra leads. One downside is that you can't rotate the USB arm, so if your USB ports are vertical rather than horizontal, you have to do some awkward laptop elevation to get the videos off there. You can buy a USB extension cable to get round this, but everything else is designed so well that you'd think this would have been thought of.
Capacity/battery life
It holds up to an hour of video as a pretty standard-sized AVI, which is plenty really. Battery life promised up to four hours, but in reality sits nearer the three-hour mark. Still plenty of time to watch back your footage and delete bits you don't want.
Software
Software for very basic editing is included on the Flip, so if all you really want to do is take short clips and whack them online, you can do it straight out of the box. The 'movie mix' feature, which blends together several clips into a short movie, is okay but not great. You can't, for instance, replace the audio with your own soundtrack, and you have no choice about how the scenes are faded into one another. Still, what do you expect? You can always use Windows Movie Maker or something similar to get better results.
Picture quality
You're not going to get anything broadcast/TV quality, let's make that clear. But for online video, the quality is just fine, and much better than any mobile phone video currently out there. When you're moving quickly, e.g. in a car, foreground stuff whizzes by extremely quickly and distorts a bit, giving the impression you're watching speeded-up film. But middle-distance stuff looks perfect. The camera also copes surprisingly well with poor lighting conditions - it can get a half decent picture under most conditions.
The viewfinder/playback screen is really quite small. It's fine for shooting but watching clips back can be a bit of a struggle. There's an A/V out so you can play back on a TV or monitor, which given the resolution of the picture, also holds up surprisingly well.
With the tripod (an extra £10 or so), you can get a lovely steady shot, too, and it also functions as an extremely basic monopod to steady up your hand-held shooting. Really useful.
Minus points are the zoom. It's a weak digital zoom that distorts the picture as soon as you start using it, so you might as well forget zooming in on anything.
Sound quality
A real strength compared to what else is on the market in the same price range, or compared to mobiles. I doesn't like wind whipping across the mic (but what audio kit does?), but at loud volumes like gigs, it simply compresses the sound right down so you don't get a huge mess of white noise, but can actually pick out what's going on. And sound for natural background noise, conversation etc. is perfectly clear.
The biggest oversight is a lack of audio out/headphone socket, so you can't listen back easily to the sound on what you've recorded. Sound only plays back through the on-board speaker, which is not powerful, so you need to be somewhere quiet to play back, and even then you don't get a true representation of the sound.
Reliability
Looks plasticky and cheap, but is quite robust. The only problem I've had was having it in my pocket all day in 30oC heat, it became a little temperamental and didn't switch on immediately, until it'd cooled down and the moisture had evaporated. Best to keep it in a bag or loose coat pocket, then.
On the whole, though, this thing is £80, and for the price, both the picture and sound quality are actually excellent, and you can pull good quality stuff for the web together in no time at all, whether it's quick grabs of bands performing or from the field footage of humanitarian emergencies.
See below for a couple of clips, one from a recent gig, and one from my recent travels (see my earlier post), so you can see for yourself how the Flip holds up in different situations.
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-JYepFl_hDc]
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/flip-video-camera-review/
stuartfowkes: BLOG: Flip video camera review http://tinyurl.com/6ce79n
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1032251949
Interesting interview here with University of Leeds professor Bethany Klein on advertising and music. Of course she's hawking her book, but it's an engaging interview and some food for thought on the 'art vs. $$' debate. Have a read.
One minor point that got me interested is when she says, with reference to Play, that 'Historically, if you look at the terms of constructed authenticity in popular music, you’ll find that Moby gets out of certain aspects of it because it is electronic music; it’s not rock ’n’ roll. It doesn’t have the same stakes in the art-vs.-commerce debate that rock ’n’ roll might.'
And thinking about it, that's probably true, although my initial reaction was to bristle at the implication that electronic music is any less valid sitting at the 'art' end of an art vs. commerce debate than Nick Drake, for instance. While I wouldn't agree that it's necessarily more suited to adverts per se (depends what you're looking for), I suppose electronica principally (or at least popularly) comes from the same era as music in advertising, so there may not be quite the same feeling of outrage in hearing Amon Tobin or DJ Shadow on an ad for the first time as there might be from hearing The Stones or Led Zep. And what of lyrics? Does having lyrical content of any kind necessarily create a closer connection with a piece of music, such that when you hear it out of context in an advert, you react badly. Or does this opinion just come from that baseless, myopic school of thought, still bewilderingly popular fifteen years after LFO's first album, that says electronic music is artificial and digital, and can therefore not be constructed with heart and emotion? And since it has no heart or feeling behind it, then its place is in hawking products and backing trailers for ITV drama?
Even so, in the case of Moby specifically, I doubt it gets him out of the debate because it's electronic music, but rather because Play is a dead-eyed, soulless Great White of an album. Eugh.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/electronica-in-the-art-vs-commerce-debate/
Here are some memories of driving round the eastern province of Rwanda last week. I forgot the memory card for my camera, which meant no photos, but that was probably a blessing in disguise, as I just videoed everything, like the very stereotype of a western tourist. [vodpod more about "Journeys through Rwanda ", posted with vodpod
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/journeys-through-rwanda/
stuartfowkes: OxfordBands: The Repeats: demo: If they are The Repeats, whom are they repeating? The ch.. http://bit.ly/1009r
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1025122420
So you might have noticed I've been away for a couple of weeks. Things have been kind of busy, and I've found myself breaking that golden rule of blogging - do it regularly. So I'll spend the week reviewing what I've been up to to make up for it.More on the Audioscope festival to come, but in the meantime, here's a video I made of a journey from Oxford to eastern Rwanda last week, as part of a trip I made for work. It also marks the first time I've really road-tested the Flip video camera, so I'll be reviewing that in some detail this week to, and my first attempt at sticking a video together, with the surprisingly-useful Windows standard Movie Maker software. Anyway, have a look. [vodpod more about "I've been to Rwanda", posted with vodpod
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/ive-been-to-rwanda-2/
So you might have noticed I've been away for a couple of weeks. Things have been kind of busy, and I've found myself breaking that golden rule of blogging - do it regularly. So I'll spend the week reviewing what I've been up to to make up for it.
More on the Audioscope festival to come, but in the meantime, here's a video I made of a journey from Oxford to eastern Rwanda last week, as part of a trip I made for work. It also marks the first time I've really road-tested the Flip video camera, so I'll be reviewing that in some detail this week to, and my first attempt at sticking a video together, with the surprisingly-useful Windows standard Movie Maker software. Anyway, have a look.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/?p=343
stuartfowkes: Testing this Twitter updating your Facebook status thingie...
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1004205549
stuartfowkes: Dammit. Why is it if you put on a music festival, at least one band always pulls out less than a week before? I'm gonna name it Fowkes' Law.
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/1000834326
stuartfowkes: Rediscovering my love for The Lapse. Great band.
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/998829547
stuartfowkes: OxfordBands: Jonquil at The Regal, 3 November 2008:
Jonquil at The Regal, 3 Novembe.. http://bit.ly/4lKI5U
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/989043123
stuartfowkes: Editing a blog is somewhere between stimulating and interesting on the content front and DEADLY DULL on the technical side of it...
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/987590846
This is what I went to see last night. Stunning live band. Check them out. Review written for OxfordBands.com.
Some gigs are just ill-starred from the outset. The trick is to pull them around so you remember them for the right reasons.
Tonight is a prime example - first, the show underwent an enforced last-minute move from The Regal to The Wheatsheaf, missing the local music listings in the process. And second, the scheduled headliners Xmas Lights were forced to pull out at even shorter notice. All of which meant an audience of fewer than twenty, including support act, soundman and promoter, turned out to see Pulled Apart By Horses.
Boy, did the rest of you miss out - they're easily one of the best live bands we've seen this year (and we've seen a lot of bands this year). What Pulled Apart By Horses delivered wasn't just a stunning performance, but rather a salutary lesson to all bands on how you play to a room of ten people. The mirror image of the poseur band who get a bit of hype from NME, then can't be bothered to perform unless there are more than fifty people in the audience, PABH take the opportunity to crank their amps up even louder and shove their set right down your throat. Guitarists Tom Hudson and James Brown are everywhere: on top of the speaker stacks, mounting their guitars on the venue floor, crashing into one another on stage, as if they've discovered that kinetic energy is a cure for cancer.
Oh yes, almost forgot the music. In short, it's a majestic blend of Unwound-esque post-hardcore aggression combined with the exuberance of early Fugazi: they may just be the natural successors to the much-missed Cat On Form, before they downed tools and Steve Ansell hit the big time with Blood Red Shoes. In places, it's almost - almost - like watching Nation of Ulysses in a tiny bar in some backwoods town in 1992, and we can offer little higher praise than that.
Next time this band play in Oxford, get a front row seat.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/pulled-apart-by-horses/
stuartfowkes: OxfordBands: Pulled Apart By Horses, The Wheatsheaf, 29.10.08: Some gigs are just ill-st.. http://bit.ly/4AjAHD
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/982859965
The more observant among you may have noticed that a) I have not posted in a few days, and b) I haven't updated on the music festival we're organising for a good while. The two facts are not unconnected.
So about two weeks ago, we finally confirmed the lineup for the show on 15 November, which was seriously hard going this year for many reasons, but which I'm now very proud of. We've managed to cram lots of lovely electronica and dubstep, one of my favourite bands right now, some incredibly heavy doom-metal and lovely pop all in one day, for which we should either be acclaimed for our eclectic tastes or condemned for putting together a bill that will make no one completely happy but ourselves. Two sides of the same coin.
But I digress - once the lineup's together, it's only then that the really hard graft begins. Here's a short list of what the two of us have done in the past couple of weeks, just to put off anyone thinking of getting into the festival-promoting racket while still doing a day job:
Liaise with the lovely folk at We Got Tickets about giving their booking fee to charity and to installing a newish feature meaning you can donate to charity as you buy a ticket
Book flights for two artists and arrange transfers to and from airports
Book accommodation for two artists
Update the website, MySpace, Facebook groups etc.
Do two mailouts to our mailing list
Close down the remaining negotiations we had going with other booking agents with a polite 'the lineup's now full, but thanks' etc. note
Source promo images and biogs from all bands
Chase up advertising artwork from all advertisers in our event programme
Write the entire 24-page programme, consisting of ten band biographies, three event profiles and all the usual guff like intros, credits etc.
Get copy and advertising from Shelter for their contribution to the programme
Interview three of the bands by email for an interview feature in the programme
Send out a listings message to all key print and online music listings outlets
Talk to charity press office about jointly doing press work
Draw up press contacts list
Write press release and get sign-off from charity
Arrange meeting with soundman to discuss tech specs and logistics for the day.
Design and proof programme ready to go to printers
Do press mailout for interviews, news pieces and features
Try to convince people to help us flyer and work the door out of the kindness of their hearts
Bore the SHIT out of anyone who will listen about any or all of the above.
Next up, all the logistical stuff like tech specs, backline and the ins and outs of the day, the fun stuff like doing a few local press interviews, and the horrible stuff like looking on as the tickets resolutely refuse to sell out in advance.
If you're anywhere near Oxford, please buy a ticket and I promise I'll stop my woe-is-me festival organisation blogging.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/how-to-organise-a-music-festival-update/
Well, my new band, From Light To Sound, played our first ever gig this weekend, so I thought I'd post a belated reflection on what that was like and how it went. I also play in Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element, and have played in The Evenings, so it was far from my first gig of all time, but in some ways it really felt like it. My first ever gig was a really horrible improvised performance featuring two PCs, a record player and a megaphone (one for another day, I think), and the first time I performed with The Evenings, they were a well-established and well-loved band who were known for having all kinds of musicians play with them at every show, so the pressure wasn't really on.
This time, despite choosing to perform for the first time at a private party, and thus in front of what you would hope would be a warm audience, it really felt like it was. It would be the first time we'd been on stage as a group, the first soundcheck, and most critically, the first reactions from other people who weren't actually in the band.
There are so, so many things that could go wrong that I won't try to list them all, but here are five off the top of my head:
Everyone in the room could hate it. You've been locked in a studio for MONTHS, cooking up music you all think, in your sweaty and self-aggrandising circle of musicians, is BRILLIANT and will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. When in fact it's cock, and it's down to the very first room of people you play to to tell you.
At least one member of the band might freak out. The rest of you are well-rehearsed, calm, collected and together. But one of you flips, forgets his parts/breaks his instrument/freezes, and ruins it completely. Especially if it's the drummer.
Technical malfunction. The more instruments, the more electronics, the more gadgetry, the more likely a technical mishap becomes. And you've not played live before, so don't really know how to cope with it. These can vary from the minor (string breaks) to the major (your laptop containing all your backing tracks explodes).
Fuck up your first song. Don't try playing your widdly math-rock, multi-time signature masterpiece first in your set in attempt to dazzle. If you mess it up, it'll most likely ruin the rest of your set as you'll be a gibbering wreck. Play something mid-paced and blindingly obvious first to get into the swing of things. Or conversely, fuck up your last song. You've played really well so far, it's going down OK with the audience, the light's at the end of the tunnel, you're on the home straight. You lose your concentration thinking about the praise you're doubtless going to garner from the adoring groupies huddled by the bar. And you mess up your final track, the grand finale, the good impression you wanted to leave the audience with. Best to fuck up one of the middle songs, eh?
You don't get a soundcheck/the mix sucks. It's your first gig - you're not likely to be headlining. Soundcheck runs a bit late because of a fiddly headline act who can't quite get the mix right in their in-ears, then a support band whose keyboard won't send an output to the DI properly. Don't they realise it's your first gig and you have to hear everything perfectly? You go on with a linecheck at best, you can't hear everything as well as you have at every single practice before that day, and from there it all collapses.
And us? See 4b) to some extent - a bit of a glitch in the last song, but the benefit of it being your first gig is it could actually sound like that, and the next time the same people hear that song played properly, they'll think you've come on in leaps and bounds. Ha!
Our show seemed to go down really well - some people whose opinions I trust said some lovely things, and we've since been offered two more shows (including our first in public, yowzer), so all the signs are good. But everyone seems to think From Light To Sound isn't exactly a great name. Let's consider that a road test too, then - anyone got any good band names going spare?
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/doing-your-first-gig/
stuartfowkes: Glad Shinawatra finally got banged up http://tinyurl.com/5mmnrz http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7681416.stm
http://twitter.com/stuartfowkes/statuses/968814459
Ah zombies, how I love the myriad ways in which you are foisted upon us by filmmakers big and small. Whether it's Romero's mysterious plague of walking dead or Danny Boyle's fleet-footed angry slaverers, you come at us from radiation, gas leaks, military experiments gone wrong and voodoo magic. Though you may lack the élan of the more stylish undead at the vampire-end of the spectrum, I have to admire your resourcefulness. In Days of Darkness, the zombies are caused by parasitic aliens dropped by a passing comet, who replace our genitals with little wriggly pink aliens and make us develop that urge for a late-night, all-you-can-eat brains diner.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/review-days-of-darkness/
So today is Blog Action Day, and according to the site's conservative estimates, around 9.3 million people is the total readership for today's blog posts about poverty. Yet at the same time, Oxfam highlights the fact that 967 million people are currently going hungry worldwide, boosted to that figure by an extra 119 million people being devastated by rising food prices this year.
According to my shonky GCSE-level maths brain, that's 104 hungry people for every single person sitting reading this. Imagine that - more than a hundred people who can't afford to eat for everyone who will even be made aware of Blog Action Day. So what's the point in just screaming our collective outrage across the internet for a day?
Consider that despite the effects of climate change on crops and harvests, there is more than enough food in the world to ensure that no one needs to go hungry. What's going wrong? Unfair trade rules continue to push people further into poverty, climate change hammers the poorest people in the world hardest and they are the least able to cope with the effects, and the US government pledges enough money to its banks to end global poverty for two whole years.
And all this in the same world in which Peter Mandelson can get a £1 million golden goodbye for his job as EU Trade Commissioner, a job that saw him do everything in his power to block development out of trade negotiations explicitly set out to help poor countries.
Individually, we might not be able to do much to right the global systems that conspire against the poorest people (unless you're Peter Mandelson, in which case see above), but we can certainly do something that will make a difference. Give £2 a month to a charity whose work you respect. Lend your voice to something worth winning. Make a one-off donation to an appeal. Get angry about something. Take your old rubbish down to a charity shop.
If enough people take it upon themselves to take even one action, the world would become a better place overnight. And if Blog Action Day can help to achieve that, then maybe it's not just a load of people virtually wringing their hands for a day and then going back to business as usual.
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/blog-action-day-104-hungry-people-for-every-blog-reader/
http://thespiderhill.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/a-day-at-the-movieum/
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