Quick sidenote: I’ve changed my comments settings a bit; you’ll now be asked to register when you leave a comment. Sorry, I realise this is a pain in the arse, but I’m getting an unmanageable amount of spam at the moment. Hope this extra layer of security won’t stop anyone from leaving a note or a comment. Ta!
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Evading the circus
Posted 26 Apr 2011 — by Jonathan
Category General, Observations
Category General, Observations
I don’t suppose that anyone will be in the least bit surprised to read that I have absolutely no interest in the impending Royal Wedding, or anything at all to do with the Royal family unless it involves their ploughing some of their obscene wealth back into the country and/or abdicating, but it’s really quite distressing to note the feverish interest from other quarters. The Guardian – a newspaper which could once be counted on to either ignore or critique the monarchy – claimed earlier this month to have renounced its republicanism. That was, happily, an April Fool’s joke, but it might as well not have been. Today the paper boasts an article which does two things; first points out that Prince William has been cautious to keep himself private, remaining a ‘great unknown’, and second add to the endless tiresome speculation about his supposed ‘normality’.
There was a bit of mild intrigue in the press this week about the fact that William had invited a bunch of Tories – including John Major – to his wedding at the expense of Labour politicians; not even Tony Blair is on the guestlist. But today’s article includes one really irritating sentence, which suggests that William is a child of Blair rather than Major, inheriting the tendency towards the same infuriating – and largely patronising – fetishisation of football which blighted New Labour. According to the article, Wills still plays!
Only last week a team turning up for a kickabout in Battersea Park were surprised to see him on the other side.
Oh for god’s sake! Are we really supposed to believe this inane PR? What, Prince William just spontaneously decided to go and play football down the park the other day, lining up against a bunch of local lads? That The Guardian believes this is symptomatic of the fact that it’s stopped looking critically at the Royal Circus.
My television, needless to say, will be turned off on Friday.
Wool animal
This first image was taken just off Chichester canal at lunch time – moments after I pressed the shutter I was rocking back on my heels, attempting to prevent my camera from a comprehensive slobbering. Luckily the animal diverted his attention to my face at the last minute. The second image – the ducks laid off. Luckily.
Oh football
Posted 05 Feb 2011 — by Jonathan
Category General
Category General
I am strangely pleased that my football club failed to join in the mass scramble for transfers at the end of January’s transfer window. Unfortunately, it wasn’t because they took a moral high ground and refused to join in the repulsive carnival of avarice which transfer-day spending has turned into. It was rather that they made several insane bids of their own but luck conspired against them and they didn’t get accepted. Well, good. I’d rather come sixth and miss out on Europe than join this ludicrous rush for overpriced, overpaid players. (To be clear, I’d have been very happy if the club paid a reasonable fee for an excellent player – just not £35m, even for a handsome Geordie).
Meanwhile, the club I supported as a child – as much out of deference to geography as anything – are planning to move East and abandon their own neighborhood, which is one of the poorest and least well invested-in in London, desperately needing the club’s ongoing presence.
Sometimes football is shit because the commentators can be such imbeciles. Sometimes it’s shit because the players are neanderthals. Sometimes it’s shit because you’ve been beaten at home by Arsenal. And sometimes it’s just shit. I don’t want my club to win at any cost, to sell out their own community, to pay exorbitant fees and wages for players who don’t merit it. The lamentable stadium plans aside, I don’t even think my club is particularly bad; our players are generally a comparatively likable bunch, our manager is dependably comical, and the director seems to do his job well – but for a modern football club to be competitive it must play this awful game – this money go round. It’s the game that’s ruining the game.
By Chichester coach station
It’s a grey, drizzly day in Chichester. If I understood white balance better I could do something with that sky.
British Sea Power, Who’s in Control?
Posted 13 Jan 2011 — by Jonathan
Category General
Category General
I really should get round to posting about how utterly brilliant the new British Sea Power LP is (it’s utterly brilliant), but in the meantime, here are the band playing ‘Who’s In Control?’ for the Guardian website.
None shall pass
Posted 07 Dec 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General
Category General
This was the best thing I saw all weekend. On Monday morning I walked past and noted it was still there, but two burly handymen stood looking at it, scratching their chins. This morning it was gone – or rather, reduced to rubble.
I think they should have left it alone.
Early snow
Posted 01 Dec 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General
Category General
This weather’s amazing for the start of December. Nice sprinkling of snow down here in Brighton – but it’s far deeper elsewhere. This dog knows where it’s at.
Richard Dawkins’ hate mail
Weirdly, this video makes me feel really Christmassy. Here in Brighton we don’t get to spend Christmas with Dawkins, so we have to get Sam over instead – he’s our proxy-Dawkins.
Audio blog #1
Posted 22 Nov 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General
Category General
Ok, so in my never-ending quest to explore all sorts of ways of sharing audio content, I’ve just intoned my first audio blog – four short minutes of me blathering on about what I’ve been doing with my week. Hope this is of some interest to someone – if so I might try to do one of these every week or two – apart from anything else it’s a good way of catching up with things I didn’t have time to write about.
In it I talk a bit about Salt Lake City, Bonnie Greer, Obama and jetlag. Sound is kind of crappy, sorry.
Field recording; buskers, NY subway
Posted 14 Nov 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General
Category General
On my last morning in New York, before my connecting flight to SLC, I jumped on the subway at Prince St to go up to Central Park, and just as I boarded, so did a group of buskers, who began a rendition of ‘My Girl’. The standard response to buskers on the subway is, of course, to look down and ignore them. But these guys had grins breaking on people’s faces and toes tapping – even if they still weren’t giving up any cash. By chance, I had my Zoom H1 in my hand, so I pressed record.
Frolics in Paris
Posted 12 Nov 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General
Category General
Earlier this summer I spent an absolutely fantastic weekend in Paris with my friends Sam, Laura and Ali. We had a particulary good couple of hours down at Paris Plage, running through fountains and mucking about. Now, months later, the lovely Dan has edited together some footage of the day and created this video for us – it’s great. Thanks Dan!
Friends in Paris from Dan Corns on Vimeo.
This has really made me miss my friends, who are an awfully long away at the moment. Suddenly really looking forward to returning to Europe. In a funk now.
The Lowbrow Reader Variety Hour, SoHo
As I mentioned in my previous post, the Housing Works Bookstore Café is one of my favourite places in NYC. It’s a fantastic, lively little bookshop in the centre of SoHo, and it’s run entirely by volunteers, with all proceeds going to homeless NY residents with HIV or Aids. Like a lot of places which grow from a desire to advance social change, it’s become somewhat of a haven for liberal, artistic types, and I’ve been twice in three days since I arrived in the city – once on Tuesday night to watch the Midterm election results come through, and once again last night for an evening of stand-up comedy and music organized by the authors of The Lowbrow Reader, an irreverent comedy journal published once a year out of New York City. It’s founder, Jay Ruttenburg, hosted the event and lined up four acts, any one of which would have been worth seeing had they been performing alone. To see all four together, for free – in such a nice setting – was a joy.
Hess Is More are a very charming Danish band fronted by a denonair Will Self lookalike, all rangy and avuncular, spending half of the set towering genially over us like the BFG and the other half turned away, his legs folded up while he bashed away at a snare drum and a hi-hat. His band, packed on stage beside him, conjured up a delicate storm with vibraphone, saxophone, ukulele, guitar, bass, the aforementioned mini-drum set up and a gloriously tinny drum machine. They even found one moment to put their instruments down and whistle their way through a middle eight. Their complex, slow-unfolding music – barely audible at first but a riot of percussion at times – a kind of organic, folk-jazz throb reminiscent of Herman Dune or Penguin Café Orchestra. I really really recommend this lot; good humoured, subtle, evocative stuff. Sample, recorded with my trusty Zoom H1, enclosed below.
Next up was a comic; Jon Friedman. Putting comedians on the same bill as bands rarely works, I guess – mainly because the audience is impatient for the bands, and bent on talking rather than listening, but when the line-up has been selected carefully, and the venue got right, it can be charming and, frankly, a lot more rewarding that just watching three bands in a row. The perfect venue for a eclectic bill such as this is, funnily enough, a bookshop – and Friedman fitted in superbly. His style is laconic, thoughtful and spare, frequently trying out thoughts, weighing up opportunities for jokes. His one-liners are his best trick, reminiscent in some small way of Stephen Wright’s master jokes; well judged and complete, despite their brevity. I really liked his stuff; gentle, clever, wistful comedy.
Again, here’s a short sample.
Next up was Jeffrey Lewis, who all of New York really should know and love. He played a short set which was loveable for all the reasons that Jeff is always loveable – his music is one-note and droll, wilfully simple so that the audience can concentrate on his lyrics, but he lets great, half-sung melodies through the net, and his words are always worth paying close attention to. No audio clip for this, because I’ve already posted one (here) and there’s a video to follow when I’m back in the UK.
Finally, the night ended with another comedy set; this time from Joe Mande, who delivered a more pointed, practised set than Friedman, and one which probably had a slightly more consistent hit-rate; but he wasn’t quite as rewarding, perhaps because he tried out safer material. Whereas Friedman’s unpolished gags sometimes failed to hit the mark, they were unfailingly charming. Most of Mande’s set was direct and funny, but it was lazy in places too, resorting to cock-jokes which didn’t match his better material. He didn’t take the audience anywhere ’til his final skit, which showed some of the verve which Jon Friedman displayed – and interestingly it was a take on a joke that Friedman himself had earlier made, so perhaps some of it had its genesis in a shared conversation.
Anyway, here’s Mande on the weirdness of drinking cow’s milk.
As you’ve probably gathered, I had a brilliant evening. If you’re in NYC, make sure you check out the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe ASAP.
Field Recording, Trafalgar St, Brighton
Posted 08 Nov 2010 — by Dan
Category General
Category General
One of the reasons I’ve got interested in field recordings recently is the transformative nature of recording everyday sounds. Robbed of their context, sounds seem to change. Here, the sound of a busker playing his guitar under the Trafalgar Street / Brighton Station tunnel blends with the sound of passing cars. Maybe it’s an imagined hoot of seagulls that gives it a seaside air, but to me listening back the cars are not cars, but waves, and there is something liquid about the dolorous music, making the whole thing more beautiful than the sum of its parts. I recorded this late in September, crouched over my recorder, worrying about wind interfering with the sound quality.
Speak your actions
Posted 06 Nov 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General, Observations, Photos
Category General, Observations, Photos
I’m writing this in a pub in the West Village, not far from the Hudson. I arrived in New York on Tuesday, and since then I’ve noticed one disturbing but inevitable thing. Each time I come here – this is my fourth trip – it feels less like a wonderful holiday, where I socialise a little with my American colleagues, and more like a work trip, where I temper a concentrated burst of quite testing work with moments of reprieve in the city. That’s not to say that I’m not enjoying myself, but it’s a pity of sorts to discover that New York is not a playground, after all.
It’s autumnal here, but not so dramatic, in the New England sense. The trees are dipping towards the colours of rust though, inevitably. Tomorrow I’m going to head up to Central Park, which is invariably the part of my trip I never plan for, but often enjoy the most. Other things – watching the skyline from Dumbo, shopping in Tribeca, I may have to leave ‘til next time. Thus far I’ve not really engaged with the city’s wider spaces, so it’s been a few days of packed delicatessens in SoHo, busy bookshops, bustling storefronts in Chinatown. I’ve sought refuge, to an extent, in the fact that I now know this city relatively well, so I can head straight to places which are reliably lovely – the Housing Works Bookstore, Shakespeare and Co and McNally Jackson for books, Other Music for records. Here – the White Horse on Hudson St – for an end-of-work drink.
The abiding memory of this trip, I think, will be the election. It’s not my job, as a liberal outsider, to weigh into these matters, but it’s hard not to conclude that America is making an incredible mistake jettisoning the spirit of optimism that came with Obama’s election. I’m prepared to accept that he has not been the revolutionary leader people were looking for, but it’s such a failure of the imagination to elect someone on the basis that they might deliver change, then judge them so early, when its seems so obvious that change of the nature that Obama promised would take so many years. As is so often the case, self-interest guides the electorate – it does in England, too.
I watched the election results come in – some of them – in a bookshop in SoHo. New York, like California, I bet, feels pretty weird at the moment. The coasts must wonder at the middle, must feel so separate. At work my boss wearily complained ‘I’ve decided to become a Republican – it’s so much easier’.
Yesterday, before I headed up to the University of Columbia, I checked in to the Strand Bookstore off Union Square to get some books, and spotted this graffiti on the walk up from Astor Place. I guess this guy – a lonely conservative in liberal NY – feels like his fellow New Yorkers do, when they check the Midterm results.
Pictionary madness
I played my first ever game of Pictionary this weekend, at Andrew and Sophie’s flat. It turns out I’m not as good an artist as I thought, and that none of us can draw hands. Here, though, are a couple of very decent attempts at depicting madness. Can’t remember who drew them, though – perhaps Alec and Sophie? Anyway.
First look at The i Paper
Today saw the launch of the Independent’s new spin-off, the promising but hard to refer to in casual conversation i, which I’m going to call The i Paper here, just for readability’s sake.
The i Paper is a bold move in a newspaper industry which isn’t exactly in the rudest of health, something particularly true of the Indy itself. At a first glance one would expect a paper to launch a radical new product in a position of strength, rather than weakness, but the boldness of the launch is all the more admirable for that. Whether this is a long-term project, a trial for a new direction for the main paper or a first step towards establishing a freesheet, The i Paper has targeted a nice niche; it’s a concise, cheap (20p) paper targeted at ‘the time-poor’. If The Metro (a diabolically bad freesheet) is the paper for people who don’t like newspapers, then this is the paper for people who like them, but don’t buy them. And there’s a lot of those people and, at 20p a copy, this might just work.
Let’s start with the positives I took from today’s launch issue. First, the presence of long form articles – the Johann Hari piece about Obama and James Lawton’s take on Rooney – are very welcome in a paper of this kind. It’s the kind of thing that neither the freesheets nor the middle market papers do. This is real value; intelligent, ambitious stuff, a world away from the AP stuff in The Metro.
And the design is generally nice: bright, colourful, and attractive, with a good mixture of the frivolous and the serious. There are probably a few too many call out boxes, but some of the shorter features are really nice. I particularly liked the ‘Five Clue Cryptic Crossword’ (a nice, concise spin on a feature that normally demands high time investment) and the ‘Postcard From…’ box. I felt like a couple of other gimmicks (the ‘Opinion Matrix’ and the ‘Panorama’ feature) were potentially nice but they do need expanding. Aiming for concise coverage is a lovely idea, but having article lengths so short that imparting serious information properly is impossible simply defeats the object. When this kind of brevity is employed, it’s hard not to wonder whether we really need a full page of weather forecasts? I honestly don’t think I’ve used newspapers to source weather forecasts in my life. Perhaps others do, though.
These aren’t one off problems. The Johann Hari article is demonstrably the most valuable piece, so it’s a bit of a blow when I later discover that it’s actually an edited down version of his real Independent column – meaning I have to look up the latter online to read the real thing. This is just daft; if The i Paper is going to plump for long articles, it shouldn’t water them down. It just seems like a counter-intuitive decision. And actually, I’d like to see a bold move in the other direction. The long-form article is a woefully underused tool in modern journalism. I think it would be revolutionary if every issue of The i Paper contained a really unique two or three page article – something really serious and meaty. I’d buy it every day in addition to my usual paper, for that feature alone.
Another thing I noticed is that there’s no Leader. That’s really odd, and one respect in which this paper is much more like the Metro than, say, The Evening Standard. I’m not wedded to a leader article, but the absence of one is strange. And some of the editorial focus is, to be honest, way off. A tiny two column feature on cholera in Haiti on page 24, and a big half page feature on the death of the walkman on page 27? Nothing wrong with glib pieces like the latter, but not if the balance is wrong. (Don’t get me started on ‘Is Bert Gay?’…)
‘The News Matrix’, which takes up the whole of pages 2 and 3, is, alas, a complete waste of space. Two pages right up front that add nothing at all to the package; it’s simply a set of over-edited summaries of the paper’s content – information expressed better elsewhere. They could, by editing more carefully, improve this feature over time, but frankly it would be far better to simply use this space for extra content.
So I think there’s work to be done. But, overall, I have to say that I’m really impressed. I think, crucially, that they’ve got their pitch right – a serious paper for busy people and for those who want to consume information quickly. But I feel like there’s much they can do to improve. For my part, the dealbreaker is this: I really can’t imagine buying a newspaper with so little news analysis and opinion in. Similarly, the paper is front-loaded – important news squeezed in too tight at the front, and too much superfluous crap at the back end. A slightly heavier bias towards news, and just a touch more detail, would make a massive impact.
Lastly – and this is something that isn’t a failing on their part – I’m a commuter. Unfortunately for the Independent Group, I’m not one of those 15 min tube users, but someone who travels further and really needs a paper that takes 50 minutes to read. I was finished with the paper a lot earlier than I normally am. That probably means that I’ll keep buying The Guardian most days.
But this is really promising stuff. I’ll certainly pick up another copy tomorrow.
Field Recording, East Street
Posted 26 Oct 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General, Technology
Category General, Technology
I recorded this back in late September, sat drinking cola at a cafe in Brighton’s busy East Street. Not sure if I was trying to record the live jazz band or the table next to us talking, in retrospect. Can’t remember a great deal about the day, except that Lyndsey and I had been looking at coats in the South Laine, and that the sun was particularly warm after a few days of temperature drops. We sat enjoying the weather, only for the sun to dip suddenly behind a cloud every few minutes, exposing us suddenly to the chill of autumn.
Interesting idea, irritating name
Posted 22 Oct 2010 — by Dan
Category General
Category General
Oh, now this is very interesting. Didn’t see this coming.
As of this coming Monday, the Independent is launching ‘i’, a brand new daily newspaper, priced at 20p and intended to compliment their fuller edition (which stays at £1).
According to the Independent website,
“i is specifically targeted at readers and lapsed readers of quality newspapers, and those of all ages who want a comprehensive digest of the news in printed form. i will combine intelligence with brevity, and depth with speed of reading, providing an essential daily briefing”.
This is interesting, will look forward to seeing it.
That name, that lower case i is really irritating though, isn’t it?
The Labour right
Posted 23 Sep 2010 — by Jonathan
Category General
Category General
Now that the Labour Leadership contest is effectively over (voting is closed but the results have not been announced), John Harris in the Guardian reckons that now is the time that the Labour right will make itself heard, the whole contest thus far having been a rather unconvincing scramble to the left. He’s probably right, and I hope he is – not because I belong to the Labour right, but because I want to hear their ideas. Personally, what I do hope is that the Labour right can find itself some new standard bearers – if we have to put up with more from John Reid, Alan Milburn, Blunkett, Mandelson and Blair, I shall be tempted to top myself. Where are the new James Purnells, now that he has left parliamentary politics? And will Andy Burnham lose the leftist Northen accent he’s been over-pronouncing these last months and return to the rightist instincts he showed previously?
Another point – if you do click through to the Harris article you’ll find pretty much every comment is completely bonkers. There’s a persistant faction of the Labour movement which is convinced that all the party needs to do is move to the left and we’ll secure power again. These people are utterly deluded.
