Twitter Spills

Crowd Sourced

2012-02-20T01:36:00.001-08:00

So last night I was talking to my lovely American friend Liz about my crowdfunding campaign.

I'm running an IndieGoGo campaign to raise enough money to pay the performers doing tragedy at Stand Up Tragedy And also, if the target is reached, to fund some Getting Better Acquainted road trips.

The target is $3,500 dollars. This is a pretty small target compared to most of the campaigns you'll find on IndieGoG. I've reached $540 of the target do far. There are 12 days left till the deadline.

I'm doubtful I will hit it. It is still possible though. And whether the target is hit or not the money is very appreciated and will be put to good use. If you are reading this before March 1st then please contribute what you can.

So the reasons I think it isn't working well are:

1. UK culture is different from US culture. We aren't naturally predisposed to crowdfunding. It seems a bit unseemly. Talking about money. And asking for help and support. Aren't these things best fine through "proper" channels?

2. Many of my friends are not very tech savvy and spend little time online. They have also had a lot of practice at ignoring my communications because I communicate so much. Possibly too much. Many of them won't even know about the campaign, despite the emails and the social network promotion. Friends are the first and most important rung of the crowdfunding ladder and mine generally don't even know what a podcast is and check their emails very rarely (or at least respond to them rarely.)

3. People may think that since Stand Up Tragedy Tickets are £10 on the door that they have already given more than enough to the cause if they have attended or they are going to attend the live show. A point if view I do understand. They may even think, if they don't know me that well, that it is a bit of a con. It isn't. I don't set the ticket prices and I would never ask for money if I didn't need it. SUT may break even. It won't make a profit.

4. We are in the middle of tough finacial times. People are being cautious. Everyone is worse off than they were. Even if they were predisposed to funding independent arts (and many people aren't) they may feel this an inappropriate time to do so. People see art as less important in austerity.

All of the above may well be true but there is a 5th reason: my lack of ability to do the job of fundraising. I may feel like I am being brash and in people's faces with this campaign. But am I?

After talking to Liz I realise that I'm milder than most fundraisers. And sadly for my campaign that's the way it'll remain.

Here are some of the techniques Liz, who has years of fundraising experience and is more culturally in tune with both crowdfunding and podcast culture, suggested:

Sending targeted emails to key people. A key person is someone who has lots of social contacts and a history of contributing to things like this. I could only think if two potential key people. And one of them was taking to me. They are both American. But then she explained that it was all about the people those people might know. And then I could think of a few more. Not that I would feel comfortable directly approaching anyone about this. I don't like the idea of hassling individuals at all. I won't be contacting key people. But it's good to know how people do it.

She then said it was about making the communications clear and simple. Something that I have tried to do but since I often fail in my aims of clarity and brevity I've probably failed to achieve. She said I should make a template email and send that to my key people. Then they just have to fill it in and send it on to their contacts. The idea of this makes me feel a bit queasy. This sort of hard sell doesn't really fit with me. I prefer to respect peoples free will.

When I discussed the problem of my people not being online much she asked if my friends texted. My girlfriend who was also with us balked at this idea. I was more aware of it. I get texts from people telling me about their gigs quite often. It doesn't work on me but it doesn't piss me off. I've occasionally texted close friends about gigs myself. But the idea of texting people to ask them to fund my shows just doesn't work for me. Too intrusive. Too pressurised. I don't want people to feel obliged.

Later I mentioned that when payday comes I'll be contributing to the campaign Liz rolled her eyes and said I'd already paid with my time and effort. I said "Well actually I've already paid over 300 on publicity out of my own pockets, which I may or may not make back! But I can't ask people to give what they can and not give what I can myself."

And this is my biggest problem. I don't like or relate to money. I can't take it seriously. I can't hold it fully in my mind. I'm politically against it. I take it personally too because it's not about raising the money but about what the money can do. So friends aren't deciding not to give me money. They are deciding not to help a friend out. Which is the wrong way to look at it. And I struggle not to see it that way.

But me and my projects exist in the real world. And money is necessary.

If I was a different person I'd send a well written and calculated begging letter to all the richest people I know. I shouldn't care about hassling them. I believe in the redistribution of wealth but I don't want to ask for it.

I'd locate my key people and send them templates, try and get them to hassle their friends using my words.

I would text everyone I know and tell them about the campaign.

But I'm not that person. Which I'm a little bit glad of. And a little bit sad about. But there we have it.

The campaign offers perks. It isn't a begging thing. It's a chance for people to directly fund the arts. To cut out the gatekeepers and go directly from audience to artist. That's why it appealed to me. But it's still ultimately about money. And for many people money is too valuable to part with, even in small amounts, and for others, such as myself, money and art have no real relation to each other. It is hard to connect them up. Apart from of course they do relate very strongly because in this world money controls and influences and restricts and allows everything. And occasionally someone, rarely the artist, will make a lot of money from some art.

Stand Up Tragedy: The Opening Night

2012-02-08T11:07:00.000-08:00

Our site is currently being attacked by malware. We are currently sorting this out. In the meantime I thought I'd post about the first night on my occasional blog:

The first night of tragedy is now over, and we got off to a great start. After a swift introduction where I tragically failed to say the word trajectory, we started with a pop! As in, an alternative pop song from The Reactionaries, who reframed the parable of the boy who cried wolf as a story about a character who dies because of his tragic flaw, and implicated the audience in his suicide.

Then Casual Violence disturbed and enchanted the audience with some sketch tragedy, two scenes from their Portable Residency show which you can see in full on 27^th February in Camden’s Etcetera Theatre. Why is this man telling us about the feelings he has for a pillow? Will the little boy in the supermarket ever find his mum? We laughed in all the sad places.

Emily Lewsen then told the true story of a tour taken in Israel: a couple ostracised by their politics. The tour guide takes a fall when her tragic flaws get the group lost. We ponder whether things are dilemmas or facts, and empathy and Prosecco wash away tears by the Sea of Galilee. This is Emily telling a different tale at true story night Spark London:

The Dentist - Emily Lewsen by Spark London on Mixcloud

Then The Reactionaries sang a song about the spirit leaving the body of a dead person. It had a very catchy dance for the choruses; it may well prove to be the next big dance craze to sweep the nation.

Next we had Jacqueline Downs’ The Great Big O performed by Libby Edwards, a tragic story about domestic violence, motherhood, and a sad, mad moment. Moving. Painful. And beautiful. Have a read of it here. This story was sourced from Liars’ League where writers write, actors act and everyone wins. Libby finished telling us the story. The audience clapped.

But where was the next act? A man appeared, asking some people in the front row about the strange lighting on the front of the stage, the line of light bulbs on fake grass, with daffodils scattered between them. This awkward moment began What do you think of it so far? performed by Drunken Chorus, a tragic attempt by a man to perform a double act. The night ended with a dying comedian bleeding to death on the stage lit by a mirror ball.

But then the tragedy was over as The Reactionaries came back on stage and attempted to lead the audience in a sing along. This sing along will end all the nights.

The first night was full of tragedy but it wasn’t one itself. It was, I’m pleased to say, a success.

We’d love to be able to pay the performers who participated. The Stand Up Tragedy team are doing this for a love of tragedy and I’m covering costs out of my day job salary. We hope the show will break even. If audiences keep coming like they did on our opening night, we will. To help us pay the artists we have set up an IndieGoGo campaign. No contribution is too small to be helpful.

We will be releasing extracts from the night as a free weekly podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud and the Stitcher Smart Radio app, so you’ll be able to hear some of the brilliant tragedy I’ve been talking about. The first one will go up on Friday 10^th February 2012.

And now, like the song says, it’s time to go.

Dave Pickering

Host of Stand Up Tragedy

As @amandapalmer says "We are the media"

2012-01-25T02:01:00.001-08:00

You may know that I'm running a crowdfunding drive for http://www.standuptragedy.co.uk and http://www.gettingbetteracquainted.co.uk.

You also may know that I'm a loyal promoter and funder of interesting independent art. I have limited means but I give what I can.

If I've ever funded or promoted a project that you do I'd really appreciate some reciprocation.

This is my campaign:

Your contribution would help pay performers and fund interesting audio. Even dollar would be much appreciated. For $10 (£6.50ish) you start getting "perks".

Even if you can't afford to give anything sharing and promoting this campaign to friends with more disposable income would really help too. Compared to most other crowdfunding drives I'm asking for a very small amount but it'd make a world of difference. It's only by supporting each other independently that we can get the art and media we deserve.

I saw The Artist last night:

2012-01-19T03:37:00.001-08:00

I thought I was an amazing film. Made me laugh, cry, think, fear, smile, remember and consider.

It's also an example of my favourite kind of art: content and form are so perfectly intertwined that they are essentially the same thing.

Go see it.

January 2012 brings news of PROJECTS:

2012-01-06T05:32:00.000-08:00

Stand Up Tragedy + Getting Better Acquainted = An IndieGoGo Campaign

www.standuptragedy.co.uk www.gettingbetteracquainted.co.uk

I've set up a crowdfunding campaign that will hopefully allow me to pay SUT performers and extend the reach of GBA. Have a look and see what you think, give what you can, and please spread the word: http://igg.me/p/59763?a=126408

Getting Better Acquainted has done a lot this year and will keep on serving up a weekly dose of free conversation in 2012. This is a round up of what I've learnt and what the show has done this year: GBA 2011

In next Wednesday's episode I talk to Karl James from The Dialogue Project. Why not listen to a teaser.

You can download or stream the show from the website or if you prefer subscribe and download via iTunes.

Stand Up Tragedy has it's first live show on Monday 6th February. Tickets for it, and for all SUT nights, are available and if you use the promo code TRAGIC they're a couple of quid cheaper: Click here to book tickets.

We have some amazing people already on the line up. Have a gander at the site if you don't believe me, and that's just the people who've got their act together enough to send us their publicity details!

I'm still looking for acts, although mostly I'm now looking for music acts and rarities, drop me a line if you or anyone you know are interested.

The Reactionaries are playing at the first SUT night, we've written the end of the night sing-along-song that will close every night/episode, and are releasing it for free very very soon. We've also started the process of making our 2nd Album. It's called Bouncy, Poppy Songs About Death and it should be done by July 2012. We'll be debuting some of it on the 6th.

The Plural has extended a little bit into 2012 due to November's technical malfunctions. We'll be making our last track and doing a final mixing and tweaking session sometime over the next two months. It's been a great experiment and has produced some good, some bad and some ugly songs for your listening considerations.

That's about it. I have a few other irons in the fire but none of them are glowing red yet.

Happy New Year!

Dave

Follow me on twitter:

@goosefat101 / @GBApodcast / @standup4tragedy

This morning I travelled into the pasts vision of the future: #WestfieldStratford #ChurchOfApple

2012-01-03T02:39:00.001-08:00

I was walking into Blade Runner to visit the Church of Apple. Thankfully the future was pretty deserted at that time.

The Church didn't open it's doors till 10am. The faithful waited in silent contemplation. The doors remained open but you couldn't go in.

Beneath the waiting people's contemplation and their worship there is fear. At the centre, wound round every faithful gut is need, pain, greed and fear.

Fear of what? Of everything. Of yourself. Of the world that surrounds you with its smooth metal and bright lights.

The Westfield centre is a huge mothership. It could be taking off now. Maybe we are consuming in space, up above, and inside. Will we ever get home?

I offended a man in the apple store by suggesting it was silly to refer to their experts as Genius'!

"I think calling them genius' is pretty cool," said the man. I looked round the room. It looked like a space lab. I sighed.

"Look, I'm sure they're pretty intelligent but they aren't Einstein are they?" I said. "You never know," said the man.

Soon afterwards a different man fixed my iPhone. "I don't know why it didn't work. I don't know why it works now!" he said.

Genius!

Things I've Learned from the first year of doing @GBApodcast

2011-12-27T03:13:00.001-08:00

The following things are things I've learned, achieved and considered in my first year of making Getting Better Acquainted. Many of the things I've learnt have come from conversations that haven't come out yet but will be aired in 2012.

____________________________________________________________________________

Perspective

Having spoken to so many people about themselves, and tried to empathise and find common ground, I've been reminded that we are both similar to each other and very very different. Everyone is weird because everyone is not you, and you are weird to everyone else.

All three conversations with my mother (but especially the third) yielded both the revelation that if I am to forgive myself my flaws then I have to forgive my mother and her mother their flaws. For they are the same flaws. All of spring from the same river and it flows down.

The weekend I recorded those conversations was a highly emotional one where I also held a new born child in my arms, interviewed some old and dear friends and spent time with my 6 year old niece.

From that weekend came my new attempt to sum it all up:

"We're all just people trying to get through life in whatever way we can."

GBA 24 Mum #1 by Getting Better Acquainted

To look out for: Mum #2, Mum #3 and the GBA special devoted to this revelation.

____________________________________________________________________________

Meditation / Yoga

I've talked to people about these practices and I've come to the conclusion its time to get rid of both my sneer at, and fear of, meditation and yoga. My fear of silence probably needs to be conquered. These practices may help me find more peace in myself and give me perspective on all the chatter and clutter. I find that I crave a great stillness. But how do I find a way to fit it into my time? That's something I've yet to learn. Hopefully 2012 will offer up the answer.

Whatever my problems with fitting these new and possibly beneficial projects into my life, one thing I scribbled down after a GBA conversation was:

"I have the resolve and drive to get my shit done so I need to just do it. But also relax about it. Give myself space to breathe."

And I have done that. I'm less harsh on myself than I was. And I'm getting things done. Possibly more. But I take time out for myself and I'm enjoying the process more. I'm less desperate to race to the end.

GBA 23 Jessica by Getting Better Acquainted

GBA 27 Joss by Getting Better Acquainted

Look out for: Lily

____________________________________________________________________________

Learning in the edit

Some conversations have been a revelation repeated. And sometimes I didn't notice what I learnt the first time properly!

Listening back to my conversation with Louise I realised I'd been on the path to the above mentioned revolution earlier than I'd thought and her wisdom in that conversation and the things I said in response informed and strengthened it.

GBA 19 Louise by Getting Better Acquainted

Listening back to the conversation with my brother Tony I realised that it would be interesting to people who didn't know us. That it was in the words of Jen a conversation full of "startling honesty". At the time i'd been disappointed with it. In the edit I realised that it had been a really great conversation and one that I should reconsider and remember. One of many times this year I've learnt things on mic.

GBA 35 Tony by Getting Better Acquainted

____________________________________________________________________________

Friendship and Family

I didn't expect the conversations to be so personal. I should have expected it but sometimes you don't think about the most obvious things. You don't fully consider them.

So many conversations were journeys into shared history. And often at the heart of that history is shared love. So I've had a chance to examine the bonds of closeness I have with people.

GBA 22 Zoe by Getting Better Acquainted

GBA 16 Owain by Getting Better Acquainted

GBA 11 Clive by Getting Better Acquainted

GBA 4 Liz by Getting Better Acquainted

GBA 6 George by Getting Better Acquainted

To look out for: Jess, Richard, Alex, Jack and George, Jen

I've also realised I was closer to more people than I thought and gave felt friendships deepen on mic.

GBA 31 Ged by Getting Better Acquainted

GBA 2 Elspeth by Getting Better Acquainted

And i've reconnected with old friends and places and revelations have come from that. Not just revelations but wedding invitations and day trips.

GBA 26 Angela by Getting Better Acquainted

GBA 17 Cardiff by Getting Better Acquainted

Look out for: Steve and The Coventry Special

____________________________________________________________________________

Themes

The show has been organic in how it's come together. But looking back some themes seem very prominent to me.

Some have come from its structure:

Family
Friendship
Occupation
Conversation
Memories

Others have come from my own preoccupations:

Art
Class
Politics
Getting through life
Nature verses nurture

And some have surprised me:

Faith
Death
Honesty
Coming of age
Spirituality
Purpose

Even the word plug and the process of asking people if they have anything to plug has been a surprisingly provocative thing. As demonstrated by Eric:

GBA 33 Eric by Getting Better Acquainted

____________________________________________________________________________

Deleted

I accidentally deleted GBA 1 which is why it now appears out of sequence. In the aftermath of that mistake I discovered that Soundcloud offers the ability to create a spotlight tab which I'm now using to house a set of episodes designed to introduce the new GBA listener to the show.

Soundcloud also allow you to create sets which has allowed me to start grouping connected episodes together. So the show has its actual order, that is designed with variety and range in mind. But now you can also follow strands of the show. I see GBA as a tapestry anyway but now it is easier to unpick.

Musicians by Getting Better Acquainted

Theatre by Getting Better Acquainted

These separated strands also bring out the element of the show that is an audio autobiography told through the connections I have made with others.

Family by Getting Better Acquainted

University Friends by Getting Better Acquainted

____________________________________________________________________________

Tripping

I've been on four GBA road trips this year and this is an element I hope to expand in 2012. The other two (Coventry and Bristol) will be coming out next year.

GBA 15 Edinburgh Festival by Getting Better Acquainted

Three of these four trips were journeys into my past literally, although the fourth one was even more related to my past in both less and more direct ways. You could say all of them were about facing and coming to terms with myself. Or my-selves, who I am now and who I was then.

I've also been travelled to other peoples homes and other locations to record people from The National Theatre to Hemel Hempstead.

Or for example to a borrowed flat in Stoke Newington:
GBA 13 Richard Tyrone Jones by Getting Better Acquainted

Sometimes others have travelled to me for conversations. Like Eric

who came for night and stayed for a weekend:

GBA 34 Eric and Dad by Getting Better Acquainted

I've snatched conversations in places that I was travelling like this one with Matt that was recorded at a friends wedding.

GBA 29 Matt by Getting Better Acquainted

____________________________________________________________________________

Feeling blessed

The word blessed isn't one I'd normally use, maybe I've been influenced by all the conversations I've had. But regardless blessed is the only word I can find to describe how I feel about many of the conversations that I've had. This one for example:

GBA 18 Sam by Getting Better Acquainted

To look out for: Dad 3, Sonia, Natti

The conversations have had big effects on me. It was nice to find that they had big effects on others. For example Hayley on listening to Elspeth's GBA was inspired to embrace her faith more. She was also inspired to write a song called "Leave the body" a song being recorded for The Reactionaries new album. We'll be performing the song at the Stand Up Tragedy launch date on the 6th of February 2012.

GBA 9 Hayley by Getting Better Acquainted

____________________________________________________________________________

Off Mic

So often the conversations and socialising that happened off mic but nevertheless happened as a result of meeting with people to record the show have been even more illuminating than what you hear. I'm often catching myself thinking "Doh! Why aren't I recording this?" Although I'm trying to cut down in that and remember one of the rules I try and record by: "You get what you get and you don't get upset."

____________________________________________________________________________

Self Perception

This year I've really heard myself. At my worst and my best. There is nothing like recording yourself for 4 days talking to your school friends to make you hear a facet of yourself properly. The year began with plenty of that as I worked on what I consider the failed project 4 Days in a Room.

In fact 4DiaR was a big influence on GBA. I learned what works and what doesn't. And I wanted people to hear the other me's. The people I was or could be with my other friends and in different rooms.

So I've heard my voice a lot. On GBA I hear my voice on monitor headphones during the conversations. And later I hear it again in the edit.

I'm very aware of how it sounds, it's tone, the vocal ticks I have. I still find hearing myself hard. I'll think I've become used to it and then I'll find another conversation where I do things I wish I hadn't.

But i'm more philosophical about it now. I've also heard and edited a lot of other peoples vocal ticks. I know my voice doesn't annoy other people as much as it does me. And that the balance sheet has a lot of good moments on it; for every time I talk over someone when they were about to say something amazing, is a time when I listen well, or ask the perfect question. It evens out.

I also think I now hear my own voice in everyday life closer to how it sounds in reality. This is probably a good thing, although I'm not sure in what way it is good yet.

I've been creating things for years but this has been the first project people have sent me emails telling me they like it. Often people I don't well at all. And even occasionally strangers.

It really made my day when Helen Zaltzman from Answer Me This tweeted the show saying:

And we've also had twitter support and respect from Risk and I Like You. The show has a consistent international listenership and was recommended by SoundCloud.

And I've had some really great iTunes reviews and soundcloud comments this year.

All of this plus the mind expanding journey this project had been for me has helped me to see my own strengths as well as my weaknesses.

It has been a surprise to realise that my work has been leading in this direction for years. In fact it was an off mic conversation with my friend Richard (whose episodes will air in the new year) where I first realised this.

It has also been strange to realise that I am the product here. That this form is such a personal one and that on my search to explore truth I have come to this point where there is no filter between myself and the audience. Or at least only the small but crucial filters of the edit and the context.

There is no author or rock star pose, there is just me. My life. The people I know. Our stories.

In many ways this has been very liberating.

The change in my understanding that this project had been us a big part of what has led me to "book the room". This phrase comes from The Dialogue Project's Karl James whose GBA will air in three weeks. The meeting we had only happened because of GBA. And that goes for many other meetings I've had this year.

(I didn't meet with Karl till just after I'd booked the room.)

The room is The Lounge at The Leicester Square Theatre. The show is Stand Up Tragedy.

____________________________________________________________________________

The Form

I've thought a lot this year, both on and off mic, about the form of GBA. What things it offers that other shows don't. The kind of marvellous medicine that it's ingredients make.

The show is long form and takes the audience on a journey. In fact considering the nature of what the show is and how it relates to what I do (music, writing, performance) has led me to the conclusion that what I'm interested in doing is taking audiences on journeys. I am a jouneyman and not a jack of all trades.

The moments when life intrudes into the conversations seems to me to be the crux of what it's about. When a dog interrupts or a car revs it's engine it exposes the mechanics of the show. But unlike in most forms, where exposing the mechanics makes the show feel less real, in snatched conversations it makes them more real.

The conversations happen in places TV and radio don't go to. In the guests homes, on river banks, in din filled back gardens, walking round the streets of Brixton, Edinburgh and Cardiff. In crowded pubs. In silent front rooms. In sunny back gardens filled with birdsong. And they are captured moments. Spontaneous.

But a microphone is present and that both changes and frames the moment.

The phrase I've settled on that described it is: Heightened realism

____________________________________________________________________________

Turning 30

I began GBA in my 30th year. I always thought I'd hate thirty. Ridiculously I've been depressed by getting and being older since I turned 22. But I actually like being thirty.

Partly because in meeting up with people I went to school with like and seeing how far they've come I've realised how far I've come. "We've left school behind" as an old friend who wishes to remain off mic put it.

Also kicked off by GBA has been a reanalysis of my past. This has been partially lived out on mic. It is important to try and forgive your past, embrace it as part of yourself, and I am both pleased and surprised to find myself doing both.

Getting older is ok. Being young was rubbish. I know myself so much better now.

One of the things I know is that I don't know anything very much. But one thing I do know is that I am very glad to have found Getting Better Acquainted. It seems to fit. I am very proud of it.

@WTFpod with @marcmaron : A full on recommendation:

2011-12-22T05:57:00.000-08:00

If you don't already listen to WTF with Marc Maron then can I really strongly suggest you start. The latest with Michael Ian Black is a great conversation between two very similar and very different people who share a respect and distrust for each other. Plenty of tension but also some revelation.

But there are so many other amazing conversations. They really get into what being an artist in the modern world really entails, the contradiction and humanity that lies below the face of" Holywood" or "Show Business" and the experiences and instincts that can drive people to dark places but also inspire them to try and share their experience.

Marc Maron talks to people you'll have heard of and people who you don't know at all. Often the people you'd never heard of turn out to have some of the most amazing conversations the show offers.

Here's some people he's had on the show: Stewert Lee, Sandra Bernhard, Zach Galifianakis, Chris Rock, Robin Williams, Tig Notaro, John Hamm, Bryan Cranzton, Ira Glass, Janeane Garofalo, Anthony Bourdain, Doug Stanhope, Louis CK, Jud Apatow, Gary Shandling, Aubry Plaza blah blah blah...

But the show isn't so good because it has famous people on it. It's good because people really talk. And they try and understand each other and they try and work out life and art and all that shit. It has an intimacy to it generally recorded in Mark's garage, and the conversations are between people who often know each other personally and have some history together, or at least who work towards the same sorts of goals and desires.

It's such a great show. And in many ways is both the model and inspiration for Getting Better Acquainted. If you find initially that the intro monologues are a bit too full on give it time, they aren't too long and then the conversations begin, and as you learn to know Mark in an intimate way you are able to "get" him and the intros stop being abrasive and start being moving, funny, annoying (in a satisfying way) and sometimes incredibly profound.

I love this show.

Off the road

2011-12-14T07:13:00.001-08:00

Just nearly got run down by a scarily hard seeming bloke on a bike.

"Why'd you turn the wrong way?" he said.

"I don't know. I'm sorry." I said.

"Get off the fucking road then you fucking cunt!" he said.

"I'm sorry" I mumbled again and hauled my heavy bag out of his way.

He rode off on the pavement (which we were both on at the time.) Him and his silent female friend sped over the road at a super sprint riding over the pedestrian crossing (when the lights were red).

At the other side of the road he stopped on the pavement and glared at me. Then the swerved round an old lady and swept out of my life.

The truth behind #Clarkson...

2011-12-01T10:57:00.001-08:00

These stupid attacks on Clarkson's right to free speach put fog around the truth. To not have legal attacks on Clarkson for his conduct (and I bet you that none will be instigated) is to have a double standard.

Many people are prosecuted unfairly in this country; the twitter joke trial, fortnum and masons 140, etc... People received 4 years for a Facebook page advocating rioting. Even though it didn't incite a riot.

If Clarkson shouldn't face legal proceedings (and I don't think he should) then none of them should face it either. This is what people should be complaining about. This is where we have something worthy of outrage.

When people make public statements against power it is being seen as illegal. When they make them with power, even in an offensive way, it is not.

That is not fair. It isn't right. And it is the way things have always been, to a greater or lesser extent.

Striking Issue 2: Blinkers

2011-11-30T07:09:00.001-08:00

Osbourne says: "While I accept that a 1% avarage rise is tough, it is also fair to those who work to pay the taxes that will fund it."

I'd like to remind the chancellor and many people posting anti-public service worker stuff that people who work in the public sector ARE people who pay the taxes that fund them. You pay my salary. But I also pay my salary. You benefit from the services I provide and so do I.

I've heard reports of people telling leafleting strikers to "get a job". Well they have one. That's why they can strike.

I respect many positions on the current events. But I'd like an end to these silly ones please.

Striking Issues: We're all just trying to get through life...

2011-11-30T03:45:00.001-08:00

ATN: Public and private sector:

Please stop buying into the narratives created by the political classes. We aren't against each other. We are all being attacked by cuts to our public sector, by increased food prices, redundancies, etc... It doesn't matter what sector you are in.

It's disgusting that it's illegal to hold a general strike that would gave the power to unify us and allow us to insist on an ate alternative. Our unelected government do not have a mandate to dismantle/privatise the welfare state. They are holding us to account rather than the banks and corporations. Nothing is being done to address the terrible inequality of the super rich having so much.

In terms of strikes. Yes, it is a hard choice. There are no perfect options. Yes, we ALL deserve to be treated better. Yes, much of what we have is unsustainable in terms if resources and environmental impact. Yes, the poorest are really badly affected by public service strikes. Just as they are by private service strikes. Most people don't strike lightly. They lose their pay. It is a right to withdraw your labour. A right I believe should be extended to everyone, union member or not.

Everyone is just trying to get through life! Let's stop squabbling and respect peoples decisions. If you are on strike I understand that decision. If you choose to break the strike I understand your decision. Neither option is ideal.

Let's stop all this nonsense and remember who the people with the REAL power are. Let's start saying: "after you've addressed all the other places money can be found, like tax avoidance, Robin Hood/Tobin tax, making the banks pay us back, cutting slower, cutting differently, fair income tax etc... THEN we can talk about cutting public services.Then we can consider the problem of pensions for an ageing population!"

And of course the 1% and the top tiers of the 99% are just people too. The thing is it is wrong for so few people to have so much. Money is just a tool for organising society. It isn't meaningful in itself. It is a fiction we write. And we can rewrite it. Or we would be able to if we could get hold of the pens.

And how about we approach industrial relations with respect?

Teachers could perhaps be offered more time and less paperwork in exchange for cuts. Public service workers could be offered free transport to and from work to offset the changes to their previously agreed terms. It is hard to have agreed to something, worked with that understanding for years and have it changed by someone with better conditions to you.

We need to move forward with empathy, understanding and the aim to make things more fair and equal. Our political classes and others with power are failing to do this. Let's lead by example and show then how they should behave by taking this approach to each other.

2011-11-24T04:34:00.001-08:00

"That brief period between 1917 and 1979, when British wealth, trembling in fear of revolution, ceded some power, opportunity and money to the working classes is over. There is now no politics to express or admit the enormity of what has happened since the 1980s – how wealth and human respect drained from the bottom to enrich and glorify the top."

Polly Toynbee. Gdn 14.7.11
(Via my dad.)

I don't always like Toynbee but that quote is spot on.

The Future

2011-11-21T14:35:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I saw The Future by my favourite short story writer Miranda July She is also an artist, filmmaker and performer.

I loved the film. It resonated with me on lots of levels. It was, I guess, a magical realist film, although for all its surreal elements, it felt straight forwardly realistic to me. It seemed to represent exactly how I experience the world: a bittersweet existential dream.

The only thing I felt was wrong with the film was the voice of the cat who narrates the film. It was voiced by Miranda July who played the female lead. But the cat is a male cat. I think she voices the cat as his monologues may just be in her characters imagination. That's fine. So make the cat a female cat. Or else lose that idea and have a male voice for the cat.

This film was the kind of film people either love or find really annoying. I loved it. Why not see how you feel about it?

God is in the detail: RIP Jackie Leven

2011-11-15T08:57:00.001-08:00

A great but sadly unknown singer and song writer has died. A man who lived terrible things and made them into warm and wonderful songs. Warm like the sunshine falling on the polar ice. Warm like your hand feels when it holds something dead. Warm like almost cooled metal that has been smelted and beaten.

The first song I heard by Jackie Leven was The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ It's one of those perfect songs that punches you in the gut and then reaches up to wrap itself round your heart, squeezing gently. It smashed into me from a compilation cd made for me by my friend Alex. I was 20 years old. I played it on repeat for a long time. I didn't want to stop hearing it.

It seemed to be absolutely about me and at the same time it was about everything that has ever existed. It seemed to describe both my soul and all of history. It didn't change me exactly. It was more that it uncovered something in me that had always been there but id not known before. From then till now that part of me has always been there, close to my surface. Poking out from time to time.

I borrowed the album Fairy Tales for Hard Men and listened to it. It was full of songs and a voice that spoke in simple poetry about domestic violence, alcoholism and drug addiction. Intensely personal and yet amazingly universal it mixed the specific and the transcendental. I could relate absolutely despite never experiencing those things.

I listened to the album every morning and evening as I walked between my house and campus, Leven's voice engraving itself into the slate of my mind. My feet kept time with him as I walked along the thin, winding, Lancashire roads. Twice I found myself crying.

A year later in a small church in the city of Edinburgh my girlfriend and I saw him play. A man in his 50's, overweight with long, greying, scraggly hair he didn't look impressive. He called to the venue staff for a pint glass half full of red wine and half full of white. He drank 3 of them that night. He explained that his voice had only just recovered from when he was stabbed in the throat. He'd had to learn to sing again.

He started to play.

Despite being only one man and a guitar he provided rhythm worthy of a full drum kit, his tapping foot miked up booming the bass, his fingers beating out snares and toms on the body of his instrument. His healed voice reached high up into the churches rafters and whispered in your ears.

In between songs he told hilarious anecdotes about heroin addiction, death and suicide. They were funny, sad and absolutely enthralling. They were warm, wry and above all else painfully human.

We were sat on the front row. It felt like he'd invited us into his front room. He asked people for requests and I called out for The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ. He looked me in the eyes and said in his soft Scottish accent;

"It's a great song. But I can't sing it anymore since the stabbing."

He looked me in the eyes.

And he played Exit Wound instead. And I'd never heard it before. And it was beautiful.

Afterwards in the bar we bought his CDs. Unlike when I've bought CDs from singers before and after I felt like something had passed from him to me. Not an exchange. He had given me something. He looked right into me, from the stage and in person, but there was no judgement there just understanding.

We were the only young people there and in that respect I think we did touch him a little. He was surprised we knew him.

And even though I know it's not true I do feel like I knew him.

Which is why I feel sad that he's gone.

Rememberance

2011-11-11T02:54:00.001-08:00

This is what I think we should be remembering: WW1 was a war about money and power that massacred a generation. We still wage wars and massacre people for country and capital. Lest we forget.

http://www.cwu.org/the-poppy-and-other-acts-of-remembrance.html

Bonfire Thoughts

2011-11-05T16:32:00.001-07:00

May I suggest taking time this bonfire night to read V for Vendetta by Alan Moore. That book is where the Guy Fawkes masks you see at various demonstrations and occupations comes from. I'm not too keen on the appropriation of those masks in that way. But the book is really worth reading. It is very relevant to the current political climate. A very cautionary tale that influenced my thinking greatly. I fully support the occupations and protests too despite the masks. There is gross inequality in this world and we need to address it. The way we are structuring things isn't working. But we can always choose to rearrange it. Or even change it all together.

First reaction

2011-11-04T01:39:00.001-07:00

I half hate this new song from @AmandaPalmer Reasons for the hate:

1.I'm not a John Lennon fan, specifically Imagine might be the song I hate most... ever. In a choice between Angels by R Williams and Imagine I would choose to keep Angels. Obviously songs that inspire hate are catchy, you even love them on one level, but they are horrible big lies, and they are full of smug self aggrandisement from their singers.

2. Sid Vicious annoys me. His myth has been mentioned enough. This is a twist on it sure, but I'm sick of him. He ruined one of my favourite bands and is a sad train wreck not an icon.

3. It encourages more people to play the ukulele which helps to make me both less special and more of a "cool" poser for playing one. Everyday I worry I will wake up and find I've become a hipster over night.

4. It's pretty simplistic.

I love it for all the obvious reasons ;-)

DISCLAIMER: only heard it once so far.

Fun and Games

2011-11-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been bombarded by games and my attitude to games.

My writing group played games during a recent trip we took to a house by the sea. We didn't play many games, most of the time went down like this and like this, but we played enough to bring back all my complicated feelings about these things.

Then a few days after this my niece and nephew (and their parents) dropped in for a flying visit. This visit was too short and late in the day for a game. But they tried to fit one in anyway. They love playing games.

And then today I listened to this episode of The Dork Forest.

Also some months ago I was at a stag do where we were expected to play Monopoly and Risk. I think that I managed not to play either game. And the alcohol, in that instance, took the edge off the whole thing. As did my current strategy towards playing games which is: "I will not recognise the validity of the game. I will treat winning and losing as equally invalid states. I will try and play the game morally and ethically correctly."

Yes. This technique gets me through it. But it essentially makes me the most annoying person to play against. Well actually the 2nd worst. The worst is me when I don't do this. The me that storms off in a flood of shouting and tears.

Indeed, I am not a fun person to play with. Sorry about that.

I heard recently that monopoly was invented to demonstrate that by becoming a monopoly you cripple everything, no one can carry on, and so no one wins. But we've relegated that message to the subliminal level if we pick up on it at all. People think that becoming the monopoly means you win. I've found over the years that this game will cause me to hate my closest friends. I cannot separate "game" morals from real ones. Which is strange as I have no problem with this in fiction, and I count computer games as fiction. But I cant get lost in an imaginary world when it's represented by pieces on a table top, or a bunch of cards, or a pencil and pen.

So part of my problem is I cant suspend my disbelief. Or maybe that's not quite right, I am somewhere in between belief and disbelief. I know I'm playing a game but I take it seriously. Monopoly means reminding myself how horrible capitalism is. Risk reminds me how horrible imperialism is. And when playing with friends this implicates them in these actions. I hope they wouldn't fuck people over that way. But they are happy to in a game.

The other problem is that I'm really really competitive. But I find competitiveness to be repellent. So playing a game means wrestling with myself and hating myself. This is especially problematic when it comes to things like 'unfairness'. I don't think I'm particularly clever and I definitely have bad coordination. I also don't think these things are valid ways of saying people are better than other people. I don't like meritocracy. I don't like systems that judge and rate people. And that is what games are. I hate both myself for being crap and the structure for making me feel crap. And on the few occasions I win I hate the nasty feeling of being "better" than other people. It's worse because my instincts are to be a right wanker about it.

I tend to be an all or nothing person. I'm not happy unless I either get top marks or I fail spectacularly. By opting out I'm trying to create a narrative where I'm the hero, partly because I'm scared I'll lose, and partly because I'm scared of what I might become to try and win. But it is still, on many levels, trying to prove myself "better".

Games and guilt are synonymous in my mind. I like computer games better because they are immerse and everyone has their own clearly delineated individual narratives.

One real world game I like is Chess. I like it for its elegance and the intense, almost meditative process where you are sketching out an idea of how your opponents mind works. Really it's about understanding the other person. It's intimate and one on one.

I also like Scruples. But then for me it's a game where winning or losing are actually immaterial. You get into the minds, the emotions, the morals, the life experiences of the group, you get into the big ideas. That's what I like to do. Similarly the game Pancakes verses Waffles that my friend Liz taught me is great. We played a short version of this last week and got it down to Hope verses Love. On that night Hope won incidentally. The majority would get rid of Love if it came to the choice.

I also like what I call judgemental Guess Who. Where the only questions you can ask are judgements: "Do they look depressed? Are they gay? Would they steal something?" In this game mostly no one wins as both people (or teams) judge differently. But it's fun. Well it is my idea of fun.

We played Apples for Apples last week. This is a similar kind of game to the above. I thought it was okay but I felt the group should be able to vote on whether the persons definition of a thing was right. I missed the democratic element of a game like scruples.

Surprisingly I won that game. Making my stance the opposite of subversive. "I'm winning but I don't accept the validity of winning." No one wants to hear that!

The last problem I generally have with games (apart from the few mentioned above) is that I find them really boring. But I also feel bad about knocking someone else's idea of fun. I also worry that I must not be fun to be around. And so another cycle starts. Everyone seems to have a higher capacity for these things than me.

But then I have a higher capacity for talking endlessly about big ideas and emotions than some, for many people that quickly becomes boring.

I'd play Scruples all the time if I could.

Sadly I forgot to take it last week.

October and ONWARDS

2011-10-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Podcast news:

Getting Better Acquainted has been getting fantastic responses. People I hardly speak to emailing me out of the blue telling me they're enjoying it. So glad it's working for people. It's certainly changed my life. And it's only just begun, so many great conversations are stored on my hard drives and will be released weekly for at least a year!

The series has a main feed where you can stream or download the episodes: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/tracks

You can also subscribe and download it via iTunes: http://bit.ly/GBA-iTunes

But when I was reorganising the files to create the direct download option I had a revelation. Another interesting way to listen to the series might be to listen to the separate strands rather than the tapestry:

Family
University Friends
Writing Group
The Cardiff Episodes
Conversations with Musicians
The Fringe Festival Season
Apples for Everyone
GBA Specials

These playlists will grow as the series goes on. New lists will be added.

***

The podcast experiment Four Days in a Room is over. The last episode aired last monday. We have gathered the best episodes together in a downloadable/streamable playlist: www.fourdaysinaroom.co.uk

These are the 18 best episodes from the series. And they are all that now remains of the project.

***

From now till mid November I'm producing the true story podcast Spark London on behalf of rethinkdaily. Subscribe to it on iTunes or stream in on Mixcloud

Music news:

The Plural have made written, performed and recorded 1 song each month this year:

There will be three more. Each song is done in a day. This months song was done is 4 hours: http://snd.sc/ns7gCR

***

The Reactionaries are beggining their second album. It is going to be great. Our first album is here: http://snd.sc/nxzXAn

***

My new band is still looking for percussion but we are very close to existing. It will be a monthly web series released as a podcast and as YouTube videos. If you know anyone interested in doing percussion for it or getting involved with filming it or designing its website please pass on my details to them. Maybe you're that person in which case drop me a line.

Other news:

Some other things are brewing, both in terms of writing and performing, but they are still in progress so I'm keeping them hush hush.

I did recently experience Hackney Hear and it was AMAZING. I strongly suggest you do your best to experience it too. Follow it on facebook and twitter for all the latest HH details.

Thanks for your time.

Please let me know if you want off this email list!

Dave

The right always claims to hate state control, but what is the death penalty but state control?

2011-09-22T00:18:00.001-07:00

What power always wants is control. But control of others not them. Free markets but authoritarian justice systems. Keep the rich white men rich. The kind of liberal allowed is the kind that sells to anyone regardless of their needs. Not the kind that tries to understand and empathise with other human beings. We might not have the death penalty here but we are still governed by a government that supports freedom for those who are already free and state control for those who are already controlled.

A great Haruki Murakami Quote:

2011-08-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.

This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.
[...]
I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System."
Haruki Murakami

Full text here.

@marcmaron sums up my current approach to art:

2011-04-04T01:48:00.000-07:00

"I live in the world of emotions, of human struggles in a very psychological and emotional way. I wanna know what's beyond the art. In my worst moments I think that art is an excuse for people to hide. In my best moments I think art is a perfect expression that speaks to all those emotions and heightens it."

Marc Maron (@marcmaron on is @WTFpod)

Getting Better Acquainted [and more...]

2011-03-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

Hello my friends,

I was at the TUC March for the Alternative and at some of the UK Uncut Occupy for the Alternative actions. This is my blog about what happening.

Developments:

I am starting a new podcast in May. It's called:

Getting Better Acquainted

Part 1: A ten minute monologue where Dave helps the audience get better acquainted with him by telling autobiographical stories.

Part 2: A long-form conversation [45-1hr] where Dave gets better acquainted with someone he knows.

Part 3: Audience feedback

[A podcast is like a radio show that is released over the internet and can be downloaded and played on mp3 players (such as iPods).]

To find out more about GBA and to find out about how you can take part check out this blog. I will be approaching many people on this email list about the show more fully at a later date. Go here for a sneak peak at the music for the show.

Four Days in a Room a new podcast series, has it's 13th episode coming out on Monday

"Discussing profound things in a silly way." "A podcast experiment." "An audio journey." "A strange muffled voicemail message that you can't stop listening to!"

Subscribe to it via iTunes. / Or follow it's RSS feed. / Like it's facebook page. / Listen to it on MixCloud

We're blogging the episodes and the reactions to the episodes here: http://www.fourdaysinaroom.co.uk/

If anyone fancies giving listening to it and want a recommendation these are my personal top 5 of the ones we have broadcast:

5. Episode 8: "Is consciousness an evolutionary disadvantage?"
4. Episode 6: Flashback to the first morning
3. Episode 7: "Yes it's Fu*king Political"
2. Episode 9: The Melvin Episode
1. Episode 11: The Journey

Please spread the word and subscribe, we've had a lot of great and interesting feedback to what's gone out so far. The show will take you (and took us) to all sorts of places. Please travel with us. Engage with us. And judge us.

Speaking of listening journeys, said.fm has recently had a few fantastic make overs and is set for some even more exciting developments in the future. If you like audio that's the place to listen. Here's a good blog what they wrote telling you why: http://blog.said.fm/a-clear-signal-through-the-noise (Check out my audio selections here.)

Some of my friends have some good projects. Here are two I want to get behind:

The Hackney Hear: An interactive GPS-triggered audio tour of Hackney, revealing the borough’s best kept secrets in 400 unique audio pieces.

This will be great, but it needs your help. They are doing it through crowd-funding. Which means they need your donations. Even a couple of quid would do. That's the thing with crowd -funding, everyone can pay a small bit and big things can happen. If you can't donate you can support them and spread the word via their facebook and twitter accounts.

Content - a new British sci fi drama: 148 years in the future, a group of strangers lose their 3D `internet' connection and must set out across a forgotten world to find it again.

This project is just an idea at the moment. But it's a great and well developed idea. My friend has written the first two episodes and he is involved in various different approaches to getting it made. Check out the Pitch and the Plot Outline. If you like it then like the facebook page. He may be looking for collaborators to help make trailer or promo videos of it. He's really looking to engage audiences in the process of creating this show.

New band still seeking members. (Please spread the word/get in touch)

The Plural's March 20th track is now available for your listening consideration. We are writing/recording/mixing and releasing 12 songs over 12 days over 12 months. By December we'll have an album of material.

Listen to our first 2 tracks (and all future tracks) on our SoundCloud page.

Like our facebook page to keep informed of when our tunes come out.

The Middle Class Bastards are also available on SoundCloud for free streaming and download. As me and Alex prepare to go in a different musical direction, under a different name, we thought it was time we tidied up the house we are leaving, so that if we ever come back it will be a neat and tidy place to return to.

The Reactionaries album is now AVAILABLE! Yes, over a year after it was finished, and after being mistreated by some people who mess musicians about, we have decided to go completely virtual and completely FREE!

So you can stream and download the album from our SoundCloud page. You can see and download the album artworks and lyrics on our Flickr page.

Other Reactionary places are myspace and facebook

We won't be getting started again properly till September but... The Reactionaries will probably be performing live for the first time at Autumn Shift on May 14th watch the above space for details and developments.

Yours,

Dave

ps Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/goosefat101

Getting Better Acquainted: New podcast coming in May

2011-03-30T10:58:00.000-07:00

GBA is a podcast show being created by Dave Pickering. The format of the show will be:

Part 1: A ten minute monologue where Dave helps the audience get better acquainted with him by telling autobiographical stories.

Part 2: A long-form conversation [45-1hr] where Dave gets better acquainted with someone he knows.

Part 3: Audience feedback

[A podcast is like a radio show that is released over the internet and can be downloaded and played on mp3 players (such as iPods).]

***

Getting Better Acquainted Needs You:

If you know me then you’re a prefect candidate for the show. Even if you know me through friends and have only met me briefly. Being on the show is not a large demand on your time. I’m looking for an hour or so of conversation. I can accommodate and I can also travel to wherever you are. I’ll provide refreshments (and travel expenses if you come to me.)

There are lots of interview shows with famous people. This is an interview show about the rest of us. Okay so you don't necessarily have anything to plug (although if you do you can). Okay so you aren't used to talking on mic, you aren't generally inclined to do this sort of thing. But you are interesting. Everyone is interesting. Let's have a conversation.

If you have any story that you want to tell then here’s a place you can tell it.

For people who listen to the radio GBA will hopefully be like Desert Island Disks or maybe even Parkinson. For podcast listeners closer reference points might be WTF with Marc Maron, The Nerdist or NPR’s Fresh Air for the main show and The Moth or Spark London for the opening monologue.

What I aim to get from the interviews:

Interesting, moving and engaging conversations.

Personally to learn to listen better.

Find common ground between myself and the guest.

Talk about interesting and unusual experiences or expertise the guests have.

Have a true and genuine conversation.

If this sounds good to you then download the form and get in touch:

[Word Version] [PDF Version]

goosefat101[at]gmail.com

The truth...

2011-03-26T13:49:00.000-07:00

I have just watched the BBC news. First up any claim that the BBC has a liberal bias is 100% bollocks. What I just watched was a very slanted representation of the march I went on today. The headline should be: Over a quarter of a million protesters marched peacefully through London. That is the most important thing.

A small group of people committing vandalism and clashing with riot police isn't the lead story. Not only is it not the lead story it is also vastly misrepresented by being on a continuous loop. Generally no footage of the earlier march is shown. Everything is violence. And that is already over. [NB at the time of writing this it had all got quiet, it was only later that the clashes began again. This doesn't change any of the following:]

Furthermore they are mixing things up. The violence was NOT committed by UK Uncut. But by a hardcore of "anarchists" / "the black bloc". They are mixing these two separate groups together. UK Uncut did peaceful, intelligent protest.

They even described wanting tax dodgers and banks to pay their taxes as an anarchist ideological point of view. Anarchists do not believe in taxes, let alone that they should be paid. That is stupid misinformation.

By emphasising all of this and even playing footage of the violence as their pro-march talking head [Sunny Hundal] was on they were giving as false impression. They even continued to play it when he said that it was the responsibility of the media to present the events realistically rather than top loading it with the violence. They proved his anti-media point as he made it. BUT pictures lodge in the mind more than disembodied voices.

This is terrible reporting. It also forms lies in peoples minds. All I can hope is that there were so many people there that these lies will be seen clearly. The truth must be told. We also have our OWN media and can spread OUR news via it. Facebook, twitter, whatever, make sure an accurate view is seen by those who weren't there. This is important. Today we said: "Who's streets, our streets." and we walked down them freely communicating a message. Tomorrow we must say "Who's media, our media." and reclaim the truth.

Having seen this footage I will be reconsidering if I sign any future "save the BBC" petitions. I guess they are better than Sky! This is ludicrous behavior, the BBC, like the police, are under threat from these cuts. We ARE all in it together. Apart from the millionaire filled cabinet, the banks that gambled and lost with our money, and the businesses that do not pay the amount of tax they owe.

And now I must go and eat a lovely meal with my fellow marchers, who are currently asking the very real question to each other "What shall we watch that we can trust."

***

Postscript 1: One reason things are being confused is that whilst UK Uncut closed down and occupied Fortnam and Masons they were NOT the "anarchists" who smashed things up outside and threw stuff. That is why the footage shows UK Uncut banners beside the "anarchists".

Some accounts from UK Uncut protestors who were inside F and M:

Video from inside F and M!!

Alex Pinkerman from UK Uncut in Comment is free

Adam Ramsey in Bright Green

Sarah Morrison in The Independant

Laurie Penny in the New Statesman

Some articles and blogs that present the March and Uncut Actions in the way that I and my friends experienced it:

Stuart White in Next Left

Blog by Emma Bob 3

Blog by Jenny Adamthwaite

Postcript 2: The below video and this video on the guardian website seem to me to be closer to most peoples experience of the March and the UK Uncut Actions:

A lluman glân Dewi a ddyrchafant

2011-03-01T08:36:00.000-08:00

When I arrived in Coventry from North Wales the English thought I had a Scottish/Irish accent and teased me a bit for it. I was 8.

When I arrived in Cardiff the Welsh knew I had an English accent and it was pretty rough for me. I was 12.

I left Wales at 18. My mum moved away so I haven't been back as much as I would have liked.

Wales has more of a sense of itself, lots to be proud of, lots to be angry about. Hatred of the English is really just opposition to power and dominion. Something I've always shared. It's the same thing Northerners feel about Southerners. It's the same thing the Cornish, The Scottish, The Irish, feel - not to mention the many places we enslaved and exploited under the Empire.

Still it is not very powerful to be an English almost teenager with glasses and no friends trying to find new friends. .

That said there is, or was, a cultural identity to Cardiff that embraced me and that I embraced. The first pubs I drank in were Cardiff pubs. The first romances I had were Cardiff romances (unrequited generally). The first bands I played in were Cardiff bands. The first place my words were performed was Cardiff. I love the city. I love it. I love its parks, its accent, its culture, its people.

I've been accepted by a small welsh village and rejected and then accepted by a small welsh city. I think I've done my time, paid my dues, I know that I'm not Welsh. But I also think I'll never be properly English. Some people I know have objected to me classifying myself as British. Well that's as close as I can get really. But still I feel part Welsh.

And certainly I approve of holidays that celebrate revolutionary attitudes (title translates as: And they will raise the pure banner of Dewi) Big believer in the need to fight the power (in a non-violent way). But also I don't like the undertones of nationalism, even believing that we need more community and cultural identity in our culture, the stupidity of saying any country or people are better than another just won't go away.

All that said Happy St David's Day.

X

Critics of modern RnB...

2011-02-25T16:52:00.000-08:00

Critics of modern RnB and to a certain extent Pop know this: it is the artform that most perfectly expresses now. You don't like now. Fair enough. Get out there and change now. You will find that art will change to reflect the new now.

Within the context of now it is beautiful, moving and interesting to listen to. But like now it is also shallow, tecnologically focused and searching for something more.

The Sounds of the Clouds

2011-02-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

Hello my friends,

Developments:

The Reactionaries album is now AVAILABLE! Yes, over a year after it was finished, and after being mistreated by some people who mess musicians about, we havedecided to go completely virtual and completely FREE!

So you can stream and download the album from our SoundCloud page. You can see and download the album artworks and lyrics on our Flickr page.

Other Reactionary places are myspace and facebook

The Plural's Feb 20th track is now availble for your listening consideration. We are writing/recording/mixing and releasing 12 songs over 12 days over 12 months. By December we'll have an album of material.

Listen to our first 2 tracks (and all future tracks) on our SoundCloud page.

Like our facebook page to keep informed of when our tunes come out.

The Middle Class Bastards are also avilable on SoundCloud for free streaming and download. As me and Alex prepare to go in a different musical direction, under a different name, we thought it was time we tidied up the house we are leaving, so that if we ever come back it will be a neat and tidy place to return to.

Four Days in a Room a new podcast series, has it's 7th episode coming out on Monday

"Discussing profound things in a silly way."

"A podcast experiment."

"An audio journey."

"A strange muffled voicemail message that you can't stop listening to!"

Subscribe to it via iTunes. / Or follow it's RSS feed. / Like it's facebook page. / Listen to it on MixCloud

We're blogging the episodes and the reactions to the episodes here: http://www.fourdaysinaroom.co.uk/

Please spread the word and subscribe, we've had a lot of great and interesting feedback to what's gone out so far. The show will take you (and took us) to all sorts of places. Please travel with us. Engage with us. And judge us.

Got lots of other exciting projects going on but they will wait for later in the year. As ever if you want to be removed from this list let me know.

Yours,

Dave

ps Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/goosefat101

Please RT: How the Observer (mis)treated yesterdays UKUncut action

2010-12-19T00:45:00.000-08:00

I am so bloody angry at The Observer's inaccurate reporting of yesterdays UK Uncut action. I was at Oxford Street. I know what we did. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/19/uk-uncut-tax-avoidance-protests

Actually you can check my twitter stream. I live blogged what we did. Don't even have to rely on the memory of me and the other protesters: http://twitter.com/goosefat101

These are more accurate:

Firstly from The Daily Mail(!) who may not say the full time Vodafone was closed for but at least they say it was closed and they generally give pretty good write up: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339844/Topshop-boss-Sir-Philip-Green-enjoys-Barbados-holiday-despite-tax-protests.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Then from Red Pepper, this is very true to my experience: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/topshop-and-the-solidarity-of-the-ordinary-shopper/

And lastly for any more information about all of yesterdays action here is a good media outlet: http://london.indymedia.org/

You can buy The Dave's album here...

2010-12-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

Due to myspaces changes my myspace lost all its well crafted html. Until I work out how to get some of that back or at least how to get a bloody buy now button on the site somehow this blog page is where you can get the album!

The Dave's NEW ALBUM: 'Going Back To Finish The Job' £5 (including postage and packaging)

Dave Related News: December and beyond‏

2010-12-10T01:11:00.000-08:00

Apples For Everyone is ending. Come to our goodbye party:

11th December: 7.30pm: The Miller (96 Snowsfield Road, London Bridge SE1 3SS) £5 entry. FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE.

A new experimental podcast series has been recorded by myself and two old friends. The show is called Four Days In A Room and may be released sometime in the next few weeks. However editing it is epic and so you may have to wait till January. Watch this space or follow it on twitter and/or on facebook for updates on this project.

You can hear me tell a true story live for the Spark London podcast here: Two Cathedrals

Also I have become a curator for the excellent podcast aggregator Said.fm So check that site out. On it you will get regular bundles of audio joy selected by various podcast fanatics, who trawl through the millions of options out there to you so you don't have to. Have a listen and TELL YOUR FRIENDS. If you want to explore my past curations you can here: Dave's Picks

So it's coming up to Christmas so why not buy The Dave's album "Going Back to Finish the Job", it makes the perfect present for the person who has everything, also for the person who has nothing, and for everyone in between and it's available for £5 (inc p and p) from here: http://www.myspace.com/thedaveiscoming

The Dave is posting a YouTube christmas song on the 24th December: http://www.youtube.com/goosefat101

Why the delay on the release of The Reactionaries? Well that's a long and very boring story. The delay is NOT our fault. However it now looks likely that we won't be able to release it till next year as we have been completely let down by the company that was printing it for us and we need to revise our intentions and find a new way of getting it done. It will be done though and our great album will be released ASAP in 2011. We can't believe how long its
taking either. But sadly that's what happens when you want to sell a nice product yourself.

Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/goosefat101 I give good Tweet.

The Band is dead, Long live the Band - Oh yes, The Dave is looking to expand into a band, London based musicians please check out the concept and consider getting involved. The advert is here. The band will also be a podcast. SPREAD THE WORD.

The principal of opposing the cuts...

2010-12-09T15:56:00.000-08:00

What we have to remember when we oppose the cuts. When we fight against these attacks on the public that come from a cabinet formed of millionaires (and a government formed from the principal of maintaining the status quo rather than addressing the disconnection between public and government) we have to remember, and explicitly state that we stand for the general principle and not the specific issue.

By which I mean:

The basic principal is that those who got us into this mess: banks, businesses and various elected and none elected million and billionaires must pay to get us out of it. The cuts must fall on them. This isn't just fair it is also essential because they can take it. Unlike the poor and the public services. We aren't opposing any single cut but all cuts that fall elsewhere. Each individual strike and protest (and personally I favour civil disobedience over striking) needs to (and most are to be fair) make it clear they are against everyone being cut. This avoids them looking selfish and foster solidarity in people who aren't in a position to strike or cut.

The other principal is that we should have collective free public service. Opposing tuition fees isn't supporting the education system. It is standing for the right to free education. I personally hate the education system, and the elitist and navel gazing nature of most universities and many academics. But that is a specific issue. When we win back their funding then we can use that money to make them better.

Same goes for The Libraries, The Police, Children's Services, Benefits, Arts, Social Work, Sports and all the services that will be cut. I'd go further and add things already privatised like transport and traffic wardens. These things should be free and paid for collectively through taxation with the rich paying more because they can afford to. That doesn't mean I am in favour of Prisons or Police brutality, or the repositioning of public service as business, or the way paper work and absurd assessment is literally ruining education and social services. All these things must be addressed. And we should make it clear they aren't good enough. They need to be sorted out. BUT STOP CUTTING THEM and we will be able to address these issues.

Because the principal of Public Services is what we are fighting for, not the current reality of them. And we know we collectively can afford them and can collectively get out of this. Because we ARE all in it together. ALL of us. Including the members of the Bullingdon club and the Tax Cheaters like Vodafone and Philip Green. It is time to make them pay.

Striking Issue 2: BBC...

2010-11-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Mark Thompson's email to the BBC staff is all well and good: http://bit.ly/b3Jfgh

On paper it sounds fair. An accord has been reached with the unions and we're all "in this together". The BBC as per usual worried that the public will object to the BBC not feeling some of the pain.

Thing is whilst everyone will have to rethink pensions as our old people heavy population stretches its resources further than they'll reach. But there is somewhere we can find money: Cutting the obscene salaries and expenses of management like Thompson.

And while we're at it slash the obscene salaries of the "talent". If they want to take their talent elsewhere then fine. There is other talent out there. Plenty. Currently not getting a chance. And most talent will stay since the BBC is still a much bigger audience reacher than any private companies.

As for striking, well I much prefer unified strikes rather than individual strikes. I want to see everyone arguing all the cuts need to be attacked, rather than that their own needs and industries are more important. I want to see a situation where those without access to unions get the same rights and freedoms as the unionised. And I want to see unions whose executives get paid reasonable salaries and do not support the basic dominant logic of culture.

That said the BBC isn't the Transport service, whose strikes screw over the poorest commuters and cause real problems for people. The BBC isn't the fire service whose decision to strike tomorrow may result in death and destruction across all areas of society (though you can bet the poorer people will suffer worse).

I am a believer in the BBC. I think its independence is really important. Yes, its flawed and could be improved in terms of its commissioning and its salaries, but its the best we have. I want to push it to be better. But I think if it is a casualty if this administrations attack on culture this will be terrible.

But all that said it isn't an essential service. Striking will only show people what they would miss. It wouldn't be as hard for the public to support as the strikes of needed services that hurt those already struggling.

This makes Thompson's position pretty weak. Especially as he is just lying down and taking the governments medicine. Twitter is alive with people who are #ProudoftheBBC. But its exec are meekly accepting its erosion.

The BBC strikers should go ahead. They should change their negotiations to: find the pension funds by reducing the salaries of the overpaid at the BBC. That would avoid any decrease in the quality of the services.

The only decrease in service quality will come from the governments cuts. And those decreases should be shown. If we all paper over the cracks no one will see them until everything falls down.

And the BBC strikers should unite with all the other strikers. With no Union accepting anything till an agreement that works for everyone is reached. Or else they should instead engage their members in direct action protests and find alternative ways to fight these fucking cuts.

Direct action: John Pilger - http://bit.ly/aCGAe8

But the cuts have to happen... NO THEY FUCKING DON'T. And their effect will be much much worse for us all: http://www.thecutswontwork.co.uk/

Striking Issue 1: RMT...

2010-11-04T12:29:00.000-07:00

(these commentaries on strikes are written using thumbs as facebook notes and tweets)

So far this tube strike has caused me to miss a great one off gig, now it makes me get up at six and severely bus it. Solidarity depleted.

But... obviously www.thecutswontwork.co.uk/ - if we are going to attack them though we need to REALLY be in it together.

RMT should be striking against ALL cuts. They should be striking with/for everyone. Even engaging in different forms of collective action.

Alternatives to single issue strikes

No 1: Collectively refusing to pay council tax until the welfare system is assured. We pay our taxes for the public good and if they are not being used that way then we should withdraw them.

No 2: Protests and shut downs such as those currently happening to make Vodafone pay its 6bn tax bill. Other good targets: Banks, Parliament, The City. Transport or fire service strikes make life harder for working and poor people. They aren't to blame. They can't take it. It is those with the money and power we should be opposing.

No 3: Striking with as many other unions as possible against all the cuts and for taxing rich/bankers/etc... as the most obvious immediate alternative.

No 4: A REAL general strike with everyone involved. The right to strike needs to be universal. Available to all whether they pay into a union or not. We should all insist on this. It allows for general strikes, stops people being forced against their principals to cross picket lines and allows people to opt out of unions without disenfranchising themselves.

(Also if the RMT are taking my advice they should really stop paying its leaders such high salaries. And stop asking for pay increases to their well paid staff. Oh and get rid of Bob fucking Crow.)

Dave Related News: October and Beyond

2010-10-22T03:56:00.000-07:00

Hey, long time no tell you about all my projects, time to change that sad fact...

Apples For Everyone is ending. Come to our goodbye party:

11th December: 7.30pm: The Miller (96 Snowsfield Road, London Bridge SE1 3SS) £5 entry. FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE.

The Dave still exists alone however and is doing a solo gig in Bristol to prove it:

24th November: 8pm: Folk Tales ( Scout Hut [Bristol Harbour] Redcliff Backs [Black Wooden Building across the bridge and opposite Severn Shed and Riverstation, Welshback way])

The Dave's album "Going Back to Finish the Job" is available for £5 (inc p and p) from here: http://www.myspace.com/thedaveiscoming

Talking about podcasts:

I'm performing a true story told live (and without notes) *GULP* This is for Spark London, a great night of Stories that also has a podcast available (on the Itunes and other netty places) So come and see me on Monday 1st November at 7.30pm at the Canal Cafe Theatre, London W9 6ND The theme of the night is "Mistaken Identities".

Also I have become a curator for the excellent podcast aggregator Said.fm So check that site out. On it you will get regular bundles of audio joy selected by various podcast fanatics, who trawl through the millions of options out there to you so you don't have to. Have a listen and TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

And finally on the podcast front, a new experimental podcast series has been recorded by myself and two old friends. The show is called Four Days In A Room and will probably begin to be released sometime in December. Watch this space or follow it on twitter for updates on this project.

My short story Elegance has been published in A DemonMinds Halloween: 2010 Edition (Volume 66) which is an American magazine. It's available on amazon.com. But buying it won't give me more money, my one of payment has already happened.

Why the delay on the release of The Reactionaries? Well that's a long and very boring story. It will be happening soon (I was hoping to be able to include it in this email but it wasn't to be.) The delay is NOT our fault. Our CD will be available ASAP.

Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/goosefat101 I give good Tweet.

ADVERT: New band being started, members needed!

2010-10-22T01:33:00.000-07:00

I am starting a new band up. The band will be a 4 piece (including me) and it will play my songs.

I want to make epic electronic folk pop, mixing nice folky instruments with pleasing electronic sounds. I'm particularly interested in duets and multi vocal arrangements. The band will have a punk ethos and a low fi sensibility.

This is what my solo out put sounds like: http://soundcloud.com/the-dave/sets/going-back-to-finish-the-job I want to extend and develop that sound.

This is a spotify playlist of songs/bands I am currently influenced by: New Band

The band will not kill ourselves on the souless London gig circuit where no one sees you and you never get paid. We will carve out our own space with regular live performances recorded in intimate venues with invited audiences and guests and distributed via a free Podcast and a YouTube channel both promoted using Twitter, Facebook and other similar sites.

Basically we play in peoples front rooms and invite our friends to come along have some drinks and watch us play. No more hassling your mates to come out and pay stupid amounts of money to lazy promotors and watch a load of shite bands play!

Once we get followers online we will put on "live podcast" nights at good London venues. We will programme those nights with quality support acts and bands, pay everyone to play, and hopefully make a profit. We'll record the nights and offer them for free as podcast specials.

We'll also be looking to generate income through voluntary donation on our websites, we will play any good gig offers at none rip off nights (generally when you are offered a gig they are good, but when you ask for a gig you get screwed) and we will also sell EP's and albums as and when online.

Potential members need to live in London and be prepared to rehearse one or twice a week regularly. Music must be your passion not your hobby and you need to be someone willing and able to commit to regular rehearsals, recordings and performance. All singers must use their real accents. Only sound American if you are American. Ideally all band members can sing (I am not interested in conventional voices, there are many kinds of singing...) Also useful are webskills and music production interest/knowledge.

I’m looking for collaborators with musical ideas, and there will be plenty of room to put your own art into the project, however we will be playing my songs and adhering to my vision, at least for the initial start up period of the bands life.

So I play Ukulele, Guitar, Analogue Keys, Melodica, Kazoo and sing. To add to that I am looking for 3 of the following:

Bass player (who also plays guitar and/or keys)
Electronic sound maker who plays Syntherizer/Drum Machine/EWI... (Drum Machine could form the drums for the band so someone who makes good beats very ideal) - I'm particularly interested in using classic computer game sounds; spectrum, atari, nintendo etc... not making pure chiptunes or anything but having some of that in the electronic dimension of the music.
Percussionist who can play kit but is also into playing all sorts of rhythmic things
Female vocalist (preferably but not essentially also plays an instrument)
Someone who plays a nice and relatively unusual instrument: e.g. Cello, Bassoon, Flute, Banjo

If you are interested or you know someone who is please get in touch with me and we can meet up, jam and see if we click:

goosefat101[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk

twitter/goosefat101

Compiling the Compilations

2010-10-22T00:44:00.000-07:00

So over the last few months I've been sortof playlist blogging, with a different compilation being released over twitter and facebook (all created and shared on spotify.)

This happened semi accidentally, with me deciding that there were enough songs about whales that were ace to justify a playlist. After that I became interested in theme based playlists and have really enjoyed putting them together. There are some quality ones here.

I've been aided and abetted occasionally by tweeps and facebookers, giving me many useful and surprising suggestions. The twits of note are @EmilyCleaver (fellow whale song enthusiast), @haylien and @jadamthwaite (she made suggestions face to face mind you cos she happens to live with me for her sins.)

That said I am resting for the time being, with other projects demanding my time I must give something up and making playlists is the obvious thing to go.

So I thought I'd collect them all here in one place so that people can peruse them at their leisure and hopefully pleasure. I shall also repost them on the feeds when appropriate. The only playlist not yet promoted is the one about Snow. For obvious reasons!

(I am still open to song suggestions...)

Abstract Notions:

Heaven: A made for TV movie
A Memory
Time
Personal Jesus
Dreams: Dreams / Dreams Of You

Rights Of Passage:

His and Hers Spotify Playlists about Wanking
Songs for hangovers - the dave mix
Moving House: Songs about years and days

Creatures:

Whales
Birds

Science and Space:

Scientists
Stars
Dreaming of floating in space...
Moon: Moon / Croon Moon: The Crooner Edition / Magnetic Moon - Magnetic Fields songs about the moon

Geography:

The River
Rain Down On Me
Snow
Sun

His and Hers Spotify Playlists about Wanking

2010-09-24T12:18:00.000-07:00

So I've done some very high minded spotify playlists recently so as an antidote here's 2 about wanking. One from the male perspective and the other from the female:

Wank: Boys

Wank: Girls

Found Story 2: The Badgers and the Goodgers

2010-09-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

[I found 2 stories I wrote when I was 6.
All grammer/spelling mistakes are from original.]

A long time ago in the times when the Gods and the demons lived there was a wood with the only Badgers and the Goodgers in it.

The Badgers were very bad they did not wosh or blow thar nose. The Goodgers were good thay wosh and blow thar nose.

But the demon of the land made a drought and that made famin. In the famin the Badgers and the Goodfers were the worst off. But the Goodgers gave their food to the badgers. So the Goodgers died but the Badgers lived.

THE END

Found Story 1: The Juggler Who Worked For God

2010-09-17T10:12:00.000-07:00

[I found 2 stories I wrote when I was 6.

All grammar/spelling mistakes are from original.]

CHAPTER 1

A very long time ago there was

a juggler

who was working for God juggling

all over the world just for the people

all over the world.

***

CHAPTER 2

The juggler had grown old and feeble.

He couldn't do very well tricks anymore. He decided to become a monk and he went into a monastery and there was a statue of Mary holding Jesus.

The baby looked so nice that the juggler performed tricks, and one of the monks in the monastery saw him performing and he went to tell his master that there was a madman in the monastery.

When the monk came back he found that the juggler was dead holding a ball with the world on it, and he had died at Jesus's feet.

THE END

Heaven: A Made for TV Movie

2010-09-10T04:46:00.000-07:00

Okay so recently I have been making themed based spotify playlists and like most things I do I've been a little obsessive about it. I've got quite a few more in the pipeline and I'll be sharing those as and when they're ready. And if you want to hear the previous ones you can search back in my twitter feed and find links.

This one came from a similar idea as the one I did about Jesus and the one I'm currently compiling about God. However this one turned into a narrative list, with each part being formed of two tracks, one speaking and the other replying.

So far so pretentious. But there you go. So this playlist needs notes and they are written below:

Heaven: A Made for TV Movie
Two souls die and meet in heaven

Track 1 and 2: The Death and The Promise
Track 3 and 4: The way to heaven
Track 5 and 6. Knocking on the door and going in
Track 7 and 8. The joy and beauty of heaven
Track 9. and 10. The material nature of heaven
Track 11. and 12. The medium of heaven
Track 13. and 14. Outro

Review: Toy Story 3

2010-08-07T12:07:00.000-07:00

This film is a perfect film. Everything in it works.

It will entertain children whilst also making adults cry.

It was beautiful and wonderful. Just the right amounts of bleakness, despair, hope and love. Perfectly blended and seasoned.

It is the best of the 3 films. It may be the first 3 that is the best of a film trilogy. Not that the other two films aren't also great.

I reckon it will be 2010's best film.

Go and see it.

Review: Inception

2010-08-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

I am generally split between not liking and liking Christopher Nolan's films. I didn't like Batman Begins or Insomnia but I really loved Memento and Dark Knight. I liked The Prestige but also found it a bit emotionally cold.

Inception falls into the didn't like camp.

Part of that may be that I am not that interested in James Bond style action sequences. Which is not to say that I don't like action, I do. I just have to care about the characters and find the sequences to have something new and engaging about them. I found Inceptions action pretty dull and unoriginal. And there was just TOO MUCH of it.

The film has some good things about it. The cast are great. The acting very good. There are some brilliant sequences, really brilliant, almost worth watching the over-hyped and overlong film for. They hint at how good the idea could have been: An action film/blockbuster than takes place in peoples minds. Thieves who steal information from inside peoples minds. A heist movie where they have to insert an idea into the marks mind. All good.

However the execution of the above is a vast failure.

People have said of Inception that it is somehow refreshing. That we don't get blockbusters with art movie ideas, with difficult concepts and existential elements. That Inception somehow changes the game.

I'm afraid it doesn't. The Matrix (and don't let the sequels spoil how good the original was) does everything that Inception tries to do, but it did so with style, originality and interest. Clever blockbusters have happened loads though, from Terminator I and II to LA Confidential. Inception isn't new. It isn't a game changer.

It also isn't as complicated as it wants you to believe. What it actually does is fail to explain things well. It thinks making things unclear can distract from When you boil it down it has lots of plot holes. It is generally very implausible.

That said all of this may be deliberate. I fear that it is. Take this review/analysis of Inception [WARNING FULL OF SPOILERS]: http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-MEANING-AND-SECRET-OF-INCEPTION/Page1.html

Everything that review says seems likely to me. Nolan could very well have deliberately made things implausible and full internal logic for the reasons stated in that article. He may also have been trying to make a film about the process of making films. Crafting a clever metaphor for his own process.

The problem is that in doing so he has made a film that is indulgent and lazy. It would have been much better if he'd developed the idea for longer, researched his topic more, thought more about the effect of the film rather than the ideas he wanted to put in it. Boiled it down better. Stopped navel gazing.

The main problem with the film is that it isn't like a dream. It thinks it is, but it isn't. There is not enough surrealness. There is just lots of guns and chases. Is that what dreams are like? No. Dreams are much more interesting. There is loads of information out there about dreams that he could have fed into it, lucid dreaming, dream interpretation. All of that could have been great.

And why all the guns? Are they really that interesting? Surely you also dream about swords, about fish, about flying, about so many different things. And you accept them all because its a dream and we generally accept the logic of dreams. There are 3 beautiful bits that hint at what it could have been. 1. The sequence where Ellen Page redesigns the city in front of her using her imagination and making it not obey the laws of physics. 2. The fight sequence in a hallway where the centre of gravity keeps changing. 3. The sequence where gravity goes completely and yet various people need to be moved through space as if they were falling in order to wake them up.

We needed more of that and less Bond shoot outs. We needed fluidity, invention, imagination. We needed it to be a fucking dream.

The problem I think is that Nolan actually wanted to make a film about the subconscious. He wanted it to be all about moving through different levels of someones subconscious. Well that's a good idea too. So choose. Dreams or subconscious. And whichever you choose cut out all the guns. They aren't adding anything. The guns in the Matrix and Terminator and LA Confidential added something. Christ even the explosions in Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves add something.

If you are going to do it about different levels of the subconscious then it still has to be more interesting. You have to have different visual cues for the different levels, rather than colouring them all in a similar way. And crucially you have to think it through: Why would what happens to a body in one level have an affect on it in another level but not to the body in the next level... etc...

Inception to me was like District 9, full of great ideas that weren't thought through fully. However District 9 was a much more satisfying watch.

I was bored in this film.

I think a better film could have been made with 45 mins of action cut and more work done on the dreamscape and its logic.

I also think the idea could have been much better realised over a TV series, which would allow the sort of character development and narrative depth that an idea with this sort of potential deserves.

Unknown Music Review 5: Betty and the Werewolves: Teatime Favourites

2010-08-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

"I don't want dinner and a movie. I just want someone that'll move me." - Euston Station

(As with many of this series of Unknown Music Reviews I have a connection to someone in this band. That's an inevitable part of the process since many of the pile of CD's that I'm working through have been purchased from friends and acquaintances.

So I happen to be friends with Emily who plays guitar and provides one vocal in the wonderful Betty and the Werewolves. That's the disclosure out of the way.)

Betty and the Werewolves play punk influenced indie pop. They do so very deliciously. I am very much a Fan with a capital F. They've enchanted me ever since I saw them play live last year. It's a sweet pain when you're a musician and you're friend has a great band and great talents. You are pleased, excited and also jealous to fuck. This happens to me far to frequently. And with B&tW I get it the pain and joy in endless waves because they really are terrific.

They have the bouncing danceable beats of the first Futureheads album and that's a good reference point for Teatime Favourites, both albums are perfect for long distance drives in a car or for putting on when everyone gets to the dancing drunk stage of a house party. Both albums have great lyrics and great harmonies, and are filled with energy and distance. Both have lots of tracks (Teatime Favourites has 14 all together) but all of them are short (the album comes in at 39.33). There are some filler tracks (for me) on the album, maybe it could have been chopped down to say 11 or 12, but having said that I suspect the tracks that feel like filler now are more likely to be growers rather than show-ers! Already the last track Hyacinth Girl for example has been worming its way into my heart from a meh, to a mmm.

The album is full of singles and much of it would work as the score of a Tarantino film, with the sort of licks and grooves that infuse his films being the guitar hook in many of the tunes. The two vocalists really compliment each other, dancing around each other with Cranberries style harmonies and occasional melodic shouting. Laura provides a perfect Dubstar/Black Box Recorder style reverberant distance, with Emily providing a warmer touch. There's a Smiths feel to what they do, there's a touch of the early Doves and they have some Buzzcocks syncopation going on.

The band are obviously enjoying themselves and it comes through on the recording. The record captures everything that's great about them live and adds extra resonances. They have great keyboard sounds, fantastic drumming, riffs galore, ace solos and most importantly they have great lyrics, they have darkness, light, fun and games.

I imagine everyone will mention in reviews that they are formed of three women with a man on drums. Which is, of course, both completely irrelevant and absolutely essential to what makes them great.

The band have a distinctive stance and sound. They have some great things to say about the world. And they are hungry for it. And they are doing it now.

"I'm obsessed with a piece of plastic... My plan for the future is to have some pieces sewn into my face" - Plastic

My stand out tracks are: Plastic, Euston Station, Paper Thin, Francis and David Cassidy.

The only real criticism I have is that I don't like the title font used on the front of the album. And I'm not too keen on the video for Paper Thin (though I love the song).

Buy there album it's available from Damaged Goods. You can also find them on Itunes and Twitter and Spotify and Last FM and Facebook and probably on the radio right now!!!

Betty and the Werewolves - live - 2 of 3 from Joseph O Hughes on Vimeo.

Unknown Music Review 4: Cautionhorses: ONHO 4-Track EP

2010-07-24T07:30:00.000-07:00

Cautionhorses are a punk rock band from Chichester. They are exploring a heavy edge, Joy Division/Devo/ Pixies influenced musical language with a humorous and politically formed lyrical approach. Their songs build constantly, keeping you on the edge of a musical orgasm and then slapping you back just at the last minute.

This 4 track EP is a bargain at £3. Their previous self-titled 7 Track EP is also available for £5. I suggest you buy them both. They will make you jump around the room, move your head about and smile. Both are available on their myspace.

Although the new 4 track doesn't quite hit the levels of either Meat or Strobes from there first EP, all the tracks are solidly good (whereas the 7 track does have a couple of tracks that strike me as filler). The stand out track on this one is Music As A Weapon with its playfully Sesame Street/Johnny Cash/Guantanamo Bay references and catchy melody.

The best Cautionhorses tracks deserve to be heard by a wider audience as they are simply brilliant and their worst are not as bad as most music you'll hear on the radio. They have a style and personality that is fully formed and unique. Their albums are beautifully designed works of DIY stencil art and they're very visually engaging both in live performance and in the pictures and photographs they use to create their online presence.

As you can gather from above I've seen them live (I know them a bit personally, albeit originally through a mutual friend) and they're very very tight and very very good. They don't appear to have any gigs in the pipeline at present but if you ever get the opportunity to see them DO IT.

Cautionhorses mix of anger and humour with danceable textures and awesome riffs is exactly what you want when you want to listen to loud music and thrash around your front room.

Recommendation/Review: Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele

2010-07-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

I really really like what Amanda Fucking Palmer (as she often calls herself) is trying to do with this EP: Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele.

This new approach coming from some bands and artists to selling things directly to the audience is fantastic. These attempts by artists (and so far they are generally only "successful" attempts if, like Palmer, they already have a high profile) to be truly independent from labels. To really try and do things for themselves making use of the amazing hopes and possibilities of the internet. It is great from an philosophical perspective: it's what music and art and life is and should be about. It is also great from a ideological perspective as it takes the money away from the bastards. But also it is great from the musicians personal perspective, in an industry that is becoming increasingly powerless and unconnected from the way audiences can and will consume it.

She is giving this EP potentially away for free (well you have to pay 0.84¢ to cover the costs of paypal and paying Radiohead). You can choose to donate more. And you can also pay a lot more for very special personalised "bundles" containing painted Ukulele's, personal phone calls from AFP. She'll sing Haiku's you wrote. And bundles themselves are very interesting new ways for artists and fans to connect (here's another interesting bundle approach).

AFP really gets my good will and respect for this:

3. THE THIRD BEST THING YOU COULD DO
is download the music for free, have a friend email it to you, or otherwise own it and enjoy it without paying for it.
honestly, that’s no skin off my back. if radiohead doesn’t KNOW (and neither do I) that you’re downloading this music, i don’t have to pay their publishing fee.
and i’d rather you have this music than not have it. so go ahead and take it from the cloud. yay.

She is fully giving her music, her work, to her fans and asking and offering them the chance to collaborate with her and engage with her. They are her publicity machine, through her blogging, her twitter and her facebook. Word of online mouth spreads this around. She did a live webcast/party offering her fans even more. Making the EP an event. Making it something special.

I don't have much money at present and so only paid the minimum price. And that is really worth paying.

The tracks themselves are varied in how much they work for me. But the ukulele adds wonderful new connotations to the radiohead tracks and when they worth they really work. But don't take my word for it. Why not have a listen:

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://music.amandapalmer.net/album/amanda-palmer-performs-the-popular-hits-of-radiohead-on-her-magical-ukulele"&amp;amp;gt;Fake Plastic Trees by Amanda Palmer&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

For my mind Idioteque from Kid A is the real stand out cover. It is the perfect meshing of the uke sound with the source material, probably because its where the gulf seems greatest. It's interesting as well because the lyrics are more audible and so add new levels to the original. High and Dry is also great and Fake Plastic Trees, whilst not being very different in feel to Radioheads still benefits from the high end uke and female voice.

No Surprises failed to work for me, something about the vocal delivery I think. And Creep (Hungover at Soundcheck in Berlin) was shaping up as an amazing cover but loses it with too much pantomime (at least in the way it sounds) emotion at the end of the song.

But over all some great tracks and a great approach. Both deserve respect and support.

Unknown Music Review 3: The Sequins: The Risky Woods

2010-07-17T03:30:00.000-07:00

The Sequins lead singer sounds a lot like Feargal Sharkey (former lead singer of the Undertones) which is the first thing that hits you when you hear them. However he has developed his vocal delivery on this EP and the vocals seem to sit in the music better rather than dominating it as I felt they did occasionally on their previous CD The Death Of Style.

The Risky Woods EP is engaging danceable indie pop. The Sequins have created nice atmospheric landscapes around a mix of choppy and warbling vocal lines. A gentle but thoughtful record, that would work nicely played when sitting in a park on small tinny speakers. Despite having a gothic tone to the sound and the EP artwork it really came across as a summer record to me. Maybe that's the sun shining outside my window, but I think its more to do with the twinkly guitar bits and the way the bass and drums are often swinging the music along.

The lyrics are evocative and thematically linked in to the sound of the music. They didn't grab me with a wow factor but they didn't stand out as being bad. They serve the music and vibe well, occasionally being a bit wordy for my tastes.

The EP hangs together nicely, although each track adds a new flavours, from the Tarrantino faux western style of Space Travel In Your Blood to the Gothrock distortion driven The Chiming Bells, they fit together really well as a set.

The stand out musical moments were the sweeping building All That We Know with its tasty synth parts and creative use of wah wah sound. And the dual vocals of the last track Offside and Beautiful.

The addition of these deeper vocals is a great companion to the lead singers voice which is very high end. I think that using dual lead vocals and dueting lead vocals on their songs is something the band should consider doing more frequently. There are strengths to high end voices (many of my favourite vocalists such as Darren Hayman or Bernhard Sumner have very high end voices) but it is nice to have the whole range covered and would make their sound more distinctive.

It took too long for the secret track to kick in at the end (although at least it was a separate track, I always hate it when its attached to the last track). It yielded a very nice instrumental haunted house style track. This track was really nice and I thought it could have been used as either an intro track to the album or a straight last track. I couldn't really see why it had been positioned as a secret/bonus track.

The Sequins are Talking Heads meets The Smashing Pumpkins with very occasional touches of Antony and the Johnsons.

A pleasant 5 songs to kick back to in the sunshine with some nicely danceable moments. Good work and definitely worth getting if you're into tight and engaging Indie music with gothic/dramatic undertones.

[Disclosure: I went to primary and part of secondary school with the bass player.]

Unknown Music Review 2: Driftless Pony Club: Expert

2010-07-13T13:23:00.001-07:00

Driftless Pony Club's lead singer Craig Benzine is YouTube's Wheezy Waiter. Many episodes of which I would ambiguously recommend it . He is also in the very excellent (and committed because its a DIY television show made by "amateurs"): Platoon Of Power Squadron.

That's how I found out about their music.

I bought this album on the strength of a few tracks I'd heard.

Musically and lyrically they seem very influenced by REM, They Might Be Giants and Guided By Voices and Dookie era Green Day. And those are good influences to seem to have. At its best this Expert achieves some of the oblique pleasures of a Stipe chorus or the energised smirk of a verse of Basket Case. It isn't afraid to rock either and has a pretty hard edge, at times so hard that it is an intense listen.

The album has a lot of space between vocals and that space is packed tightly with a lot of musical ideas. When this works it works well, allowing the words to breathe and adding to the journey the song takes you on. When it doesn't work however it is like a smear obscuring what the song is about, distancing the song from the audience. (I almost said a smear on the window of the song but it sounded just too stupid... however I liked the image so much I had to mention it in these brackets.)

When they are "smeared" the songs become hard to relate to. It's the prog mistake; getting so interested in experimentation and variety that you lose a clear sense of what the core of the song is. They are stimulating their own minds but not the minds/hearts of the audience.

But even when the songs don't fully work they have their moments. The hunger that for variety that DPC seem to have means there are always good bits to recapture your attention.

When the songs work they really work. Legends Of Archery, Maps Of Low Fidelity and Thanks, Earthquake are excellent, full of bounce, great melodies, intriguing and moving lyrics and engaging musical variation.Those are the stand out tracks, but then since the album is 6 songs long this means half of it is stand out good, and the other half is getting there.

Benzine has a great voice and the production is really nice, the drums sounding particularly fine. I felt that the songs should have had a little more space between them, no songs apart from the last one have a moment for you to clear your palette. Sometimes running songs seamlessly into each other can work, but on this album it doesn't, what it means is the ends of the songs don't have the impact they require.

It's a good CD to have on in the background at a party and those three songs are great. They sound like a band really working themselves out, really hungry for making good songs and making good music. This album has some great songs on and they are worth the price of admission. However half of it could be improved on. But that's how I feel about most albums.

Unknown Music Review 1: Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! (Album Title Too Long For Twitter)

2010-07-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

The title of this album is ridiculously/brilliantly: I love you! I love you! I love you and I'm in love with you! Have an awesome day! Have the best day of your life!

This encapsulates the manic energy, the on the edge manic euphoria of the album.

I was scared to listen to this album because I loved iotdwykirthbr (The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt – Iotdwykirthbr) SO much that I didn't want the album to let me down. I bought it though, because I wanted to hear it through good speakers for the first time.

That's why its the first of the pile I am listening to. Despite the band being better known than many of the bands I will be getting to in future weeks.

This band is truly amazing. They're an intense experience though, and possibly not a pop one, but they really do it for me. They mix a really echo filled electronic landscape with multi vocals and frantic multi instrumental jams. Generally they hang the sound round a single hook/phrase and they build it up and down and add in other counter hooks over moments. Whilst frequently very positive and love filled everything has dark or desperate edge to it, mixing with the longing and the love. What hangs it all together is a really fantastic rhythm section beneath it all, great drums and epic bass sounds.

The lead singer sounds like Kermit the frog and that is a very good reference point to the album. It feels like it has been made by muppets, sad muppets, muppets with broken hearts. They are a dance and party band but they have great lyrics.

The album and the band really create beauty from chaos, they are a concept as much as anything, a band that includes its audience in itself, that comes at things from a anarchic point of view and yet somehow still manages to work cohesively as a single entity.I think this is because whilst the album and their live shows are really just big parties they are all singing the songs authored by one man.

They are like an amateur choir that has been slipped Ecstasy tablets, they are like a class on the last day of term afraid and excited by the future and their youth, they are just really really fucking good.

I wish I was in that crowd. I wish I was in that band. But by listening to this album really loud and dancing around my front room I can feel like I am for 34 mins and 21 secs.

Eskafaceterrortour 2010 from Flipswitch on Vimeo.

Unknown Music Reviews: Introduction

2010-07-07T12:03:00.000-07:00

Over the last year or so I've still been buying CD's but there has been two significant differences

1. I have only been buying unsigned or not yet very well known bands on CD because I believe in supporting artists at the bottom but not at the top. Some of these bands have friends or acquaintances in them. Others I have just come across and liked a lot.

2. I haven't been listening to the CD's.

The reason I haven't been listening to the CD's has been that I use Spotify and YouTube to listen to all my music.

But this pile of lovely CD's, with beautiful artwork, often put together by their makers hands rises on my shelf. It is beginning to tower over me.

Some of those CD's I've heard bits of on myspace or on spotify or I've heard some of the stuff live. It's time to do them properly. Do them the way I've done Ida Maria and the XX. Time to listen to them from beginning to end and decide what I think.

So I'm going to do one a week. And review them on this place where I post occasional reviews anyway.

Recommendation: WetDog and Betty and the Werewolves

2010-06-19T01:26:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday I went to see the amazing amazing Betty and the Werewolves last thursday. It was there single launch.

http://www.myspace.com/bettyandthewerewolves

Supporting them were WETDOG who I heard for the first time and who really blew me away. They sound good recorded but they even better live. My current favorite of their tracks is Lower Leg, but I'm only just starting to find out about them.

http://www.myspace.com/wetdogthebest

Betty and the Werewolves consist of three girls with a boy on drums. They play poppy punky uptempo music with luscious harmonies, delightful guitar riffs and occasional keyboard (the bass player swaps between bass and keys sometimes mid song.) You can currently buy them through Itunes or on Vinyl (one extreme to the other!!) but next month they will be releasing an album that will be gettable on CD).

Wetdog are an all girl three-piece with a real punk spirit and a flare for exciting and engaging stagecraft playing urgent danceable delights. Their tunes are really inventive and their moves are really well thought of. The drummer and bassist swap over for some songs and the lead singer does an awesome Tambourine when not playing one of the best looking guitars I have ever ever seen (a home made looking square with a slide holder).

Both bands are available to hear on spotify. Here are some starting points:

Wetdog – Lower Leg

Betty And The Werewolves – David Cassidy

Wetdog – Zah Und Zaheet

Betty And The Werewolves – Plastic

Review: Doctor Who

2010-06-15T10:32:00.001-07:00

Okay so I've now watched enough of these new doctor who's to give my considered opinion. Generally it is almost good but never manages to be more than almost!

Disclaimer: I haven't seen any Eccelston ones. I saw the Christmas specials with the Being John Mastervich stuff happening in it. I saw bits of the programmes leading up to the doctors change over and the last four of this new series.

So I have to admit there may be hidden gems and it could have started really good and got more and more mediocre.

That said here's my opinion based on what I've seen.

The writing keeps it always in a light place. There is little depth created in any of the characters.

The doctors are all great actors and many of the bit parts are played by great actors. So the flaw really must be in the directors and writers, because generally the acting is a bit off. The scripts are riddled with cliched characters.

The scenarios however are often pretty good and sometimes really good. It is this that led to me watching more than I intended. All the doctors are full of charisma and the new way of treating the subject, post Buffy, does lead to a much better idea of the doctor as a character.

The new assistant Amy Pond is a really annoying character and the woman who plays her is a pretty bad actress.

Although as mentioned it could just be that she is asked to perform badly.

The performances tend towards pantomime rather than real. And that's the main problem, the programme is very shallow and lacking in truth.

The guest parts are generally there only to play a part in the doctors drama, they just slot into sidekick roles and they are all far too quick to accept the strange world.

I've heard this defended as being because the show is designed to be a children's show. But its meant to be watched by all the family and anyway I don't like that attitude to children's work. There is nothing to stop kids programmes having an engaging level of truth and real darkness and lights.

The trouble with it is that the good ideas and the good actors, make it annoying that it doesn't fulfill its potential.

I'm not really a fan of its source material, although because that tried to be less it succeeded more, however many of the problems with doctor who come from there. The sonic screwdriver and everyone speaking english wherever they go just seem far too easy... by bringing up the levels of realism and quality of the ideas it simply exposes the ideas kept from the original series as being hokey.

And they should never touch Van Gogh again, the level of annoyingness of that episode, and I am biased since he is my favorite painter and I know about his life, but still the whole episode was so ridiculous and wasted, even though it had the great and very simple idea of having him be taken to the present to see himself in art galleries. But that idea was the really good one and should have really been explored: did that make him kill himself? how does he feel about his commercialisation, mass production, his diaries being published... etc... And since his character was sanitised and not really developed we couldn't truly care for him anyway.

That's an example of the missed opportunities the show has. That episode was unlucky as it only really had one in it (which is disguised by all the attempts to be clever about van gogh) other episodes have a much higher quota of good ideas, but still overall its a wasted opportunity.

I can understand why its so popular, it draws on a nostalgic feeling for its source and mixes it with a modern sensibility, famous and loved character actors in bit parts, attractive and charismatic leads, clever ideas, occasional funny lines.

But for me it could have been so much more, and I wonder if people wouldn't actually prefer a better option if they were presented with one. There is so little great British TV, so few ambitious programmes, that we latch on to anything half decent out of hunger. I understand that. But this works for me less than for example Being Human (which I've only seen series one of) which has better writing and acting, if much less broad appeal and production values.

I feel a similar way towards Life On Mars / Ashes To Ashes... that series was almost there but it never really fully hit it.

Review: Four Lions

2010-06-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

Four Lions is a big disappointment, although it is worth seeing.

It's too easy and ducks all the difficult questions. As a comedy it doesn't have enough edge and as a drama it doesn't have enough truth. The family life is unbelievable. It doesn't even touch on religion properly. Too much of the humour is based on characters being stupid.

Chris Morris and the other great writers on it (peep show /thick of it) plus the very talented cast really missed a trick.

It could have been great, but instead it is "interesting" and is surprisingly, given Morris' flawless track record, a real cop out. Its clear that it was written by leftist atheists who don't really understand their subject despite doing a lot of research.

He has achieved his aim of a Dads Army treatment of terrorists. But I'm not sure the goal was a worthwhile one. Dads army at its best is much better. As was everything else Morris has done.

Ah well...