"It's the smell"

Four apparently unrelated events have got me thinking. Firstly, I've started re-watching Buffy from series one. Secondly, I also watched High Fidelity. Thirdly the cassette that now sits proudly at the top of my blog and finally a conversation I had with a couple of my flat mates about owning cd's as oppose to downloading them.

And what I've been thinking is this... is all this technology/itunes/ipod stuff ruining the way we relate to music?

I'll expand a bit. The reason I think (because I haven't actually had chance to talk to Lloyd since he 'pimped my blog') there is now a cassette at the top of my blog is my love of music and more accurately my complete anality/geekiness over music to the point where I have, by some people, been likened to the main character in high fidelity. Watching high fidelity the other day, as Rob was talking about making compilation tapes, and with that reminder of the old fashioned cassette on my blog, I was thinking about all the compilation tapes I've made over the years. From the age of 11-12 I've been making compilation tapes, sometimes for me, sometimes for friends who I think should have better music taste, sometimes for girls I've liked or even on the odd occasion been going out with. As a teenager I used to spend so much time making these tapes, planning them on paper before I would spend my time getting my tapes into the right place and slowly, in real time, copying the tracks one by one onto my cheap C90 cassettes.

But what is todays equivalent of a compilation tape? If I want a friend to listen to something now, I have to get him to listen to it on my ipod or off my computer because, to save on the amount of things I'm carrying round at the moment, all my cd's are boxed up in Sheffield having first been copied to my hard drive. I can make playlists for people, but they're still limited to my ipod and my computer. I can even now easily burn cd's for people, but it's so easy to do, the care and time and thought and effort that I used to put into making a truly great compilation tape isn't needed any more, it's just a case of dragging a few track titles around and clicking burn. It's just not the same.

But the compilation tapes question is just part of something bigger that is bothering me about all this. Now every piece of music I own is basically on one disc and I can pick and choose from that list what I put on my ipod, but then I have 10gbs (depressingly small I know) worth of music on my ipod that is also on one disc. I love this idea. I love the fact that every where I go I always have with me everything the Beatles, U2, Radiohead ever recorded along with all my favourite songs, albums and a good selection of other bits and pieces of music with me wherever I go. Like I say, I love this idea, but there are a number of problems with it. First thing is that all this technology has changed the way I listen to music. It's now very rare that I will listen to an album all the way through, and when I do, it's usually an album that I know really well and love. Since I've got my ipod and my computer I don't listen to albums, I put on a playlist of my favourite songs, or choose to listen to a particular artist or genre. Why is it that there are true musicians out there carefully creating their tracklistings, making sure that one song compliments another and that there's a coherence to the music they've made. What's the point of them doing that if all I'm going to do is stick it in with everything else they've ever recorded, or worse with a whole bunch of other songs by other people? Does this new, wonderful technology mean the end of the album as an art form and that only good songs now count? More importantly, am I the only person that does this? If I am then maybe these questions are irrelevant.

Finally, I'm sure you'll be pleased to know, the buffy link. There's a character in Buffy who is (at least some of the time) a school librarian and he's having a series of arguments with the computer teacher about the importance of books over computers, finally she asks him why he doesn't like computers and he this:

Giles (the librarian): The smell.
Ms. Calendar (the computer teacher): Computer's don't smell, Rupert.
Giles: I know! Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a, a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences... long forgotten. Books smell. Musty and, and, and, and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer, is, uh, it... it has no, no texture, no, no context. It's, it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then, then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um... smelly.

And this is my final point. While I'm not claiming cd's are smelly, there's something that feels right about owning a cd, reading the booklet, buying it on the day it comes out, having them organised on your shelf that seems to me to show more commitment, more of a connection to the music, than simply downloading a file from itunes. Music is intangible, when it comes down to it, it's just vibrating airwaves, having something tangible like a cd somehow makes it something you can call you own and for some reason, having a file on a computer doesn't seem the same.

I still love my ipod though.

Parties

This has been a weekend of two parties. Which is good as it therefore, for the first time since I moved to London, hasn't involved Zulu's in any way. On Friday night it was my cousin's son's (no, I'm not sure what that makes him in relationship to me either) 6th birthday party and I, along with the rest of the family in the area and both sets of grandparents (one set of which is obviously, probably, my aunt and uncle) had an enjoyable evening watching Isaac play with his new train set. A train set where, when the train went, the headlights on the train came on. This obviously meant, at least to Isaac, that the optimum way to watch the train go round it's short, circular track was in the dark. This meant that we spent most of the evening sat round in the dark trying to work out which of the grandparents it was that was taking a photo at any particular point. On a separate issue, how do you know what to buy 6 year olds for their birthday? I spent about an hour wandering around the toy aisles in Woolworths trying to work out what he'd like which, in my head at least, included everything from a telescope, a spiderman sticker collection and a star wars figure before I realised I was just thinking of what I'd like myself. In the end I had to give a and phone his Mum to ask some advice and apparently a book about planes was a good choice, although I did find one with stickers in.

Em and Steve's leaving party was also a nice night. I'd spent the early evening at my current housemates art exhibition watching him sell his excellent paintings and drinking the free wine, which of course was the main draw of the evening (apart from supporting my friend obviously). The leaving party was good and would have been excellent if it hadn't been for all the people their that I'd not seen for a couple of years which meant of course that I had to spend most of the night either avoiding them, which didn't seem like a nice thing to do, or having the same conversation over and over again, like my own personal groundhog day. It was nice to catch up with people though and hopefully both Em and Steve had a good, although probably slightly strange night.

The final party I want to talk about hasn't happened yet. I've been invited to a fancy dress party where the theme is pop/rock stars. I'm not very good at this fancy dress stuff so I've got no idea who I should go as or what I should wear once I know who I should go as. If anyone has any bright ideas, let me know.

Talent

On Monday night I went to an acoustic night at the Half Moon in Putney and was absolutely blown away. Now, I like to think that I can play guitar a bit, sing slightly and even, in my more confident moods, think that I can maybe, you know, if I ever actually sat down and got on with it, write an occasional good song. However, Monday night showed me exactly where I stand on the scale of musical talent, and it's somewhere well and truly near the bottom. I heard about 6 people play, three girls, three lads, none of them signed, all of them amazing. The songs were outstandingly good, so much so that, if I'd had the money, I'd have brought a copy of every one of their home made cd's at £10 a copy. Unfortunately I couldn't afford to do that so had to pick my favourite, which was hard, but in the end had to be a girl called Adelaide Robarts who I fell in love with. She's beautiful, has a wonderful, sexy, raspy voice and writes songs of true beauty. I don't know if there's ever any chance of you hearing her, but if you happen to see her name outside a pub sometime, or if by some, quite deserved, miracle she does become famous then make sure you listen to her, you'll fall in love too.

Talking of talent, the more observant of you will have noticed a new look to my blog, for which I need to thank the incredibly talented Lloyd AKA 'Larddesigns'. He's a great friend of mine and told me he'd (and these are his words) 'pimp my blog' for me. I gave him my user information, logged on today and found this beautiful thing looking at me. Lloyd has an incredible knack of designing something that is uniquely his design style but also uniquely the thing, person, company, he is designing for and I absolutely love the new look he has given this site, it's very me, thanks mate.

As for my week. It's been good. Work is really starting to pick up. Spent Wednesday sat with three of our kids in their class helping them with their numeracy and hoping they wouldn't notice that I was only working things out a split second before they were. I'm not working at the pub this weekend because it's Steve and Em's (my friends I went to Cyprus with) leaving do as they're soon moving to Dubai, which is sad but means we have a party to go to and that I get a weekend away from the bar.

Not Got Much To Say At The Moment...

Yeah, like you believe that. But actually it's pretty true. Still at the same house, the new job is going well but still very slow (although hopefully things will pick up a bit this week) and everything in London's going well, if not awesomely fantastically well.
There are however a few things I'd like to say about some new films and new CD's, so feel free to accept that I'm doing ok and skip the rest of this if you're not interested.

To start with, Franz Ferdinand's new album, 'It could be so much better' is excellent. Probably better than the first although there's not that smiley familiarity with the new songs yet so it's hard to tell. This albums certainly more diverse. A couple of slow songs and one that sounds almost, but not quite entirely, like the Beatles. Which is of course a good thing. Well worth getting.

Land of the Dead is a film that I was looking forward to. I love all George A Romero's zombie films (yes I know that's very sad and geek-like but I'm not only ok with that, I'm kind of proud of it too) and this one, whilst being different, is still excellent. The main difference with this film is that the zombies aren't actually the bad guys. Ok, so they're hardly soft cuddly care bears and still enjoy eating flesh, ripping arms in half, pulling out belly button rings with their teeth, you know, real zombie stuff. However, in the end, the zombies are the backdrop for a pretty standard apocalyptic earth story. You know, the one where a evil business guy has created a 'haven' which means that all the ordinary (ie not rich) people are left living in craphole and one of those guys, who started off by working for the bad guy becomes the hero and saves everyone and the bad guy gets killed at the end (not really a spoiler, if you don't see that happening in a film you probably shouldn't be watching the film in the first place and should instead go back to your Peter and Jane books). The films worth seeing though and the best bits, of course, are all about the zombies.

Serenity, is Joss Whedon's new film. He's the writer behind Buffy, Toy Story and Alien resurrection (but don't hold that against him) and so I was really looking forward to this film which is his big screen debut as a director. The film is a continuation of Whedon's cancelled tv series 'firefly' (which I now can't wait to watch) and is basically a western in space. Sort of like the original (episode IV, a new hope) Star Wars without the aliens and spiritual undertones. It's set in the future with mankind now living in a different solar system and a sort of wild west environment going on in the outer planets, which is where the crew of the Serenity, the films hero's, work and live. I'm not going to go into the plot cos I don't want to spoil it. I'm just going to say that it's funny, witty, intelligent and damn good fun. I will give you one of my favourite quotes (from very early in the film):
pilot: this is going to get interesting
Captain: Define interesting
pilot: [completely deadpan] my god, my god we're all going to die.

Finally I want to say something about Jamie Cullum's new album. He's one of those guys that I know I really shouldn't like. He's now, more than ever, middle of the road Dad music rather than the Jazz genius that I really thought he would appear to be on his albums (although from all accounts and his DVD, still is live) but I can't not like him. He's a 24 year old who just seems to have gone through such similar experiences to me that I can't help but love his stumbling, at times awkward, lyrics and his half Jazz/half pop sound. I loved twentysomething (the song) from his last album as it seemed to completely connect to how I felt. And on his new album there's a song, photograph, that I just can't get out of my head. It sort of gives me the same feeling that watching American Beauty gives me, that the world is really a beautiful place, but makes it more personal because he's talking about a life that sounds so similar to mine. Anyway, here are the lyrics in all their stumbling, awkward glory. I know they may appear to sound overly sentimental or just plain crap, but they connect with me. Listen to the album, if you like it buy it, if you don't I'd hardly blame you, it probably just means that in this case, you have more taste than me.

Photograph

Her name was written on a photograph,
right next to her red, sunburnt face,
it all had happened in that long tall grass,
about a mile from her old place,
and I can't remember how it started and if it lasted that day in the sun.

We said that we were going to study hard,
we held our books instead of hands,
she held a blanket over cans of beer,
I can't deny I was so full of fear.

It's just another story caught up in another photograph I found.
and it seems like another person lived that life a great many years ago from now,

When I look back on my ordinary, ordinary life,
I see so much magic, though I missed it at the time.

And there's the first time that I tried that stuff,
I think I look a little green,
I remember throwing up behind a bush,
and I found it hard to use my feet,
and who's that easily led little boy who's really off his head?

It was the same night that I kissed that girl,
the tall one with the auburn hair,
I remember laughing coz to kiss me,
she had to sit down on a chair!
she tasted like the schnapps she'd drunk,
and the cigarette she'd stolen from her mum.

And it's just another story caught up in another photograph I found.

When I look back on my ordinary, ordinary life,
I see so much magic, though I missed it at the time.