Jack Riley

Moved

2011-03-18T18:02:23Z

Why (and how) we're changing commenting on independent.co.uk

2010-05-25T08:44:16Z

Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted a big change at the foot of articles published on the site today. Where once there was chaos, there is now (hopefully) order. And in the event that the launch of our new commenting section is in the process of going horribly, technically, wrong, there is, at least, a more entertaining chaos than usual.

So it's with great pleasure that I introduce our new commenting system, powered by a charming little startup of seven people based in San Francisco, called Disqus. The new system is going to help us, with a little luck, transform commenting on the Independent into a more open and positive experience.

It's worth noting first of all that the issues we've laboured with under the previous system weren't really the fault of our audience. We know from experience that our readers are some of the smartest, wittiest and most discerning any publication could have the good fortune to attract. But read the comment sections of any of our articles over the last year or so and you'd be likely to come across a mixture of negative, sometimes borderline abusive comments often crowding out the more reasonable responses. And that's just the ones which weren't trying to sell you a pair of knock-off Nike Air Jordans (size 1-24), as one particularly determined group of Chinese spammers attempted on the site many, many times.

Spam aside, there have been many reasons for the problems we've had with the tone of commenting on independent.co.uk, and chief among them has been the relative anonymity with which users have been able to comment. With our new system it's possible to log in with Facebook and Twitter, and for the social network-phobic there's an email address only option from Disqus. We're encouraging people to use credentials linked to their personal profiles not just because openness and accountability are great, fundamental things which underpin good journalism as well as good commenting (and why should the two be different?), but also because by introducing accountability into the equation, we're hoping the tone and standard of the comments will go up.

So what we're trying to achieve with the new comment system is bigger than just the (admittedly excellent) system we're putting in place. It's about first of all letting people authenticate their commenting using systems with which they're already familiar (in Facebook's case, that's 400 million people worldwide and counting), and secondly, it's about restoring your trust in our comments section, so that some of the really great submissions we get on there rise to the top, the bad sink to the bottom, and the ugly - the spam and abuse that are an inevitable adjunct of any commenting system - don't appear at all.

Perhaps more importantly still, we want to empower the silent majority of people who have something to say about an article, but fear the wrath of an unforgiving community or, more often, can't be bothered to sign up to a new system. For those with Twitter, Facebook (more than 20 million of you in the UK, apparently), Yahoo or OpenId, with just a few clicks and no extra details handed over, you can be away and commenting on the Independent site with the minimum of bother. And in return, what we're hoping for is that by introducing logins which really represent people's personal identities, we can extend that accountability that you've come to expect, quite rightly, from The Independent to the comment sections of our digital journalistic output.

We've been trialling the system on the Sports section for the last week, and it's been great to watch the tone gently rise up to the level of constructive debate - among sports fans this can be considered an even greater achievement. There's also been great activity in terms of people upvoting insightful comments and skipping over the inane, and I'd encourage all users when browsing the site under the new system to be liberal with their use of the 'like' button when browsing individual comments, and not to hesitate when flagging a comment (simply hover over anything you don't like to see the flag option) as unsuitable. As with everything we do, we're open to suggestion and keen to hear any and all of your feedback, especially in the comments section - just as long as you're not trying to sell us trainers.

The future is small

2010-05-10T14:53:39Z

Courtesy of the kind people at Bit.ly Pro, we've set up our own URL shortener using the address Ind.pn, so URLs from the print edition and in other select locations (not yet for users, unfortunately) will be shortened to Ind.pn. Think of all the wonderful things you can do with it -

Learn to speak Spanish - ind.pn/5wAzLO

Play at making sushi - ind.pn/baPi23

Work out what to go and see at the cinema - ind.pn/9XqKMB

Or even follow the latest politics news - ind.pn/d9hdWZ

A prize of one custom shortened URL to any domain spotter (the twitchers of the blogosphere) out there who can tell us where Ind.pn is registered without googling it.

Last.fm's Orlena Yeung on this year's Camden Crawl

2010-04-12T13:41:05Z

As anticipation for the Camden Crawl grows, we interview another of the event’s committee members, Last.fm’s Vice-President of Brand & Product Orlena Yeung, about what she’s looking forward to most from the forthcoming festival. Previous interviews with Bella Union’s Simon Raymonde and Rough Trade’s Sean Forbes are online now, and tickets and the full line-up are available here.

1. Which bands are you looking forward to most at this year's event?

Well, we are really excited about hosting Ms Dynamite at our Last.fm venue this year. Her recent collaboration with DJ Zinc 'Wile Out' has been a big club track and it should be the perfect time for a big show. Most of the bands we're excited about are playing the Last.fm stage; Bo Ningen fit with the original ethos behind our Last.fm Presents events: fresh, exciting and loud music, plus Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs & Samuel & The Dragon are some really exciting new UK prospects for original songwriting.

2. Are there any Camden Crawl venues you have a special affection for? Any you really dislike?

Well I guess I'm biased as we host a monthly free show (Last.fm Presents) at the Barfly, which is what it is: a Camden institution. Apart from that, the Roundhouse is an incredible venue on size, design and the general booking policy.

3. What's it like to have your offices in what people are now calling the 'silicon roundabout'? Is there a sense of being part of an East End tech community?

The East End is still a hive of creativity in London and it's definitely an exciting place to work with lots of interesting people and companies working nearby.

4. It's fair to say Last.fm has had a pretty fantastic impact on the way people listen to music - what's next for the service?

This year we are going to focus on helping people get even more out of scrobbling by making it even more ubiquitous. This helps users get more out of all different music services out there because their music listening will be captured and as a result they will get better recommendations.

5. Since the Xbox launch seemed to go so well, are there any other platforms that you'd like bring Last.fm to?

We are pursuing a multi-platform approach. We are currently on mobile, gaming as mentioned, and we will continue to expand our hardware partnership.

6. Any big Last.fm/Camden Crawl tie-ups to speak of?

I've been listening to the Camden Crawl Festival Radio non stop which has got me really excited about checking out some of the newer bands at this years festival:

http://www.last.fm/listen/event/1228678

7. How do you think 2010 is shaping up as a year for new music in general?

I think 2010 will be a really interesting year for UK Hip Hop & Grime, with artists like Blame, Tinchy Stryder, Tinie Tempah etc finding mainstream success with an element of credibility that UK rappers haven't been able to reach in the mainstream for some bizarre reason. I think the boundaries between UK club music, Grime and indie music are getting more and more blurred so i'm looking forward to see what new tags start appearing on the site this year 'tech-synth-tropical-bass-hop' anyone?

Apple iPad: First impressions

2010-04-07T16:09:48Z

Even for someone who has only ever owned one Apple product (an iPod, since you ask), the prospect of getting your hands on an iPad, however briefly, is an exciting one. Perhaps a little too exciting if the picture of me to the left is anything to go by.

I’ll keep my thoughts on the iffy philosophy behind the iPad to a later post. Restricting myself to the device in practice though, it’s hard to find faults. It’s fast – as fast as the adverts everyone’s seen by now, both in the rotation of the screen when turned on its side, and in opening and running applications. The onboard version of Safari renders pages quickly and with few glitches, save for the fact that it doesn’t display Flash, and apps like YouTube and Maps show that for all the talk of the burgeoning conflict between Google and Apple, the Mountain View-based search giant is still happy to provide Apple product owners with some fantastic software.

I’ve not had chance to do a full road test on the iPad, though. My interactions with the device described variously as a ‘game changer’ and ‘the future of computing’ have been limited to a half-hour play in the office canteen, with a unit brought in by Kelkoo’s International VP Bruce Fair, to trumpet their distribution of the iPad whenever it comes out. I didn’t have time for the lull in enthusiasm that apparently comes after first using with the device, never mind to get through it in the way described in Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger's sober video review.

But I did have it long enough to feel its restrictions, largely because they are achingly apparent in almost any of the areas using the device involves. I’ll post some more thoughts on that later, but for now it’s worth waiting to see what comes of the announcement of the new iPhone OS tomorrow, and whether those developments will be pushed retroactively to the 300,000+ iPads already sold in the US.

Rough Trade's Sean Forbes: 'The Electric Ballroom smells of goths'

2010-03-24T14:35:23Z

Camden Crawl is not far off now, and as part of our extended coverage of the event (which includes a ticket giveaway, here), we've interviewed panel members for the event. First up is Sean Forbes of iconic music shop Rough Trade, to be followed by Simon Raymonde of Bella Union and finally Orlena Yeung, VP Brand & Product at online music phenomenon Last.fm. If you're as sick of the budget as everyone else is, read it as a quick distraction, and remember tickets for the event, which features such accomplished performers as Teenage Fanclub, Delays, The Drums, New Young Pony Club, Lightspeed Champion and many more, are still available.

Which bands are you looking forward to most at this year's event?

Young Marble Giants - First gig in London in 29 years and 32 days
Best Coast - The best new band America has to offer
Veronica Falls - The best new band England has to offer

Are there any Camden Crawl venues you have a special affection for?

Koko - I saw my third ever gig there when I was a wee nipper - it was called the music machine then. And just in case you were interested it was by the UK subs

3. Any Camden venues you really dislike?

The Electric Ballroom - it smells of goths

4. Any Rough Trade favourites playing at the event?

Well, it seems only appropriate that the Young Marble Giants are playing the Rough Trade stage as the Rough Trade label released their one and only proper album 'Colossal Youth'. Also we totally love Surfer Blood at the shop. The album is on heavy rotation everyday. You can't help but love Surfer Blood.

5. How do you think 2010 is shaping up as a year for new music in general?

it's a great year so far - lots of interesting records already - check into Harper Simon, Cours Lapin, Voice of the Seven Thunders, Gill Scott-Heron, Joanna Newsom, Caitlin Rose, Broken Bells, etc...

Mapping international attitudes to globalisation

2010-03-16T17:22:50Z

There are as many strands to contemporary discussions about globalisation as there are implications of the seemingly inexorable process by which the world's industries and cultures are going global. But how do opinions about theses issues vary around the world? Finding the answer to that question was the task undertaken by Debatewise, who've set themselves the challenge of becoming a global platform themselves in the field of debate. I'd strongly encourage you to take a look at their site, but in brief, here's their mission statement;

"Fundamentally, it's to further debate. We believe neutrality to be somewhat of an unattainable goal and that all of us have bias; whether we be individuals, journalists or big media and whether this bias be explicit or unacknowledged."

The first step was to collect opinions from Debatewise's Global Youth Panel, a collective of 1,000 young people around the world who were initially assembled to help the site commentate on the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit last year. In association with the Future Stories project (an initiative whose aim it is to highlight the benefits of globalisation, it's worth mentioning), and in association with the Independent, we've produced a YouTube-powered video-map, showcasing some of the opinions of their panel around the world. Click through to see the map (In it's infinite wisdom, LiveJournal won't let me embed it here):

If you want your opinion on Globalisation included on the map, just record a video of a couple of minutes long and upload it to YouTube, and send a link to j.riley [at] independent.co.uk with your name, age and location.

Interview with #UKsnow map developer Ben Marsh

2010-01-15T15:10:59Z

With the snow now subsiding and the country starting to get back to normal, I dropped a few questions over to developer Ben Marsh, whose #UKsnow map was one of the web highlights of the recent bad weather. It worked by asking people to tweet their postcode and how hard it was snowing followed by the hashtag #uksnow, and aggregating all of the information in the form of a map, which we embedded along with user-embedded pictures here (note the lack of snow right now). Besides looking pretty, the map provided an interesting visualisation of the weather conditions (as well as an indication of where all the country's Twitter users are hiding). I asked Ben about what position he sees developers occupying in the new media landscape.

Do you see the huge success of the #uksnow map as indicative of the positive potential of geolocation? As something a lot of people are talking about as a tip for 2010 tech trends, there's already been a lot of grumbling about privacy.

I definitely see geolocation being big in 2010, especially as more mobile devices are being released with GPS, the numbers of websites and apps making use of this can only increase. I think as long as this technology is used responsibly and as an opt-in feature, and as long as users are sensible when using it, then hopefully any problems can be minimised. Obviously there are possible privacy problems with this kind of technology but at the same time it opens up some fantastic possibilities.

How important is the role developers will have to play in more interactive news services/data mashups over the next few years?

I see developers as being very important. Its fantastic that people come up with ideas for mashups and services but having developers that can and know how to turn these ideas into a working app is crucial.

Are there any skills developers who want to emulate the success of projects like the snowmap should develop?

JavaScript is becoming increasingly more important, so get on board with a JavaScript framework - I use jQuery - but most of these will remove common tedious JavaScript tasks and free up time to work on the fun parts. Also read up on and have a play with webservices, many websites expose their key functionality through an API, so hook into these and mash something up.

Do you have any plans to launch similar services to snowmap, holsmap, the twitter music chart etc.?

I recently launched an app for lastminute.com (http://moodofthenationmap.com/) which tracks people's #goodmood and #badmood tweets across the nation.

Learning to love the iPhone, part 2: The results

2010-01-14T18:28:19Z

The dust's settled and the results are in on our highly unscientific series of tests to ascertain whether the iPhone or Google's Android phone (specifically the Motorola Milestone) is easier for new users to get to grips with. For the full introduction, here's yesterday's blog post, but otherwise let's get on with the nitty gritty.

Playing the guinea pig was Simon Rice, the Independent's Online Sports fella, who qualified himself as a control group by virtue of his blissful ignorance about the use and nature of touchscreens of any description. All in all though, he acquitted himself well over the three tests I'd devised to try and work out which of the systems was the most intuitive.

Test 1: Adding a contact to the phonebook and calling it.

Results - Android: 1min43 iPhone: 1min57

Though initially thrown off by the fact that process for adding a contact on Android involves pressing the 'Menu' or 'List' button, Simon was significantly faster at adding a contact to the Android phone than he was to Apple's alternative, due, at least in part, to his inability to type first and last names in the specified boxes. Still, not bad, and 1-0 to Android.

Test 2: Sending an email

Results - Android: 1min46 iPhone: 1min42

To the first of the higher order functions of the devices, and Simon, who'd never sent an email from a phone before, appeared to be learning fast as both devices were dispensed with at pace. The fact that the iPhone has a highly visible 'compose' button on the inbox view helped, while the use of the Android menu button the only, minor, stumbling block. 1-1.

Test 3: Tweeting a picture

Results - Android: 2min30 iPhone: 2min50

The last, and most controversial, of the tests involved using Twitter to send an image taken with the camera. I chose Echofon on the iPhone and Twidroid on the Milestone as the apps to use, since they seem to be the best free ones for each platform from reviews I've read. Android was significantly faster here, and with the Milestone's 5 MP camera, the picture was a lot better. 2-1 to Android, then.

But what did Simon make of the experience, qualitatively speaking? "I was surprised at how easy both phones were to navigate, especially considering I've never used Twitter on a phone before, much less tweeted pictures", he commented. "I'd pick the iPhone, but only just, and that's down to the onscreen keyboard on the Android, which didn't seem to pick my typing up. I tried the physical keyboard and gave up on it as I didn't like the feel."

In the next set of tests, I'll be pitting myself as a veteran Android user against iPhone devotee and feature writer Simon Usborne in a battle to the death for smartphone bragging rights..

Caitlin Rose: 2010's honky tonk heroine

2010-01-14T13:36:36Z

The first time you hear Caitlin Rose, the Nashville-born singer-songwriter whose country-tinged arrangements are threatening to make a big impression in 2010, you'll thank your lucky stars that she chose to pursue a career in music rather than go to college. With a full album scheduled for release later in the year, her 7-track Dead Flowers EP is out on 15 February, and in tomorrow's Caught in the Net column we're giving away the song Shotgun Wedding. Here's a quick email interview with the 22-year-old starlet, covering the inspiration for that song, the recording plans, and how she came to be such a hot ticket in so many people's next big thing predictions for the coming year.

What's it like to come from such a mecca of country music as Nashville? Is it more of a burden or a blessing?

Growing up in Nashville, especially in a music business family, means growing up with knowledge that seems like common sense until later in life when you realize people spend thousands of dollars a semester trying to learn or pretending to learn while looking for some intern job on music row. It's a blessing to live in a town where two or three people could take turns explaining to you the entire history of country or rock and roll. Everyone here knows more than you about something so a good listener or observer can learn a whole lot in a short amount of time.

How do you come to writing your songs? Are they inspired by people you know?

I think I write in laymans terms. There's really not much to dissect. Usually I say it straight or not at all.
Writing songs about people I don't know is easier. If I could be more vague I'd write more about people in my life, but I hate hurting feelings or making people feel uncomfortable. I've done that before. Unless they're sad songs. Those get finished fast, but the mean ones often end up at the back of the bottom drawer and it's probably for the best.

I guess the next one follows on... is there a real Gorilla Man? [The song 'Gorilla Man' is a highlight of the EP]

Gorilla Man is a composite of a few individuals, but the song itself was actually inspired by James Taylor. I spied his Gorilla album laying on my floor and in some altered state, instantly started singing the chorus. It was fun to write. There's an old notebook with at least three more verses in it somewhere. There's a Gorilla Man part 2 that's just as ridiculous, but is actually played on guitar instead of that obnoxious tambourine.

How was your recent visit to Britain? Are there any plans to tour here again?

It was a great visit. I met a whole slew of new fantastic people, played great clubs and drank good beer. There's not much else to ask for.
The plan is to return soon after the completion of the new record, potentially mid-March. I can't wait to go back even though I hate to fly.

Who are your favourite musicians? Do you listen to a lot of non-country music?

All I can remember listening to for two years is 650am(WSM) or random country records from the dollar bin. Being so fed up with the dead horse "indie sound" or any lackluster-named genre had me honing in on this one reliable sound that no one could call pretentious or unambitious or overly ambitious or washed out or "spector-esque". Nobody I knew really listened to country. It's just about finding a good song. That's something almost anyone can understand.
This past year though I've branched out or just gone back to where I was in high school. I've gotten pretty heavy into The Replacements. Paul Westerberg is one of my favorite songwriters. Fleetwood Mac has really made a mark on me as well, whatever incarnation. I never really understood pop music before Rumours, or at least what pop music should be. The mysticism(how corny) of Stevie Nicks is very appealing. She's convincingly cosmic and makes me want to layer all of my ensembles. She also got me pretty heavy into Tom Petty who I love for being fun without being frivolous. His writing is honest, his melodies are beautiful and his attitude is rocknroll without taking his emotions off the table. That old Mudcrutch stuff is cool too.

My favorite contemporary artists are Phosphorescent and Deer Tick. The first of which has an obvious appreciation and feel for country, but whose records are recorded in beautiful and bizarre atmospheric style. He has a voice that soothes without sounding wimpy. This year he released a beautiful Willie Nelson tribute called To Willie, one of my favorites. I'm also very fond of Deer Tick's '09 release, Born on Flag Day. The writing is the kind that's worth reading and their sound is something all their own, or maybe I just can't place it yet. Either way it's good. Julie Doiron from Canada is another artist/person I like. Woke Myself Up is all kinds of brilliant and Julie herself is a true sweetheart. I do love country music though and I'm a sucker for a sad jukebox tune. Justin Earle belongs in every jukebox cause he's as country as Hank Sr. and a brilliant performer. I'm a big fan of his as well, but all these artists/front people are amazing with or without bands, which could be what draws me to them along with the good songs.

What's the most challenging part of being a young musician? Have there been moments you've thought of quitting for something less complicated?

It might be because I don't want to do anything else, but everything sounds complicated compared to making music. As difficult as it's ever been trying to finish a record , put a band together or learning guitar, these things always came easier to me than school ever did. During my last two years of high school my only goal was to graduate. College was never on the agenda, save a couple of campus walk thrus and a stint at the local Community College. There was never much of an agenda to speak of, I just liked to play shows. There's not much reason to quit unless you're quitting for something else, but maybe this is all just some weird latency period and next year I'll decide to be a veterinarian. Being a young musician should be the same as being an old one, unless you already know everything. The only challenge to being young is feeling like you have all the time in the world. It's also the best part, but sometimes it's hard to get things when the heat's not on. I also grew up in a music scene with people 6 to 8 years older than me so I've always been kind of a kid sister in Nashville. It's sweet, but I'm getting sick of all the noogies.

Do you have any musical icons? Who are they, and what do they mean to you?

Bob Dylan and Linda Ronstadt are two incredibly talented artists with vast musical knowledge and versatile tastes made apparent by the constant shift in styles throughout their careers. Linda made me want to sing all the best songs the best I could and Dylan's words split my wig-dome and make me want to wear sunglasses all the time. I've honestly learned more about music through them than any other artists. With Dylan you're starting off on folk, unwittingly learning and absorbing decades or even entire centuries of songs, then two years later you're hearing some of the greatest, most unique rock records of all time, not thinking twice about how he got to there. His records defined themselves and I feel like he didn't need to make excuses for the changes. With Linda you get to hear her voice mature from that barefoot-arizona-to-california-late-to-the-party hippie girl to one of the finest and most well trained voices of modern time (and hands down one of the best rock voices ever). I recently got into Amalia Rodrigues, a female Fado artist from Portugal, whose career is strikingly similar. Poets from all over would write pieces for her to sing, much like Linda becoming the song interpreter for many unknown singer songwriters in the mid-to-late '70s. The two have some unique quality in their voice that moves people in some way and the same can obviously be said for Dylan, even if it's just to hate him. I could go on, but I'll just thank them and stop there.

What are the plans for your forthcoming album?

We start tracking the first week of February. This month we're working all the songs out in rehearsals, but I'm still finishing up a few new ones. I'm recording with the band I play with live at a studio called the Beechhouse with Mark Nevers. He's worked with a lot of my favourite artists and is a Scorpio. Anyway, I think we came up with a band name, Caitlin Rose and the Singles. Obviously nothing is set in stone.

Since we're giving away Shotgun Wedding, I guess it's worth asking whether it's based on anything in particular?

Shotgun's one of the first songs I ever wrote. It's about a couple I met at Waffle House, an all night diner I used to hang at before I could go to bars. It's southern breakfast/dinner/drunk fare. An eggs-or-a-t-bone-steak kind of place that you can usually find off every interstate exit where all high schoolers smoke (or did rather), play cards and talk a lot of shit in a civilized manner. Their story didn't end well, by the way.

To download the track, visit Independent.co.uk/caughtinthenet any time from midnight

Learning to love the iPhone, part 1

2010-01-13T13:21:50Z

With an iPhone on loan courtesy of Vodafone, I'm attempting to get to grips with the Apple flagship device once and for all, having steadfastly stuck to using Android phones for the past year.

As the debate about whether Android phones or iPhones are best, I've found interesting recently the idea that using the iPhone is somehow more 'natural' than its Google-backed alternatives (e.g. here). I'm sure there are lots of things people do that are natural; the mammalian diving reflex, for example, or blinking, but the idea that operating a touchscreen smartphone could be something somehow hardwired into the human experience is a mystery to me. Why evolution would choose to encode the information for using an Apple product over one by anyone else is a conundrum of Lucan-esque proportions.

To that end, and because Vodafone have lent me an iPhone to play around with to mark the phone's arrival on their network, I decided to set up a small test of somewhat dubious integrity to see which interface really cut the mustard.

As any good scientist will tell you, the most important thing you need to conduct an experiment is a fusty lab coat. But coming in a close second is a control group, and to that end I enlisted the help of the Independent's very own neo-luddite Simon Rice, the man responsible for such veteran journalistic endeavours as 'Is Mike Ashley a sadomasochist?' and what's now referred to on the Indy web desk as 'that tweet about a monkey raping a frog' - as well as about ten per cent of all traffic to the Independent for his absurdly sucessful Sportbest series. He is also the man with the worst Twitter colour scheme you've ever seen.

I've set him a few challenges, and will time him performing each one this afternoon, on both the very swish new Motorola Milestone (a.k.a 'Droid' to the Americans) and an iPhone 3GS, neither of which he's used before. The results will be posted back here, hopefully by the end of the day, or else tomorrow morning if I ask him to try and do more than one thing on the iPhone at once.

Camden Crawl daytime lineup announced

2010-01-07T17:48:31Z

It may be the case that right now the only thing the phrase Camden Crawl makes me think of is how I'll be getting home tonight. But as sure as we'll shortly be slipping and sliding our way through the commute, so will the sun soon be back out, and we'll all be busily relearning how to make it to the pub and back without tennis racquets attached to our feet as ad hoc snow shoes. In that spirit, here's the daytime lineup of this year's Camden Crawl to whet your appetite, courtesy of the organisers.

The daytime line-up announcements below includes details of... Island Records Boat & BBQ party, Fierce Panda showcases, Loose Records showcases, ex Food Records head-honcho Andy Ross hosting two semi-acoustic afternoons from his favourite artists, Hawley Arms Sessions and much, much more from the world of live music, comedy, theatre, visual arts and beyond.

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After swiftly selling out its early bird weekend tickets in conjunction with a launch album and live gig which earned more than £4,000 for charity partner War Child in time for the winter holidays, the Gaymers Camden Crawl is pleased to reveal the first stage of its line up announcements for 2010.

Marking its move to the first May bank holiday in the new year, the festival continues to develop the breadth of it’s daytime programme of cutting edge arts and music to warm up the Saturday and Sunday Spring afternoons leading up to it’s legendary rock & roll evenings. Featuring a live and interactive line up of comedy, spoken word, improv theatre, visual art installations, crafts, magic, games & quizzes, fantasy football, karaoke and, of course, live music, the daytime carnival of fringe entertainment sprawls across more than twenty Camden Town venues for the weekend.

The Crawl daytime schedule of events programme kicks off from midday on both Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd May and runs until 6:00 pm when the evening live music Crawl extravaganza embarks. Upon arrival at the fes- tival each ticket holder will be presented with an all-access wristband, programme guide, timetable and free download album to help plot his/her day’s adventure. ‘Crawlers’ will be granted unlimited access to all official daytime and evening venues and parties capacity permitting.The 2010 confirmed daytime line up includes:

COMEDY:

CAMDEN FRINGE (Sat @ Fifty Five) The creators of Camden’s very own annual comedy festival present an afternoon of quirky cabaret; comedy, variety and magical acts with an emphasis on the weird and wonderful.

THE FIX (Sat & Sun @ Camden Head) Both a national comedy magazine and promoter, The Fix will be hosting two days of the best new sketch and stand up comedy from the UK and around the World.

MYSTER GENERAL & FRIENDS (Sun @ Fifty Five) Brendan Cleaves and Kurt Driver present variety of musical, cabaret, stand up, double act, sketch comedy and general craziness. Think Butlins on acid.
SPOKEN WORD:

BOOKSLAM (Sat @ Edinboro Castle) The Bookslam event features a wide range of storytellers from all disciplines, from novelists to poets and musi- cians, gathering together for an eclectic day of words and music.

LITROLIVE! (Sun @ Edinboro Castle) As an evening of stories and music showcasing fresh and exciting talent from within the world of the spoken word, the programme includes performances from authors, poets and musicians interspersed with live music and DJ sets.

ONE TASTE (Sat @ The Constitution) Founded by Dannii Evans & Jamie Woon in 2004, OneTaste launched such UK talents as Newton Faulkner, Scroo- bius Pip, Polarbear. In addition to live music, their events spotlight talent from a multitude of underground art disciplines.

POEJAZZI (Sun @ Bar Vinyl) Described as “London’s premier spoken word and music night”, PoeJazzi deliver the finest nights in captivating lyrical wordplay and amazing music you haven’t seen yet.

THEATRE:

GRAND THEFT IMPRO (Sun @ Theatro Technis) The masters of fast-paced, improvised comedy arrives at Crawl with a set of four unique shows, each taking a different slant on the world of music. GTI will create sketches, skits and even an entire musical in front of your very eyes, inspired by audience suggestions.

THE MAGIC BANDWAGON (Sun @ NW1) Magic Pete & friends astound with astonishing illusions and stupefying trickery all entwined with kick ass live music!

SKIPTHEATRE (Sat @ The Crescent) This London based collective creates large scale performance & theatre pieces and runs interactive workshops. Collaborating with a wide variety of artists, bands and DJs, look out for a thoroughly new live music experience combined with theatrical mayhem.

VISUAL ARTS & CRAFTS:

CRAFTACULAR (Sun @ The Pirate Castle) BUST magazine have influenced the handmade revolution for over 16 years and bring their Craftacular event to the Camden Crawl for the first time this year. Come along to shop, dance and be merry! DJs and drinks all day.

GRAFIK WARFARE (Sat & Sun @ all over Camden Town) A loose collective of street artists based in Brighton with friends all over the UK and beyond. Its members work in all media: paint, ink, stickers, screenprint and stencils and on surfaces including canvas, cardboard, MDF and walls. Expect some big surprises & live creations as GW comes to life throughout Camden.

POSTER ROAST (Sat & Sun @ The Black Heart) Showcasing the cream of the crop of poster artists, this exhibition highlights the growing rock-poster culture. Screen-printing, etching, hand drawing and digitally creating posters for bands is more than a mere advert for a gig.

STITCH LONDON (Sat @ The Pirate Castle) Get your graffiti knit on as the Stitch London Stitchettes turn mild-mannered non-knitters to sneaky stitchers. They have been stomping across London like a woolly Godzilla since 2005 and in 2010 they’re bringing out de- mand to “Submit to the Knit” to the Crawl.

LIVE MUSIC:

ANDY ROSS PRESENTS (Sat & Sun @ The Spread Eagle) The former head honcho of Food Records and the man who brought us Blur and Idlewild amongst others hosts two afternoons of idiosyncratic semi-acoustic performances from some of his favourite new artists.

FIERCE PANDA SHOWCASE (Sun @ Lock Tavern) Born in a pub in the West End of London Town circa 1994 and a multitude of bizarre decisions later, the panda continues to amble onwards accompanied by fellow travellers as stout and hearty as The Walkmen, Hatcham Social, The Raveonettes, Goldheart Assembly and many more.

HAWLEY ARMS SESSIONS (Sat & Sun @ The Hawley Arms) A favourite local pub and renowned Camden hotspot, The Hawley presents a series of acoustic live sessions from their friends and favourite acts.

HOOCHINOO (Sat @ Bar Vinyl) Alternative hip hop, MCs, beatboxers, breakdancing, scratch DJs, live grafitti and any other underground revo- lutionary stuff they can come up with as they hit the Camden Crawl for the first time ever!

ISLAND RECORDS BOAT & BBQ PARTY (Sun @ The Constitution) Returning after last year’s storming daytime debut, Island will once again host an afternoon filled with live spe- cial guests and intimate acoustic performances accompanied by a SXSW style BBQ. Narrowboat shuttle service from Camden’s famous canal included!

THE LANTERN SOCIETY (Sat @ Lock Tavern) Founders Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou have become pivotal figures on the capital’s folk scene, founding and hosting “London’s finest folk club” and broadcasting ‘The Lantern Society Radio Hour’ live from the Betsey Trotswood.

LOOSE RECORDS SHOWCASE (Sun @ The Hope & Anchor) Currently Europe’s premier folk, Americana and alt country record label, since 1998 Loose has released the likes of The Duke & The King, Giant Sand, M Ward, The Arlenes, Inara George, Neko Case, Blanche, Willard Grant, The Felice Brothers and The Handsome Family.

ROCK A HULA (Sun @ The Crescent) A 1950s beach party combining all the fun of the fifties in one tiki tidal wave including a Hawaiian oasis filled with inflatable palm trees, DJs, swing dancing and hula hoping. This is good clean fun for guys and gals who love nothing more than to rock n roll!

INTERACTIVE EVENTS & GAMES:

BRING & SHARE MUSICAL BINGO (Sun @ The Oxford Arms) A Crawl favourite returning for their third consecutive year, B&S are back with brand spanking new games. Expect all the hottest tunes as they play out a fast and furious medley of tunes. Only the eagle-eared will walk away with supa-snazzy prizes.

HIP HOP KARAOKE (Sun @ The Bucks Head) A consistently road blocked residency at The Social for four straight years, this lot has also entertained the masses at Glastonbury, Bestival and Lovebox Festivals to name but a few. This is your chance to act out your rap fantasies supported by a DJ, host and adoring crowd!

KARAUKE (Sat @ The Bucks Head) (kar’e-yoo’ke) v. you sing, they play ukuleles! After they ripped the Crawl to shreds last year, they return with an even bigger repertoire....for you to perform, backed by an enormous live ukulele backing band.

RINGO: MUSIC BINGO (Sun @ Quinns) Everyone’s favourite Music Intro/Pun Based game makes its debut at the Crawl in 2010. It’s bingo with music instead of numbers. Knock off the artists on your card as the MC plays them and....the MC is “sickeningly hilarious!”

MOSHI MOSHI POP QUIZ (Sun @ Grand Union) In the Caffrey’s Book of World Records as the longest running pop farce since records began. After the charming botch jobs at the last three Crawls, the Moshi Quizmasters have become something of a Camden Crawl institu- tion. Loved and tolerated in equal measure.

ROUGH TRADE POP QUIZ (Sun @ Grand Union) London’s coolest new music quiz featuring many exciting rounds testing knowledge on everything from lyrics, pictures and catchphrases before finishing off with the “slightly rubbish live music” round.

SCRABBLE SUNDAY (Sun @ Old Eagle) They bring the boards, a referee and live music. There’s no tournament and you play as you want. Score, don’t score; it’s all up to you.

WHO KILLED BAMBI? (Sun @ Grand Union) The famous music quiz which touted as the “best music quiz in London” returns to the Crawl for another genre spanning journey into musical knowledge.

Twitter loses retweet function (temporarily)

2009-12-17T11:03:55Z

Update 2 - As if by some weird kind of social media magic, it's back. Twitter's Status site records the fix, although no explanation is offered for its partial absence, nor for the downtime and missing tweets that have been going on all day.

Dust off your R and T keys, and get prepared to copy and paste once more; Twitter's much-debated Retweet button has disappeared. The site is frantic with people wondering where it's gone, and there's no mention of the loss on the site's status page or blog. Given that the reaction when it was first released was far from positive, in time people are likely to get used to going back to the old (that's old in social media terms, mind) way of sharing others' tweets with your followers. And, since retweets carried out using the button are now expanded out to include RT at the beginning (e.g.), what's happened to any full 140-character messages that have been retweeted? Has Twitter broken its own 140-character rule?

Update: Kju has an answer - old retweets seem to be being cut off at 140 characters. And, as he notes, SMS updates have always been allowed over that limit.

This week in the death spiral

2009-12-16T16:56:56Z

This week has seen the realisation that the fundamentals of the advertising-based business model of online news are technically illegal, although that's not going to be such a huge problem since a newspaper 'race to the bottom' will see fast, badly written articles that no one really wants to read become the norm in the new fast-food journalism culture.

None of which matters, since it's all going to be written by robots anyway.

Could the Googlephone herald a mobile revolution?

2009-12-16T13:56:06Z

Since the first pictures and tweets of the Nexus One started emerging, the mythical Googlephone has been the source of some intense speculation, much of it surrounding the two new symbolic developments it portends; firstly, that Google is now in the hardware business, and secondly, that it is (allegedly) planning to release the phone network-free.

The first thing I thought of when I heard about this plan was an obscure patent filed by Google in September of last year. The patent contained a plan for mobile networks to be freed from network-tethering, called the "Flexible Communication Systems and Methods" (see the diagram above left), and proposed a system by which mobile phones would be able to operate on a variety of networks at different times, with the choice about which network decided by the phone based on price, service etc. In the words of the patent:

"As one example, when in a home, the device may use a broadband communication method for which the user already pays a fixed monthly rate. When the user leaves the house, they may be transferred to a metropolitan network... When the user exits the metropolitan area, where free or low-rate pricing may not be possible, the system and methods may permit the user to transfer to a pay-for-use network. In addition to cost as a factor in selecting appropriate telecommunications providers, users may opt for alternative auction models based on maximal bandwidth offered, best coverage/reliability, or some combination of options."

To be clear, this is not what's going to happen with the Nexus One, which is essentially just like any unlocked handset. Moreover, there are reports that the phone is going to be sold in two versions in the US, one unlocked, and one with a T Mobile contract. But the crucial difference about the unlocked handset is that it is, at the least, a move in the direction of openness on Google's part, and an attempt to disintermediate the mobile phone market in a way which makes a lot of sense when you consider the context. There's certainly a culture clash between Google's tacit philosophy of encouraging as much openness as possible to help growth (and then steep the free, open content in advertising) and the world of mobile phones, where as it stands you can only get certain devices on certain networks at certain tariffs, with the market led by decisions made on the part of the network operators - the recently-dropped HD2 for example.

But what US commentators haven't cottoned onto yet is that there is an emerging precedent for this in the release of the much-touted Droid in the UK, as the unlocked and network non-specific Motorola Milestone. I've had my review unit working since this morning, and it's really good. But supposedly no network would touch it in the UK because there was no room for it in the European market. Google will be watching UK sales closely as a kind of guide to what kind of uptake they could except with a network-agnostic Google phone in the US.

There is some speculation that the phone may be discounted for long-time Google account holders, but I can't see that happening - as usual, Google is going to be trying to bring down the barriers for entry as low as possible, and charging people what will look like a tax on not being a prior Google user of $100 of more would put a lot of people off. It's worth noting that Apple are already doing their bit to weaken the mobile phone networks with the iPhone, which, if this graphic is to be believed, makes no money for it's US network AT&T until the 17th month of the contracts if high data-users.

Also, in case you're wondering why we're seeing so many Google releases at the moment, that mystery's been solved; it's because the company has a freeze on products lasting for the next three months, so lots of releases have been rushing to get to the market before it hits. Top picture from patent, lower via Engadget

Yellow Bird Project: Harnessing indie power to help those in need

2009-12-07T16:19:41Z

"Indie rock bands are leaking creativity. Why not harness their magical indie powers to help out those in need?" - so says the website of the Yellow Bird project, a Montreal-based charity whose offerings include sartorial items plucked from the imaginations of Broken Social Scene, Devendra Banhart and Of Montreal as well as multifarious other great indie acts who you've either heard of and love, or haven't. Card-carrying hipsters will also recognise them as the people behind this year's painfully trendy Indie Rock Coloring Book (sic).

For their latest releases they've employed the significant talents of angst-pop beat combo Bloc Party, folk hipsters Grizzly Bear, and Metric, the Canadian New Wave stars. Bloc Party's creation (bottom left), a vaguely Impressionist false-colour landscape of a cornfield (I think) populated by butterflies and over-looked by wispy clouds, is being sold to fund the charity Bread and Roses, who champion social justice, while Grizzly Bear's child-like rumination on the culturally transformational properties of the wheel (top left) asks people to splash the cash in aid of Brighter Planet, a suitably au courant Climate Change foundation.

At the time of writing, the Metric tee is yet to appear on the website, although some fine sleuthing by the LA Times suggests it may involve "pinstripes". Profits from their design will allegedly help fund MusiCounts; more developments as they come.

UPDATE: I'm reliably informed they ship to the UK no problem, so those with Christmas present slots yet to be filled feel free to put in an order. ~~Still no word on the pinstripes~~

UPDATE 2: As per an email from Yellow Bird Project's English half, Casey, the Metric tee is due out tomorrow (Friday). Paypal accounts at the ready...

MySpace Music launches: Users ask, "Who is Mick Jagure?"

2009-12-03T14:11:20Z

MySpace, the News Corp-owned former social-networking behemoth, has been locked in tug-of-war with Facebook ever since the latter's formation, but now it's traffic has been overtaken even by Twitter in the UK, it seems fair to say that the direct competition is all but over. But one area it has always succeeded in is music, despite the site's lack of polish. Today sees the relaunch of MySpace Music in the UK, just over a year after the service launched in the US, featuring shareable playlists, integration with iTunes for purchasing songs, and fully licensed streamable music and videos. As well as that, artists are getting more advanced analytics pages, so they can pinpoint where in the the world their fans are to be found, and there's also some live concert footage from such pop luminaries as Lady Gaga and Eminem.

They're marking the occasion with a raft of celebrity playlists, of varying quality; Katie Price is taking the opportunity to air her playlist "Songs that make me want to party" (featuring Beyonce's 'Single Ladies', of course; despite the fact that he did, in fact, put a ring on it), the Jonas Brothers are letting us know their "Songs we can agree on" (the spectre of tense tourbus moments looms large), and the infinitely more palatable "Playlist for tour" by Weezer.

It's unfortunate though that the site's design for artists' pages is still that clunky mixture of bland templates and (perhaps consequently) an over-active impulse to customise on the part of individual users. There are exceptions, of course, but the sad fact about MySpace is that the vast majority of its users' pages and, to an extent those of artists', still look like a thirteen-year-old girl has tried to consume the contents of her handbag, thrown it up onto a screen, and then attempted to rearrange the resulting mess into a website, blindfolded. And that's before you even touch on the technical frailties of the infrastructure which is, as a friend of some technical expertise once told me, 'held together by sticky tape and good hope'.

Still, the improvements can only be a good thing for the burgeoning market for music streaming sites, and services like Last.fm and Spotify, both of which operate in roughly the same space, will be watching the developments closely, though they may not be directly competing for users; the demographic for the new site is pretty clear from the sharp focus on pop music; not to raise the question of what age-group that might be directly, two of them just posted comments asking "Who is Mick Jagger?" and "whos mick jagure???" on the Video for K$sha's "Tik Tok", which is top of the site's video chart.

Military heads-up technology coming soon to cars

2009-12-02T11:46:07Z

As usual, there's never room for everything interesting you stumble across while writing for the paper, and so it was with the company central to my piece today on the future of projectors, and how that may well involve laser projections which we can interact with just as we can with touchscreens. Light Blue Optics, the company who developed touch-sensitive holographic laser projection technology, are promising big moves to allow computers, handheld or otherwise, to break free from the restraints of a display or built-in interface, like a keyboard. Imagine a Mac Mini you don't have to plug anything into, but smaller, and you're not a million miles off, although what's really exciting is the potential for embeddable projectors in mobile phones and cameras (to the extent that those two will still exist as separate entities by the time the technology's small enough to embed - 2011 at current estimates).

But the part I didn't get chance to talk about was LBO's other area of expertise in the field of projection, car heads-up-displays. With what they've got planned, the company's HUDs might end up being just as revolutionary as their plans for portable mini projectors.

Having developed the technology initially for military use in conjunction with the French Thales Group (for some reason I find their website slightly terrifying), the company has been working on adapting some of their work for cars. "The requirements for defence are very different - only monochrome, for example, and in a lot smaller volume than you'd find in an automotive sector.", says Dr Edward Buckley, the company's VP of Business Development. "It's not a million miles away and basically the same principle."

The challenges of designing a decent HUD differ from other projectors in that you don't really want people spending too much time looking at them;

"The less you look at them the more time you're focussing on the road and it's surprising the difference that makes to stopping distance; the eye's a muscle, it has latency. Increasingly motor manufacturers are seeing [HUD displays] as a safety benefit, much like the way they once regarded anti-lock brakes. Our development effort has been focussed on building headsup displays which are full colour and significantly smaller than those on the market today. If you ripped one of these headsup displays out of the vehicle, you'd find they're anywhere between 3 and 5 litres in size. As well as this, they're heavy, and need a lot of heat extraction. The car makers have to design in the space in advance; you have to leave a massive gap in the dashboard to put them in."

"So our proposition has been we could design HUDs that have efficiency advantages. Rather than these larger light sources that throw lots of light away, we could make one that uses the light very efficiently. We can reduce the power demand and indeed one of the things we've demonstrated just recently is a display inside your wing mirror (pictured). The point there is that a lot of accidents happen there because of the blind spot. You can change lanes and not realise there's a car next to you, and if you had a display in your wing mirror which gave you relevant information you'd avoid that entirely."

If the cost of these units can come down anywhere near as fast as the size, and the safety benefits can be proven, it mightn't be too long before we see adoption of smart HUDs in the Fords and Vauxhalls of this world, as well as the BMWs.

The Daily Mail: You can't even trust the graphics

2009-11-20T18:31:41Z

It would be a brave person indeed to suggest that the economy is in anything other than an extremely unhealthy condition at the moment. But glancing over the Mail's article on national debt today (shan't link), it's pretty clear that the sizes of the circles don't correspond to the numbers in them. If they did, according to my rudimentary calculations, the 2009 national debt would be £1.257 trillion rather than the comparatively healthy £829 billion. And in the current situation, you might as well call that good news.

2007 circle width: 430 px - relative monetary value to scale: £621billion
2008 circle width: 484 px - relative monetary value to scale: £786 billion
2009 circle width: 623 px - relative monetary value to scale: £1.257 trillion

Getting lonely on the Wave

2009-11-13T13:30:34Z

Since I got Google Wave yesterday, I've been encouraged by a few people to write a quick assessment of the messaging service its inventors see as 'the future of email'. With its focus on real-time communication and collaboration, there's just one problem; there's noone I know on it to communicate with.

At the moment, users are early adopters - the majority of whom will have either registered interest on the Wave invite site or begged their friends to let them in. As such the majority of Wave action right now is people talking about Wave itself. Self-reflexivity is no new problem for social media, and far be it from me to criticise a blossoming online communication medium, it's just that now the friend who invited me has gone on holiday, I'm down to one contact. I could start a public wave with people I don't know but... what would I collaborate with them on? and would I want to?

At first glance, the thinking behind Wave's limited release is great; to generate a buzz built around exclusivity excites, frustrates and, eventually, increases the likelihood of widespread uptake when the floodgates open. Everyone's favourite music streaming Spotify was released invite-only initially, to a highly limited group of users who evangelised sufficiently well for it to become ubiquitous amongst young music-lovers (at least those in the countries it's rolled out in). But the success of that campaign was built on the fact that as an experience, using Spotify can be almost as fulfilling individually as when you're sharing playlists with friends. Wave, on the other hand, is fundamentally social, and for that it suffers from this kind of promotion.

(Image via Twitter)

Tweets from inside Fort Hood

2009-11-06T10:56:35Z

As America responded to last night's attack at Fort Hood carried out by Malik Nadal Hasan, Twitter once again showed its value as a tool for breaking news with the updates of "Tearah Moore", who tweeted pics and updates from inside the camp, before being shut down after roughly an hour.

Her account is now locked, but I've reconstructed the most recent tweets here from people rebroadcasting her updates using their own accounts. Thanks to Twitter's lax indexing policy for older tweets, messages before the first posted below are no longer available to view.

They just brought a CART full of boxes w/transplant parts in them. Not good not good. #fthood

Ok we just saw a soldier on a stretcher w/2 armed guards walking by He didnt look like he was in great condition.

Please help give blood for people. Even if u aren't around here, u can help in your area. People always need donated blood

A FUCKING MAJOR? Are you kidding me? A MAJ! For those of uthat don't know, Army MAJ have pretty serious rank. Dick

The poor guy that got shot... Gen Cone is reporting right now. http://twitpic.com/oejh5 (above)

Someone just started shooting in Commanche 4 which is on post housing. What are these people thinking?!?

Maj Malik A Hassan. He shouldn't have died. He should be in the worst suffering of his life. It's too fair for him to just die. Bastard!

Ft Hood is on lockdown. Some guys just shot 19-25 people. As least 11 died so far. I'm at the hospital right now. Please pray for all of em

MissTearah wasn't the only person tweeting from the base. Another witness, whose twitter ID is ArmyBarbieGirl, was also in Fort Hood, and tweeted about the psychological effect of the attacks, as well as indicating the general paucity of information being given to soldiers in the area:

OMG Cant sleep i keep hearing noises outside.after today im really paranoid. but i swear someone is out there. oh gawd i hope its only a dog

Sad news buddy of mines brother was killed here at fort hood today.. May he rest in peace and i'm soo sorry robbert for your loss.

Sirens going off again.... i hope thats just letting us know that all is good now

going to go out... yep thats right im leaving my house! i NEED to know whats happening out there!

not very far at all. the fist shooting were only five minutes away and the second was only a block or 2 away from where i live

its very quiet almost looks like a ghost town outside.i cant speak for al of us here but its quite nerve wrecking.

2 of the shooters have now been cought. phew. 0.0

Currently at Fort Hood TX on lock down. 7 dead 15+ injured.

MissTearah's updates raise some major ethical questions about the appropriateness of using Twitter in such situations where others' security might be at risk, as discussions on the TwitPic site used to post the picture above showed; while some commenters questioned whether legal restrictions (HIPAA in particular) should prevent the pictures being posted, others debated the moral implications of the postings, with one commenter saying "We are ALREADY freaking out and this shit just makes it worse".

When it comes to stopping the BNP, folk music is leading the way

2009-10-22T16:33:02Z

While Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time tonight is getting all the headlines, one musician has chosen today to highlight another way in which the BNP is attempting to hijack the mainstream media in order to create the veneer of respectability necessary for the party to continue its worrying growth as a political force in this country.

Chris Wood, Radio 2's Folk Singer of the Year, has today released to the Folk Against Fascism campaign his song "Spitfires" (available to stream and download below), a track he penned in response to the BNP's use of British military iconography on a campaign leaflet dropped in to his Kent home. The folk community are particularly concerned by the BNP, ever since Griffin gave them the dubious endorsement of playing folk music on his online radio show. According to campaign group Folk Against Fascism, "the BNP’s Activists and Organisers Handbook encourages its members to get involved in the folk scene". They add that "the BNP want to take our music, want to twist it into something it isn’t; something exclusive, not inclusive. We must not let them. "

I asked Chris some questions about folk's reaction to the BNP and the song. In many ways, folk music and the Spitfires Chris sings about have in common exactly the sense of British tradition nationalist groups tend to draw on in their efforts to legitimise their political views by association. Drawing attention to these cultural misappropriations might well be our best bet at deconstructing the alignments Griffin and co have been working so hard to create.

What's been the reaction amongst the folk community towards Nick Griffin's folk radio show?

I'm not a particularly 'Folk Community" type of guy but I guess they are somewhere between outraged and dismayed.

Why do you think Griffin and the BNP have targeted folk music particularly?

There is precedent, in the Tutsi and Hutu tribal massacres traditional songs were given new words and powerful 'Oi' beats. Likewise Serbia and, of course, the German population have not felt able to go anywhere near their own folk music until very recently. We have to accept though that the British establishment has constantly ridiculed or ignored England's indigenous music and dance for generations, the BNP may just see it as 'up for grabs'.

Is it right that the BBC have invited the BNP on Question Time tonight?

Absolutely. Like it or not, Nick Griffin is an elected representative of a legitimate political organisation and as such should be called upon to face the public and his peers. Our political elite have become so adept at spinning us whatever froth they are peddling they assume we are naive enough to succumb to Mr Griffin's argument, whatever it is. Who knows, they might be right but may I quote from a folk song..?

"Awake arise you drowsy sleeper, awake arise arise it's almost day, no time to lie no time to slumber, no time to dream your life away."

I'll be singing that at a gig in Clerkenwell tonight so I'll have to miss the program.

How are Folk Against Fascism working to dissuade the BNP from using folk to further their political aims?

I think Folk Against Fascism are attempting to counter ignorance and naïvety by raising awareness of just what folk music is. The greatest composer who ever lived was ANON: Britain's songs and the ritual calendar represent the freely given gift of our ancestors. Folk Against Fascism are trying to demonstrate that this music is too rich, too variegated and far too sophisticated for any organisation to appropriate.

How did you come to write Spitfires?

The song was started before the European elections took place [in which Griffin gained a seat in the European parliament]. As a native of Kent I have grown up with the sound of the Manston Spitfire, just about every summer of my life I have seen it fly out to do some air show or other. I was at my desk when it flew across my back garden in late May, the first verse just came straight out of the pen. The question was how would the song be finished. It was about two months later when the BNP leaflet flopped onto my doormat that I knew exactly what the song needed to say. I have subsequently been told that the spitfire pictured on the BNP leaflet was from a Polish squadron"

Right-click here and click "Save target/link as..." to download, and stream below.

Is Google about to turn the music industry on its head?

2009-10-21T16:58:04Z

Still legally struggling in their project to digitise the world's books, at first glance it seems like a strange time for Google to launch an online music service, especially in what is already a crowded marketplace . While it's unlikely to be anywhere near as revolutionary as the company's Chinese music offering, which allows the country's internet users to download any of more than a million songs for free, popular streaming services and online music stores must be questioning what effect the search giant is planning on having on their industry. Early indications suggest a service streaming songs using a 'one box' similar to the one already used for Google searches for financial data, to display audio in search results, with streaming more likely than selling mp3s.

If they're streaming, then their competitors (or partners) will be established services with hundreds of thousands of users like Imeem and Spotify, and Spotify sales partner 7digital will also be in the camp of those facing competition if Google's new plan involves actually selling songs, as will iTunes and Amazon's mp3 store. The iTunes battle could be especially interesting considering that Google and Apple's clash over Android phones and the iPhone has already led to Google CEO Eric Schmidt quitting the board of Steve Job's company over potential anti-trust cases (along with Arthur Levinson). Music would be just another skirmish in the ongoing battle, which is also threatening to flare up in the field of Operating Systems (what with Google's Chrome OS around the corner) as well as mobile phones (see the Google Voice on iPhone saga for a clue as to how this could all play out).

While providers of every kind of entertainment content have struggled with the devastating impact of the electronic all-you-can-eat buffet that is the internet, the music industry's battle to keep a handle on the redistribution of their content has been more visible than most, sadly mainly for it's idiocy: just recall Metallica's thousands of pages of file-sharers they were planning on suing, for example, or this year when Warner's decision to pull their content from YouTube ended up kneecapping their own artists' websites. As such, it stands a chance of being the most interesting wrestling match yet between consumers, content providers and content creators.

Acutely aware of the need to open up new revenue streams in the face of falling demand for their central product, the music industry could learn a lot from Google, a company which still makes the vast majority of its revenue from advertising which appears alongside the content people are actually searching for.

In terms of achieving that aim, Spotify are amongst the most forward-looking companies; as well as the mobile tie-in announced yesterday to build Spotify into gadget of the year HTC Hero on the 3 mobile network (it will perhaps prove ironic that this is one of Google's Android phones), they are banking on device tie-ins as the way forward, and their CEO has made some interesting comments to that effect about Spotify being built into TVs and HiFis to name just two possibilities. What is worth remembering though is that Spotify is yet to launch in the US. Noone wants to launch a service at the same time Google is launching something similar, and likely with less advertising or at a lower cost.

With established deals with all the major labels and a huge, dedicated userbase, its unlikely Spotify will be swept away with the arrival of the next big thing from Mountain View. On the other hand, Google's speciality as a business is taking out its rivals while wearing a "who me?" smile, and besides, we don't even know what the service will look like yet; and perhaps won't until the 28th, the date that is being mentioned for the service's launch.

The Cribs storm London

2009-10-16T14:29:13Z

For a Northerner-in-exile like myself, The Cribs' gig last night at the Kentish Town Forum was a peculiarly homely experience, to the extent that flying plastic pint glasses and pogoing parkas can be homely. My full review of Wakefield's finest sons and their newest member, guitar prodigy Johnny Marr, should be online in the next few days, but in the meantime those who couldn't it make it to any of the dates on this last tour can listen to the setlist reconstructed on Spotify here.

Setlist:

We were aborted
Hey scenesters!
I'm a realist
Emasculate me
Last year's snow
Cheat on me
We share the same skies
Girls like mystery
We can no longer cheat you
Direction
Hari kari
Save your secrets
Our bovine public
Another number
Ignore the ignorant
Be safe
Mirror kissers
Men's needs
City of bugs

Who are Thom Yorke's new bandmates?

2009-10-02T17:45:12Z

What have "Bottle Up and Explode" by Elliott Smith, "Roller Coaster of Love" by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and David Byrne's giant clunking Camden Roundhouse installation got in common? They all feature members of Thom Yorke's new supergroup, due to grace LA's Echoplex tonight for a gig shrouded in mystery, and revealed to the world today on Radiohead blog DeadAirSpace. According to twentyfourbit, the gig will include Yorke's "entire solo album, The Eraser, four new songs, and one Radiohead tune for good measure". In Yorke's own words, it'll be "total chaos and its kind of a rehearsal but .. if you are near by…". Here's the line-up in full:

Joey Waronker

Drummed on Elliott Smith's "Bottle Up and Explode" and "Bled White", so presumably no stranger to helping out a miserablist genius, Waronker has also worked with Beck, Smashing Pumpkins and REM; it's conjecture, but he could well have first met Yorke when REM's instrumentalists, including Waronker, performed with Thom at the Tibetan Freedom Concert back in 1998.

Mauro Refosco

Brazilian Refosco has been performing with David Byrne since 1994, as well as doing some soundtrack work, and playing with his main project Forro In The Dark, a group who specialise in forró, a genre they call "the hip-swiveling, dancefloor-filling, rural party music of Brazil’s northeastern states". Sounds right up Thom's street, then.

Flea

Michael Peter Balzary to his friends, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers bass player is better known to the world under his insect-inspired stage name. I'll leave the consternation over his suitability at performing with Yorke to the rest of the blogosphere.

Nigel Godrich

The veteran Radiohead producer has been spotted playing guitar on multiple occasions for a number of high profile acts, including , ahem, Zero 7.

Will it work? Who's to know - I for one, will be scouring YouTube for clues come tomorrow afternoon.