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Sunday 22 January 2012

Google knows more about me than I do

I'd read a couple of articles about how Google have developed a new SEO function where, when you search for something, it will return content that it 'knows' is most relevant to you. I can't remember where this article was, but the example it used was, if you google 'golf' and in the past you'd uploaded pictures of you and your buddies playing golf to Picasa or Google+, that picture might be returned at the top of the list. Twitter have been outspoken about how this will 'warp' search results. For the time being it only crawls Google-owned services, but the obvious extrapolation is that it will expand to include all social tools as soon as companies like twitter relent.

I thought it was fascinating and promptly forgot about it. Today, I googled 'blogger' and was shocked to see that two of the top returned images were these:



















This one's a nativity display outside a church near where I live. The other is a picture of my desk at work (I have no idea why I took it).

It's a little odd, for a couple of reasons:

  • I took them with my phone, and hadn't emailed either to myself
  • My guess is they made their way to Picasa when I connected my phone to my PC. But there are lots of pictures on my phone and I can't find any of the others on Google
  • It may be because I'm not using the right search terms - but why would these two random shots be returned by a search for 'blogger'?!
  • And if the search terms are seemingly arbitrary in their correlation to the images returned, who knows what else is out there?

For me, the main concern is that I've inadvertently uploaded information that I had no intention of uploading. I'm not sure whether it's like being duped into signing a contract, or agreeing to sign a contract without understanding the small print. The way things are going, probably the latter. But, for all the good intentions of the (rather heavy-handed) protests against SOPA and PIPA and the school of thought that says 'yes' to freedom of information we could, by association, be siding with companies who know far too much about us and, what's more, who in the future may be legally allowed to profit from this information without the individual being able to do anything about it.

Google, facebook, twitter, all seem so benign now with their cute logos and fresh-faced CEOs. But for the first time, I can imagine a future where someone like, say, Mark Zuckerberg is to our children what Rupert Murdoch, today, is to many people.

The difference may simply be in the mediums and agents used - Murdoch sells traditional print media whose journalists stick their pens and noses into peoples' lives and write about them for entertainment. Social tools use the intoxicating allure of 'free' to collate and dissect data, which is made available for commercial use, so that advertisements can be tailored to us as individuals whenever we use these social tools that are now essential to our personal and professional lives. In a sense (and certainly, for the most part, in innocence), we are willingly giving away our stories - our interests and thoughts, captured in photos taken on our phones, or status updates written in a spare moment - to a global audience. Salaried agents of information - the journalists - are not needed. We expose ourselves voluntarily, for nothing, in exchange for access to these 'free' social tools.

I sound conspiratorial and paranoid. I'm not, I assure you. These incredible technologies, and the economies of innovation that go with them, are, I'm convinced, the future of a capitalism that has been strongly discredited by the 2008 financial crisis. There were sound ideological reasons for deregulation in the 80s and 90s - it was about making peoples' lives better, keeping up with the pace of change. And it happened so dramatically, announced in press conferences and reported on by television and print news. Of course, it all went too far, and you think, much better if it could have faded away, rather than burn out as it did. If only good ideas gone bad could slip away unnoticed to die quietly, rather than self-destruct in so devastating a fashion. The irony about the progress of the online transparency of information trend is that it's happening by stealth. Our information is used in ways that we find out about only by accident. And you have to ask why this is. Hold onto your privacy, because I suspect we'll miss it when it's finally gone for good.

Saturday 14 January 2012

The end of Lookout Records

I was sorry to read that Lookout Records is, finally, no more. I say 'finally' because it's been a long time coming, ever since Green Day stopped Lookout selling their first two albums in 2005.

Funnily enough, my first real job was an unpaid internship at Lookout in early 2004, where I worked in the radio and press department, cutting out articles from music magazines about the label's bands for their promo packs, and data inputting their record's positions on the American college music charts. Occasionally, I franked a lot of merchandise packages and lugged them off to the post office. With hindsight, it all seems so 20th century, which could well be why they cut their staff's hours to part-time six months after I left, and then fired them altogether a year later. They stopped innovating. It was a pivotal time, but I was too naive to realise it.

I'm also being a little flippant. During the mid to late '90s Lookout put out some of my favourite records; records that I still listen to and favour over anything that's happened pop musically since. It's somewhat melodramatic to say, but Lookout's closure is, like my bad knees, a further sign that my 20s are over; not only are they not coming back, it's like they've been hermetically sealed off, consigned to the dustbin of history, bankrupt, arthritic, a curio.

I'm looking forward to reading The Rise and Fall of Lookout Records. While I was there, although I wasn't paid I got a lot of free records. I have pretty much every '90s Lookout release in every format. So, for the geeky hell of it, my top 5 classic Lookout records.


 5. Groovie Ghoulies, Travels With My Amp
For boys that liked girls, the Groovie Ghoulies didn't really cut it, writing songs about sci-fi and comic book folklore. But to me, they epitomised Lookout's colourful and zany punk rock. I don't know what Larry Livermore looks like, but I always imagined him as a Groovie Ghoulie; old and rock 'n' roll, with brycreem hair, Converse and a Cramps t-shirt. The Highwayman, (The Girl Is) An Unsolved Mystery and Leprechaun Rock are magick.

4. Screeching Weasel, Anthem For A New Tomorrow

The best thing about Screeching Weasel was their name, which they said was a take on a frat boy t-shirt that said 'I've got a screaming otter in my pants'. Which in itself harks back to a sweeter time, when frat boys were like John Belushi and not Abercrombie wearing terminators. I never liked the Weasel as much as other people did, although there's no denying that at their best they were LKR's most highly tipped mainstream contenders after Green Day, mainly because Ben Weasel is that universally compelling jock-gone-wrong character - the musician equivalent of Seann William Scott and Will Ferrell. Anthem For A New Tomorrow was better than their acknowledged classic, My Brain Hurts, with bigger hooks and better lyrics. Talk To Me Summer is the pop punk instrumental to beat, Totally is the best Ramones rip-off that Joe Queer never wrote, while A New Tomorrow was the anthem the title promised, with its monotone stock market call-outs, sloppily chugged chords and Blake Schwarzenbach's gravel-throated cameo.


3. Green Day, Kerplunk
I don't get the whole Green Day revival thing. These days, they're just a bad mix of U2 and, I dunno, some other shit middle-of-the-road rock band. But back in '93, when Metallica and G 'n' R were at the height of their (then awesome) powers, Green Day's cut 'n' paste, black, white and green photocopied album sleeves and badly recorded pop songs were about as 'underground' as you could get, as anyone who can remember life before the Internet should be able to attest. They opened up a whole new world for me. Grunge was misery, metal was angry; Kurt was suicidal, Axl was an undiagnosed bipolar lunatic. But Green Day, and Lookout, with Chris Appelgren's distinctive cartoon artwork, were happy-go-lucky, carefree and frivolous. If that doesn't sound like the right ideology for a teenager then I don't know what does. 2000 Light Years Away, Christie Road and One Of My Lies are way better than Basket Case, American Idiot or anything else that came later.


2. The Queers, Don't Back Down
When I was at LKR, Joe King was persona non grata; vilified as an unpleasant drug addict who was impossible to deal with. Despite his unfortunate name and slightly pervy older-dude chauvinism, he was the most naturally gifted, pure-dumb-pop songwriter in the Lookout stable. Like the Ramones, every Queers album sounds the same; this one has the best production values, so it's top of my list. Here's another thing, the Queers were better than the Ramones. Punk Rock Girls, I Only Drink Bud and Janelle, Janelle are about as good as three chords and a leather jacket ever sounded.



1. The Mr T Experience, Milk Milk Lemonade
Always my favourite band on LKR - wordy, nerdy-but-cool in a smart, funny way. I read somewhere that Ben Weasel said this was the worst album of the year when it was released in 1992. In 2012 it won't get a fancy 20th anniversary release, especially because MTX were one of the few former LKR bands not to reissue their records on another label. Dr Frank Portman is now an author; when I was at Lookout I interviewed him on a couple of occasions with a view to writing a book on MTX (which I abandoned when I came to the simultaneous conclusions that no one would want to read it, and I didn't have a clue what I was doing). I Love You, But You're Standing On My Foot is hilarious; See It Now is poignant and bittersweet; Love American Style deserves a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


Honorable mentions:

The Donnas, Turn 21 (probably the last good LKR release)
Operation Ivy, Energy (the one that started it all)

Tuesday 10 January 2012

Polish Prime Minister declares Scandinavia 'awesome'!


In an historic address, Polish Prime Minister Owain Paciuszko made a surprise, but welcome overture to his country's north western neighbours.


Heralding their sense of humour and joyous approach to life, Paciuszko also acknowledged the roving intelligence that is a central part of Scandinavian culture.


Read an eyewitness account here.

A Scandinavian rejoices

Monday 9 January 2012

Chucky Thatcher, the Iron Baby

Good article about Meryl Streep's portrayal of the Iron Lady and how it's a little unfair that she continues to be demonised in 21st century Britain. I always thought she got a bit too much flack.

Still, looks can kill, and maybe if she'd worn a onesie and pearls (without the knife) Chucky Thatcher would've seemed more palatable?



Saturday 7 January 2012

The first rule of economics

Here's a good idea - snag a photo of a celebrity with the first edition of your book, then feature that picture in all future editions, with a cute comment about them that links in neatly with the subject matter of the book.