Ug. I did it, i finally caved in and built a proper myspace page.

I don’t know why, i’ve never like myspace from the beginning. It smacks so much of sheer marketing ploy, it gives me the jeebies. I know about the Robert Maxwell Rupert Murdoch buyout of Intermix Media who own myspace and all that, but i mean even before then.

I jumped onto the friendster bandwagon pretty early. It seemed fun, it seemed like all the san francisco and uk indie-kids and hipsters had effectively taken over a dating site. I like mis-using things, i like other people mis-using things, finding new uses for something the original creator never intended. Then came tribe.net, which i reluctantly also subbed up for. It did seem like a genuinely better community site, more geeky and less fratboy. But still.. i got bored entering all that information in a second time. I got bored after that with community sites.

Then i got my audioscrobbler plugin, and when that merged with Last.fm, here was a true community site that really kicked ass, was genuine about the music, innovative with the features, and i instantly fell in love with it.

Flickr is my other online obsession these days, since i upgraded my camera a few months back. Same story, innovative and easy to use website, and seems genuinely passionate about the content and the users.

So, back to myspace. Whats not to like? Its pretty easy to use, up-to-date features (nothing truly innovative there, just seems like the best features from what has gone before), and i guess thats it. Its the ease of use i guess that gets everyone on board, and now that the whole world and their granny is on there, they pretty much have the dominating force for any would-be music community site challengers to the throne. So what am i griping about? i dunno! Myspace is just ugly and full of too many ads, and i feel like i’m selling out by building my own page, so i guess i’m just venting/justifying/whining!

The thing is, what makes a good community site is having a large community, and myspace now has it, with so many members. Everyone i know is up there, and its good people, its people i really do know and share a life with outside of inter-web-land, people doing and making and promoting great independent music.

But still i can’t shake a sneaky image of boardroom meetings and brainstorming sessions behind the myspace origins, rather than bedroom or garage hackers, and *splutter!* thats, thats just not indie-rock!

( http://myspace.com/highpointlowlife in case you were wondering.. )

After reading Ollie’s post last week about this new Bill Drummond / Mark Manning book, i immediately went onto Amazon to order a copy – turned up yesterday..

I couldn’t wait to get home, or even onto the train, just away from work to lose myself in it!

First impressions tho, I love the Bill Drummond chapters, but it seems like the Mark Manning ones are even more disturbing than they were in Bad Wisdom. I mean, they are somewhat amusing, but i am getting kinda bored of the sadomasochistic graphic descriptions, rapes, skinnings, wanking, etc. Am i just a prude??

I havent yet, but i am thinking of skipping over the Mark Manning chapters, but wondering if i will lose much (any?) of the story..

Did you finish it yet, Ollie? Whats your thoughts?

Hola.

This is my first post to the Diskant blog, and this thread seems a nice way to introduce myself..

Listening To: too much good stuff lately, and a lot of it actually back into electronica… New material for the upcoming Marcia Blaine School For Girls album, which is sounding ace; Suburb The Record Label’s sampler disc. Its probably badly labelled as a sampler, as its a proper full length compilation release, and the label’s first release to date, but i guess its a sampler of the good stuff to come. 14 tracks of digital goodness, from people like Blamstrain, Bovaflux, 11t1, and other lads i hadnt heard of, but all quality music.
Sawako – Hum. New release on ultraminimalist US electronic label 12k. Pure sine waves, coupled with lush melodies and manipulated vocal sound sources. I’m not always as blown away by minimal electronics as i’d like to be, but this album really stands out.
On the more guitar oriented side of things, really loving the Cocteau Twins 4 disc boxset “Lullabies to Violaine”, especially the Mark Clifford/Seefeel remixes. Although the packaging, beautiful as it is, (5 panel foldout digipack with tactile cover) is so fragile – it has slight smudges on the cover and one of the CD sleeves has come away from the backing already, even though i have only taken each disc out once to rip it into itunes. Maybe thats the beauty of it though! Other re-issues i been enjoying are the two All Natural Lemon And Lime Flavors albums, and the Orchids ‘Striving For The Lazy Perfection’

Reading: Configuring And Tuning Databases On The Solaris Platform by Allan N. Packer. erm, yeah, i like that kind of thing! Last thing i read was The Future Of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law professor lad. Genius book about the possible outcome on creativity, code, music and ideas, of the path we seem to be following with copyright law. highly recommended.

Working On: a Catalyst 6513 multilayer switch with redundant supervisor modules and MSFC’s. um yeah, more of that!

Looking forward to: Like A Stuntman supporting Rainer Maria at the Garage on December 2nd for Silver Rocket.