Owning-Up

Owning-Up
Originally uploaded by jovike

Surrealist and jazzman George Melly’s uncompromising, witty autobiography. He also wrote two other memoirs of his earlier experiences of childhood and the navy: 'Scouse Mouse' and 'Rum, Bum and Concertina' and the trilogy is now a Penguin Classic.

His last biography, about his then approaching 80th birthday 'Slowing Down' is also published by Penguin.

Goodtime George. That's what they called him: Goodtime George. I've been reading his first book of autobiography on and off for a year or so. Great stuff. I nearly saw his last concert but forgot to go. He said it would be his last tour. Sigh.

Temperance Seven member and Jazz Record Restorer John R.T. Davies Dies. In this obituary is quoted a long description of his working methods.

Don Arden - Intimidating rock impresario. His methods were less pleasant.

Bad news from Manchester: Tony Wilson dies of cancer. He always impressed me by being quietly-spoken.

The Sea and Cake have made a 'rock album' - sounds like "krautrock loungecore" Sounds intriguing. Rock Cake I really hope they are as good as they are described.

Rip and Goodbye: "the complete dissolution of my library of compact discs". Many comments.

My All Time Favorite Prog Rock Recordings - chapter 39. Not mine, someone else's.

The shirt that Wreckless Eric wore on the cover of 'Reconnez Cherie' has turned up. His news section is better than most people's blogs.

Fake Steve Jobs on Robin Trower: Today's Music Depresses Me.

British rock fans of a certain age have copies of ZigZag magazine knocking about in their attic. Mine are in what I call our library. They smell great. Since 1996, rocklist.net has been putting old polls from ZigZag online. Essential Rock Albums.

Always sad when someone that everyone has heard of dies in obscurity. It happened to Mike Sammes but luckily Jonny Trunk was on hand to save some of his treasures: Music for Biscuits.

Trunk records are pretty good; also worthy for their excellent and lengthy sleevenotes are those other musical magpies RPM, for instance 'Magpie - 20 Junkshop Pop Ads & Themes' contains Andrew Bown's theme music to 'Ace of Wands'.

I've got some Joe Meek and Pet Clark compilations from RPM. Essential these days to get the dates and cover art for iTunes, so this Petula Clark discography comes in handy. Great graphics and some moody expressions from Pet.

Big Al Davies' Treemo channel.

Kevin Ayers' MySpace page:

This myspace site is presented by Kevin Ayers' management. Kevin is aware of myspace and thinks it is very cool, but he doesn't have a computer let alone an internet connection. He wishes people still sent telegrams. He is very touched by the kind messages left on his page and that there is still space in music collections for his efforts.

Also among my very few friends on MySpace are Foul House because my friend's daughter is the singer. They are great live and should make an album ASAP.

The loudness wars: Why is there so much variation in volume in my music collection?

jTunes "The Insanely Great Songs Apple Won't Let You Hear."

Pitchfork.

The label Repertoire are putting out some nice editions on CD. I just got a triple disc of all the Pretty Things singles.

Vinyl Vulture: Record shops in London. The Digger's Guide to London.

Desmond Briscoe, Radiophonic Workshop founder, 1925-2007. Musique concrète and diegetic sounds.

Making Flippy Floppy - what a silly name for a music blog. How about a sensible name like Wibbly, or monkeyfunk, or Bubblegum Machine, which posts two wacky mp3s each week. Adult material such as emotion can be found in The Lefsetz Letter. Lefsetz also points us to Jeff Beck's 'Led Boots' at http://music.msn.com/crossroads which got me right there.

I don't know why people call Revelations: a musical anthology for Glastonbury Fayre "legendary" because I've got a copy downstairs. It's out on CD now, which is handy but it won't sound as good or have such an elaborate cover and inserts.

In Quest of Absolute Fidelity: The Saga of the Black CD – Finding Black Gold!

Uh-oh - or, as it says here: WOW: CBS Acquires Last.fm for $280 Million which is a shame because I've been on last.fm since it started as Audioscrobbler. You can bet they are going to screw it up somehow, like Yahoo did with LaunchCast and mailing lists and now Flickr.

Suzi Quatro unzipped. I never knew '48 Crash' was about the male menopause.

Music blog by Pliable: On an Overgrown Path. Good for classical music and exposes the fools who think the BBC or the Proms are "brands".

Richard Godwin admits he can't follow opera plots. I like that.

A musical pantheon: The desert island challenge: 24 records.

Great mp3s! The Barry Gray Music Sampler.

Motorhead Blogger.

Back in the groove: young music fans ditch downloads and spark vinyl revival.

Vinyl Vulture.

21st Century Gizmo: iPhone

Dropping a battered plastic divider by my groceries on the checkout till, I realized how mainstream Apple is these days. The divider carried an advert for iTunes vouchers. When a relative buys me a voucher I shall know that Apple is the only game in town. Must drop more hints.

Why is Apple growing so quickly? It's all due to design and I want to explain what that is, why Apple is good at it and what an iPhone is, without sounding too much like a fanboy.

As if their online store isn't enough, Apple is the fastest growing retailer in the USA taking $1bn a quarter in their expensively appointed shops (more profit per square foot than Tiffanys!), only a few years after Gateway — a manufacturer of PC clones — abandoned their chain of stores.

The "bricks and mortar" shops were stringently redesigned after realizing the need to address users' needs such as music or film, so Apple abandoned their initial design where the shop was conventionally laid out by product type. This all happened in a mock-up and delayed the opening of their first store by months.

CEO Steve Jobs said Apple's high street stores were put in place for the iPhone, also that Apple had to lose its dependency on large retailers with little knowledge of Mac OS X.

Apple apply design rules to their operating system so it keeps out of the way and looks as elegant as the hardware. They also make their own applications which rule some market niches like online music, via iTunes and iTune's dedicated hardware aka the iPod, dictating their one-price policy to the music industry. They also dominate music production (no latency on a Mac), graphics and art, taking in magazine and poster production and video editing either with Avid or their own range of Pro applications. For instance editing video with soundtracks using iMovie is possible without reading a manual: intuitive functions belaying sophistication behind the scenes. It's also fun to make your own music using GarageBand, a product so gorgeously straightforward yet powerful it could only exist on an Apple.

These kinds of products and the layout of the stores reflect the Apple philosophy of seeing their users as producers (active) rather than consumers (passive). They create rather than watch.

Apple's design process follows the precept 'form follows function'. Apple keeps it strictly simple. For instance: the iPod. The design of this is brilliant not because it looks sexy — the appearance is a by-product of the design process — but rather because you can hold it in one hand and scroll up and down the lists and menus and notes only using your thumb. Jobs and co. sweated over the onscreen menu, simplifying and reducing it to the minimum. Physically there is no surplus material, no ridges or stickers; there's just what you need and that's it, so no black lines or gaps around buttons that are already a different colour and texture, and so on. It's hard to convey why anyone should want one, especially to people who weren't planning to transfer their music collection to a digital format, until they think about being able to access any track they like immediately, anywhere. All your music in your pocket. Just employ the opposable digit. Also the OCD and retentive folk amongst us can scan the cover art in (whenever iTunes doesn't have it) or program smart playlists in iTunes that flow into each other.

So to sum up: design is for hardware and software. Design is all-encompassing: beauty and efficiency comes from the way each component fulfils its purpose and fits into the overall structure. Executing design with style is art.

Apple's competitors' philosophy seems to be to build something just about good enough and sell it cheap. No need to delight the customer with refinements or to think about the user experience and how the programs could integrate... maybe they think they have enough of a captive corporate market, or habitual customers who only buy what they know. (Hello Aaron!) But Dell could never be like Apple. It is harder to be restrained than to add more features in order to give the impression of good value, while building down to a price. Dell's marketing department prefers that. It's also easier to use focus groups than trust to judgment.

The iPhone? It has Mac OS X. It can do things the iPod can, like photos, notes and calendars, or play music and video. It's a phone too, easier to use than any other phone. Most importantly, it has Mac OS X, and that is what differentiates it from other small portable devices. This means it can run widgets or exactly the same email or web browser program one finds on a laptop or desktop, or amazing new apps like Maps with search and live traffic conditions. So it can not only replace a cellphone, smartphone, iPod and maybe laptop, but also satnav? And imagine how well it will sync with all the personal data on your Mac. It is not a cellphone where each button always has the same function. It will regularly have new software. I believe it is a new class of device, namely a handheld computer. Obviously I can't get mine soon enough.

Many developers have been hoping to get their applications on the iPhone, but Apple has not yet released a Software Development Kit and shows no indication of doing so, however apps can be written with HTML/AJAX such as the widgets/gadgets you may already have on your desktop PC. Four examples have already appeared: a Twitter messaging client (now called Hahlo), a Digg client, an AIM chat client, and a shopping list called OneTrip which is quite good and reminds me of an app I once tried on the bulkier Apple Newton, which leads me to wonder whether Jarvis Cocker will finally abandon his Newton for the iPhone.

I'm already planning to download the shopping app and replace the options with my own and then host it on my site. I'm also thinking of writing a randomly rude quiz app, for which the interface is perfect.

The "soft" keyboard of the iPhone is the only doubt that I have at the moment, before the launch. I'm hoping to write rubbish like this while travelling on trains. Sure, I could use a BlackBerry or Hiptop or Palm or eMate, but I don't like their tiny keypads or predictive texting. The iPhone has a proper dictionary, like a laptop, but the keyboard is on the touchscreen so it will not have the physical feedback that one is used to when pressing an actual key. Apple say that when you learn to trust it you will fly. Initial reports suggest that this can take a day or two. I do hope so. I am reassured by the speed of Steve Jobs typing in his demo: "Sounds great! See you there" in 15 seconds. It would be fun to send grotesquely verbose emails or SMS text messages, something I could not attempt on a cellphone or most smartphones. Actually I can't even find the text function on my current phone — an ancient Alcatel — unless I have unread texts.

The iPhone has been called a God Machine and the new It Object. It is, I believe, the first truly 21st century device. After it launches on the 29th, Apple should take over the smartphone market and some of the cellphone market.

To learn more about the iPhone, I recommend watching Steve Job's keynote in which he introduces it as a three-in-one device. See how he mocks other phones and how difficult it is to make calls on them. Also see the ads. Go through the Apple/iPhone pages and view the many short movies. Regular Apple web sites like MacSurfer have iPhone news as well as the iPod sites like ilounge and iPhone Hacks, the iPhone being a widescreen iPod. Gadget sites like Electronista.There are also dedicated iPhone websites started by third parties: iPhonic, iPhoneworld and iPhone Atlas from the MacFixIt people.

Some articles:
Technology Review: The Secret of Apple Design by Daniel Turner (registration required)
iPhone and the Future by Frank Levinson
The iPhone keeps its cool secret by Mike Rogoway
The Unofficial Apple's Consumer Strategy
Entering iPhone Era: Marking Time in Mobile by Tomi T. Ahonen
Sun Tries to Jump on iPhone Bandwagon with jPhone by Daniel Eran

How Do You Like Them Sandwiches?
Apple is a Quiznos. It has the stores, employees, recipes, product variety, past success, reputation, and demand.

Suddenly it's obvious that the value of the iPhone isn't just that it has a clever grid of squarish icons on the front, or that it is a thin phone, but that it is an integrated product and part of an overall successful business.

Roughly Drafted: Tech: The iPhone, PDAs, Mobiles, and VoIP Telephony
The most uninformed iPhone article yet: Apple's Hype Phone by Laura Goldman
Apple's iPhone Rocks the Cell Phone Industry by Paul Carton.
January 2007: Analysis: iPhone will change the world "iPhone is a phone media centric device that confuses categories"

Love is here

Love is here
Originally uploaded by jovike.

All you need is Love, the new Beatles album.

This can't wait. If you have a hi-fi you need Love. Love is all you need. If you have an intimate knowledge of their music you will especially enjoy the mashups and segues.

Rock'n'Reel magazine has been relaunched. As they are giving away 5 CDs with a subscription in Europe, I couldn't resist this as a Christmas present to myself.

And while I'm on the Subject of Music... is by a man with a lot of CDs. And speaking of albums, I've been collecting them since 1974, so it was a big shock for me when Virgin removed its range of vinyl records from the Oxford Street megastore in London. Suddenly I didn't know what was out there anymore, without the browser bins to riffle through. It is as if iTunes were to vanish now. In 1984 the music industry promised us all the titles would come out on CD eventually, but half of them never did. Ah yes, I remember music... in the interests of bringing it back, here is one solution: Lost in Music.

Brian Eno's Neroli album is on iTunes for only £1.49! More low prices like this please.

Arthur Chisnall, Eel Pie Island promoter, 1925-2006. A good read. He also promoted independent thought, shortly to be made illegal.

The Novelty Rock Emporium is one of many blogs who put MP3 files of old records online, often sourcing music from junk stores. I love them. Some other good ones are Boot Sale Sounds currently featuring Michael Bentine and Charlie Drake and mod-ified music from 60s pop Singapore! - both these sites often include the cover art too. The Torture Garden (love it) and Feed me Good Tunes are more contemporary.

Jason Freeman had a problem: "People often ask me what music I listen to, and I find it difficult to describe my enormous music collection in just a few sentences." Luckily he is a programmer. I've given his solution iTunes Signature Maker a spin. This samples and mixes a sound file from segments of your favourite music on your computer. What for?

Maybe it will help you gauge your compatibility with your next blind date: "She seems nice enough, but her iTunes signature is just so atonal! Should I go with my heart or with my ear?" Or maybe an iTunes signature will figure prominently into a political attack ad: "If you're mad at him for raising your taxes, polluting our environment, and cutting the education budget, just wait until you hear the music he listens to…"

Here's mine: short iTunes signature; long iTunes signature. Can you identify the twenty songs? It's the same songs in both samples. (Also in WAV format if you can't do MP4: short iTunes signature; long iTunes signature.)

books... mostly sf

Triffids and Jizzle
Originally uploaded by jovike.

Elastic Press have published many of my friend Allen's books, including The Elastic Book of Numbers which has just won a BFS award, and on Saturday 4th November they have a special event to launch a new anthology with a musical theme Extended Play, edited by Gary Couzens, with an introduction by Jean-Jacques Burnel. The event features live performances from Lene Lovich, Tall Poppies and Ciccone. Ten quid for three bands and ten authors!

Another old schoolchum Nick Papadimitriou has an essay in the new book London: City of Disappearances edited by Iain Sinclair.

VISCO is the Visual Index of Science Fiction Cover Art with some good articles on various sf, fantasy, weird and horror fiction magazines. Another way to explore the cover art from VISCO is SF Cover Explorer, by Jim Bumgardner, of krazydad.com, a great programmer I met on Flickr.

I'm a member of the Penguin Paperback Spotters' Guild group on Flickr, devoted to the art and design of Penguin book covers. See also Penguin books at the Design Museum.

The University of Otago's online exhibition Straight Jackets notes that "the general neglect of book jackets has resulted in a scarcity of early examples".

Of course we would not have these fascinating images and great reads if it were not for physical books, a medium that will survive this digital age as explained in Chris Mitchell's review of Double Fold in Spike magazine. (What's coming after digital? Analogue again, probably.)

Bookshops: Fantastic Literature. They have a nice email newsletter in which old duffers like me try to remember the titles of sf stories they read as youths. For more general than genre titles, also available by the yard, try Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Road. I've been to the shop and climbed to high shelves many times. Download their enormous catalogue and read their news and trivia. Another good source is AntiQbooks.

For real sf nuts (remember Skyrack?) eFanzines are obviously fanzines online, in web or PDF format. A labour of love. Or here's a more professional magazine from the US: Locus. I keep up-to-date with science fiction with Ansible's estimable email newsletter. Sf fandom invented words like fandom and fen - the plural of fan. trufen.net is stuff for fans.

Download free science fiction books!

Why not catalog your books online in a big library thing? I did this on paper once, thirty-five years ago (no laughing please) and I can see that online you won't get the benefit of my lovely handwriting and doodles. Anyway, here's the entry for Olaf Stapledon.

Buy me a book for Christmas! Or better still, buy Elemental a short story anthology to raise funds for tsunami disaster relief with contributions by big name authors Brian W. Aldiss, David Gerrold and Larry Niven inter alia.

"We contacted Sir Arthur C. Clarke," said Kontis.

Clarke, the author of "2001: A Space Odyssey" among many other great works, lives in Sri Lanka and was directly affected by the disaster.

Savile assured the author that they were not asking him for a short story — because of his age and poor health, Clarke does not write much, if at all, anymore.

"We asked him to write the foreword," Savile said. "Within 24 hours, we heard back from him, and within another 24 hours, we had the foreword."

If you're thinking of using Writely instead of Nisus or Word or whatever to write, then head for Google Docs. Authors can collaborate online! There is a revision history and word count. Documents can be saved in plain, HTML, RTF, Word, PDF and OpenOffice formats.

Aspiring writers sometimes ask published authors which pen they use... The Write Stuff. And mind your apostrophes!

Book reviews are always to be found at The New Statesman, like this review of So Now Who Do We Vote For? by Suzanne Moore or a review of A Woman in Berlin by J. G. Ballard.

Literary blogs: many are linked to in the excellent This Space.

More Miscellany

Marconi Radio Telephone Apparatus
Originally uploaded by jovike.

Some old links that I meant to blog in 2004: these ones are still online:

Craigley Heath! This interview with Josie Lawrence with Danny Baker (from his old breakfast show on BBC Radio London), Amy Lamé and Mark O'Donnell is still there and well worth a listen. Is it life-changing? perhaps. (Real Player required) It includes an encounter with a stage-door Jenny and a priceless clip of Alec Guinness at his most misanthropic in response to a Star Wars fan. If you enjoy this sort of thing, then Danny Baker now has a show in the afternoon and the last five days are online.

The Skewed Worldview of Lubin Odana is a blog I'll be adding to the links on the side of this page. He's a bit crazy and we like the same horror films.

The Modern Antiquarian is a resource for ancient sites in the UK and Ireland, such as Avebury and Stonehenge.

The Search for the Spider Pool (NSFW) is definitely not safe for work. The beautiful location for many 1950s nude photos still has its secrets.

Dialectical sex and gender: Cunnilingus in North Korea. Interesting comments - good music too! Strangely this may be safe for work. It may be.

The dark side of Mary Poppins.

Dennis Wheatley wrote A Letter to Posterity which is linked to in this BBC feature. "Your life does not matter, but your freedom does."

Michael Moorcock's Miscellany is back up after a hacking attack. Still as difficult to navigate as ever, but worth it to keep up to date with the great man's words.

Roberts Radio Ltd. website has an interesting history section.

A reporter tries to find some good in the armpit of America.

Stream of unconsciousness: conversing with Denny's patrons. Denny's is a cafe chain in the US selling fatty sugary food - like MacDonald's but for breakfast.

Worst album covers ever including a link to ten more ghastly images.

The Human Design System seems as bad as Scientology. I wonder why people go for this stuff. HDS is supposed to draw "from science and esoteric wisdom" but no pointer is given to either.

The Hillman Imp as driven by the Man in a Suitcase.