Obviously what radiohead have done is significant and laudable, but they're a big, rich successful band. They can do what they like. What's more encouraging about the internet and music are the ways that the smaller bands and less well known musicians can find new ways to have careers and offer their music. One lovely example is this site from Erik Friedlander, promoting his Block Ice and Propane album. Except promoting's the wrong word, it's more a site that 'fills out' the album with pictures, stories, remixes and atmosphere. And it too, offers you various ways to buy.
I came across it on this Studio 360 show loosely themed about road-trips and it does seem to nicely evoke the spirit of the drive, both the solitary night-drive and the country jaunt. He gets great noises out of his cello and the atmosphere is somewhat similar to what The Portico Quartet do (and they've got a new album out soon too.) It's worth having a listen.
I've enjoyed catching up with the Studio360 podcast today. A couple of bits caught my ear. This show has a great interview with Herbie Hancock, which reveals how his training as an electrician helped his career and how Maiden Voyage (which he'd say is his best piece) was written as soundtrack for a Yardley Cologne ad.
And Ben'll like the feature in this show on the redesign of the font for the US interstate sign system. Graphic design saving lives, that's what we want.
Here's one of the last bits of Interesting that doesn't require some tricky editing (like what am I going to do with Lloyd's bit?) and I know it was a favourite 20 minutes for many people. It's Jennifer Lyon Bell (with Jeffre) offering 9 Tips For Making A Better Erotic Movie.
I wonder if the words 'erotic movie' are going to attract a different flavour of comment spam.
I'm sorry about the absence of the last bits of interesting. The only delay is me, we're now getting to the bits that require trickier editing. But, to keep you doing, Dave has put his slides up on slideshare and synced them with his audio. Which means you can see the very rare missing few minutes from the video (due to tape change). It's like some sort of rare Dylan bootleg. (Picture above is Dave, but it's better of his camera.)
So I bought a Wattson yesterday. Partly out of enthusiasm over the new Howies shop, partly out of genuine ambient eco-curiosity, but quite a lot so I'd have something to talk about at this tomorrow. It's a simple, clever thing that tells you how much electricity you're using. It tells you in £s, it tells you in watts, and it tells you with an ambient glow. And it's incredibly simple to set up. The video above is the Wattson in our kitchen (dig the crazy worksurface) with me turning the fluorescent light on and off. So the figures represent what our annual bill would be if we left it on the whole time, versus sitting in the dark for a year.
In some ways it's just a silly, indulgent, middle-class eco-worrier, gadget freak toy. It's been perfectly possible to sensibly manage your electricity consumption for years. It's just we never have.
And the Wattson makes it a playful, easy activity. So far we've sat and asked ourselves, how much is our annual bill? do we know? how many watts do we use? is that above or below average? how much are we actually paying for our electricity? (the machine defaults to a typical UK price but can be adjusted). This is stuff that a lot of people just don't think about that much.
And then immediately we started playing with it, because it's presence encourages you to think about your consumption. Arthur insisted that the first thing we did was see how low we can get it:
That's everything in the flat turned off, except for the fridge. And the Wattson itself, which is obviously, slightly ironic. It's made us all much more conscious about what we're leaving on and what we're using. And I don't think it's just a novelty, I think it might be like driving a hybrid car, where the interface gives you a different implied goal in the game of driving - maximum fuel efficiency.
The website says that there will soon be a community aspect to the Wattson, and it's got a USB hole which must be useful for something. I'm hoping it'll be a way to see how your consumption compares to others, which will also be useful, but, more importantly, it'll be competitive, like nike+. Then it'll really be fun.
The big problem with it at the moment is the unit price, it's a lot, £150. That makes it mostly a bourgeois indulgence. But hopefully that's just the effect of it being a fringe-ish device not expecting to sell a lot of units. Once this idea kind of idea is embedded into every fusebox or fridge as a low-cost, component then it might start to make a difference to the way we play with and use electricity. Because it obviously be ideal if we didn't try and solve every consumption problem by buying new, powered gadgets.
I know I mention In Business quite a lot, but the programme this week is one you really have to listen to - it's about craft. Not in the potter's wheel sense (not that there's anything wrong with that) but in the sense of 'doing things well, for the sake of doing them well'. And it seems very relevant to what a lot of people who read this do. It starts with an interview with Professor Richard Sennett and it's great stuff. He talks about the way we think through touching and holding things and doing stuff with them, how 'we don't proceed from principles to particulars', how long-term profits come from quality and how to many businesses separate people with power from people with knowledge. Great stuff. And the programme backs it up with good examples.
But it was rammed home to me because just after I listened to it I watched a programme with Stephen Fry talking about Abba. And how good they were. (You can see him for yourself above) He talks about how they were good because 'they were better than they needed to be'. Their dedicated pursuit of pop craft led to their being some undefinable elevated quality to what they did. Something that made it better than the typical pop culture. And I think it's that craft focus and dedication that makes for a great ad too. It's when something's been done that makes it better than it needed to be just to achieve the short-term goals of awareness, or whatever. It's what transforms it into something that contributes to the broader culture rather than just sucking life from it. Which, in the long-term tends to make it more effective anyway.
