Oh. (Russ L going to and fro in the Earth)

I’m sure anyone likely to be reading this encounters a lot of blogging-about-blogging (socialicus medius) as they safari across the internet savanna in search of fluffy little zebras to shoot, but I ain’t down with that. As the observant may have noticed, lately I’ve mostly been blogging-about-not-blogging (needlessius apologia). This is a newstyle and I get the feeling it’ll catch on. I am a pioneer. As in so many other instances, in a few years time you’ll see celebrities doing exactly what I did a few years ago. Or now, rather. I am currently doing what they will have once done. In the future they will find themselves having done what I did prior to them doing it. Or something.

Friction sparks a-fly as I return to the point - I apologise to anyone who might want to be apologised to about the current dearth of posting ( “No-one”, I suspect). I think I’m going to try to smash everything together into a few themed digest posts to get everything written about soon (hopefully before Supersonic). These will, of course, be crap, but obviously I don’t want to risk never-having-existed like all those people who are foolish enough not to document their lives on the internet.

To keep you amused in the meantime, have a bit of Swells:

“The scam that is the music industry is being gang-raped in every orifice by millions of baggy-trousered cybermonkeys. Economists reckon that by the year 2013 these stripey-jumpered virtual burglars will have stolen all our money back and spent it on lap dances and sweets. This is undoubtedly a good thing. But what about all the slack arsed chancers who blagged their way into the music industry and are now facing the screaming fucking nightmare of having to get real jobs?”

Catch you on the flipside, dudemeisters.

1) RSS Feeds - This continues on from this post, I suppose. RSS feeds have indeed now found a place in my life. It’s mostly of use when it comes to blogs that I don’t look at all that often, and that use is mainly the fact that I can see straight away when they’ve been updated. When it comes to ones I look at regularly, I haven’t really changed my behaviour. Maybe I will over time. What I’m a-wondering about now is whether or not this will affect my Blogroll down the side there. That’s long needed a bit of thinking about (it doesn’t list all of the blogs I read, and isn’t necessarily even my favourite ones) and a subsequent re-organisation when I’ve decided on a philosophy for it, though.

It’s slight annoying that they don’t display as the original webpages would (is that feed-readers in general, or just Bloglines?), but even that’s not all bad – it’s a positive blessing if the original site has music or videos or whatever-have-you that start to play automatically (I hate all that malarkey). There seem to be a few blogs that just won’t update in the feed-reader (irrespective of which of their feeds I add to it), but I suppose I can live with that.

Ultimately – yes, I like RSS. I haven’t yet found it to be the revolution in internet useage that it’s often described as, but it’s quite handy.

2) Twitter - “if I’m not careful I’ll find myself on effing Twitter or something next” I remarked in that abovelinked post. Turns out I was already signed up to it. I was looking at Jez’ Twitter page and realised that he was following one RussL. After one of those lovely edge-of-desk-gripping knuckles-whitening whattheforksgoingonhere justaminutenowholdup bursts of paranoia that I do so well, I remembered (I genuinely had forgotten) that I’d previously signed up to Twitter for Live Birmingham updates (something that never really took off, sadly).

I decided to have a bit of play with it. For me, Twitter has become the place for ‘little bits that don’t justify a blog post’. I have a vague compulsion to document most of my life (in my saner moments I realize that I probably shouldn’t be encouraged. World At Large: please don’t invent anything else along these lines), but I’m usually sensible enough not to actually make a post on the blog for something like “Just ordered my chicken, lamb & prawn Madras (+ sundries) from The Rowley Village. I’ve been looking forward to this so much”. I can now stick it on Twitter. Other than that, it’s just been replying to other people’s Tweets.

I don’t have other people’s messages sent to my mobile telephone; I find receiving a text message that wasn’t directed specifically to me a strangely invasive experience. Plus there’s the fact that my mobile often sits unchecked in my coat pocket for long lengths of time (and I never turn the sound on) – I’d fish it out to find about 381 out-of-date tweets to have to delete. I have set it up so that I can post messages by text (it took me a few attempts but I got there), but that’ll only happen in a month where I have free ones (every second or third, generally). I can’t imagine spending credit on this, even if it is quite fun.

There you are, then – I’m either a twit or a tweetie-bird. My Twitter page is here, or you can see the last however-many down there in the sidebar.

I can’t believe you get spam ‘followers’ on the bloody thing, though. I mean… what?

I’m still can’t really see how it’s supposed to be any was more convenient than just clicking down my blogroll on the right there, but since I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about RSS I’ll have a go (with Bloglines - is that the right way to go about it?). I suppose that this way I am told when there’s something new appearing, but there are some blogs I habitually visit frequently and some I’m only likely to check every now and then. I already find myself there in time to see everything new or new-ish with the former, and more than happy to receive the lot in one go with the latter. I’m not sure that the new method will make a fat lot of difference to me.

The backgrounds of the pages don’t display as they do in real internets. I don’t like that. I may be doing something wrong, though.

‘Ark at ‘er, getting all technological. Changing the blog’s template, playing with RSS… if I’m not careful I’ll find myself on effing Twitter or something next.

~ Russ L

EDIT: My feed-reader doesn’t seem to be keeping up-to-date with the actual blogs. Ho hum.

I’m not convinced, though. I will have to think about this.

(EDIT: By ‘theme’ I mean ‘template for the visual design of this blog’, of course)

Apparently this blog has been indexed on something called BlogShares.com and someone called Pat Bateman has bet on me.

I’m not entirely convinced I like the sound of this.

What is the etiquette to be followed when one appears in your comments box?

I usually leave them there for a little while before deleting them. No particular reason, it’s just that I know that they can appear confusing to someone who doesn’t know what they are (I was baffled beyond belief the first couple of times I saw one). Should I be leaving them permanently, though?

Thoughts would be appreciated.

I just started a TumblR page.

I’m not sure for how long I’ll be bothered to attend to it (the thought occurs that 99% of everything posted to it will either be stuff that could go on the Delicious Page/linklog or just stuff pinched directly off I Can Has Cheezburger), but we’ll see how it goes.

I promised Meatloaf by this point but have failed. Sorry. Please note that my waffling about that particular gig isn’t likely to be anything any greater than usual; it’s just that, y’know, it’ll be about Meatloaf. That’s surely enough.

Me saying “my waffling about that particular gig” rather than “my review of that particular gig” is important. I do not consider anything I write on this ‘ere blog to be a review (and if I ever do, it will be under a very specific rubric announcing as such). I’m not quite pedantic enough (I’m very pedantic, but not quite this pedantic) to correct everyone who uses the word ‘review’ in a comment or whatever-have-you, as has happened many times, but it’s certainly not how I view anything written here. The trouble with announcing this is that I don’t have any sort of specific criteria of what I consider reviews to be, but whatever they are this blog definitely hasn’t involved any so far. It’s a series of “What I did on my holidays” style ramblings (although ironically enough I didn’t write a fat lot about what I did on my holidays).

The thing that has brought this to mind was a message I received recently from Dave of the new Robot Professor outfit, who are putting on some gigs at the skate park in Moseley. I was asked if I wanted to review the first one. I demurred, and pointed out a couple of other people who might be interested. This brings us on to the second stage of this little ramble – I’ve written about music on request before (when I was involved with The Communion) and have had very mixed feelings about it. There are good things – you get loads of free stuff and get your witty, witty oh-so witty quips read by far more people than would do so on something like a personal blog – but there are plenty of bad things too. The immediate problem lies in having to think of something to write about yet another entirely mediocre rock band (those are the hard ones. Of any given ten CDs you receive, one will be good, one will be bad, and the other eight will be nondescript beyond belief. It may sound silly, but the bad ones are better - at least you can think of something to say. I recall when I was at school a kid told me he thought music was bad if he listened to it and thought it was average. At the time, I thought and told him that was stupid – if you listen to it and find it average, then surely it’s just average? – but I now know exactly what he means. This has been a long bracket. Thank you for sticking with me), and the longer-term problem arises out of this.

I used to think I liked a lot more music than I disliked, and I suppose that in so far as my experiences went (and what other evidence could we use for this?) I actually did. In retrospect, of course, I can see that was only because I had my own filter. I’ve never bought an album ‘at random’ – it has always been because I’ve read something about the band or heard something by them that has led me to think that I would like it. This doesn’t provide a 100% strike rate, obviously, but there is at least some sort of filtering process going on. When one starts getting sent an entirely random selection of gubbins (weeeelllll… a selection of gubbins determined by the cumulative effect of several other filters that may as well be random, if we’re going for precision), one begins to realise that most of the music in the world is simply not of interest. It is very hard to refrain from becoming hugely cynical.

Erm… It does say in the title that this is mostly blah, and I’m not sure where I’m going with it all. I suppose the upshot of all this is for me to point out that I’m not about to go and write about anyone’s gig on request. If I go, I’ll write something, although it may consist purely of a list of the shiny objects I was distracted by over the course of the evening.

Having said that, if someone has a general topic they’d be interested to see me write about then please feel free to stick it in the comments. I suffer from an appalling lack of imagination and find it very difficult to think of that sort of thing myself. I know no-one wakes up wondering what Russ L’s thoughts are about any given topic, but if anyone does want to throw me a bone then feel free.

These Robot Professor sorts, anyway. They’re putting on some gigs at The Epic Skate Park in Moseley (my map), and for some reason beyond me I do feel slightly bad about having to have said no to their request, so here’s a plug. I’m not as keen on them not putting the last band on till quarter to eleven and by the looks of the bands being booked I assume that the term ‘post-rock’ can be used to describe ‘any band at all, whatsoever’ these days, but there’s potential for great fun here. Of the bands they’ve got booked over the next few months I would especially recommend Mothertrucker, Mills & Boon and The Arm, and there are lots of bands new-to-me to discover too. I won’t be at the first one ‘cos I’m going to see Travis at The Academy this Friday (yeah, bite me), but I definitely hope to make it to a few of them after that.

A quick round-up post, methinks. I haven’t felt a lot of enthusiasm for doing this just lately (this may or may not be apparent from the even-lower-than-usual standard of writing), but I’m off on holiday next week (hurrah!) so I want to be up to date before then.

There’s been food and drink. Maxine took me to Las Iguanas as a belated birthday present (that’s not so bad. It was only at this outing that I actually handed over her Christmas present…), which despite being a generally South American (rather than specifically Mexican) place really reminded me of Chiquito. I don’t know why. It just did. I had a tiger prawns in lemon type thing for a starter, anyway, and steak fajitas for a main. All very nice. The tortillas were a little bit on the small side, though. Last Saturday, following another nice pie at The Old Joint Stock, I went with the parentals to the Moseley Beer Festival, which (despite going in the middle of the afternoon) I was expecting to be a hell of a lot more busy than it was. I’m told they were a lot busier at other times in the weekend, though. Quite a few nice things were sampled, with ‘Spring Zing’ from Hopback being a highlight.

There’s been music. I went to The Civic on Sunday the 8th. Very short preliminary sets from 4Sure (locals, of ‘X-Factor’ fame. I really wanted to like them more than I did) and Megan Rochell (someone get that girl a pie) passed by without fireworks. Boyz II Men were my main reason for going, although when I actually stopped and thought about for a moment I realised that the only song of theirs I knew was “End Of The Road” (I do love that a lot, though). A few more seemed familiar during their set, though, and they were quite fun. Not amazing but quite fun. Joint-headlining with them and on last was Brian McKnight, none of whose music or hits I could recall at all. Nothing he sang sounded familiar, either, but it didn’t seem any great loss – R. Kelly style “Lots of emoting, very little emotion” type stuff. Last night I went to Symphony Hall, to hear some Elgar courtesy of the Philharmonia under Sir Andrew Davis. I got as indignant as the next man about them taking old Eddie off the back of the twenty in this of all years, but the thought occurred that I’d never actually been to hear any of his music performed. We got “Prelude And Angel’s Farewell” from “The Dream Of Gerontius,” the “Sea Pictures” song cycle, and after the interval his 1st Symphony. I enjoyed the first two a lot, but got a bit lost during the actual symphony – there’s a lot, and I mean a lot, to try and follow. It might be one to sit down with a bit more; perhaps familiarity will make the themes easier to track.

So there you go. Nothing worth reading there, but I’m up to date now and can thus bugger off to Stranraer for a bit. Cheerio, gang.

I usually add to and subtract from my list o’ blogs (over on the right there, in the sidebar. Assuming you’re on the main page of this, that is) one at a time, but quite a few new ones have found their way into it just lately and so I’ve just had a bit of a deleting sweep (getting rid of a few that I can’t say I honestly look at anymore, and a few that seem to be inactive and aren’t by people I happen to know).

Have a quick glance at a few from the new streamlined list. They all contain some good stuff.