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January 2012
Mini-rant first.....Whatever happened to MySpace? Sure it’s still there in some shape or form....I still use it for my listings... but do you notice how it hardly ever gets mentioned any more almost as if it didn’t matter and had never existed when in truth it was never off people’s lips as the premier website for promoting music and acts?
I thought it a very useful facility for musicians but these Internet people run around with the goalposts all the while as it suits them and punt what they want to see in the forefront of communication technology for you and I to use as the industry standard.
Can we put a date on the all-change to Facebook? You’d be amazed how it was such a short while ago that none of us were using it but not any more. When I say ‘using’ for me that means finding my way around by default because it never feels straightforward or simplistic. It takes up far too much of our time but that’s how they plan it to work...you can become a slave to it and the providers are pleased that it grabs you like that. And then the gossiping starts. And my word there ARE some gossipers on the folk scene in England.
But the way the internet, and MySpace and Facebook especially, allows for the development of self-importance-without-substance in this celebrity-driven society we have, is probably the biggest disappointment to me about something that is a useful facility when you have it under control!!
I’m now doing what I said I was looking to achieve in the short term and that’s playing less actual gigs but ones of far greater quality especially where real musical appreciation is concerned. So it’s fast becoming a long-term reality too. The downside for me personally is that it means less gigs but then I’m no chicken and heading in the direction of pensionable age anyway so as a job of work like many in later life it naturally becomes something you will do less.
The irony of this being that less application comes at a time in your life when you have the most experience and from my own point of view I’m a far more rounded, developed and craft-full player than I ever was. But gigs still do come in both for me solo and the duo with Fraser Speirs. And we think they’ll pick-up a bit when the new CD is in the public domain and doing its promotional job.
Wonderful books I’ve waited for... for a very long time ...have appeared in the last few months. Both are biographies ....Mississippi John Hurt by Philip R Ratcliffe and Big Bill Broonzy by Bob Reisman. I can’t tell you how good they are following on from last year and the Blind Willie McTell biography Hand Me My Travlin’ Shoes by Michael Gray and one about Doc Watson too. Superb research and presentation from exceptional authors! Oh...and a new CD from Ry Cooder too!
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