peteashtondotcom

Its approaching. The moment when I vacate The Bournville Flat. It will be an emotional time tempered by the lugging of boxes, as such events often are.

If you would like to help then the move is taking place on Wednesday morning at 9.30am. I have hired Call-Me-Edward, the man w/van who helped Andy move, and I don’t have a huge amount of stuff but the more hands the better. For those who have assisted me in the past, be reassured that I have downsized a lot over the years. And I appreciate that the likelihood of people with normal jobs being free on a Wednesday morning is slim but you never know.

I think lunch at the local pub will be in order afterwards.

Interesting item pointed to by The Stirrer. Our local newspaper in Birmingham looks to be moving it’s printing away from being “live” in a cost cutting exercise. Currently the Mail is printed a few hours before it’s distributed across the city in the afternoon but there are plans to shift the printing to the night before. The NUJ is rather concerned that this will “damage their hard-fought reputation for journalistic quality and credibility”. Which is odd because I thought we were talking about the Birmingham Mail. But it’s a point worth thinking about.

A bit of background - the Birmingham Post and Birmingham Mail, along with a gamut of other Midlands newspapers, were part of Trinity Mirror for a long while but TM decided they didn’t want them any more. Rather than be snapped up by another massive media company they’ve gone for a management buyout with private equity funds. Part of this funding is, presumably, a requirement to modernise. Given that I understand the papers are produced on beige Macs running OS 9 with the journalists having to share the one PC that can run an modern browser this is a fairly reasonable requirement. They’ll also have to sort out something to replace the god-awful icNetwork all TM papers have been lumbered with for years. In short, the Post and Mail group is about to join the 21st Century in a hurry.

I have no stats to hand whatsoever but it’s not unreasonable to assume that sales are down for local papers. I’d imagine their average readership is old and getting older and the honey-pot of the Thursday Jobs edition of the Mail is losing its essential value as the internet takes over that market. If they’re going to survive then they need an internet strategy, just as the Nationals are doing. In other words there has to be a shift from paper to bytes.

I wonder how important it is for a local evening paper to be printed at the last minute? In the old days there was a value to this as you couldn’t get indepth news about the issues of the day without buying one. Now when something major happens everyone goes online. There’s also the fact that a newspaper is already out of date the moment it comes off the presses, let alone makes it into the shops. Would a twelve hour delay really make any difference? I’m not sure.

That said, I’m also slightly confused as to how this becomes a cost-saving exercise since surely printing is printing. Maybe they’re hoping to move the printing to a cheaper operation outside of the city, but then that brings in transportation costs.

I should point out that I have no love lost for the Mail. It’s a shite tabloid that I can’t bare to read. But the broadsheet Post has the potential to be an interesting and vital force on the Birmingham media scene. If it can take what works for the Guardian and Telegraph and apply it on a local level, from up to the minute news to community building, while maintaining a revenue stream through online ads that can only be a good thing for the journalists and the city as a whole. And if that requires diverting funds from a printed paper than I’ve personally never bought then so be it.

It occurred to me that while my blogging has been fairly prolific these last few weeks I haven’t done a me post for a while and, for once, things are at least mildly interesting.

You’ll remember that I’m in the process of not living in Bournville anymore. Well, I’m still here but only until the end of the month. Then I’ll be living in Moseley. I’d pretty much narrowed my choices down to Moseley and Bearwood, Bearwood because I really liked living there circa 1999 and Moseley because given the sort of nu-media-wank work I’m doing these days there’s a lot of that sort of stuff going on there. But Moseley won out mainly because it’s easier to get into Digbeth where I expect to be spending most of my time over the next year, not just by bike but on the Number 50 bus. Although to be honest I’m as much in Kings Heath as Moseley. My new street will be Cambridge Road where the main access points to the wider world lead out in Kings Heath. I delivered Moseley in Bloom leaflets there though so I know it’s really Moseley. Not that these things matter one iota but I suspect my locals will be the Hare and Hounds and The Station rather than the Prince. I’ll also, it turns out, be living near Rich Batsford, which is nice as he’s a touchstone for the non-wank Moseley scene and a general good egg. The Mighty Matt and Marv will be across the way but only for a couple of months before they bugger off to Angouleme. Such is life.

The flat is self contained so I’m living on my own but it’s within a larger house with give or take 10 flats and there’s a communal staircase. I had to sign a document declaring essentially that I wouldn’t be an arsehole, socially speaking, which was a nice touch. Apparently it had been drawn up by the other tenants themselves rather then being imposed from above. Nothing major - just the sort of things that would piss me off too. The flat is a bit weird. It’s two rooms but they both open out onto the landing, so I effectively have two front doors. One for the bedroom and one for the kitchen. This was a bit odd at first but I quickly became sold on the idea. The kitchen is pretty large so I can set up an office in there, keeping my work separate and leaving the bedroom as a refuge from the world. We’ll see how it pans out.

Work wise the Custard Factory site is coming along well. I’m pretty much working at home on it but it’s all tedious hacking rather that creative writing right now. I’d forgotten how much I really don’t enjoy this sort of thing anymore but the novelty of new systems is almost making up for it and at least this way I have total control over how the thing works. Given that it’s going to evolve dramatically as it starts being used this is pretty essential. I’m going for a two pronged approach. Wordpress is running the main frontage with a blog but everything else is going in a Wiki, running on MediaWiki, the same software that runs Wikipedia. I figured there’s going to be a lot of information about the Custard Factory going on the site from tenants to the history to the development and everything else, both physically and spiritually, if you like. Figuring out a structure for this, especially before anything has been written, was doing my head in and a wiki seemed the best way to go. Again, we’ll see how it pans out. Hacking MediaWiki is fun though, in a bashing you head against a badly written manual kind of way. One day someone will figure out a way to make money from documenting open source projects and they’ll be a millionaire. The site is supposed to soft-launch on August 1st but I’m moving around then so it might not. Depends how the prettyfication period goes.

Back to the living thing, I’ve been on my own in the Bournville Flat now for three weeks and, truth be told, I’m loving it. Partly it’s because this flat really rocks and I don’t want to leave and partly it’s because I’ve got loads of space and can do what I want with it. I’ve moved my bed down to the (massive) living room after sleeping in the cramped but stylish loft and am really enjoying the whole “walking around naked” thing. Maybe I’m making a bigger deal of this than is becoming but having shared a house for so long it’s a rather special novelty.

But I really don’t want to leave. I’d happily stay in this place forever. But that’s not going to happen. Even if I could cover the whole rent the flat is tied into the shop downstairs so whoever takes that takes this place too. And there doesn’t seem to be too much movement in that department right now. It seems the Bournville Village Trust, who own the property, have been paid so they’re not bothered what happens and the receiver for my old landlord hasn’t gotten in touch yet. The sensible action is to just get out, which I’m doing, but it’s going to be a wrench.

Still, I had my two years here in this special place, and that’s enough to be grateful for. There won’t be another like it, though. That much I can be sure of.

What else.

Oh yeah, the Creative City Awards. That’s a blog post it and of itself but I know I’ll never get around to writing it. Suffice to say Pete was invited to attend this big awards ceremony celebrating Birmingham’s creative businesses. He was invited by the Birmingham Post to sit at their table, though he didn’t realise this at the time and was wondering what he hell he was doing at a drinks reception in the International Convention Centre wearing a dinner jacket and bow tie that hadn’t seen the light of day since 1997.

But it all worked out well. It seems the Post has a new editor who, unlike most of Birmingham’s great and good, is rather on the ball and they’re in the process of extricating them from the national behemoth Trinity Mirror group, going the private equity route so they’ll be an independent organisation rather than part of a massive media conglom. So regardless of my personal merits it’s interesting that they invited a blogger along. They really should be talking to Paul Bradshaw though since he’s the preeminent expert in this field in the region, and I’ve told them as such.

The awards themselves were frankly bizarre, not for the prizes given which were all fair enough for this sort of thing but for the presentation, generally done by local broadcasting stars from the region who aren’t Nick Ross. The cheeze was tangible as tin-pot radio DJs and local news presenters did that minor celebrity chummy thing in pubic but at least you knew you weren’t missing anything when you talked over them. (Notable exception being Ed Doolan but I got the feeling he was just barely tolerating the bollocks.) When Heart FM breakfast DJ Ed James stepped up to present something I nearly ran up and beat him with sticks, but I couldn’t find any sticks and it probably wouldn’t have gone down well. I still haven’t forgiven him for that time I was working in the tampon factory in Alum Rock on the 6am shift, forced to listen to the inane ramblings of the motherfucker for hours on end. God, I hate that man.

And the event was topped off with a tacky 70s disco at which point nearly everybody left the massive hall and hung out in the rather more cramped lobby. It felt like a transitional thing, where the old guard were putting this on in their own way but were celebrating the new young turks who they didn’t quite understand. I guess in 20 years time we’ll the old gits being joked at by young arseholes like me. Such is progress.

But the rest of the evening, fueled by plenty of free-to-me booze, went well. Loads of people seem to know about Created in Birmingham these days, which is nice but a bit weird, and it was good to meet up with some folks for the first time. It was especially good to chat to John Mostyn who, quite frankly, is a fucking loon and wonderful for it. He’s one of those people you wish would write a book, even if it’s just about his getting repeatedly kicked out of the Brit Awards, but I suspect he’s far too busy doing interesting things to get around to that. I like him.

And so, after starting the evening wondering what the fuck he was doing there and regretting missing what he suspects was a killer gig in Kings Heath, Pete found himself one of the last to leave at 1am feeling well fed, slightly pissed and curious as to whether this makes him part of the bloody establishment now.

Steve Albini plays poker and is part of an online commiunity of poker players. One day he said ask me anything and ask they did.

This starts off like a lovely pub conversation with a fascinating guy and even though it gets a little tedious once the music nerds discover it there’s still a lot of good stuff all the way to the bottom. Be warned, if you like and admire Albini (as I do) you’ll be reading this for a good hour or so.

Some quotes:

Downloading and the culture of free music have affected the income of record labels, but the street-level music scene (as defined by bands, entrepreneurial independent record labels, studios like mine, etc.) is doing great. Bands have an easier time than ever getting their music out into the world, and bands don’t even need a label to have an international following. It’s actually a great time to be in a band.

On the detachment needed to record music you love:

While the recording is underway, I’m like a gynecologist, and it would be inappropriate for me to be getting turned-on by the vagina I’m working on at the moment. I need to have a different relationship with the vagina.

On computers:

I don’t use computers to make records. I use tape machines, like nature intended. I use computers for correspondence, arguments, poker and porn.

This one I particularly like. Kinda applies to my attitude to blogging. Kinda.

I am convinced that any decent art (including records) is made with a measure of disregard for its audience. Good art is an almost entirely selfish pursuit, in that the artist is doing something unique to him, and any outside perspective (this “objective” one) would be ignorant and unable to judge it completely. Having seen many bands go through the process, I am convinced that making concessions to the imaginary audience (or any “objective” considerations) almost always weakens the record.

And on finding new music generally I can attest to this being the truth:

If you wait for other people to thrust music under your nose, you’ll be listening to nothing but crap for a long while, because that’s what gets thrust at us. Music is not a spectator sport.

Finally, a couple of links to posts that made me smile:

• Steve Albini’s advice on how to mic a tuba
• Steve Albini on Tina Turner’s Private Dancer

Go read and learn.

via Waxy.