Pete Ashton's old blog

On June 10th 2000 I started this blog, my first.

Today is June 10th 2010.

I’ve been blogging for ten years.

To mark this occasion I’m going to stop this blog. Everything will be neatly packed away and I will try my damnedest not to break any links. It’ll all still be here, all 7,377 posts (including this one) and 8,671 comments (which are now closed across the site).

Tomorrow I’ll start afresh over at iam.peteashton.com where I’ll explain a little about what I’m going to do there. But mostly I’ll be having a good stretch and runabout without 10 years of baggage cluttering up the place.

Should be fun.

(And either more or not as momentous as you might think.)

Are you the sort of person who likes sticking small pieces of paper to things? Do you also like listening to bald men play chiptunes in pubs and other venues?

Then you might be wanting an 8bit Pete sticker or two. Here’s one as part of a wider montage of stickers on a laptop computer.

To get your hands on this delight you can either:

1. Come to 8bit Lounge on the second Tuesday of the month at the Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath. The next one is, ooh, this Tuesday.
2. Ask me if you see me around the place in the off chance I’ve remembered to bring some with me that day.
3. PayPal me £1 to cover postage and the whole bother of finding an envelope and going to the postbox and that. As well an envelope with your name on it you’ll get four stickers.

   Here’s a PayPal button.

   

And then you too can have a pixelated picture of me to stick on things! Oh, the possibilities!

I was wanting a snooze earlier and to send me off was listing to a The Moth podcast which, naturally, kept me awake for the duration but that’s by the by. The setup of The Moth interests me. Here’s the story:

The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda’s porch. After moving to New York, George missed the sense of connection he had felt sharing stories with his friends back home, and he decided to invite a few friends over to his New York apartment to tell and hear stories. Thus the first “Moth” evening took place in his living room. Word of these captivating story nights quickly spread, and The Moth moved to bigger venues in New York.

Sounds a bit like Paul Murphy’s Songwriter’s Cafe only less songs, more stories. Not being a songwriter I’m more drawn towards the story side, particularly the live aspect. I’ve gotten much more comfortable talking to an audience these last few years and it seems a natural sidestep from blogging.

I was also thinking of Fray, more specifically the Fray Cafe at SXSWi which I took part in in 2008. Here a small roster of experienced storytellers provide the structure for anyone to come up and perform. The only rule is it must be a true story and it must be under 5 minutes.

When I did my Fray stint my legs were wobbling and typing this now the idea of telling a story on stage scares me a little, and I think that’s a good thing. So I want to see this happen.

The question is where? We’ve got a fire pit at the bottom of the garden ripe for some late night action. The MAC seems open to small scale activites of a cultural bent. Maybe something inbetween?

Consider this the planting of a seed. Let me know if it grows into anything.

Update: Fi’s pointed out the Storytelling Cafe at Kitchen Garden Cafe which is nice and local but seven pounds? Really?

Outcrowd Collective artists doing art at Supersonic 2008 – photo by Abrinsky

Today I had a nice chat with a guy whose name I’ve completely forgotten who’s putting on a one day music festival the name of which I’ve completely forgotten. (It’s been that sort of a month really. If/when the details emerge in my brain or in the comments I’ll add them here.) I do know it’s happening at the Rainbow Warehouse in Digbeth in, I think, September. He’s thinking getting a bunch of artists, in the non-musical sense, to do something. He didn’t know which artists and he didn’t know what he wanted them to do, he just thought it would be a keen thing to do in the space under the arches.

For some reason he was asking me for advice, I guess because I’ve been running a shop that has had artists doing things, although to be honest I’ve been reacting to artists wanting to do things rather than going out and asking them. But I gave it my best go. Here’s what I suggested.

Talk to the musicians. See if they know or like any particular artists who might be suitable. Follow those trails of recommendations.

Ask the artists what they’d like to do. Some might want to do a big mural over the day, some might want to sell their work from a table. Tailor the space to them rather than expected them to adapt to your vision.

Look out for a collective or similar of artists who might be able to look after the whole space themselves.

Think about the sort of people coming to the event. What sort of things are they likely to buy? Jewellery? T-shirts? Vintage hats? Kitschy novelties? Rare vinyl?

Talk to people who have played with this model before. I know Supersonic have artists alongside the festival and I think Shambala have done similar things (must go to the latter some time).

That was about it. I’m sure there are people with actual proper advice out there but, hey, that’s what I reckon.

Last night I was honoured, and I don’t use that word lightly, to be invited to Paul Murphy‘s house for his Songwriter’s Cafe. More accurately it was held in a purpose built room under his treehouse at the bottom of the garden with a stage and fire pit. A cadre of top quality musicians played for us and each other from old-school folkies to new young kids. It was quite magical and special and just what I needed.

I was enjoying the music too much to take notes of who was playing so credits will have to come later but they were all top notch and the “audience of peers and friends” vibe made a change from the usual them-and-us dynamic of a gig (not that one is better than the other).

23 photo in this set and here’s the slideshow.

Because it’s in his home it’s invite only, sadly, which could lead to accusations of elitism and all that crap. But on the other hand it’s private-ish happenings like this that build the social and artistic foundations for a vibrant culture in the city. It’s just rather than use his living room Paul just build a venue in his garden to do it in.

We went for an evening stroll around the neighbourhood and noticed a gap in the fence of what was, I learned from Fi, the site of the former Philip Harris Medical Centre in Stirchley. It’s here on the map and it now looks like this:

Recently I’ve been on the lookout for interesting bits of metal. I’m not sure why, other than random bits of metal have always interested in me in some way. So, having explained to Fi that I couldn’t explain what made a piece of metal interesting, I’d just know when I saw it, we had a bit of a hunt.

Here’s the results.

What I’ll do with these I do not know. Maybe turn them into some kind of arty art. Maybe store them in a ice-cream tub in the shed. But there they are. Interesting pieces of metal.

One good thing to come out of that unfortunate incident with the councilor and the status-updating platform was the lodging in my brain of the phrase “Creative Industry Smuggerati”.

I would take issue with the narrow geographic parameters – most of the smug creative types live in the Heaths of Kings or Balsall or, in my case the non-Heath of Stirchley where the rents are cheaper – but the rest of it is pure gold.

Creative Industry Smuggerati. Perfect.

And it’s certainly better than the Twitterati nonsense that was going around last year.