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.)

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

May 26th sees 8bit Pete engaged by Art Detection Services at The Vaults to provide music entertainment as they judge the goodness or otherwise of Art using their bespoke Art Detector Machines.

I have no idea what to expect of this evening but having had Matt Moore, CEO of ADS, resident in the CiB Shop last month I expect it to be full of many funs. And bleeps.

More info on the Vaults events page

“Today we are not just announcing a new government and new ministers. We are announcing a new politics. A new politics where the national interest is more important than party interest, where co-operation wins out over confrontation, where compromise, give and take, reasonable, civilised, grown-up behaviour is not a sign of weakness but of strength.”

I found this notable as it’s exactly, to the letter, what I’ve been longing for from our political systems. I’m not optimistic, I have to say. Even if Cameron and Clegg mean it there are people in their parties who will sabotage this kind of behaviour at the first opportunity. But this statement is by which I will judge the behaviour of this government. Good luck chaps.

Which got me thinking. While I have been repeatedly disappointed by the quality of some of the local politicians in this fair city a few have impressed me with their intelligence and wisdom.

The thing is you can’t use party lines to divide them up. It might seem like the Tories have a monopoly on all idiocy in Brum but a generally quite socialist friend of mine voted for a Tory councilor last week because he was a good man. And to be fair Labour councilors have been rather quiet in the last few years.

We need another criteria which is why I’m proposing a list. The Politicians In Birmingham Who Are Not Fucking Idiots or PWIBANFI list.

First on the list is Tom Watson for bothering to understand what this Internet thing is all about and how it might relate to society.

Who else should be on it?

It’s all in the eyes.

I took loads of photos. Loads and loads and loads. It was like the good old days when I just let the shutter snap away with nary a care for what it might be capturing because what was on stage be worth it. Here’s the full set and here’s the slideshow, in reverse time order.

Recently he completed a blogging project. As someone who has dabbled in the odd blogging project over the years and failed on numerous occasions, and given the aforementioned man-affection, I feel not obliged but honoured to make formal note of this achievement. I shall let Paul explain by quoting the email he just sent to his mailing list. (Now on his blog too.)

In November 2006, after an impetuous ill-thought out bid on eBay, I won the first 1188 programmes of 2000 AD. Rather than just have them sit piled up in my bedroom collecting dust tormenting me about how much money I had spent on them, I decided I was obliged to read them all. I thought, rather than just read them why not blog about the experience too. So, I started the 2000 AD Prog Slog Blog where I review every other issue of the Galaxy’s greatest comic and many of it’s associated publications.

So far so good. Many obsessives have trod these planks before. It’s the next paragraph that illuminates, for me, the reason Paul makes my heart do a man-throb.

Well, after three and a half years of thrill power intensity turning my mind into a boggled mess and over 700 entries , the blog is due to come to it’s intended conclusion this weekend. Of course, I would like to tell you how proud I am to have got this far but there’s a part of me that feels ashamed at having used up so much time on a project which, let’s face it, is obsessive and stupid. All I can say for certain is, ‘it’s been emotional’ and ‘thank God it’s over’.

Let’s hear it for Paul. Not only has he done something stupid, he knew it was stupid yet still saw it through to the end without anyone forcing him. Now that’s heroic.

I mentioned above that Paul is a cartoonist, which of course is how I know him. If you fancy some self-loathing laffs from a man who lives in Milton Keynes seemingly out of choice you could do worse than order his Book Of Lists for a mere £10.95.

Well done Paul.

There are many reasons for doing this. Some are outside of out control, some are completely within our control, but one of them can be best illustrated by this photograph taken of me on Saturday evening after our busiest day on record.

You’ll notice the distant stare, the nervous rubbing of the arms, the given-up-on-being-defensive, wounded posture.

Actually, let’s zoom in and enhance that face:

I need a break.

No regrets, though. This has been one of those “chapter of the biography” moments and while I’m prefacing every mention of re-opening with “maybe” I’m pretty damn sure I’m going to make it happen.

Once I’ve had a break.

And here’s my GIF.

You can look at all the GIFs and listen to their set from the night right here.

“Mon deux!” I exclaimed. “C’est un drawing par Louis Trondheim, le cartoonist Francais extraordinaire!”

How nice to know one recent evening Trondheim, having maybe had a carafe of wine too many, fell on his face and decided this cobble needed to be a rabbit.

Fiona has been trying to avoid joining the gym by searching out less soul destroying forms of exercise. Yesterday was trampolining (ie jumping up and down on a big spring) and today was the wonderfully vaguely titled International Folk Dancing held in a church hall between the bus stop and our home.

Sidebar: Before Jez picks me up on the house / home thing, and trust me, you don’t want to go there, it’s Fi’s house – I’m the lodger.

I was on the bus home when I got a text:

So I did the honourable thing and joined her.

It was, of course, really odd, but also perfectly normal. This, I thought, is the city’s culture. All around Birmingham in spaces like this groups of people are gathering to do stuff. Selpar, as the group is known, is not centrally run and there’s no funding. Each group is autonomous yet linked by overly active people (the name Pam Bishop will be familiar to anyone involved in this sort of thing) and, most interestingly, no-one is “professional”. The fee for tonight was £2 to cover tea and biscuits. Maggie, the leader, is not paid a professional fee (or any fee) yet had been running this group, which has been going since 1972, for 15 years. And while she lead the class the group was held together by a tight bunch of regulars who, you felt, shared all the duties. It’s community arts in the purest sense.

Here’s a quick video I shot at the end while we were packing up:

It’s not representative of the dancing as it’s just a bit of freestyle to wind down but it gives you a sense of the who and the where.

What struck me most was how normal they were. It was the sort of thing the unassuming person in the office tells you they do of an evening and you raise an eyebrow because you thought they were just a boring so and so and had forgotten that everyone is interesting if you give them half the chance. These are people. Real people. The sort of people that arts orgs forget about because they don’t tick the right funding boxes or just think or as “the audience”. It was mundane and ordinary and not very interesting, yet like the Internet that’s exactly why I found it vibrant and radical and fascinating. Mainstream media would laugh at this in the same way teenagers laugh at things they don’t understand and feel threatened by.

As Birmingham hurtles towards this City of Culture thing which, if past experience is anything to go by, will end up defaulting to the medium and large arts organisations because it’s easier to deal with them, I find myself fascinated by things like this that survive and thrive without the need for Cultural Olympiads or any of that bullshit. This is DIY culture in its purest form and anyone in the culture industries should make it their duty to pay attention to it.

This one sort of came out of the blue but it seems on April 24th I’ll be performing with the Thingamagoops again. This last happened in November 2008 and was very strange. Here’s a video from then.

This time it’ll be in the context of a Build Your Own Theremin workshop and I’ll be opening for two proper musicians, Ms Hypnotique (aka chum Susi) and Mr Underwood (aka Glatze). Which is both a relief as odd noises will be both tolerated and expected, and rather daunting as I don’t really have a clue what I’m doing or how it all works. I’m a bit of a charlatan really.

But I do have a magic glove.

(If you’re wondering, they reckon the Thingamagoop is an “optical theremin” and who am I to argue.)

Filmed, edited and published in about 2 hours.