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The trouble with radio February 8, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Essay, Music, Rants, Society , add a comment

I’ve avoided music radio for a long time. From when I was young I knew how important music was to me but I found it nearly impossible to find stuff that I liked and listening to the radio never helped. I did for quite a while, as you do when you don’t own any music or have any other channels to hear it. It left me entirely disatisfied and I stewed in some kind of musical no mans land for a long time.

Recently however, I’ve found myself listening to rather a lot of radio (for me, anyway), not through choice but because it’s on where I work. Now, it’s not local or national radio like you’d typically listen to, but actually it’s very similar in style, it just has adverts for products from the store rather than from other companies.

Listening to it more and more has really brought me to realise just why DJs let down their audience time and time again. Indeed, it’s such a deep betrayal that no one even knows it’s happening. Every day I find myself hearing the same songs. The same bland, un-musical pieces of factory made pop music.

I’m not about to suggest that DJs not play chart music, as much as I would like that. No, instead all I ask is that DJs do what I percieve their job to be. Not everyone has time to seek out music, to dig and listen and cast away and listen and love and seek and find and pour themselves into.  It’s their job to not just play what people already know they like, but to play them stuff that they may find they like. To open new doors, to new and interesting places.  To introduce people to worlds they never thought existed.

Music has incredible power. You ask almost anyone and they’re likely to say they like music. As a species, we are built to enjoy music. But some of us more than like music. Taking my average tracks per day (from my pretty damn accurate last.fm profile) and the median (since the mean would take a ridiculous amount of time to find) length of songs in my music library we can calculate that on average I spend 4.725 hours a day listening to music. Ish. Of course, that’s not exclusive (and doesn’t include when I’m at work, or when someone else is playing the music). Doesn’t sound like the hugest portion, but bare in mind that’s over 4 years that average, and includes times when I’ve been working or at school full time. It’s been slowly rising over the past year as well.

Now I’m sure there are plenty of people more obsessed with music than I am but I’m pretty deep in at this point. Most of me is focused around it. And it’s damn important to me. Because of the effect it’s had on me, I want to share that effect. I want others to feel it and to know it. That’s why it annoys me so much that DJs are always playing the same songs, they never give your average every day music liker to become a full blown music lover because they limit them to the top 40, or even smaller groups of songs.

I think that’s fundamentally wrong, and something of a moral injustice. There’s a further element that I’ve become more and more receptive to further reaches of music and I want to have another source to say “Hey, listen to this, see what you think”. I want to be able to trust that DJs are playing music because they think it’s interesting and good, not because it’s what’s been handed to them by their major record label funded bosses, not because it’s what we’re being told to like.

I do have a big problem with pop music, I hate about 99% of it. Mainly because it’s pretty much all the same. Doesn’t matter what genre it claims to be. If you think of all music as coming from a centre and spreading out in different directions all around as different genres then what’s played on the radio accounts for the tiniest spec in the middle. Yes, some of those bits are on the bit that starts to be come Electronic, or Blues, or Rock or Punk but ultimately it’s so close to the middle that it shares almost nothing in common with the further reaches of the genre.

And that’s my problem. A lack of variety. Currently all we get is a tiny spec of all the music out there and that’s not fair on anyone. Not fair on the listeners who never have the chance to discover music that could change the way they see the world. Not fair on the artists that work so hard to produce original and interesting and likable music that goes entirely ignored by the mainstream population. And more importantly, not fair on me for having to listen to all the shit they do play.

The Minestrone Mystery February 2, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Ramble, Rants, Scraps, Thoughts , add a comment

There is a great mystery that currently confuses countless in this country. How many times have you reached for your variety pack of Cup-a-Soup (or generic brand Cup Soup) only to find unwanted packets of minestrone? Like a plague that haunts our cupboard, minestrone is rife among these variety packs and is almost guaranteed to sit for years at a time, fermenting and stagnating.

No one likes minestrone (Source: me and 4 of my friends). Or at the very least, everyone likes all the rest of the better. So why do they keep appearing? Surely there isn’t a big difference in cup soup production costs, I can’t imagine that chicken and vegetable, mushroom or tomato are more expensive to produce than minestrone.

I’m not asking for much here, just some variety packs that don’t include minestrone, cause I’ve got about 5 packets still left to get through, and they’ve been there for as long as I can remember. Many people are left enraged and frustrated by looking to a relaxing cup a soup after a long day at work and only finding minestrone. This plague upon our land must stop, for the sake of all our sanity.

Priorities January 12, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Fun, Scraps, Society , add a comment

As anyone currently living in Europe knows, we’re having a very cold winter. There’s still a slushy snow on the pavements and less used roads. I’d say it was unheard of but last year saw heavy snowfall in February. I wasn’t around to witness it but it sounded really rather crazy.

I was perusing the wikipedia article on this abnormal winter. It’s pretty interesting. The bit that caught my eye however was down at the bottom. So as it turns out (source: BBC) most shops have been suffering from people not wanting to go outside. No surprise there. The fun part is that sales in contraception have risen. So everyone has definitely gotten their priorities straight. Right on, humanity.

Happy Arbitrary Celebration Day January 1, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Fun, Ramble, Scraps, World , add a comment

Yep, we’re finally out of the cool sounding oh-somethings and into just plain old 10. I’m not gonna have fun with my event names for another ten years, that does rather suck, my whole twenties spent not being able to call things “Awesome Event *last two digits of year*” since it just doesn’t sound very good.

As you can guess from my title, I find the celebration of new year a bit puzzling. A good excuse for a party to be sure, but I don’t really understand why everyone gets so happy and hugs and kisses everyone around. Really every day is a new year, a new year from the same day the year before. I call bullshit on new years resolutions too, if you wanna make a change fucking make a change, don’t wait for some arbitrary date to do it.

Anyways, have fun wherever you are.

Googling Fun December 22, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Blogs, Gaming, Internets, Scraps , add a comment

So while I should be going to bed (and will once I’ve finished this, I promise) I was procrastinating (yeah, procrastinating going to bed, it happens a lot) with Google Webmaster Tools. They’re quite helpful for all things google related and I noticed a few things about my blog’s top search results.

Thanks to my review of EA’s internships I’m actually on the first page of results for educating adventures. I think this is pretty cool, and goes down as the first time my blog might actually be useful to someone. I’ve noticed a few hits from similar google searches, it does appear that there’s very little in terms of actual experiences from people on EA internships out there on the web so my account is a rare thing. It’s nice to think that my post might help someone make a better decision about their future.

On a sillier note, I also come up quite a bit around Toy Commander related stuff which is quite sad in a way. It’s such a good game but so under appreciated. Shame I’m not famous enough to have the impact required to get a sequel, that would be so awesome. 8 player online multiplayer? Hells yeah.

A guy can dream…

Fully Legal and Employed December 19, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Work , add a comment

This week has been quite the turnaround. I’d hoped for it to be good but you’ve got to be careful with potentially good things, I didn’t want to celebrate too early. So, Sunday we had a gig down at the Grange Hall in the village. It was quite a fun event, free for everyone and included a buffet. Lots of bands from the local area, quite a few of which were good fun to see perform. Our set was pretty short (15mins) which was unfortunate but you have to make the best of these things, it was a good fun evening overall.

Then on Monday I had a job interview at the local Co-op food store. I felt it went well at the time but didn’t want to jump the gun in happiness terms so I just waited to hear back.

On Tuesday was a big day in every persons life, I had my driving test and passed (yep, first time, I think I can be a little smug about that). It was almost a fail for going too slowly (which does make me chuckle somewhat) but almost a fail and flying colours all end up the same in the end. It’s difficult for me to feel too pleased about this as it don’t actually have anything to drive at the moment, nor the money to buy it. However of course I’m happy to have passed, it’s only just starting to sink in really, the idea that I can drive on my own and that I won’t have to do any more reversing around corners.

This was followed up the next day by the news that I had got the job at Co-op. Since I felt it went well it wasn’t exactly a surprise but in the current economic climate I’ve become used to being turned down for stuff. I had my induction yesterday and I start on Sunday, my only point of confusion being that I have yet to get any uniform and don’t really know what the hell is going on overall. I have faith it will work out though, I’m starting before the store opens so there’s plenty of time to get things straight.

I’m really relieved to have this work, it will allow me to have a steady income stream so that I can do my own projects on the side without worrying about having no money. It’s a big weight taken off my shoulders and will have an incredibly positive effect on this year. Unless something weird happens I’ll have a car by the time I go back to Uni so I’ll be able to continue working whilst I study.

It’s quite amazing how a week can turn things around. I should feel much better than I do and that is a little frustrating, I guess it’s because these things are long term and take a while for their positive effects to really show. Still, things are certainly on the up, even if they aren’t quite how I’d cherry pick them to be (when are they ever like that?).