The trouble with radio February 8, 2010
Posted by Sharny in : Essay, Music, Rants, Society , add a commentI’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.
Priorities January 12, 2010
Posted by Sharny in : Fun, Scraps, Society , add a commentAs 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.
The Bridge August 25, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, Society , add a commentI just finished watching The Bridge. I had heard about it a while ago and been intruiged by the the premise and it didn’t dissapoint.
As a film that centres around the filming of actual suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge, it’s going to be something that is controversial. It’s definitely possible to view it as something morbid but at the same time, can be something very sensitive.
I personally found it very moving and extremely powerful. I’m not really gonna say a lot about it because there isn’t a whole lot to say, it had a strong effect on me though, that’s for sure. Having seen this the experience of visiting the bridge whilst I am in San Francisco later this year is going to be even more special.
I suppose what really struck me by it is the variance between the stories of the people who took their own lives. Some had mental problems from quite early on and where in and out of depression, whereas others had seemed happy to those around them for the majority of their lives. This is, I suppose, the scariest part, as it puts forward the idea that essentially anyone can be driven to suicide, that it is not as distant as many of us would like to think.
Chavtastic July 15, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Essay, Rants, Society , add a commentI was just reading this article and it kinda gave me a good talking point for something I’ve wanted to write about for a while because I had heard it elsewhere and really wanted to take issue with it.
Here’s my problem, the authors of this article basically make the point that the word Chav is about class hatred, from the middle (and possibly higher I suppose) to the working class. But the thing is, I’ve grown up as the whole concept of a Chav has been born, I’ve gone to school with them, I have been friends with them. Don’t try to tell me that some middle aged journalist has any kind of clue about what a Chav really is. I’m making a few assumptions here (I don’t know how old the writers are, or that they are necessarily journalists) but actually you can’t get that much closer to the experience than people my age so either way I’m more qualified.
A Chav is not, as this article seems to be saying, a derogatory term for the lower classes. No, it’s a social stereotype.
Now, the thing about a social stereotype is that it involves choice. Chavs choose to wear track suits and strangely angled baseball caps, ultimately they choose to do the things they are often criticized for (vandalism, teenage drinking etc), even though I know most of them have plenty of fucked up behind their actions.
Admittedly, the working class and chavness is far from mutually exclusive but it is not the same thing. So really I’m just sick of people who clearly have no clue what they are talking about putting forth their opinions to the world, trying to convince the politically correct that chav is some kind of no no. Discriminating against someone for something that is neither a fault nor within their control (eg Skin colour, social class) is completely wrong, there are no two ways about it. The examples in the article include Faggot, Pikey and Nigger. These are all words based around insulting someone based on something that is not only unchangeable but also is not wrong in any way. But a chav puts themselves into a stereotype, they weren’t born that way, they don’t have no choice and yes, there are a lot of negative connotations to the chav image, connotations that you have to accept when you take on that image.
As someone who is into metal, I wear darker clothes and band t shirts to indicate an allegiance, I buy into a stereotype in order to tell those around me something about myself. Usually it’s that I don’t like the same shit they listen to (which does include probably the majority of the general public’s view of metal but I deal with that). But I’m perfectly aware of the downsides of stereotyping myself, I choose to do it though, anyone who buys into any stereotype chooses to do it and if that choice results in criticism then you just have to deal with it.
No one should need political correctness to back up their choices, you can either try and explain to others your choice or ignore what you know is their ignorance. In this case, it would seem like the ignorance is coming from those that claim to be politically correct, which, isn’t very surprising to be honest. Personally, if I felt that I were lower class (I’m not rich but come from a reasonably middle class background so I’m not really one or the other) I would be offended by the fact that this article makes the assumption that Working Class = Chav, when in fact that’s just not the way things work.
