I can’t say that I’m a Lorde fan—not that there’s anything wrong with her music; it’s just not my usual thing. But I came across her blog, which she runs on Tumblr (I think people need to keep an eye on Tumblr; it’s poised for a comeback as a blogging platform). She was very open about the pressure to make a buck on concert tours, especially when all she and other musicians really want to do is play for the fans.

I don’t know how much you’ve been following the live music industry conversation, but lemme hit you with a five minute explainer, cause I think it’s interesting, and good to know about if you’re going to concerts at the moment. Basically, for artists, promoters and crews, things are at an almost unprecedented level of difficulty. It’s a storm of factors. Let’s start with three years’ worth of shows happening in one. Add global economic downturn, and then add the totally understandable wariness for concertgoers around health risks. On the logistical side there’s things like immense crew shortages (here’s an article from last week about this in New Zealand), extremely overbooked trucks and tour buses and venues, inflated flight and accommodation costs, ongoing general COVID costs, and truly. mindboggling. freight costs. To freight a stage set across the world can cost up to three times the pre-pandemic price right now. I don’t know shit about money, but I know enough to understand that no industry has a profit margin that high. Ticket prices would have to increase to start accommodating even a little of this, but absolutely no one wants to charge their harried and extremely-compassionate-and-flexible audience any more fucking money. Nearly every tour has been besieged with cancellations and postponements and promises and letdowns, and audiences have shown such understanding and such faith, that between that and the post-COVID wariness about getting out there at all, scaring people away by charging the true cost ain’t an option. All we want to do is play for you.

Lorde

As usual, it’s the common folk who bear the brunt of a global economic downturn. The fat cats just get fatter. Because “Everybody know…Da’ po’ always bein’ fucked ova by da’ rich. Always have…Always will“

Twitter this, Twitter that

I know you’re probably sick to death of hearing about the fate of Twitter. I am too, but because it’s a platform I love, I can’t resist reading every article about its demise that comes through my feed. It’s like rubbernecking on the highway. When you see an accident off to the side, you feel compelled to look, which in turn causes you to slow down, which, through the ripple effect, turns into a mile-long traffic jam.

Stop rubbernecking!

Sorry, I can’t help myself.

This article in The Verge feels like the scene where the villain hits the self-destruct button, lets out an evil laugh, and then heads to the roof to escape in his helicopter. When your CISO, Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Compliance Officer ALL resign at the same time, you know the ship is going down!

Sources say:

Over the last two weeks. Elon has shown that he cares only about recouping the losses he’s incurring as a result of failing to get out of his binding obligation to buy Twitter. He chose to enter into that agreement! All of us are being put through this as a result of the choices he made.

Elon has shown that his only priority with Twitter users is how to monetize them. 

from a Twitter lawyer trying to do the right thing and warn the people

To hell with social media, long live blogging!

Some big shoes to fill

I don’t often mark TV shows down in my calendar, but for The English, I did. The Guardian called it a rare, sensational masterpiece, with Lucy Mangan giving it 5-stars! How could I not watch it?! As a kid, I was a huge Western fan. I picked up my love of cowboys from my dad. He was a huge fan of Louis L’ Amor. He had all the books, like The Sacketts, among others. And whenever a western was on TV, we were there to watch it. Some of my favorites:

• The Outlaw Josey Wales
• The Good, The Bad The Ugly
• Two Mules for Sister Sarah
• Shane
• El Dorado
• The Magnificent Seven
• A Fist Full of Dollars
• True Grit
• Rooster Cogburn

I was curious to know if The English would live up to my expectations of a Western. The basic story line follows a revenge narrative.

The English takes place in the mythical mid-American landscape in the year 1890. It is about Cornelia Locke, an Englishwoman who comes to the new and wild West to get revenge on the man she thinks killed her son. When she meets Eli Whipp, a former cavalry scout who was born into the Pawnee Nation, they work together and find out that they have a common past that they must defeat at all costs if they want to live.

I am 3 episodes in and I am not disappointed. Chaske and Blunt are awesome together. The dialogue is superb. The action is graphic and dark. And the cinematography is stunning. I’m looking forward to seeing how the story plays out. It’s on BBC iPlayer in the UK. I think it might be on Prime in the US.

I gotta another wild hair

Well, it’s on. I’m embarking on a 30 day blogging challenge with my Twitter friends, @SMWGeek and @MrFresh who, like me, are OG bloggers from back in the day when blogging was cool and everybody had a Blogger or a Livejournal account, and we blogged everyday about everything and nothing. We shared our thoughts, our hobbies, our frustrations, our passions. Our blogs were an extension of ourselves. They were personal blogs back then. You were doing it for the love. Then blogs got popular and somebody figured out how to make money from them. That was the beginning of the end of personal blogging. The snake oil salespeople could smell the blood of the innocent. They promised to show us how we could make money blogging in our underwear. The marketeers could see the gold rush coming, and they moved in with their banner ads and Macromedia Flash videos. The personal blog was dead. Blogs became like the suburbs of the 1950s uniformed and bland, with every blog looking the same. No more Geocities. Myspace tried to keep the gig alive, but Zuckerberg had other plans. Now it’s all about the niche blog and content marketing, if you’re blogging at all and not doomscrolling or suffering anxiety from all the FOMO induced posts on Instagram.

So every now and then I get a wild hair on my butt and decide it’s time to do another 30 day blogging challenge to get myself back in the habit of OG blogging with the hope that maybe it might rekindle the fire of personal blogging.

If you’ve made it this far, then go ahead and make a nostalgic old man feel good by leaving a comment below. I will be cross-posting the 30 day challenge posts to Twitter and Mastodon, but if you want to be guaranteed to get my posts, then go ahead and subscribe to the blog or add it to your RSS feed reader.

This blog has been running since February 2004. Long may it continue.