I’m Twittering, Bobbie’s Jibbering

I’d been avoiding signing up to Twitter for a while now. I didn’t really see the point in it. But there’s a new service being set up, and it uses Twitter as its basis, so I thought I should give it a try.

Twitter is a kind of micro-blog. Instead of writing a post every couple of days about something you’ve thought about or experienced, you just write a quick ‘what I’m up to right now’ in 140 characters or less. Several times a day, it seems, is accepted practice.

You can twitter online at the website, via Instant Messaging (though not on any of the IM platforms I use) or you can twitter via text message from your mobile phone.

Of course, it’s very social networky. You add friends to your contact lists, and you can keep tabs on them. You can even get a text message from Twitter when your friends update. Things like ‘Bruce has gone to the toilet and he’s worried about his cat’.

They call it ‘following’ somebody, which has creepy overtones if you ask me — but it’s willingly shared information, so I guess it doesn’t count as surveillance.

And speaking of surveillance: Oh my God — you can almost see right into my flat!

Anyway, Twitter seems a bit nonsense — but I can totally see why it would be entirely addictive.

I haven’t sent any invitations from the site to ‘Please Add Me As A Friend’ because I’m not sure who I would get them to email on my behalf. It seems presumptuous to expect that anybody would be concerned with my comings and goings on a micro scale — but it’s there if you’re interested. My profile is at http://www.twitter.com/dubber.

But the clever bit — and the reason I finally relented and signed up — is that Tom Martin, local web imagineer, has come up with a useful online music implementation: Live Birmingham.

It’s early days yet, but it seems like a good idea. Simple and effective, using existing tools as kitset pieces. If you live round here, and you’re interested in finding out about local music events, it seems like a really good way to do it.

Beats the hell out of collecting armloads of flyers every time you go and have a cup of coffee. I’m looking forward to seeing it up and running properly.

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In other news, Bobbie’s been buying records!

Her second and third ever vinyl purchases took place in the last week, and she’s discovered the joys. Jibbering Records is no longer just a place she hangs out on her breaks, drinks coffee and meets with friends, it’s now also actually a record shop.

She picked up the ‘Soulmap’ 12″ by Melasse, featuring the horn section from Fat Freddy’s Drop, and she also picked up Percy Filth’s Don’t Take It Percynal, featuring Lotek, Sonny Jim, Kosyne, Redbeard, English, Jodo and our friend DJ Cro.

The covers on that one feature the Birmingham city skyline and are all handprinted and numbered. She has number 021.

The record itself is pressed on white vinyl and it really is something to behold. She’s giving it back to Cro to get it signed by all concerned, and then she’s going to get it framed.

Of course, then we’ll need another copy to listen to.

But more importantly

It’s been a bit of a testing week, so rather than bore you with it, I thought I’d finish my Friday with something far more interesting. Otters are far and away my favourite animal. If you were looking for my soft spot, that’s it right there. Here’s just one reason why:

Leeds Jazz Conference 2007

Just got back from a great conference at the Leeds College of Music.

I spent three days in the company of interesting and intelligent people, all of whom liked jazz and knew all about jazz music, and we talked about jazz, and we listened to jazz.

One of the many highlights was the performance (pictured above) of Tom Clarke, the winner of the UK Conservatoires ‘Creative Exchange’ composition competition for music students conducting his piece Katy’s Theme, performed by the Conservatoires UK Big Band.

All university students — all exceptional musicians. The best in the country. It really was quite something.

I presented a paper at the conference about jazz consumption online — and I’m really pleased with how it went. Some people asked some interesting questions that were about wanting to know more, rather than (as is more common) demonstrating how much more they know than the presenter about the subject.

The joke about questions at conference papers is that they tend to run along the lines of “You seem to have overlooked an important part of this subject, which I covered in my PhD thesis…”

More importantly, I attended some really exceptional presentations. One on Keith Jarrett and his contempt for electronic instruments was particularly good (“It was fun playing electric keyboard in Miles Davis’s band — because these things are toys, and toys are fun”); one about the idea of jazz ‘community’; one about creative non-fiction in the reconstruction of jazz histories — and quite a lot more besides.

Perhaps most impressively, many of the academics attending were also phenomenal jazz players, and since we were in the Leeds College of Music (the European answer to Berklee) and instruments were everywhere and there seemed to be pianos and drum kits in every room — jazz would just break out at every available opportunity: over lunch, in the breaks, in the middle of discussions to illustrate a point…

And when the academics weren’t playing, the students at the college seemed to just pick up and play.

It was the second of these I’d been to, and it was far better than the first — though that might have to do with the fact that I thought my presentation at last year’s one wasn’t very good.

This time, the conference was really great. Best in ages.