The effect of Last.fm

I have been a member of Last.fm for just over a year now (http://www.last.fm/user/JammyJamster). I have started to look at my profile every couple of days now just to see what I've been listening to, because apparently I can neither remember or look at my iTunes Recently Played. I really do like Lasf.fm, whether its just checking my own play count, listening to a band's radio station to find similar artists or my friends' radio stations to see what they've been listening to: There are many great features of Last.fm, however one aspect of Last.fm that you might not consider when signing up is the guilt factor that it brings to your musical life.

There appear to be two types of guilt: The Guilty Pleasure Guilt and the Play Count Guilt.

Its a shame that I havent had Last.fm for more than a year, then it would provide me with a more accurate play count. However this means that artists that I may have just like for a couple of weeks and listened to loads during that period, appear very high, like high HIGH up my most played list. Although I probably still like this artist, its a little cringing to see them all over my play count (see FrankMusik and Enter Shikari).

The second is the slightly more annoying guilt, although it really shouldn't be. For example. I have liked Alexisonfire for literally years now, and having only recently seen them live for the first time a few weeks ago, I have been listening to them a lot, both before and after the gig. It makes sense. Alexisonfire have the pleasure of being my most played artist, and now I feel guilty to listen to them. Its hard to explain, I want to listen to them, but I don't want to keep building my playcount up. Not because I'm embarrassed, but because I feel it is unfair on my other artists. I feel I should listen to Fall Out Boy, Enter Shikari or The Maccabees some more to level out my play count. And that's strange.

As much as Last.fm simply tracks what I want to listen to, it also makes me consider what I listen to a bit more carefully, which is stupid I know, and I try to ignore it. But sometimes I cant.

Songs of the week:

Not anything that different I suppose, but its a very nice tune. Indie/electro/dance/pop a sweet combination:


And a dirty bit of dubstep I found this week, real good tune and some dirty, dirty beats in there:

There are somethings only black people can pull off...

I know racism is very on trend at the moment, with Adolf Griffin getting his ass kicked on QuestionTime (not that he really had a fair chance, but like fuck did he deserve one). But something struck me today, black guys can pull off cool handshakes, white guys really REALLY cant. All you do it make yourself look every more white.

I was walking out from the library at uni today and was going up the narrow stairs next to the Allesbrook lecture theatre, and I saw a couple of black guys pulling off mental handshakes. They had hand clapping, shoulder bumping, click, the whole works, and I was about to ruin it. I was like shit, I'm gonna walk through right in the middle of handshake, get caught in a meale of hands and THEY WOULD NOT BE HAPPY. No man wants his handshake interrupted, especially a carefully crafted piece of art that I was witnessing. I got closer, saw a gap as one man moved to another and went for it. I stepped closer and another handshake had started. SHIT. I was beyond the point of no return, so I just went for it and ruined it.

I apologised. They said "don't worry mate". I know, what drama! I've already started drawing up a script for the movie. (It probably would be better than our radio script advert we worked on today. Actually no, that's a lie, it's brilliant. Fact.)


Tip of the blog: Ricky Gervais Podcasts. I know, I know, I'm well behind. But if you havnt listen to them, seriously get a torrent download or go to Pilkipedia and get them on the download. Karl Pilkington fucking mental ramblings, Gervais' laugh and Stephen Merchant's cheeky jokes are a work of art.

People are dicks.

I think that most people will agree that people are dicks.

Ok, that is a slight generalization. Most people are lovely and think that most other people are lovely too, however some people are dicks. And some people are lovely but just decided to act like dicks sometimes. Most people decide to do this at gigs.

I've been to quite a few gigs over the years, perhaps not a massive range of artists, but have seen Bon Jovi, Lostprophets and Calvin Harris, bit of a mix. However at all of these gigs there appears a great deal of dicks. I dunno what it is but when people are at gigs they either think that they can start mosh pits to songs that don't require or encourage them, scream loudly down the phone to their mates who clearly can't hear them, or give a shit or just sweat all over you. And most of these people are about 14. They just can't wait to tell all their friends at school, who's parents wouldn't let them go to the gig, about how they started a mosh pit and punched someone in the face, or "omg did you hear them play "Don't cha" (not that I have ever been to a Pussycat Dolls gig) "umm... no, well it was really loud and you trying to scretch the words down the phone like a fucking cat (excuse the pun) being thrown around the room didn't help...LOL".

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels like this, although I really don't feel strongly enough about it to do anything about it (I'm surprised I managed this), I'm pretty sure it would be quite difficult to get a ban passed on this anyways...


Recommendations this week:
Song - Kings and Queens - 30 Seconds to Mars - Surprisingly catchy, pop and good!
Video -
Vintage Cera, in form as always.
Film - Bruno, hadn't seen it before. Loved how funny I actually it is, how outrageous it is and how homophobic and stupid some of the American public are.

Back to business

After a somewhat damning blog from our new Interactive Media Strategies teacher (http://paidia.wordpress.com) about how our course, the kids of the internet, are merely passive users of the internet, I felt compelled, and somewhat embarrassed to blog again. He moaned that we do not blog, upload to flickr or edit wikipedia. We are lazy.
We are students!
But do we need to contribute to the internet? It's not like it's missing us. It's not like there's not a blog to read, or you've run out of videos to watch on Youtube, it's still going, with or without us.

However, I think Mike was more bemused by our lack of internet input was because we are Advertising and Marketing students. We need to understand patterns of human behavior and consumption. This is even more important now advertising expenditure has overtake that on TV for the first time...ever?! Advertisers need to know how to reach people, what they're doing, or "what they're eyes are doing", as another simply put it.

Therefore, I will endeavor to keep this little blog going, especially after a friend shamed me by his five year blog (http://www.losingsleepandsight.com/).

Boring is boring.

I seem to have lost the ability to do nothing. Having worked solidy for the last 2 months, I thought I would have a few days off before I start the dreaded CMR, and I really don't know what to do with myself.

I created a twitter account...http://twitter.com/JammyJamster
I created a last.fm account...http://www.last.fm/user/JammyJamster
I found new bands...Augustana (a mix betweent The Frey and Jack's Mannequin) and Metro Station (with a very heavily tattooed and pierced Miley Cyrus brother)
I applied to various placement places...nobody has replied.

What else am I do to? Start my CMR probably, but that can wait. So I'm just waiting for little brother to finish his interview at the Arts Institue in Bournemouth. I say little brother...


Thats Gavin on the right...
A lot of ellipses today. Anyways I'll get cracking on with being bored some more.

Jade Goody is dead.

Surely there can be no greater event in modern history to revive my blog. Mass news coverage, an impersonal condolences from the Prime Minster and an entire edition of OK! magazine dedicated to her deem to be a fitting tribute.


Seriously?
Seriously? Does anyone care? It may seem as if I am being harsh, of course its sad that she has died, she was young, had kids, its a great shame. But its Jade Goody. Everybody was more than happy to call her a ignorant, stupid racist just a few months ago and now everybody is moaning her as it were their own sister, with the British press leading the hypocritical way as usual.

I havnt written this for a while due to the lack of time I've had, as well as the battering the lovely Rebecca Willmore gave my blogging skills. Lovely she is. My last few weeks have been filled with 4,500 account planning assignment, when half of my group decided to drop out of uni, leaving just two of us to do the work, however I cannot complain with 68%. Being my highest mark so far I was pleased, however every other group picking up theirs around me getting 70%+ did put abit of a dampner on events. Oh well. Then came the marketing planning and budgeting assignment on Ryanair, another cheeky 4,500. And then just 2,500 on Volvo's communications. I say just, because I was literally bullet pointing at the end. Just a rather large research project, finding a 6 week placement, revising for exams, doing the exams, doing the placement left. Then summer.

The highlight of my past few weeks of assignment pain has getting...wait for it...Michael Jackson tickets!! Getting up at 7am with my pre-sale code was worth it. Well, it wasnt, as I didn't get tickets untill 1pm, but I got them :) And my god I'm excited. I don't admite to doing a MJ nut, but I'm quite a big fan, having all of his albums and liked him since I was about 8. I hope its going to be everything it's hyped up to be, but is everything? Will he sing? Will he dance? Will he cancel? One thing is for sure though, he will entertain.