Category: Other

So thanks to Benjamin over at Life Rapture I am now completely addicted to the Bloomberg documentaries Game Changers, a series which profiles the elite men and women who have defined the way we act and think about finance, sport, music, technology, politics and culture. I imagine I’ll be blogging and tweeting about my findings quite a lot in the near future. It’s made me think a lot about my own drive, and my own need to achieve my goals, and how I’ve only just come across my intentions and how solid theirs are or were so early on.

One of the biggest surprises I have encountered so far is the story of Mark Zuckerberg, popularised by the 2010 film The Social Network (based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich). Zuckerberg for those not savvy to any of the terms and names I’ve just pulled is the founder and CEO of Facebook, the social networking site which has captivated the world in the last decade. I enjoyed The Social Network but I watched it as a film, it was hard to imagine the real people and lives behind it all, as though it were all just a hilarious concoction of Hollywood but watching the Game Changers documentary made me realise just how powerful Zuckerberg has become, and how willingly we allowed that to happen.

The first thing I should mention is how impressive his morals are, he knows that Facebook is bigger than any amount of money that can be thrown at him (including a $1.5 billion bid from MTV). I like that. The fact is that most ‘entrepreneurs’ to use a blanket term will happily sell on their idea as soon as the price meets something they can roll about in for the rest of their days, but Zuckerberg recognises that what he has created would be lessened by it being passed over to someone else, that it would cheapen his efforts since its creation in 2002.

The second issue that arose for me from the documentary was how much Facebook now knows about us and our habits. The genius move behind Facebook is that it is all user generated content, we are the suppliers and we are the product and we are the target market, that means that anything that is done is being stored and who knows where that will lead. I know this is a terrible thing to admit to but I wonder what will happen to my Facebook page when I die, where all of those messages will go, whether someone will continue to run it, whether people will still put music videos on my wall, thats a huge impact to make on someone, he has changed the way we think about everything, the way we speak, the terms we use, the way we contact each other, the way photos are handled, it’s an incredible gift to the world but I struggle to accept that Zuckerberg is happy with that, content in the knowledge that he has helped a lot of people (if you ignore the negative and bitchy side). After all he is a businessman, and don’t let him fool you with those flipflops and hoodies.

Hello, sorry, I took a couple of days off. There was an incident involving too much alcohol and a snooze in a toilet on a train that you don’t need to hear about. The important thing to note is that it’s Tuesday, it’s exactly 9am and I’ve run two and a half miles this morning, which still isn’t that important.

I wanted to talk a bit about the jubilee celebrations. Firstly it should be noted that I’m a massive fan of shouting ‘smash the state’, talking about a new world order where we all just cuddle each other and I think that the royal family are a massive burden on my life (except Phil the Greek who is just the brilliant kind of awkwardly placed racist I can really get behind). Yesterday I went to a jubilee party which was cracking fun. I think in a few ways this weekend has brought out the best in people, it makes you appreciate the wonder of being British, whilst hushing up a lot of the nonsense in our lives/country/government, and sweeping it under the bunting. I don’t know if it’s because of the extra bank holiday (if you’re lucky enough to have an employer who recognises such things), or just because it makes people take stock of the fact that we’ve got a good thing going (yes that was an attempt to paraphrase Sid Owen) but everyone seems a lot more British this weekend.
I can’t say I’ve ever felt particularly British, which is probably partly down to my mongrel breeding and partly due to the fact that I could never place exactly what it meant, after this weekend I have concluded it means eating a lot of trifle, drinking a lot of Pimms and singing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da too loudly whilst simultaneously cursing Peter Kay for using John Lennon’s middle name when introducing Paul McCartney to the stage outside Buckingham Palace. I can settle for this kind of British, it’s in my comfort zone. Sitting in my lounge last night with a cup of tea, a stack of sausage rolls and watching the jubilee concert really set it all into place for me. I’ve heard people today griping about the fact that they didn’t have whoever on at the gig but the problem is that heritage artists are the ones who truly celebrate what it means to be British. I don’t think a lot of ‘current’ artists have any longevity at all and that was reflected in the line up, it’s not T4 On The Beach, it’s a celebration of 60 years on the thrown and I think the variety was spot on. If you have an issue with it you can have words with velvet voiced Gary ‘bent over for a knighthood’ Barlow who organised it (apparently).

What I hope is that this weekend doesn’t end in terms of the spirit it has evoked, I hope we can have a faultless Olympics Summer and that we can get back to being Great.

I’m a massive Beatles fan, I have been since I was seven years old and the first proper song I learnt at my piano lessons was With A Little Help From My Friends. The thing I always had wrong about them, well for the majority of my adoration, was that it was all about Lennon and McCartney. It was only when I was at University and was sat down one night with a few joints and a copy of A Concert For George that I started to realise how wrong I had been.

George Harrison or ‘the quiet one’ as he was often known was by far the best guitarist of the Beatles, and was ahead of the curve in terms of form. He could also throw together a brilliant song, an element that the Beatles only seemed to accept later in their career (See: Here Comes The Sun, Something, Sun King). As further evidence his Let It Roll has more plays on my iTunes than Lennon’s solo efforts. I had to delete McCartney’s because it was so twee it made my gums hurt.

What makes Harrison a crush for me is the fact that he was just in it for the music, he would not put it down. He wrote with Clapton, Orbison, Dylan and Petty, he just wanted to make great music and that’s what his legacy will always be, as a musician, and a songwriter and a good old boy.

Finally made it to the barbers chair. Nine months of no maintenance had done terrible things to my hair but now it’s all gone. I feel better, lighter, more air dynamic. I think I look dreamy.

I’m currently reading Dream Brother and as such I feel I need to make it clear that my mancrush on Jeff has very little to do with his physical appearance, because the book states in no uncertain terms that he hated being viewed as a pin up or a sex symbol. What I love about him is his absolute passion for music, his sense of humour and his gift.

I first got into Jeff Buckley because a girl I fancied was really into Jeff Buckley and to my lesser mind I felt the best way of ensuring she thought I was worthy of her was to just like all of the things that she liked. As is often the way my love for the artist has stayed whereas the girl has drifted off into the ether, I thank her wherever she is for introducing me to Jeff’s work.

I suppose most people know Jeff for his cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah which was thrown into the spotlight in December 2008 as real music fans campaigned for it to be Christmas number one over that years X-Factor winner whose name has long since disappeared into the mists of time. What you should know about Buckley is that his version of Hallelujah is just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve spent the last seven years collecting bootlegs and live albums and he really has something for everyone. At points some it gets awkward or self indulgent (particularly live vocal solos) but there’s something quaint in that, nobody else has/had the audacity or the voice to try it. The way he composed his songs, the haunting melodies, the soaring vocals, it’s just really something to behold and embrace.

Jeff was prominent when the world was just turning away from grunge and looking for the new thing and as much as he thought it was what he wanted he became a victim of his own success, being hounded by the press and fans of his father (cult folk singer Tim Buckley) to the point that when he could have made an incredible second album he felt put upon by everyone at his record company who were demanding hits from him when all he wanted to do was thrash about and make noise with his friends. Throughout his brief career and indeed brief life he stuck to his guns, held his integrity high and did what he wanted and that’s a beautiful character trait.