from the morgue

Shihad, Flesh D-Vice and a Postcard

So I've been listening the heck out of Shihad's new album, Beautiful Machine. (You can listen to much of it over on their MySpace page.) It's good, and occasionally great, and I think over time will settle comfortably into "second best" in their album catalogue, right after the unbeatable Killjoy.

The 'had are a funny wee band. A Welly high school metal covers band that grabbed its own sound and then never stopped evolving. Going through their catalogue and every single album debuted a new sound for them. They've never hit the big big time, but they make a living from their music and they're pretty much entrenched as NZ's favourite band. Their reputation as a live act is deservedly big. There's apparently a band biography on the way that I'm really keen to read - squaring the circle on their many contradictions will make for some fascinating content.

So, nice album. But that isn't what this post is about.

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When they started out, Shihad were managed by Gerald Dwyer, himself of seminal Kiwi hard rock band Flesh D-Vice. (Is that even the right label for Flesh D-Vice's music?) This new album reminded me of a Flesh-D-Vice oddity I've had sitting in my drawer for a while now.

In '06 I picked up the hardback 'The List of Seven' for a couple bucks at a book sale. This is a fun riff on Sherlock Holmes and pulp action by Mark Frost, co-creator of Twin Peaks. When I went to read it, a postcard fell out of the pages.

On closer inspection, it turned out it wasn't a commercial postcard - it was a photo that had been used as a postcard. The photo showed a wee girl wearing a hand-knitted Flesh D-Vice jersey. The postcard on the back had a Wellington 1990 postdate on it, sent by "Jennie & Ian" to "Sue and Gerald" in London. The writing mentions getting back from a Faith No More gig and that "Shihad played really well".

(Shihad's 1990 support for Faith No More was one of their earliest big moments.)

As I looked at this card, eventually the penny dropped - this was likely a postcard being sent to Gerald Dwyer. Why else the Shihad mention + Flesh D-Vice knit? (I tried to check out some facts - was Gerald in London at the time of Shihad's big gig? Was Sue his partner? No luck.)

Further realisation - the book it was in as a bookmark is a '93 release, so at the time it was being used as a bookmark it was already three years old. The photo was a keepsake for someone, and should properly be returned. But to who? I didn't have the first idea where to look. Dwyer himself died over a decade ago. I traded a few emails with Karl from Shihad, but he couldn't figure it.

So I now hand over to the internet. Maybe someone will Google Flesh D-Vice or "Gerald Dwyer" and find this post. Maybe a reader will know someone who knows someone - everyone knows everyone in NZ. I've got this photo/postcard that someone might care about, and it's easy enough for me to pop it in an envelope.

Here's the card (click for big version):

Brevity Friday Linky

Okay, a brevity linky:

Stumbled across Kate Beaton's comics for about the fifth time and this week I will linky them. They are good. Especially Napoleon eating cookies and Conversations With Younger Me.

Make your own Music television - a mashup of Last.fm and YouTube that searches YouTube for music videos that're liked by people who like the music you like, like. Is good. Hattip to the imperator DavidR for this one.

Potsie Syndrome - characters on TV shows who still show up each week because the actor's on contract, but just kinda stand around and never do anything because the writers just don't have a clue why they're there.

And did you catch the Ewok gospel, via linky in last week's comments by Dave W?

Lamest. Scandal. Evar.

I mean, really, isn't this the most inane scandal you could imagine?

ITV rigged the outcome of its call-in 2005 People's Choice comedy award so Robbie Williams would be able to give an award to his mates Ant and Dec.

This is sad on so many levels it makes my head swim when I try to count them.

I mean, it's clearly scandalous - those call-in votes cost money. But... but... Robbie Williams! Ant and Dec! People's Choice Awards! ITV! THIS IS A STUPID SCANDAL!

Doctorow's Little Brother

Since we were talking about Cory Doctorow the other day, I want to plug the man's new book.

Important bit first: it's free. You can download it in a variety of formats, including html and pdf, here. Doctorow practices what he preaches around this stuff.

What is it? It's youth fiction with tech smarts, street savvy and one hell of a political kick, as you would expect from a conscious followup to Orwell's 1984. Check out the blurb:

Marcus, a.k.a "w1n5t0n," is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works-and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school's intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they're mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Go download it. Then read it. I've done the first, plan on getting to the second real soon now.

(But I've got the busy. Blog may fall silent for a day or two.)

How I Will Get News

Blogs are the future of news, for me.

In future, news will come to me via blog. I will subscribe to blog by subject matter. Each blog will serve as a curator for one news subject. Some will be very specific, others will be big-picture views of a field. One blog could focus on Middle Eastern news, another on general science news, another on news of the ecological status of the arctic, another on the Chicago Bears.

Each blog will build trust from its readers by reliably presenting every significant story connected to this subject matter. Each blog curator will add value by providing context, assessing the veracity of the story, and providing links to relevant background information. Blog curators will *not* deconstruct or attack stories on these blogs - this is not their function and will reduce value. This kind of comment can happen on a separate blog channel.

Of course, the simple act of selecting a story to cover, and providing context a certain way, does provide a sort of comment - it is impossible to escape some degree of bias and framing in any news service. Blog presentation minimises the problems associated with this by being self-consciously personalised. As a reader, I will select blogs on topics that are of interest to me, and over time I will get to know the personalities of the blog authors.

Curator blogs will voluntarily associate with each other to make semi-formal news networks. News networks will operate in a dense, flat network rather than a hierarchy.
News will come straight off the wire services, paid for by advertising leveraged across the whole network - the advertising, like much online advertising, will be content-specific and at a remove from the content providers, to remove undue 'Manufacturing Consent'-style influence.

It will be easy to select the news content you are interested in following and build it into a single newsfeed. It will be possible to follow multiple blogs on one topic, particularly valuable if the topic is contentious (e.g. anything political).

Newsblogging is work. Some people will try and not do a good job. PR operations will set up shill curators. Other curators will be offered pay-for-play deals. Reputation will be everything. It will still be much better than the current system.

This system will effectively function as a parasite on the mainstream media services, while simultaneously raising the profile of good content from other news sources such as Indymedia. In time, freelance journalists will be able to offer their content direct to these news services - writing articles, then getting the word out wide to the relevant newsblogs, getting linkage and eyeballs in response, and earning their keep via the advertising revenue on their own pages. Some people are already doing this.

The infrastructure isn't quite there, but soon it will be.

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All the above speculation performed with not a single coffee in me yet today. Anyone want to deconstruct this or present a more plausible scenario?