#LonData

So yeah, I was at the #Londata meetup this evening, it was all about Big Data. I was a little out of my depth.

My depth being those job vacancy posts I did in 2009, those libor posts of 2008, and the London rents posts of 2012, all lovingly scraped by hand. Rather than the api-driven professional affairs of tonight's audience.

Anyhoo at #Londata a company called Bloom were showing off some pretty network diagrams illustrating influence on twitter. They look like dandelions and help companies identify who to engage with. Its all to do with who passes on specific messages on twitter and expands the reach of a client's campaign.

One thing I took away from the presentation was that I ought to change my profile details on Twitter to more accurately represent my interests. Or maybe not, maybe I can opt out of being a marketeer's pawn by having my interests as guinea pigs and Dutch politics, things completely incongruous to the content of my tweets.

Anyhoo, I was wondering how Bloom's networky authority stuff could apply to the indiepop music scene. Allo Darlin were playing at Kings College tonight so its kind of topical, and Allo Darlin are both the sort of band who's members go to lots of other gigs and are also the sort of band who played on a train platform at the seminal Indietracks 2008 festival.

There's a handful of bands and a handful of people who all go to the same concerts. Sure some gigs are full of other people and some people go to see other bands gigs, but there is a hard core who are key to the scene. This we already knew.

Maybe if they were diagrammed as nodes, each node is a person, the lines reflect going to gigs, the colours have no relevance.

This diagram is just to illustrate the concept, Alice from The Cosines has probably been to Moustache of Insanity gigs, Bill From Moustache of Insanity has probably reciprocated and Hannah from Owl and Mouse must have been to a Moustache gig at some point too. And Trev OddBox, he puts on most gigs within the scene.

But can twitter be used more intelligently than just spamming the usual suspects, and target people better than just me tugging on people's sleeves?

Information about who goes to what gigs used to be more freely available on songkick, you could look at anyone's gig history and filter it and easy build up an idea of who liked what gigs and who your gigmates are. But now this information is less visible and it takes minds greater than mine to extract it.

Hmm, I'm not quite sure what the point of this blogpost was, just a ramble I guess, with links.

Gender inequality at Indietracks: There I fixed it

Following on from yesterday's internet entertainment and also today's discussions on the Anorak forum, I thought I'd use the spreadsheet I made up of the past few Indietrackses as a force for good.

I have compiled a fantasy Indietracks lineup featuring all bands that have played there before, but carefully selected so as to be completely balanced by gender.

First a brief note as to what I mean by 'balanced by gender'. Rather than all acts being 50% male and 50% female, I've tried to figure what the make up would be if males and females were randomly distributed. So there are some all male bands and some all female bands. Considering we want about 55 acts to play in total, the mix would be as follows:-

All male	9 bands
Mixed mostly male	14 bands
50:50 bands	10 bands
Mixed mostly female	14 bands
All female	9 bands

With this in mind the lineup would be as follows:-

Disasteradio, Emmy The Great, Foxes!, Frances McKee, Helene, Kevin McGrother, King of Cats, Labrador, Loyal Trooper, MJ Hibbett (solo), Oxo Foxo, Roy Moller, Ste McCabe, Allo Darlin (2008 lineup of Elizabeth and Virginia), Berlin Brides, Burning Hearts, Everybody Was In The French Resistance.. Now, Lets Whisper (2008 lineup including Elizabeth Morris), Marshmallow, Kisses, Modular, Paisley and Charlie, Poppy & Friends, The Cannanes, The Lovely Eggs, The Middles Ones, Zipper, Gordon McIntyre (2012 lineup), Haiku Salut, The Just Joans (2008 platform lineup Dave, Katie, Rowan), Betty and the Werewolves, Teenage Fanclub, The Specific Heats, Art Brut, Butcher Boy, Cola Jet Set, Friends, La Casa Azul, Rose Elinor Dougall, Stereo Total, Tender Trap, The History of Apple Pie, The Red Shoe Diaries, The Smittens, Hong Kong in the 60s, Very Yours Truly, Stars of Aviation, The School, A fine Day for Sailing, A Little Orchestra, Withered Hand, The Loves, Little My.

This gives the following gender stats:-

Total female performers	90
Total male performers	90
%female performers	50.00%
%male performers	50.00%
All male	9 bands
Mixed mostly male	13 bands
50:50 bands	11 bands
Mixed mostly female	10 bands
All female	9 bands

Which is close enough to ideal.

You're welcome.

**UPDATE**
The list of bands was a little half-arsed, so here's the lineup by stage

FRIDAY
MJ Hibbett (solo)
Allo Darlin (2008 lineup of Elizabeth and Virginia)
Tender Trap

SATURDAY
Main Stage
Butcher Boy
Betty and the Werewolves
Everybody Was In The French Resistance.. Now
The Loves (2011 festival lineup with dancing girls)
A Little Orchestra
A fine Day for Sailing
The School

Indoor Stage
Emmy The Great
The Lovely Eggs
Hong Kong in the 60s
Gordon McIntyre (2012 lineup)
Little My
The Red Shoe Diaries
Berlin Brides
Haiku Salut

Church Stage
Helene
Roy Moller
The Just Joans (2008 platform lineup Dave, Katie, Rowan)
Labrador
Ste McCabe
Friends
Very Yours Truly

Train
Oxo Foxo
Paisley and Charlie
Loyal Trooper

SUNDAY
Main Stage
The Smittens
Rose Elinor Dougall
Teenage Fanclub
La Casa Azul
The Specific Heats
Stars of Aviation
Cola Jet Set

Indoor Stage
Art Brut
Stereo Total
Poppy & Friends
Withered Hand
The Middles Ones
Zipper
The History of Apple Pie

Church Stage
Lets Whisper (2008 lineup including Elizabeth Morris)
Disasteradio
Marshmallow Kisses
Burning Hearts
Modular
The Cannanes
Foxes!

Train
King of Cats
Frances McKee
Kevin McGrother

Sexism in indiepop band selection and Indietracks

Earlier today Daniel Novakovic and Jennifer Reiter posted an awesome blogpost on the So Tough So Cute blog about gender inequality of performers at Indietracks 2012.

Twitter erupted, Facebook erupted as band members and promoters denied their sexism. And cos Daniel and Jennifer had used statistics to make their argument it was all a great heap of awesome.

They had analysed the male/female/x make up of all the bands listed as performing at Indietracks 2012, then categorised the bands into being male, female or 50:50

This is how we counted performers at Indietracks. The process is based on the Ladyfest Malmö method.

• A female act is an act where the majority of band members are female
• A male act is an act where the majority of band members are male
• A 50/50 act is comprised of half females and half males or equal members of males, females and trans people

and with the help of lovely polkadot pie charts summarised the findings as

Summary:

• 56 acts were booked in total.
• 38 were male acts
• 7 were female acts
• 11 were 50/50-acts

Clearly since 51% of the population is female there must be sexism at work.


Similarly for individual performers at Indietracks 2012

• 159 were male
• 64 were female
• 3 trans or genderqueer.

It doesn't really represent the population.

But how badly should indiepop promoters feel about this? Is indiepop particularly sexist compared to other musical genres? I've always felt that indiepop is a broad musical church, inculsive of all genders and sexes. Compared to pop, punk, rock and metal, there are far more people in skirts in indiepop bands.

Anyhoo, So Tough! So Cute! only looked at the data for Indietracks 2012. Which could just be a blip, so I've poured over the old festival guides for Indietracks 2009, 2010 and 2011.


For performers, without investigating the privacies of trans and genderqueeriness

	2009	2010	2011	2012
Total female performers	75	58	59	64
Total male performers	138	143	120	159
%female performers	35.2%	28.9%	33.0%	28.7%
%male performers	64.8%	71.1%	67.0%	71.3%

Its roughly 70:30 male to female, how much variation were you expecting? About that much?

	2009	2010	2011	2012
Female bands	7	5	7	7
Male bands	40	43	35	38
50:50 bands	13	11	11	11

That is remarkably consistent, considering all the thousands of indiepop bands who could possibly play, more often than not there's always 7 female bands and 11 50:50 bands

Personally I think there's something a bit off about calling Allo Darlin' a male band, since without Elizabeth Morris, they wouldn't be half as successful.

So, as I have access to the raw data, we can categorised them differently, thus:-

	2009	2010	2011	2012
All male	19	17	17	15
Mixed mostly male	21	26	18	23
50:50 bands	13	11	11	11
Mixed mostly female	3	3	2	4
All female	4	2	5	3

Thrilling stuff that doesn't really change the argument much, except that if promoters were being sexist in their selections, there would perhaps be more 'All male' bands.

There are, of course, flaws in the methodology here. Flaws such as Dan and Jonny from Pocketbooks who as a mobile rhythm section play bass and drums in a couple of different bands, most of them featuring female members, when considering Indietracks, do Dan and Jonny only count once or multiple times or as fractions adding up to whole people. Likewise Remi from Electrophonvitage/Sunny Street and as a solo artist, the Colin Clary/Lets Whisper/Smittens, and Simon Love, cos he's worth ten normal men.

On the female side there's Emma from Knickers, Owl and Mouse and Darren Hayman's band who's trying to make up gender inequality single-handedly.

What's to do?

I can only propose that all women in general are forced to form bands and get on stage even if they don't want to.


Any musically talented women must join at least five bands.


I don't know.


UPDATE #1
As mentioned earlier the original piece didn't cover other music genres outwith indiepop, so I thought I'd venture into other worlds...
These are the details for The Didmarton Bluegrass Festival 2012

Total female performers	28
Total male performers	118
%female performers	19.18%
%male performers	80.82%

All male	19
Mixed mostly male	14
50:50 bands	5
Mixed mostly female	1
All female	3

So thats most imbalanced than Indietracks, with overwealmingly male bands.

Thick Creamy Podcast 20-07-2012

The other days I went to a gig, the last ever Which Way Is Up show at The Wilmington Arms, so I've recorded a podcast from the night featuring some awesome bands like The Cosines, Downdime, Haiku Salut and Ace Bushy Striptease.


At the bottom of this blogpost you file some of the photatoes I took at the show, I think that last one of Ace Bushy Striptease is the best gig photo I've ever taken ever.

I wonder, is my podcasting career underperforming? I'm averaging only 25 listeners per podcast, am I doing something wrong or is that punching above my weight?


For the first couple I was getting thirty or forty listeners, and for the last few they've only been getting twenty or so. Is it just I'm not pimping it so hard and spamming twitter, Facebook, and all the messageboards, or is it just its a poor idea?

The Cosines

The Cosines

Downdime

Haiku Salut

Ace Bushy Striptease

My videos of Indietracks 2012

I went to a music festival the other weekend, Indietracks 2012. Its like twee indiepop and steam trains at the same time, and this it had parrots and owls too.

Anyhoo, at these things I usually shoot a few videos, I'd like to present them all to you here in one blogpost.

This is a short 4 minute taster of the whole weekend


This is Darren Hayman and The secondary Modern playing a cover of The Bee Gees' I started a Joke
 

 This is The Just Joans playing a cover of Kenickie's Come Out 2Nite
 

 This is Fulhast playing Prison Pizza
 

 This is Allo Darlin' playing a cover of The Just Joans' If You Don't Pull

And this is Elizabeth from Allo Darlin's encore, their classic Tallulah



And for those of you with plenty of time on your hands this is a 30 min compilation of the weekend.


On reflection, I should have titled it up with the name of all the bands. That would have taken an hour or so, and I was in a rush to get it online first, not sure why.

I think with these videos for me it is a popularity contest, can I get more views on YouTube than I did the other year. The quality isn't great, but it's good enough for YouTube, and what do you expect with a Canon IXUS 50 from 2005 (it used to be cutting edge, I could have been a contender...). For the past few years there's been folk mincing about at Indietracks with professional cameras, whole film crews, and I'm never sure what happens to the footage, a five minute local news item perhaps, or a limited release indie movie, who knows.

This year a band called The Birthday Kiss had a video up pretty quickly here, although I've got to say, eight seconds in the commentary contains what could be a tribute to the end of my 2008 video. Good research there chaps, appreciated.

Go Compare - Go Fuck Yersel

Just to be clear, the point of this piece is that I want to live in a world where anyone can freely graffiti billboard adverts without fear of prosecution for vandalism or hate crime. We are bombarded by outdoor advertising with no choice as to whether we see it or not, if people could freely amend adverts as they see fit, marketeers would be forced to take into account the views of local communities.

It makes me gag with frustration, there are actually people out there who think that this is a spontaneous eruption of hatred and vandalism against one specific car insurance comparison site, and not just a slightly edgy marketing job.

I'm genuinely concerned that people think that out of all the things in modern life that a spontaneous uprising of graffiti could be about, it would be about one TV advert.

Not the Aleksandr from compare the meerkats, or Churchill the disagreeable/agreeable bulldog or that dapper Admiral.

A lot of people think that its genuine amusing vandalism, then so be it.

What I think would be awesome if if some lads with spraycans went out and cranked the Go Compare graffiti up a notch and added their own unauthorised graffiti. "Go Compare - Go Fuck Yersel", "Go to Compare the Meerkat", "Go back to Italy", "Go anorexic you fat fuck"

If this is the reality that folk think they live in, then embrace it. I eagerly await the same graffiti creeping into other adverts, a wholesale takeover of billboard advertising by lads with spraycans, inspired by Go Compare.

Especially around the Olympics

That would be awesome.

Any advert that annoys you or rubs you up the wrong way, just grab your cans, don't say it, spray it. If anyone stops you, tell them you have implicit permission from the PR company to purely and genuinely express the feelings of the local community towards advertising.

When I used to stay round Shields Road in Glasgow, an area with a large Muslim community, whenever the clothing companies put up posters of scantily clad women wearing £4.99 bikini tops, a few days later the skantily clad woman would find herself covered up. Someone had been out with a ladder, a tray of black Dulux and a paint roller, and covered her modesty.

This happened a few times until the advertisers got the message that you don't do scantily clad women in some areas.

I guess in a sprawling metropolis like London, it doesn't matter if an advertiser pisses off a large section of the eyeballs.


A few weeks ago the same thing happened in Walthamstow (and Tower Hamlets according to the Evening Standard), with this year's H&M £4.99 bikini tops adverts. By Blackhorse Road underground someone had tried to paint over the skantily clad women and failed miserably, only one of the four ladies was covered.

Our awesome MP tweeted about it, we have different views on this. I think its a pure and genuine expression of a community's distaste for advertising that's vulgar in their culture, and she thinks its a hate crime. Some people feel threatened by it.

I was tweeting about it yesterday and received this

I don't really want to invoke Venn, but it is possible for graffiti to be both vandalism and hate crime, and also for vandalism to look like hate crime when it clearly isn't, in much the same way that a marketing job can look like vandalism when it clearly isn't.

One person's hate crime is another's censorship. If you're going to mush all these concepts together to match whatever your worldview is, then you'll find me up a ladder painting beer bellies on posters of Olympic Team GB and complaining that they're already airbrushed to unrealistic perfection and encourage the youth of today to develop eating disorders.

Anyhoo, the Go Compare graffiti campaign is a rather sweet anachronistic affair, harking back to a time when people did things differently.

We don't use ladders to deface adverts now, these days we use software, like on MyDavidCameron and the anti-terror hotline remix

 Alas, if Go Compare created a macro generator website, no one would use it, no one feels strongly enough about their adverts to actually go out and vandalise them.

Only in the dreams of marketeers.

Thick Creamy Podcast 12-06-2012

Its been weeks and sweeks since this gig, but here's a podcast of The School, Just Handshakes (We're British) and Knickers gig at The Queen of Hoxton, from 12-06-2012

Knickers

It was the first time I'd been to The Queen of Hoxton, just a few blocks away from Liverpool Street Station, maybe five minutes walk. The place was one of those cool, dark neon lit places that you'd imagine were created by The Mighty Boosh.

Although there were posters up advertising the gig, I couldn't find where the bands were playing until I asked the barmaid. There's this big staircase in the middle of the room with a sign clearly marked 'Toilets', then there's this big octagonal room, its like something from dungeons and dragons, there's like eight doors, two of them lead to certain toilets, and only one of them leads to the venuey band playing bit. It was dark but I could just about find my way.

Knickers

Of course I'd arrived a bit early so there was a good deal of standing around, and I wasn't quite sure which band was on first, I hadn't seen the Just Handshakes (We're British) since Indietracks last year and I didn't want to miss them, on the other band I see Knickers more often than I watch the news, so it could easily nip out to get my dinner when they were on.

So Knickers kick off the night with an awesome set featuring favourites My Baby's Just a Baby, and A Thousand Miles and some of their more obscure b-sides such as  Wowie Zowie.

Just Handshakes (We're British)

I found a fish and chip takeaway a few blocks away, although I have to confess, technical difficulties meant I couldn't clock in on FourSquare. The football was on, I saw Blaszczykowsk's goal. just as the man asked me if I wanted a sausage with my chips. 

Moments later Just Handshakes (We're British) took to the stage.

They were alright.


They'd played in Newcastle a few weeks before and much of their between song banter was based around Byker Grove, that was cool, but does it say something about the age of the audience, I mean, it hasn't been on TV in over five years, and Geoff's been dead for over a decade.

The School

Headlining the evening were The School. The first couple of songs were beset with technical problems as the mixing desk died, so songs became acoustic numbers halfway through, but it was all taken graciously.


They played a long set of track from their first album 2010's Loveless Unbeliever and their new album Reading Too Much Into Things Like Everything

And so it was that I skipped home through the warm Hoxton streets.

Phone Box Library #37 Little Hadham, Hertfordshire

So we were tootling around Hertford again, with time on our hands, so we headed to the tiny village of Little Hadham. Not to be confused with the larger Much Hadham a mile or so to the north. And there just round the corner from Hadham Forge, we found the 37th telephone box library book exchange.

It is an awe-inspiring four shelf affair with an additional set of shelves on the floor, home to 136 books.

Dan Brown's Angels & Demons was present

I left a copy of Ian Flemming's Casino Royale that I'd previously acquired from Henham, but been unable to read due to Gormanghast committments, and grabbed myself a copy of The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart. Dice Man had a dose of mildew, probably as a result of its stay in the phone box, the protection from the elements provided isn't the best for books, but I guess its adequate compared to the pulping if it was thrown away.

A notice on the wall of the phone box hints that the keeper of this phonebox book exchange is a councillor called Geoff Williamson

The verge home of the phonebox could do with being cut back as  nettles were encroaching. That said, maybe it has been strimmed at the start of the summer and grown rapidly in the recent good weather, its not easy to stay on top of these things.

Plants and stuff: Definitive listing 2012

Roughly a year ago I did a blogpost listing all the plants that we were growing in out back garden here in Walthamstow. In the pre-ramble I was pondering whether in the years of going to gigs I'd actually seen 1,000 bands. Sadly, over on the gig listing site, Songkick, that sort of quantity information just isn't visible.

Anyhoo, back to gardening, with a year's worth of experience, learning what works in our garden and what doesn't, its all blooming right now, and I thought it about time do do another role call of what's growing

1. Apple - cooking
2. Basil
3. Basil - red
4. Beetroot
5. Blueberry
6. Butternut squash
7. Chives
8. Cornflower
9. Cottage Pink Iced Gem
10. Dead bathroom tree
11. Irises
12. Lavender
13. Mint
14. Oregano
15. Parsley
16. Parsnips - one variety
17. Parsnips - another variety
18. Peppers
19. Poppy
20. Potatoes
21. Pumpkin - Atlantic Giant
22. Pumpkin - dwarf
23. Random red tree stolen from work
24. Raspberry
25. Rhubarb
26. Rosemary
27. Sage
28. Sweetcorn
29. Thyme

Crikey, twenty nine different types of plant, the same number as this time last year, but a different mix, still enough for a decent balanced meal.

No tomatoes this year as we seem to have late blight in the soil which just makes the them rot. Late blight also affects the potatoes, but if I harvest them before September, they should be okay.

The parsnips won't be good to eat until next year, and likewise the sweetcorn won't have any cobs until next summer, but its nice to watch it grow.

The apple tree is doing better than last year, the fruit are bigger and more numerous. I'm not sure whether they'll grow big enough to eat, but it still an improvement over the falling foetal buds of last  year.

Phone Box Library #25 Henham, Essex

The other week during atrocious weather I found myself cruising the winding roads of the Essex / Hertfordshire borders, the rain was coming down torrentially when my wee car pulled up in the village of Henham to check out phone box library #25.

I'd read about this one a few months ago in an article which also covered the phone box library in Arkesden, seven miles away on the other side of the M11. I was somewhat confused about the photo in the news source it was unclear which phone box it was of.


The Henham phone box library was established in mid September 2011, and is still going strong. You can't miss it, slap bang in the middle of the village, huge verges on all sides, pairs of puddle ducks waddling past enthusiastically.

Inside there are four shelves bolted onto the back panel, about a hundred books in total. Shamefully there is no Dan Brown, but making up for this shortfall there are half a dozen Stephen King books, most of his Dark Tower series.

I'd say it was a tiny bit untidy, a couple of books piled on top of rows of books, but at least there were no piles of books on the floor.

I exchanged a copy of my own novel in return for the first of Ian Flemming's James Bond books, Casino Royale, an edition from 1978 with a boobie lady on the front cover.

The rain lessened off a bit, so I ventured out of the phone box to return to my car, taking a few photies of the fine looking duck pond, sign posts and villaginess of the village.

The phone box book exchange in Henham is well worth a visit if you have a spare forty minutes around Standsted Airport and if you love the windy country roads of Essex.


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