If by any chance you have been checking out my photo pages here, you’ll have seen some manic activity on those pages for sometime now. I appear to have fallen in love with a photo sharing community site called flickr, which has become a very social place to be.
First Black Country Flickrmeet
Sunday just gone was the first Black Country Flickrmeet, which I organised and drummed up membership for, I was truly astonished by the number of people who had been brought together, by the flickr site and our interactions within the various groups, to walk my route around Walsall taking random photos. The day was a successes and not only showed the ability of a social network to arrange such an event but the idea of democracy carries through as members are encouraged to add their own ideas for meetings and the whole thing kinda works in a nice way.
Here are just some of my own photos from the day, which you can view more of on this page, but you’ll find a lot more in the flickr group
At first flickr appeared just to be a site for uploading and hosting photos, but because of the social aspects it became much more than that. I was soon joining groups left, right and center partly to gain an audience for comments on my own photos, which at the time were event based, but also to discover other works to be inspired by them and as a by product of that I gained contacts and a social network.
Social documentation through photography
The most surprising thing I got from flickr was the sense of community, feedback and belonging. Not only was it a place to be inspired, pick up new tricks and figure out why shutter priority matters so much, it’s just a great place to hang out in. The great city of Birmingham is home to a vibrant photographic community and some members of the Birmingham group, like Pete Ashton, spun off a meetup group where members could arrange to meet and have a wander around the city centre, taking photos in a group, giving a sense of belonging as well as being able to document the city as it changes. The meets are almost like social documenting.
Inspired by this I decided to help set up a similar thing for the surrounding area to the North West of Birmingham known as the Black Country, all of my higher and further education was carried out in the Black Country and I’m fond of the area as much as I am of Birmingham.
I can barely contain my excitement, Julia has posted up a professionally shot and edited promo video for These Days, it’s on YouTube, link to it, embed it, email it, watch it.
Check out her gigs page because she’s touring again and this coming Saturday she’ll be screening the video, bluetoothing a free track to everyone at the gig in Cardiff and hosting the gig for us to download. There are tracks on myspace for you to check out, seriously I know I keep up with the relentless Julia posts since like 2005, but you must spread the good news
After a short spell away from the limelight Longview seem to be kicking out some fresh anthemic indie rock from their studio in Manchester. The band sprung two surprise gigs on us as they get back into the swing of organising things.
Emma Scott of Kerrang radio brought Longview Long-view to the Actress and Bishop in Birmingham recently as they tried out some of the new material. They also played The Night And Day in the homelands of Manchester. Having followed the band for a long time I can safely say there is a mantra of if “it aint broke, don’t fix it” coming through and as such the band haven’t changed what they are doing or followed a tangent or felt the need to change as so many bands these days do, which is a very good thing, in fact as you may hear from the free track they have posted, things are even more anthemic than they were.
If you’ve never heard of the band before, Long-view are the kind of band who wouldn’t be out of place supporting Coldplay on a stadium tour, it’s anthemic music which is apparent in the massive hit “Further”. They launched themselves with a debut album titled Mercury and early on had produced a stunning video and DVD single release of “Can’t Explain”. A handful of singles were taken from that album and released and they toured heavily firstly in support slots and then in their own headlining gigs. You’ll find the band have added a hyphen in their name creating “Long-view” after a clash with a similar band name.
Found this gem of an artist lurking around on Overplay. Based in my home region of the West Midlands in England Caroline7, plays out acoustic melodic folk tunes which are booth soothing and haunting.
Likened to Eva Cassidy (perhaps a very young highschool easysreet Cassidy), she fingerpicks lightly and carries a lot of the work with her voice, a lot like Cassidy herself, haunting in some way. What you get with the track Childhood, is exactly the kind of track which wouldn’t be out pf place in an acoustic tent at a music festival, raw and melodic yet predictable. But then again there’s something safe about predictability.
Caroline has been featured on Classic Gold Digital Radio, BURN FM, BBC Radio WM and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. She also played at Artsfest in Birmingham, which is a massive arts and performing arts festival in the second city of England. Anyone local to Birmingham will be able to catch this jewel in the midlands music scene at a number of venues in the coming days and months, including a local shopping centre in Wolverhampton, bostin! Be sure to check the gigs page if you happen to in this part of the world.
Oh my gosh I’ve been so out of touch with my own site. I had started the listening post as an MP3 blog to stream out some lush music which found its way to me by the interweb or otherwise, but it kinda never really got started.
Kicking off the return post then is a Sweedish singer songwriter, going under the name Hello Saferide aka Annika Norlin softly drifted across my last.fm player today. Almost like that time when that distinct Sunday roast fragrance manages to creep upstairs and draw you in. From reading her myspace page, it becomes clear that her stage name was inspired by an intelligent bus driver in a drug addicted neighborhood, glad that clears that one up then.
What you’ll find here are sharp lyrics and simple instrumental manipulation, telling a story sung by an edgy voice with a distinct Scandinavian accent which at times can fit awkwardly into an Americanisation, but this works to Annika’s advantage here and surprisingly adds something unique.
The track San Francisco, is a spring time tune, very upbeat with an electric athemic feeling. Backed by a full band and backing singers, it’s worth holding on right to the end for the backing vocals slam and baselines, cheesy yes, but very catchy. Valentines Day is one of those simple tracks with classical style finger picking and harmonies, quite soothing.
