The long weekend was a joy, and although this isn’t ‘work’, we did get round to scooping out about 9 frames of honey we’d taken from our bees earlier in the summer. The messy results of that sticky process are now sitting in a slowly filtering honey-bucket awaiting bottling in a few days.

After that, it was a new month, a new term and it feels like a new start. Having had hardly any EMI work to do this week I’ve been able to focus on the new startup. Now everyon is off holidays, we had a great catchup meeting on Thursday, with the whole team together. Awesome stuff, a few shifts in the various strands but overall momentum, which is invigorating.

Immediate tasks bubbled up with a pitch next week so Friday was spent putting some very quick screens for an iPhone app together and sketching out an iPad app. This weekend I’ll flesh those out and should have nice work ready for midweek.

In addition, I’ve been helping out with a little site for the New Forest Festival, learning a bit more than I’d like to know about Wordpress. Really, I’m shocked by how popular WP is – it’s a right messy old nightmare doing things in it. Back to MoveableType for me next time!

Busy busy busy!

Back on the weeknotes horse after summer off, apologies for the absence. It was a self imposed quiet from not wanting to crap on and moan about work not going in my preferred best direction. Also, I didn’t want to undermine myself by talking about future plans prematurely.

I’m currently splitting my time between winding down my participation with new digital product development with the record label and early design work for a new startup I’m involved with. The contrast between the two especially strong right now, where the project I had originally begun in November is culminating in multiple releases in early October. Meanwhile the startup has assembled a killer team, has multiple streams spinning up and should have a couple of early products out in October with more following.

This brush with corporate culture has been quite interesting but eventually the frustrating inertia inherent becomes frustrating and the opportunity to get out and at least fail fast again is irresistible.

So like Phil I’ve had a lot of trouble getting back into Weeknotes after a holiday break. I tried doing the 30 Days Of Music which I will continue – just not right now.

I’m currently in a nice hotel room at the top on Nob hill in San Francisco. I arrived a week ago to continue work on a better digital music product, and this past week have been working with IDEO a bit. They wind down now and we shift to development with Pivotal Labs.

It’s a bit nerve wracking, I’m not sure we’re quite ‘there’ yet but we are a step or two forward from our prototype phase. The amount learned having built that is only now becoming clear to me and it’s been a big help deciding what is interesting and what is fun, rather than being dry and dusty about the whole thing. Users are not archivists, old records are not data.

Being Sunday I took some time away from work to enjoy sunshine, Blackpool winning their Premiership playoff and the Maker Faire here in SF. I can haz arduino, finally. The week ahead should be lots more work, not sure if it’ll be fun, but have a feeling it will be decisive.

I’m not very cool, I rarely keep up with the trends but for a brief moment in 2001 I felt quite close to the new “thing”.

The thing was mashups/bootlegs and the one that tipped me over the edge was this one by Freelance Hellraiser – A Stroke Of Genie-us with bits from The Strokes Vs Christina Aguilera. Here’s a photo (not mine) from the what seemed like the smallest, hottest, most important club for all of 2 hours- King Of The Boots!

Picture the scene. It’s about 11.30am. standing in front of a flooded, windswept Other stage at Glastonbury in June 1998 (although the weather was closer to November), brain flooded with cheap speed and unknown halucinogens from the night before. This is the first band on, hardly possible and playing before a tiny battered audience mired in mud. And then this hits, the lyrics talking about aliens, and the rest. I remember where I was when my mind was blown, yes sir.

This reminds me of my dad. It was released in the summer 1982 (so I’d be 8 years old) and I recall being at my nans and this song being on heavy radio play. I think my mum either hated it or had another favourite at the time and my dad was certain it was going to number one – they may even have had a little wager between them as it going to number one!

It did, and we had the album later that summer – I think bought with the winnings from the bet. Ah, I may have got all that wrong – I’ll have to ask my dad – but even if the story is wrong this song still reminds me of him.

Totally shivers, and I make no apologies for adding this after it was used on the ending on Six Feet Under. I loved that TV show, lots of fun and lots of emotion (for a TV show) and had a great set of characters. This tune swelled on the end sequence showing Claire riding off into the sunset of possible futures. Cheesy, sure, but cheesy magic. Thanks.

(The original is a bit over played (and banned from embedding by record company idiocy so here’s a very lovely Ulrich Schnauss remix)

How can you not smile at this two minute twentytwo second chunk of teenage sunshine? It distills the excitement and anticipation of Friday nights out, when anything can happen and waking up next to someone new and shiny on a Saturday morning is a distinct delicious possibility.

I feel old now.

I vaguely like little bits of the Doors (Light My Fire is alright I suppose) and quite enjoyed the film with Val Kilmer, but never really saw the appeal of most of the music. And this in particular – for some reason this song just wrinkles me all wrong, the mixed up bits of tempo – slow, fast, slow, fast just makes me hate the drugged up hippie prince. You’d have to be pretty fucked up to dance to this remotely well at least.

This changes, and when I was younger was whatever I was into that week. Now with the benefit of time, age and a hint of LastFm I’ve narrowed it down to one.

True Faith – New Order

I remember seeing it, with the video, on the TV in 1987. No doubt it was the Chart Show or maybe even something specifically Granada where Tony Wilson was a regular TV face, presenting the local news. I didn’t know he was also owner of Factory records and all that at the time. I’d liked Blue Monday but this was something else.

It hit me between the eyes stomping along (echoes of glitterbeat?) demanding your complete attention right through the enigmatic verse, throbbing bassline, stardust sprinkled chorus, extended middle eight and fading out with Hooky playing all over the upper ranges. Magnificent, a song that puts a bounce in your step, puffs out your chest and makes you think, just for a few minutes, that anything is possible.

That’s my favourite song.