General people watching with to the likes of Think About Life @Digital and watching our overpriced cans of Ref Stripe vibrate across the window sill to some Jamie Woon @Digital also. But that was just because we were waiting for the main event:
The protest for electoral reform in London today could have just been another piece of news. But I know Tim Hancock and Quin Golding went. I am connected to that event through people I know. I would have been still connected to that event without social networking, but Facebook made me conscious that I was. An awareness of events around us and our connection to them is part of what differentiates the solitary individual from the member of society. A global consciousness facilitated by technology is changing our relationships with others and in turn will change our politics and our society. We grew from small communities, but live in an environment of such scale, that only with this kind of technology can we continue to feel a part of something, a part of society. Technology isn’t tearing people apart, its bringing them together.
I launched Spotify this morning to find some of the latest additions included some BBC Live Sessions. I’m currently listening to The Specials at the Paris Theatre on 15 December 1979, and as I discovered with The Clash’s Concert Vault recording from earlier this week, the best bits of these recordings is the lecturing from the bands between songs.
In the case of The Clash it was Joe Strummer berating journalists over their constant questioning behind the meaning of The Clash’s music (to which his reply was a rendition of Police and Thieves).
“You know, we get asked, we have to talk to a lot of journalists, and they always ask us ‘Excuse me, sir! But does your music have a message?’ and if you say ‘Yeah’, then you let yourself in for ‘What is this message?’ So for all of those trainee journalists in the audience, THIS is the message!”
The Specials are equally scolding of unprotected sex (Too Much Too Young) and students (Rat Race):
“If any of you under 16s are planning to make love later on, get hold of your dads dictionary and look under the word contraception and under the word fun, and under these two words you’ll fund four words: Too Much Too Young.”
"If all you students are listening and thinking about your mum and dad at christmas, just stop revising for a moment, and prick back your ears, this is for you, its called Rat Race."
Sonara Milagrosa live at Session Cafe at Acud in Berlin. Just happened upon these guys by accident. Just a shame that we only caught their last two songs!
Now listening to
