I’ve just spent four days in Belfast hanging out with musicians, sleeping on their couches and spare beds, going to gigs, doing a spot of consultancy and speaking at a music industry seminar. As you’d expect in Ireland (and under those circumstances) there’s no shortage of stories to tell.
I thought I’d start with one told to me by Walter the Goon from the band John Shelly and the Creatures. It explains the origins of the band’s name in a bar in Berlin some years earlier.
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I stayed the night at Walter’s house, watched a bit of Glastonbury on TV, ate Chinese food and drank American beer. The next morning, we did the full Ulster Fry breakfast including farls, strolled through the Botanic Gardens and finished off with a pint of Guinness at a very traditional establishment, before I jumped on the bus back to the airport.
NZ readers might be interested to learn that John Shelly and the Creatures were the support band of choice for the Brunettes when they played in Ireland.
Lovely man - and very hospitable. If you ever want to go freeloading in other countries, my tip is to seek out musicians. Here’s what the band sounds like. The single ‘Angeline’ is coming out in September.
I’ve spent the past couple of days showing Saskia and Piet from Veronica Holdings around Birmingham, and introducing them to some of the more interesting music industry people around town.
We’re going to be doing a project together, which involves music, students, mixing, DJs, gadgets and a trans-European party. My job, while they were here, was to make sure they saw some of the nicer bits of Birmingham, make sure we got all of the work done that we needed to do, and try and make them feel as welcome as we do when we come to Amsterdam.
Some of my friends were skeptical: “Once you’ve shown them everything that’s great about Birmingham, what are you going to do in the afternoon?” - but actually - we did okay.
Apparently I won the prize for best postgraduate research for 2008 at AUT’s School of Communication Studies. They have a prizegiving ceremony tonight their time (Wednesday 12th), and Matt and Rosser from the university have both been in touch, asking me to do a video that they can play at the awards.
Video is really not my medium, so I’ve been procrastinating quite strenuously on this, but I did manage to cobble this together at the last minute. It’ll have to do. I present it here for your entertainment.
I’m told I get a cheque for $500, which will come in very handy. Perhaps I could put it towards ‘talking into a camera’ lessons…
I have a lot of public profiles on the internet, and for obvious reasons, many of them mention that I work at UCE Birmingham. Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore.
I haven’t been fired or found a new job — the university has simply changed its name. From tomorrow, UCE Birmingham will be Birmingham City University. Apart from the fact that it now sounds like a football club (and looks like one: wait till you see the new logo), it’s okay as University names go.
It got me thinking about what it would be like if AUT (my former employers in New Zealand) made the same sorts of choices. In a town where there is already a University of Auckland, it would become Auckland City University. I can’t imagine that being allowed to happen there — and I don’t know how this has managed to happen here.
The argument is that Birmingham City University is snappier than The University of Central England in Birmingham, which, I suppose, it is. But it’s not snappier than UCE, which is what everyone calls it. When you abbreviate Birmingham City University, you tend to end up with simply ‘Birmingham City’, which always makes it sound like the next word you’re going to say is either going to be ‘Council’ — or ‘Nil’.
But that’s not my problem. My problem is that now I have to go around the internet sweeping up all the anachronisms about where I work. This will affect all of my online profiles, many of which I can’t even recall where they might be.
So… if you find an instance of me claiming to work at an organisation that doesn’t exist, could you please bring it to my attention so that I can correct the internet?
