Posts by Robyn Gallagher
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Nick Hornby wrote a piece in the Observer last year on the role that music blogs play now.
Record stores of olden times were a place to both purchase music but also discover music. Purchasing music has moved online, but - as Russell noted above - it's hard to discover cool new music on iTunes.
That's where music blogs and other music discovery websites come into play. They let people sample and discover music without risk.
It took me longer than it should have done to work out that the internet is one giant independent record shop – thousands and thousands of cute little independent record shops, anyway.
I've also been led to iTunes purchases via a hearty YouTube session. Or at least this is how I'm explaining the large amount of ELO that's recently made its way to my iPod.
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Selling us garbage like Lady Gah Gah (sic) does a disservice to music.
What? Have you even listened to her album? She writes and performs really good pop songs. Songs that make me want to dance and not wear any pants.
And you know her stage name is a play on "Radio Gaga"? She's much smarter than you think.
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On a related subject, BBC Radio 2 recently played a two-part documentary by Pete Waterman called "Last Orders at the Spinning Disc: What's Happened to Record Shops?"
In part one he looks at how record shops used to be, recalling how vastly social they were in the 1960s, the hippy hangouts of the 1970s, and the birth of the mega store in the '80s.
Then in part two, he looks at what's happened to record shops - why it's not just the independent stores closing down, but the mega stores too. And why supermarkets are now the leading retailer of music in the UK.
Part 2 is available on the BBC iPlayer (which seems to play OK in New Zealand), but I'm sure that those of us who have friends in England won't have any trouble finding part one too.
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They contributed to almost wiping Real Groovy out and as they spread around the country people who buy their music at The Warehouse will realise it's just as cheap at JB Hifi but is actually filed and displayed logically not just tossed randomly onto a table.
That's one of the things I really like about JB - the people who work there actually seem knowledgeable about music/films/whatever their specialty is.
Actually, there's a thought - why is it that we mythologise record shops but not DVD retailers?
I guess it's because we didn't grow up buying DVDs (or even video tapes, really). The romance is in seeing movies, but there's a slight romance with video rental joints.
No one worries about independent DVD shops being edged out by the big retailers like they worry about record shops.
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24 hours ago I didn't really know who Paul Reynolds was. 12 hours ago I sort of knew who he was and was sad to hear that he'd died (and feeling a bit strange that I'd existed in a different Venn diagram).
But now a funny thing has happened. I've started reading all the tributes that people have been writing about him. While there's sadness, there's also a lot of energy. People have been genuinely inspired and fired up by him. And that energy is continuing - his work and his enthusiasm has been shared and is growing.
And it's through these comments from so many people that I've started to get an idea of what he was like, and indeed what a tragic loss this is.
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I'm feeling really weird about this. When I heard last night on Twitter that Paul Reynolds had died, my first thought was the namesake Telecom CEO.
Then I had a look at his People Points blog and thought, oh, yeah, that guy - the one who asked a question at the Great Blend in 2006. That's the only memory I have of him.
And it bothers me that he's lead this amazing life, done all this important stuff, been an active part of the interweb community for years and yet his achievements have more or less totally passed me by.
I feel like maybe I've been living in a bubble for the past 15 years, ignoring the greatness going on in the neighbourhood around me. Perhaps I can take this as a sign to expand my horizons.
My thoughts are with those whose lives were touched by @littlehigh.
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I'm a New Zealander. We don't like to make a fuss.
I was at a Thai restaurant a couple of weeks ago and found my "mild" soup was so hot that it was actually causing me pain.
I told the waitress. She replied, "Oh! You should have said something." Which was strange, given that's exactly what I'd just done.
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Arseless chaps? Surely chaps with arses are simply trousers.
Jeansless chaps is what you need to be careful with.
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Men want him to invest in their schemes; women want to sleep with him (and many have). There's nothing really to tell that he's on the prowl, other than a direct look and a half-smile.
To quote Liz Lemon, I want to go to there.
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Reading this, it's all, "Oh yeah, I know him. And him." Etc.