Everything is against me!

I think I´m destined not to be able to keep this blog going whilst I´m away. Internet connections generally aren´t the fastest out here and to make matters even worse I got mugged last night in Granada, Nicaragua, and the bastard legged it with my camera. I had loads to blog about that pretty much relied on some awesome photos!

However there could be light at the end of the tunnel. A security guard saw it happen and knows who did it. I´m now involved in some kind of plan to catch the guy tonight with the police. Very exciting, although I could do without it! Who knows, I might get it back if I´m lucky!

Life through a lens

Image via

I'm left with a bit of a dilemma. I don't want to spend the next six months travelling and having to think about communications and work type stuff but I also don't want to leave this blog (and my brains) lying dormant. So I have come up with the following idea...

It's a bit like a personal photography ethnography for want of a better expression. I'm going to hone my photographic skills by asking the question: 'Who cares about big advertising budgets when there is this in the world?'......insert image

I don't know where it's going to go. But I'm hoping it will vary from the irreverence to the deep and meaningful. This should keep me on my toes.

The ol' tin sandwich

Image via

As part of my 'think less do more' travel plans I've bought myself a flash new camera to hone my photography skills and a harmonica. I'm determined to use this time as an opportunity to do things I've always wanted to do. Playing music being one of them, not necessarily the harmonica. But my thinking behind the harmonica is that it fits better into my backpack than a cello.

My first task according to my book is to conquer jingle bells. Stay tuned for an update on my harmonica tour of Central and South America.

Only average people see the average in things

“Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still” - Jalal ad-Din Rumi

No one likes to think they’re average. But the fact of the matter is at least half of us are below average. Yes it’s true I’m afraid, averageness is all around us.

Now I think I’m quite a proud Englishman, despite the fact that we are generally average at everything in the modern world. Our culture is average, we’re average at sport, our economy is average, our service is average, our music is average, our weather is average and it would seem that even our creative industries are now seen as average. At least that’s how people generally think of it.

As a nation we seem to be a pessimistic bunch with such high expectations - God forbid should our great empire be considered average. I think we are way to hard on ourselves sometimes and perhaps a bit of optimism is in order. Just like this fantastic exhibition currently on at Tate Britain.

‘How we are: photographing Britain’ was an open exhibition that invited anyone to contribute photographs of Britain taken through their own lens so to speak.

It doesn’t necessarily celebrate our averageness, but embraces it and portrays Britain in its most unspoilt and often humbling way. Much of it is optimistic and endearing, looking for the interesting thing in an ordinary life or object. Such as these:

Enjoy the stormy weather


Grandma



Leeds Leap


You can view all the entrants and winners here

20 Years of Rave

Image from PYMCA

I'm absolutely loving PYMCA (Photographic Youth Music Culture Archive) at the moment. As well as an excellent image library to use and peruse, it has had two cracking exhibition's on recently. This was England and more recently Pills, Stills and Bellyaches - 20 years of rave. Rave was probably the first musical subculture that influenced me and my circle of friends. Living near Brighton, the South Downs became an area rife with raves (and still is by the looks of things here). As organisers looked for larger spaces to hold bigger gatherings and keep events under the radar, the countryside close to London was perfect.

At the time there wasn't really any interesting subcultures to identify with. It was the point of transition from the 80s to the 90s where not much was really happening. It was unclear who was who and who was into what. Clubs and pubs were pretty uninteresting. There wasn't much live music, they weren't playing the music that certain people wanted to listen to because of its association with drugs and they had strict dress codes to supposedly keep the 'riff-raff' out, but essentially made everyone look the same. I guess you could call it a relatively boring middle England at the time.

This meant rave spilled out into warehouses and open spaces where people were free from the restrictions placed on them by mainstream culture and that's when it really took off. It became a real herd movement I suppose. The obvious illegal element attracted rebellious young people who loved the secrecy surrounding many raves. It was fuelled by unstructured mass gatherings that my generation at least had no experience of. It wasn't just about the music, in fact I prefer more of the genres it inspired rather than rave as it was back then. It was more about the social side of it, it was the feeling and the atmosphere that the music created among huge groups of people and to be honest I don't ever recall there being much trouble at raves.

On top of the music, the atmosphere, going to Sterns, hassling older mates to give us a lift and traipsing about fields, there was the whole interaction between each other that also united our group of friends. We used to spend hours of an evening copying each others tapes and weekends were spent going round the record shops listening to vinyl and getting all the latest flyers that would decorate our bedrooms. Some of which would become quite rare. So much so, people were even buying and trading them, they were a bit of a social currency. You would then have to keep the flyers of the rave and cut front covers out of them for your cassettes. Man, talking about cassettes and flyers makes me feel old.

After emerging from the acid house movement in the 80s, rave culture's association with drug fuelled space cadets with glow sticks and whistles overshadows the influence it has had on a number of other genres such as hardcore, jungle, drum and bass as well as more recognisable bands such as Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, New Order and The Stones Roses. Bands you could arguably say have then gone on to influence the likes of Oasis and Kasabian.