A nosey question

Probably absolutely none of my business, but as I'm feeling curious (AKA nosey) I will ask anyway. I glance at my blog statistics occasionally and have been wondering why so many people end up here so frequently from Brazil through searching for DDD8 in Google? Just curious, as it was an academic conference held in Sept '07 so I can't imagine it being still newsworthy now, either in personal blogs or elsewhere. Unless there is something specific going on in Brazil...? I mentioned the conference in a post last year, even though I knew I wasn't going, as one of my PhD supervisors was one of the organisers and I was probably feeling informative at the time. It would be interesting to hear from others doing research or work in that area, so if anyone's passing through again and if you feel like leaving a comment, it would be great to hear from you.

What mothers want (allegedly)

There's an article in Music Week about the unique sales opportunity that Mother's Day presents for the music industry, providing one of its "biggest sales spikes" outside Christmas as people go on a spending spree to spoil their mothers. I noticed the increased marketing for this occasion last year, as TV adverts started being screened for CDs with slightly mawkish titles, of obscure artists I'd never heard of, pitched at viewers as the perfect gift for Mother's Day. I remember it because it seemed that any old dross could be designated as 'appropriate for Mum' if it had a suitably sentimental theme, and I felt vaguely sorry for any mothers of more discerning taste who received one of those CDs.

A "Mother's Day-type product" seems to be based on curious assumptions about the musical taste of mothers, as if you can lump all mothers into one category. A deluxe edition of Simply Red's best selling album is to be re-issued and "aimed firmly at the Mother's Day market". Another company, Pinnacle, will be promoting Katie Melua throughout this period, as “Mother’s Day always presents good sales for Katie Melua albums." Yet another company is producing a collection called 'Just for You' (in case anyone is unable to write this in a card...?), with various assorted artists in the Melua vein. Other industry-driven suggestions are music by female singers or collections of 'oldies', including Billy Fury.

I don't quite understand the assumptions behind these proposed marketing campaigns, although I'm quite sure they're all based on solid statistics. If I gave my mother a Simply Red deluxe CD, she'd think I'd completely lost the plot. A musician friend of mine, who is also a mother, once described Katie Melua's output as 'male wank music', so I'm guessing she wouldn't be too pleased if her kids gave her that on Mother's Day. Should mums have a particular fondness for female singers, just because they're women? Did all women automatically like Margaret Thatcher, just because she was a woman? Did they hell.

The 'oldies' thing is slightly puzzling, as it seems to be based on several assumptions, one being that mums are a certain age or old enough to be nostalgic about music they grew up with, presumably during the 50's and 60's, since popular hits from those decades are usually featured on 'oldies' compilations. That can't be the case in reality, as many are a lot younger and probably weren't even born in those decades. The other assumption seems to be that everyone automatically likes 'oldies', and if you didn't when you were younger, there may be a point when you come of age and change your musical tastes to include these artists. Or maybe it's just a 'safe choice' for a gift that isn't likely to offend anyone, as the music is familiar now, distanced by time and no longer likely to shock or surprise, even if it did once when it was new.

I'd be interested to know if people's tastes do change as they get older, or if they continue to like whatever music they listened to when they were young. My grandmother used to be quite fond of wearing dresses made of pastel-coloured crimplene, a man-made, synthetic, slightly spongy fabric, as it was easy to look after (drip dry, no ironing needed). I wondered whether my mum would ditch her usual style of dress and switch to crimplene when she reached a certain age, but she never did. It proved to me at the time that certain tastes at specific stages of life aren't necessarily innate or inevitable. Maybe it's the same for music too, and these marketing campaigns for Mother's Day products are more for people who don't take the time to actually think about the tastes of whoever they are buying for. I think my own mother would really prefer a Led Zeppelin DVD, and I'll be keeping the Billy Fury CDs for myself. That doesn't fit the marketing demographics in the article, but at least I'll have thought about it.

When people think art is rubbish

I don't mean that in a critical sense, when an artist's work might be considered conceptually weak or badly executed. I don't mean it in a British tabloid headlines manner either, in the way Tracy Emin's bed or Damien Hirst's pickled animals might have been regarded as pretentious crap or 'just not art'.

I mean that ghastly real-life incident when a piece of artwork in a gallery really is mistaken for a pile of old rubbish, and the cleaners are instructed to get rid of it quickly, before the guests arrive for the private view.

Well, thank goodness for a none too speedy disposal of the rubbish into the incinerator, and the trusty Hoover... at least that gave a chance to empty out the vacuum cleaner contents and retrieve the artwork from amongst the 'real' rubbish. Then it was quickly replaced in the gallery before any lasting damage was done and no-one was any the wiser. A helpful new addition to the piece since then was a carefully delineated rectangle of white tape around the work, so everyone knows it's art and not rubbish this time. It's all a question of interpretation, isn't it!!

I'm back at work now and the 'rubbish' tale doing the rounds was the highlight of the day. And thank you for all your nice comments, I'm feeling much better at last, which will hopefully continue until I'm back to normal again. I do wish I'd washed my coffee stuff up before I was ill though, as it's sprouted a healthy greenish-grey mould culture since I've been off, but that's life. I liked that mug too.....

Back soon...

I'm not dead and haven't given up the blog or anything, I've just been ill, having tests and that sort of stuff. I'll be back when I feel less crap and have something to write about.

Slightly antique body armour

I read quite a few of the British police blogs, and I admit I like the odd post where they complain about their uniforms. These usually attract a fair amount of comments from other officers too. I find it interesting because it's a load of men talking about their clothes in great detail. Looking at this invention, maybe it could have been a bit worse if they'd lived in 1950's Detroit.

This design for police riot kit featured in Mechanix Illustrated (September 1956). It was intended to protect Detroit 'men in blue' against rioters and gunmen. The police were supposed to fire through the portholes, which were made from bulletproof glass. Other handy features were the spotlight on the top and the 'leggings'. As it's made of steel and weighed 65-lbs, a version with wheels attached was designed for anyone wanting a bit of extra help.

It reminds me of a cross between a Dalek and a Cyberman. One of the commenters on BoingBoing pointed out that Ned Kelly had similar body armour in 1880. Nothing's new, is it, the same needs exist but the kit is just modified according to the technology and the materials available.

Beats and Bongos

I've been quite enjoying the current Pop season on BBC TV over the past few weeks. It's a mixture of new documentaries, archive programmes and classic films about British pop music.

The films screened so far have been a strange treat, about music and teenage rebellion - Expresso Bongo (1959) and last night's Beat Girl (1960). They both featured contemporary young pop stars, Cliff Richard and Adam Faith, as well as aspects of the London music scene during that period. I found them interesting partly as they were set in London's Soho, where my parents used to go to coffee bars and jazz clubs around that time. I found the unexpected range of surprisingly sleazy themes quite interesting too, as for some reason I wouldn't have associated them with popular films from that period.

I liked Expresso Bongo for it's strange, rather quaint dialogue and slightly grimy night-time sleaziness, though it was really about the rising career of an unknown singer/bongo player. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Sir Cliff Richard's fans don't like it. I'm assuming that's because the main themes of the film are commercial and personal exploitation, with seedy rented rooms, greedy music business people, strippers and prostitutes. There was also a rather ambiguous liaison between a young, naive Bongo (Cliff) and an older female singer. It's presumably not an ideal film to be associated with, given Cliff's subsequent clean-living Christian 'bachelor boy' image as the Peter Pan of Pop, but I think it's curious enough to warrant another viewing.

Beat Girl was a tale of teenage rebellion in the post-war years, focussing on a slightly odd group of 'beatniks' in Soho coffee bars and basement jazz clubs. Great slang (squares and daddy-o etc), though rather stilted in retrospect, or just badly acted maybe? Christopher Lee makes a convincing sleazy club owner, though being fatally stabbed is an interesting precursor to all the times he gets impaled with a wooden stake as Dracula in his future career in Hammer Horror films. The unpleasantly surly teenage female character was supposed to be at art school, while she wasn't 'hanging out' in bars and strip clubs. She mentioned that she was at St Martins (art college) to her stepmum, who said - Oh, that's supposed to be one of the best, isn't it?' to which the ill-mannered 'beat girl' replied 'so it's rumoured...' The Charing Cross Road college entrance featured briefly, though I'm not sure if was real or a part of a studio set. Still, it's nice to get a name check in a vintage B movie about deviant youth!

In case I'm beginning to sound like I'm obsessed with sleaze (which I'm not, actually), I'd better point out that I just happen to like B movies from that period, when it sometimes features as a strand in a storyline. Justification over!

7 random things

Maybe this is a bit lazy of me, but I did that '7 random things about yourself' meme last night on the Random Reality blog and thought I'd stick an amended version on here, minus the obvious ones (I might have already mentioned I was doing a Phd....)

1. I knew moth balls didn't work when one ate a hole in the middle of my favourite Black Watch tartan wool and cashmere mix pencil skirt, while hanging right next to a moth ball. Cheeky little sod. Moth balls stink anyway, so another reason not to use them.

2. I tried to run away from a nun on my first day at school when we lived in Aden, but she shut the VERY LARGE iron gate so I couldn't. Tiny child... strange woman in flapping black clothes and a weird headdress... utterly terrifying situation!! Not bad instincts for a kid, though....

3. I had pink hair when I was young. I don't now, but still think the natural look is highly over-rated.

4. I sat opposite Michael Howard in an NHS waiting room once and I smiled at him, as he looked small and harmless. I still feel vaguely guilty about that. (He is a Tory politician, ex-Home Secretary from the Thatcher years, described by one of his colleagues as having 'something of the night' about him. He is usually portrayed in tabloids crawling out of a coffin like a vampire).

5. Sounds a bit revolting now, but I used to eat Marmite by the spoonful when I was a child. I'm not dead and I don't have high blood pressure, so no harm done, eh!

6. I think the very beautiful Billy Fury has just replaced Elvis as my favourite singer from that era. It's a pity I was born much too late to ever see them in real life and in their prime, but records, photos and films are a good reminder of why they were (and still are) popular.

7. I complained about my neighbour's hideous late night Sunday sing-song in my dressing gown once, then found out afterwards it was his birthday party. Maybe I'm a partypooper, but they were singing The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Tight Fit. It sounded like this X-Factor reject's version. I'm sure anyone else would have done the same thing, whether they were getting up for work the next day or not.

It's been quite interesting to read other people's 7 random things on their blogs, so feel free to do your own, unless you have already and I'll pop over and have a look.