Roaming Rove
Aug 13, 2007 · 1 minute readPlease, oh please, can we get him behind bars just after 2009? Just for humour value?
Please, oh please, can we get him behind bars just after 2009? Just for humour value?
From one point of view, Tony Wilson was a failure. His music show So It Goes… was cancelled after two series, the biggest hit from Factory made a loss on every single copy sold, the Haçienda spent five years sitting almost empty, Factory itself dissolved messily in the 90s. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to start new labels, embarked on a digital music venture that went nowhere, and was a prime mover behind a campaign for further independence for the north of Britain, a campaign that was ultimately rejected by the populace.
A failure, then. But what a failure. Factory Records was a record label that we may never see the likes of again. It was born of the DIY attitude of punk era, but Wilson was thinking much, much bigger. For him, it was an attack on the stranglehold that London held on the British music scene, a way of re-establishing his beloved Manchester, and a movement rather than a mere company. It wasn't like any label that had previously existed; royalty payments were extremely generous (approaching 50% for some acts), the acts themselves owned their master tapes, and anybody could walk away at any time. Now, it has to be said that the actual implementation of this plan often left a little to desired, as Factory had a tendency to be somewhat inept when it came to handling actual money, but there have been few record labels since that have come anywhere close to the Factory ideal, in either their values, their aesthetics, or that catalogue. Or their ability to use a spreadsheet.The World of St. Elsewhere Spreads.
(The World Explained. It's all Munch's fault…)Ahh, the memories. Better if it wasn’t connected to another gun murder in Manchester, but still…
M.I.A.: I'm only here on a year visa, so if you could just advertise, I'm looking for a husband.M.I.A. setting the record straight about Diplo. Fairly forcefully, too…
I did buy an Apple a couple of weeks ago. For work, yes, but the law of Apple strikes again: they will always release new machines approximately two weeks after you decide to buy one. Grr.
Still, the new iMac looks so pretty. And with a wireless mouse and keyboard, almost as portable as the MacBook / MacBook Pros themselves. Seeing as how I'm not really interested in a new machine right now (although the new keyboard looks interesting; it could be a possible replacement to the trusty IBM one I use at the moment), the changes to iPhoto and iMovie are what interest me in today's announcement. iPhoto has got faster (again), plus some fancier editing tools and web gallery options, but iMovie is a completely new application, borrowing a little from iTunes by giving you a video library to store and select clips for when you're making little movies. And if you can get it into MPEG-4 format (ffmpeg is your friend), you can have it in iMovie (it also does HDV/AVCHD for higher-end camcorders!). Oooh, that's fancy. One-click upload from iMovie to YouTube.Can I have volunteers to accompany me to this? Especially since I don’t know anybody who lives there anymore? Come on, it has its own FAC number!
I will be so much happier when our generation has got over this little phase. Please, no more bad 80s cartoon adaptations. I beg you.
(and Jason Lee? Shame. Shaame!)