Nomadic Neil

One of the Christmas traditions people in the UK like to enjoy is speculation as to what will be the Christmas #1 Single. It usually ends up being the song that grandmas and grandads buy as a Christmas present for their grandchildren. Songs that have topped the charts in past years include Bob the Builder’s ‘Yes we can’, Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ and ‘Mr. Blobby’ by Mr Blobby (look that last one up). It’s not the hugely significant cultural event that it’s made out to be (some people are nostalgic for a non-existent time when there were no novelty songs) but it’s part of the shared experience that lets people in the UK get into the Christmas spirit.

Now over the past four years the #1 single has been the winner of the X-Factor, one of Simon Cowell’s ‘talent’-spotting reality-TV-shows. The format may be familiar to you as American / Brazilian / German (insert your country here) – Idol. In case you don’t know it’s a show in which hundreds of contestants try to impress a panel of judges and the viewing public with their singing performances in order to progress through consecutive rounds so they can be crowned the winner. They get a record contract, money, C-List celebrity status and become an international pop-star (maybe) for 6 months. Then a new season of X-Factor starts and the whole cycle repeats.

This year Jon and Tracy Morter were a bit fed up with the predictability of it all and decided to thwart the eventual winner of this year’s X-Factor, Joe McElderry, in his quest for the coveted #1 spot. A Facebook group was started and they set about recruiting people through websites and twitter accounts asking them to buy ‘Killing In The Name’ by Rage Against The Machine so that it would be the top selling song of the Christmas period. Just imagine families sitting down to watch Top of the Pops and hearing RATM?

Long story short, RATM came in at number 1 on Sunday, setting records for being the first download-only #1 and the fastest selling download in UK chart history.

So what does this mean? It depends who you ask of course. Some people wanted to make a statement against Simon Cowell, against the X-Factor (on the whole there seemed to be little malice intended towards Joe McElderry), for rock / ‘real’ music, to support a charity for homeless people (profits from the RATM song will be donated to Shelter, more than £70,000 has been raised so far), or simply as a joke.

This is what it means to me. Two people were able to create a ‘tribe’ that went viral. They asked the tribe to buy a 17 year old song. More than 500,000 of them did just that. No money was spent on marketing as the channels were free social media sites and applications like FaceBook and Twitter. They successfully beat a TV show that is probably the most watched show in the UK and which has thousands of words written about it in the UK media every week. The single was unavoidable in every supermarket and department store across the country. To me it’s a real life example of ‘the Long Tail’ and the power of social media.

Not only was Old-Media thoroughly trounced when it came to marketing Joe McElderry’s song, they were sorely lacking (as usual) in realising the significance of how it happend. Of course you would expect that since old-media is rapidly losing viewers and readers to internet alternatives. I don’t know how many articles I’ve read in which blatant untruths were recited over and over proving once again that the poor excuses for journalists working for the big UK newspapers have not yet discovered that you can research stuff by looking it up through search-engines.

Writers at the Guardian and the Times thought they were very clever when pointing out that RATM are signed to a major record label owned by Sony and are therefore hypocritical with their ’stick it to the man’ message. Somehow they didn’t find any of the countless interviews with RATM guitarist Tom Morello in which he has discussed this apparent conflict. The band’s opinion is they’d rather get their message out there through mainstream means than have fewer people hearing it in the first place. In the same way that you can buy Noam Chomsky’s books in chain-stores they feel their message is not invalidated by the method of delivery (remember they got started before the internet was in mainstream use, to get big you needed to be with a major record label). Professional journalists were made aware of these and other mistakes in the readers comments sections but so far none of those articles have been amended or taken down.

What do you think, is this a significant moment in the history of new media / social-web / web 2.0?

And which song do you prefer?

Stay cool, stay awesome.

This is what the dread-locked Thai beach bums listen to.

One of the things I have to bring with me when travelling is my guitar. Sure it takes up a lot of space and is awkward to carry, I worry whether it will be damaged on plane journeys and where to keep it safe when I’m staying in shared accommodation. But I can’t go a day without playing, I need it with me. It’s like some kind of drug, and I get withdrawal symptoms when I can’t play.

It’s no coincidence that I make significant improvements in my playing when travelling as a lot of time is spent waiting for trains, plains and buses to arrive and leave. I think every traveller should have a hobby that can kill the down time. Things like hacky-sack, poi or interpretive dance should do. You get bonus points for anything that can involve other people joining in or has the potential to impress a member of the opposite sex.

For me playing guitar is a great way to brake the ice with other travellers and locals because many people can play guitar, while everyone else can make a request. Old Filipino ladies have taught me blues licks and I’ve had Vietnamese teenagers ask me to play ‘Winds of Change’ by the Scorpions. Then there are the other travellers that like to sing along to Bob Marley and Jack Johnson songs.

A couple of nights ago there was a party at a bar near my guest house. The bar owner had set up some microphones, bongos and a guitar amp and invited anyone who was interested to come up and make some music. There happened to be a Swedish session musician present, he had an electric guitar with him so naturally took up lead duties. A Thai guy manned the didgeridoo, while a German played the bongos. I was on rhythm guitar and vocals. We made up some instrumental jams and performed a couple of my own songs. We also performed a cool instrumental version of Superstitious by Stevie Wonder.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it as we received lots of applause between songs and plenty of people took photos of us. I didn’t hear a ‘Booh! You suck!’ at all! I knew it was good when afterwards people asked us how long we’d practised together. The answer of course was not at all, we first met when we got up in front of everyone.

Here’s to all the musicians around the world. Keep jamming together in occasional unison and harmony!