onionbagblog

Re-birth of the Cool

Billy Bragg reinvents himself as the new Poster Boy for Americana (although to be fair, the Mermaid Avenue noodlings pre-date England Half-English.)

There’s some astute observations in the first half of the recording from The Bard about the nature of the music industry [URGH].

No longer a stand-alone record business, but an all-round entertainment industry.

Yer man makes the point that as recent as five years ago he didn’t even have a FB page, let alone a Twitter account. It’s a theme also touched on by Amanda Palmer in her TED talk:

“Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance. The interent and the content that we are able to freely share on it are taking us back. It’s about a few people loving you up close, and about those people being enough.”

See what @solobasssteve is working on for evidence as to how this micro artist / audience relationship can actually work.

Movers and Shakers

“I don’t want to be a slave to a mortgage for the next 25 years. This is what happens when property in your city becomes a global reserve currency. For that is what property in London has become, first and foremost. London houses and apartments are a form of money.”

Great piece by Michael Goldfarb in @nytimes, explaining the economics behind the Great Escape out of London.

Let Them Eat Cake

Meanwhile, one of the *possible* accentuators of gentrification in Brixton gets a little bothered below the line in The Graun:

“If anybody were ever to ask me why so many people who write for Guardian newspapers dislike the comment sections below the line I shall direct them to this emetic joyless explosion of bile, self-pity, insecurity, point-missing and all round general chippiness, from a bunch of people who don’t even bother to buy the paper.

This isn’t interactive journalism; it’s care in the community. And people wonder why I no longer bother to engage.”

OUCH @jayrayner1.