Best track to mention Blogspot, like, ever

I wish I knew enough Portuguese to be able to decipher the following brilliant, low-end-heavy piece of Mozambican snap, but it's easily the coolest track about Blogging I've ever heard anyway. (Courtesy of Casa de Musica)

UGP feat Ana Paula - Meu Blog (Mediafire)

Bonus: Super-intelligently updated Marrabenta blended with House and Zouk, also from Mozambique.



And a track about the actual phenomenon of remixing stuff. Also a great idea! (Courtesy of mozmusic)

DJ Ardiles - Remix (Mediafire)

I'm in teh Finland

Listening to ur tango



There are many reason's for August's frankly shameful post tally, but the most interesting one by far is that I've moved to Helsinki. Here I'll do an exchange term in a faculty of musicology which specialises in the semiotics of music (awesome?) while immersing myself thoroughly in Finnish culture and (potentially) frozen lakes.

For the purposes of this blog, though, I'll be hunting for Finnish music as well. I've not really got into anything at a deeper level so far except the marvellous Finnish tango, old and new, which I'll be following up on with a big post in the near future.

Any readers from here want to meet up or anyone with general Finland/Helsinki tips, feel free to contact me.

I just came back from a few hours in a neck brace at the hospital

...after totalling my parents car against a railing. So therefore no blog post today. (Both me and the passenger are perfectly okay, so the CT scan says.)


Selection of forthcoming posts, once I have some time to recover:

Watermelon
Fear of the Working Class
The attraction of marginalisation
(A trilogy)

Acoustic versions of electronic tracks

Genre of the Week: Eurobeat
(Under heavy research right now)

Kenyan music in Stockholm

100 posts

There, I've made 100 posts in my blog. Now it would be nice for you to do something for me.

I realise others have thousands and that it's not so much to celebrate really. But I'm fairly happy that I've carried through with this project long enough to reach a century, plus I want to take this opportunity to ask for a bit of general feedback.

See, I've played around a bit with the blog in that unsettled way that everything has as a start, and I'm not sure what works and what doesn't. I was hoping you guys would tell me.


The blog is doing fairly well in general. I've got a decent amount of readers, good subscription numbers and a growing Technorati rating. I seem to have settled into a format (mid-length posts mostly) and I've gotten into the habit of posting regularly.

One thing that does bother me a bit is how few comments I get, comparatively, to other similar-size/age blogs. I put myself totally in the blame for this one - I obviously don't make "commentable" enough posts. My last post is a good example. I actually got a comment there but all it did was tell me they liked what I was writing; for someone like me whose background is in the forum world and whose express intention was to create threads that's pretty much a failure. I want discussion, I just don't know how.

So, please, tell me what you've liked and what you haven't in my blog so far. Do it anonymously if you like. But even better, tell me what a blog needs for you to want to comment on it. MP3's? Controversy? Lists?

I probably worry too much, but sometimes I think I just throw stuff randomly into cyberspace.

First Post

I'd really love to say this is my first shot at blogging.

But that wouldn't be true. I have made abortive attempts. Overformatted. Underprepared. Half hearted. In Swedish. All deleted after a few posts.

You see, I don't actually like blogs. I much prefer the open, collaborative, community-oriented format of the forum. But then I started regularly reading and commenting on a blog. And that had blogposts that were basically replies to other blogs. And then I realised the tiresome truth.

The Blogosphere is a big forum. It's a badly designed, ill-connected, impossible to monitor, absurdly overcrowded, spam-filled, incoherent and ugly forum. And being a good member takes effort.



This, then, is the collection of my threads. Like good forum threads, they're meant to be universal and spark discussion. And like a good sub-forum, my blog is themed. It's dedicated to providing serious, thoughtful discussion on the neglected and underanalysed subject of popular music, past and present. Posts will range from broad analyses of overarching themes to petty commentary on individual Youtube videos.

I've made the mistake of locking myself too heavily into a format before, but nevertheless I can't stay away from one regularly recurring feature: the Genre of the Week is a slightly critical, slightly narrative description of a genre of music, past or present, narrow or broad (I'm resolved to do "Pop" at some point). I like genres in much the same way I like forums - they're a bit communal, a bit laid back and not so ego driven. By that analogy whiny indie types who claim to have no genre are the bloggers of the music world. :)



I'm trying to keep this blog as ego-free as possible. (Hah! Fat chance! It's a fucking blog for god's sake.) Still, I have to tell you something about myself in this initial post. My name is Johan Palme, I'm 26 years old and currently a musicology student. (I'm contemplating going back to my real job.) I live in a post-gentrification area of central Stockholm, currently being slowly drained of its dozens of record stores and invaded by yuppie PR types. Besides Sweden, I've lived in Hungary, Britain and Tanzania. I have degrees in Philosophy and Politics and in Journalism.

I've got a very broad musical background with an interest in essentially all kinds of popular music. I've written extensively about the subject, taught a course in its history, and at various times have had at least three radio shows with different types of musical content on the student radio station of the University of Umeå. I keep an open mind and try to acquire deep and analytical knowledge about all of popular music, which could potentially make me an excellent musicologist were it not for the fact that the subject is more about medieval chant types and teaching musicians how to read scores than about actually listening.

As you probably can tell, thinking about music is one of my biggest hobbies (others are architecture and cooking). I hope to share some of these little ideas and thoughts that appear in my daily life through this blog.

Hopefully you will enjoy it, and post many comments and go off on interesting tangents.

Like I said, I much prefer forums.