The 24th June, a.k.a – the day politics got interesting

It’s been a while since I tuned in to Question Time.

It used to be a guilty pleasure. Cup of tea, biscuit and the mostly incoherent chatter of a group of grown adults who represented something between five-year-old kids and baboons.

Then something happened – politics got boring. I don’t know what it was, but that hardly matters. Because finally I have a reason to watch again.

Today’s election of Julia Gillard as Labor leader and subsequently, PM brought the QT excitement back in a big way.

Not because Kevin Rudd was given the boot. Not because Gillard is the first female leader of this nation.

But because Australia is at a fork in the road.

Gillard, as tweeted by adzap is “unwed, childless and an atheist”. Meanwhile, her opposition Tony Abbott is known as one of the most conservative politicians, with his focus on family-values and Catholicism.

Regardless of policy, these two leaders represent two different directions for Australia’s future. Whichever the nation prefers will be decided in an election this year.

The result may finally answer the question of our identity as Australians. Are we traditional or modern? And, when that question is answered, is this a positive or negative thing?

I’m looking forward to the election and what it will mean for us all. Meanwhile, I think I’ll cosy up on the couch with tea and a biscuit. Question Time might be on…

The Ironic Post

There were two letters for me in today’s mail.

The first was a promo from Myer telling me I was going to “be rewarded”. The second, a rejection letter for my application for News Ltd’s traineeship positions.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

Today’s culture teaches us that we have choices. The generations before us have struggled for our rights to freedom. To choose to live, dress and work how we want.

Consumerism feeds off that idealistic vision, and Myer has captured it perfectly in phrases like “invitation”, “you can”, “be rewarded” and of course, capitalising on the “my” in Myer (“my preview” and “my hours”)

Yep. Everything in that promo screams choice.

Then there’s the letter from News Ltd. The letter that doesn’t live in the world of advertising (well, apart from news business models), consumerism and ideals.

That letter seems to dispel any notion I had of having the freedom to ‘be what I want to be’.*

But I guess you can either be disillusioned by the irony, or join the advertisers.

Take Tom Cowie, for instance. His ingenious idea was to build his own brand to use as a resume.Local and international media have flocked to Tom’s blogand twitter feed to check out his idea.

Tomwantsajob has been a hugely successful campaign… in marketing. In fact, Tom was offered a job in the advertising world for his efforts.

So here’s the real question – how does anyone, even a bright young thing like Tom (who has had articles published in esteemed places like The Punch) really get to be what they want to be?

Is choice really an ideal?

*While the post left me downhearted this morning, I’m still wildly passionate and determined to continue hounding newsrooms until I get a job as a journalist. But it makes you think…

Totally Wired – the price of privacy

I’d never read Wired magazine before. But while browsing through random magazines at my local library I happened across this very interesting story from late 2009.

Freelancer Evan Ratliff was fascinated by how public our lives are in this digital age. He wondered if anyone could actually disappear, without leaving “digital fingerprints”. So he decided to give it a go.

This is a really great piece of journalism. Not only for its writing and intriguing subject matter, but also because of the manhunt that Wired readers and computer nerds took up obsessively (Wired offered a cash reward and it was a bit of a game). Hundreds of people logged on to track Ratliff and, in just 25 days, succeeded in catching him.

At the end of the article, I came to a sudden point of realisation – that my much-loved gadgets are cheating on me.

Right now my laptop is sending all sorts of electronic data to who-knows-where. My phone is sending signals as to my position. My external hard-drive is probably storing the details of the last five computers I logged on to. I can only hope my television isn’t in on the act.

I have thrown out my name, address, date of birth, phone number, bank details and other private information for shinier, more efficient gadgetry. I have willingly given my life to ‘Big Brother’ in my addiction for techno-wizardry.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the person who hangs out in internet cafes, knows everything about World of Warcraft, makes jokes in datascript and shuns people who still don’t own an iPod (really, it’s 2010!). It’s just that I have realised how much I depend on having a digital life – internet banking, blogging, texting, email, social networking, university enrolment, etc… My digital fingerprints would be messier than a three-year-old’s fridge art.

Unlike Ratliff, I’m not trying to vanish and I don’t have a string of cybernerds tracking my every move. But it definitely gave me something to think about.

Check Ratliff’s piece out here. Or have you already followed the story? Are you scared of your digital fingerprints or have you found a way to erase them?

Would you Dubit evil or genius?

“We like to think we make the future a brighter one for our youth.”

You would think the website that this statement appeared on would be some sort of charity or youth organisation – perhaps a government promotion, or even a school?

But you would be wrong. That statement appears on the homepage of Dubit.com – a UK marketing agency that helps sell products to the youth market without paying media companies for advertising space.

How? It’s actually kind of brilliant. And disturbing.

Dubit pays children and youth (between 7 and 24) in cash and vouchers to promote their clients products on social networking sites, by putting up fliers and even throwing parties with friends for the sole purpose of advertising a product.

Because why pay big money to fancy advertising firms or media corporations when children can do the work for you? Dubit’s clients, who include Nintendo, Sony Ericsson, and McDonalds, plus UK government bodies like the Department of Health, obviously can’t afford billboards and newspaper ads.

The idea is also brilliant for utilising peer pressure to influence the target market. If Bobbie-the-coolest-boy-in-school is raving about the latest movie from 20th Century Fox, it is inevitable that some kids are going to love their work as well.

However, before we all stamp up-and-down about child labour and evil corporations, it might be worthwhile pointing out that Dubit was started by teenagers in the Young Enterprise school program.

That’s right. The target market created a marketing website that saves corporations money and essentially rips themselves off.

My first thought was that these students must be the children of the corporate devil. My second was that the client’s brand strength is such, that these kids believe that the billionaire CEO’s of these companies will actually see their market as people and give a damn about them. The third argument is that perhaps these are a bright bunch of entrepreneurs who would rather contribute to the perception of youth by brands than be annoyed by another crappy toy in their Happy Meal.

The real issue here is that children are being taken advantage of. Everyone knows – when you mess with children, the media and angry parents lobby groups get angry(er).

But kids aren’t stupid. The youth of today have grown up with the internet and social networking. They tend to have a sixth-sense about online scams. So, the idealist in me is rooting for the latter argument.

However, if the companies on board the Dubit bandwagon are the same that use child labour to manufacture their products (I’m looking at you Adidas), then it’s clear that something is not quite right.

In my research I found this entertaining article on Dubit from UK comic David Mitchell. You might be interested in having a read.

What do you think of Dubit? Have you used it or know someone who does?

Back to Black

I wrote this piece at university. It’s one of my favourite pieces, but I couldn’t seem to get publishers to feel the same way. Anyway, have a squiz:

As I walk home, I notice a new store with dusty windows and no name. Flyers are Blu-tacked to the panes, advertising a few local gigs and the new Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings album. The window display is made up of an Elvis DVD, a Kush CD, a Zombies record and the new Nick Cave album on vinyl. Propped in the corner is a children’s book called ‘M is for Metal: the loudest alphabet book on earth’.

This is the window of my local record store that, despite the dust, only opened in a few months ago. I love it instantly. Punk blares out of an old stereo, a bugle hangs from the wall next to a Johnny Cash poster, and most importantly, its racks are full of old records, just waiting to be discovered.

Of course, any album or song I want would probably be cheaper and easier to find online. In this digital age anyone, anywhere can download anything to his or her computer with just the click of a button. But despite this convenience, many are seeking out independent record stores and while compact discs are on their way out, vinyl is back in.

“I suppose they feel it’s special, compared to the chain store atmosphere, or buying music online,” says Chris Johnston, senior writer and music critic for The Age.

“The whole joy of a record store is the guy behind the counter and the sensory feel. The smell, and the dust that gets on your fingers.”

I nod, thinking of the smell and dust of my mum’ vinyl, packed in milk crates. Growing up in the 90s, I heard records like the Beatles, the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack, Pink Floyd, and a favourite of mum’s called ‘Alice’s Restaurant’. We had a big chunky stereo and a twenty-year-old wooden turntable that would play my parents’ favourite records on Sunday afternoons.

Like me, Chris’s musical education started with his parent’s collection – cassette tapes of the Stylistics and Barbara Streisand. A soul record featuring James Brown, Otis Redding, and Aretha Franklin, was the first record of his own, and the beginning of his musical education – courtesy of an older brother, student radio, and street press.

“My life started at that point,” he says.

“This whole world just opened up and I was consumed by it.”

For both of us, even though we’re from different generations, the start of our relationship with music was “like a religious experience”. It is a rite of passage, in which vinyl and record stores play a huge part, even for Gen Y. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, sales of compact discs are declining, and digital music is making only fifteen percent of music sales per year.

“The point is the difference between an mp3 and a piece of vinyl,” Chris says.

“Not the technical difference or the scientific difference, but the difference in meaning. In what they can represent and what they can hold.”

He’s right. There is a difference. An mp3, after all, is just a set of numbers. You can’t touch it. To purchase a song on iTunes, for example, you simply punch in a code and you receive a code in return, which plays a song.

“But vinyl holds memories,” says Chris, becoming paternal.

“You really love it and you want to make sure that its safe and warm and dry and it doesn’t get hurt.”

“It’s almost like there’s something in the grooves of the vinyl. When you play them, the needle actually goes into it – penetrates it.”

So much talk about the aesthetic nature of vinyl leaves me hungry for an afternoon smorgasbord of 12-inch delicacies. I decide to have a good look in my local record store, the one with dust and no name.

Steve Thompson is the owner of the store, which, it turns out, does have a name – Eight Miles High. As a long-time collector, opening the store has been the “realisation of a dream”. He’s contributed half of his collection to the store, which looks like over 500 albums. I wonder where he got them all.

“I’m not giving any secrets away there,” he says.

“But I’m such a tip-rat and always have been. Every box on the side of the road I kicked. It might be full of records.”

His knack for finding pre-loved treasures is obvious. Steve is dressed head to toe in second-hand finds – faded denim, scuffed work boots and an 80s era black leather jacket that he was given by a friend.

As I chat with him about future plans for the store, which include in-store performances, t-shirts, and maybe even guitars, Steve sorts through a huge stack of vinyl albums.

“It just gets bigger everyday,” he says of his stock, “I’ve been sleeping about four hours a night since the store opened, but its fun.”

He calls Eight Miles High a “real record store” and although he would love to sell vinyl only says he doesn’t want to alienate anyone.

“Some people have only got a CD player, and that’s fine. There’s stock that I have to get in for certain markets. I do have to pay the bills, but I’m not in it for the money.”

For Steve, he wants to make sure people get “genuinely sucked in” to the vinyl trend. He also wants to employ locals, and the community has backed him since Eight Miles High opened.

The community of independent record stores like Steve’s is another appeal for music lovers. In an age of technology where phrases like ‘consumer-driven markets’ get thrown around, it’s nice to have a sense of place. A culture you can belong to with like-minded people.

Like the music industry, fashion cultures have undergone this backwards move to ‘vintage’ trends. Vintage fashion stores have opened all over the place, and even hip chain stores like Sportsgirl and General Pants Co. sell a range of vintage clothing from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Chris calls these movements to old-fashioned things a de-centralization.

“Ten years ago the chain store was, essentially the one place you could go. The six big record companies controlled everything and the CD was the format that ruled. Now music has been totally democratized. Its been taken away from the corporations and given back to the people.”

Although fashion chain stores have responded to this movement by stocking vintage garments, music chain stores are continuing to push onwards with digital technology.

In 2006, Sanity Entertainment, one of Australia’s prominent music chains launched their Fast Track Kiosks – small booths where a customer can download music to a memory stick or burn a CD instantly for $1.69 per song, without browsing through the store or dealing with a sales assistant.

“They’ll probably be irrelevant in five years. They’re just thinking up different gimmicks, I think,” says Steve.

The current album has stopped playing and Steve hunts for a new disc to play. It ends up being a Dusty Springfield album. The all-too-appropriate song, ‘Will you still love me tomorrow?’ plays throughout the store.

It makes me wonder, along with Dusty, about the future. Will we always have stores like Eight Miles High, which cater to the every need of audiophiles like Steve, Chris and I? Will I, like my parents, be able to raise my children on an audio diet of vinyl?

Chris has “no doubt about the future,” and Steve will never quit the hunt for that rare record. As for me – whether or not this is a passing phase while we wait for the next big thing, or whether or not vinyl is here to stay – I’ll always have those milk crates of dust, music, and memories of Sunday afternoons.