Just back from Sainsbury's; a quick fridge fill-up, a million Nectar points which gets me something like a box of Weetabix or 50p off a weekend in Dorset and the main 'squeeze' of this blog, some free-love for 'Innocent', yes, brand new flava in ya ear, mouth!!!
Always loved 'Innocent' from day one, ever loyal to the brand. My fave mix, "Oranges/Bananas/Pineapple", has never made the grade to large size - boo!!! and runner-up fave flave, "Pineapples/Bananas/Coconut" has lately become rare in small and large, but tonight dub-plate presshah!!! It's the new style, d-r-opppp!! "Oranges/Mandarins/Raspberries"; tried & tested, there & then on the store floor - 10/10 for taste-hit, long live the new flesh, f-r-r-eshness!
Yes, more pure goodness, no dodgy ingredients and as a company, 'Innocent' always come across as fun, honest, sincere & ethical too - just this week I read something in 'Marketing' about their latest packaging made from corn starch, carbon-free and compostable in 10 weeks; keeping it green, know what I mean? Innocent's web site's fruity too + big up their blog!
So Rich/Jon/Adam + all family @ Fruit Towers, the healthy endorsement's over - feel free to keep the juices flowing over here at Rinse HQ or Xfm like you used to, remember? Saturday night smoothies most welcome on Xfm's Saturday night soundtrack show, "The Rinse"!
I'm really vexed by all the hype and press (e.g. Sunday Times) surrounding 'Second Life'; in short a new virtual world where you simply live on-line in a virtual world; Wiki as ever gives more food for thought/research. What I'm most suprised about is some of the supposed stats: when I logged on today around 3PM, there were apparently 2.5 million 'inhabitants' pretty good, seeing as site began in 2003, but not a patch on the exponential growth of sites like MySpace.
The most suprising figures come from 'business' generated by the site; in the last 24 hours as I write this, over $1million was spent on all manner of commerce e.g. buying virtual land, clothes and even wedding services, though the classifieds did seem to be pretty sparse, pop-up heavy as well as more outlets for gambling. You can even hold a virtual business meeting in Second Life; does anyone really want to? It's smelling quite Nathan Barley (i.e. media pretentious) in here......
Some people are earning seriously from it, take Anshe Chung (aka Ailin Graef in 'Second Life') who apparently has a virtual property in worth about $250,000.
Graef employs an ever-growing number of real people in the real world (!) to manage her virtual empire - amazing considering all the property, materials, experiences etc. are 'virtual' and, stating the obvious are removed from the physical, tangible brick 'n mortar world that we, er, live in!!!
Hell, even Reuters are taking 'Second Life' seriously, setting up camp inside with Warren Ellis writing columns for Reuters' news desk. Jimmy Carr is set to perform a gig there at the start of Feb (how he will cope with virtual hecklers?!!!). Many bands have gigged there too e.g. Duran Duran and Suzanne Vega as well; guess it really does help the Carbon Footprint (less travelling etc.)
Am I missing something or just "Losing My Edge", to quote the phenomenal awesome hook and lyrics of LCD Soundsytem's finest moment(s)? Fantasy/role-playing etc. is great but is this moving too far? Maybe not.
I remember reading a while back about some on-line gaming where people were doing similar stuff to 'Second Life' i.e. buying/trading 'virtual' objects and one case resulted in actual murder when a Shangai gamer killed someone for stealing his 'virtual sword'!!
A lot of this new 'cyber-craze' (boy does that sound dated!) really echoes David Cronenberg's very-now prophetic "eXistenZ" where barriers & boundaries between gaming/real-life/fantasy etc. are blurred to f*ck. However 'Second Life' evolves; it's damn interesting pop-tech culture, possibly a super-smart PR/Marketing exercise too. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate 'Second Life', it's just baffling during its infant stages. Some good analysis here too.
Full-length James Hyman & Nas interview inside Jan/Feb 2007 issue of Hip-Hop Connection; short extract below.
For James' radio interview with Nas, keep listening to The Rinse on Xfm.
Regular readers to this blog know how much I love Simone + her blog. Now she's split the blog in two, one blog for her life in Belize which is simply brilliant -pics, vids & well-written scribes about life in the jungle Dome (no NOT a drum & bass rave!). It's beautiful seeing her life evolve and when son Lucas for example grows up even more, what a document he's got to look back on, very 'Tarnation'.
Simone's other blog is devoted to music, with frequent nods to MTV's Party Zone, a programme we both literally put our heart, soul + blood into!!!! We really were on a major mission to document club/dance culture for so many reasons; no other broadcaster was doing it and if they were, for the odd short new piece or quick interview/clip, it was being done badly, believe!!!
I'll never forget literally being in my teens, programming/producing a weekly show that at its peak, aired to a potential audience of over 60 million European households, being shown the maddest visuals + then some!!!!!
We built up a huge tape archive (12 years/about 2,500 betas = 5 solid years of non-stop viewing!!, many of which got destroyed in a fire but we've got lots of tapes and slowly you'll see them get uploaded onto YouTube etc., time permitting.
What prompted this quick blog - well, a look at Simone's blog and a lovely letter from this dude, Cosmin, explaining literally what a life-save MTV's Party Zone show was, uniting nations via its culture we were promoting:
Hi Simone,
I found your wonderful blog the other day and was so happy seeing some of the old partyzone footage and also finding that you have followed your dream in such a beautiful place like Belize.
I must say I was addicted to PartyZone (in its last 2-3 years of existence because I didn’t have cable before) and sort of lived for those Friday nights. Basically everything that I knew about dance music was due to your work and dedication. And believe me, a 16-year-old boy to have heard about (and listened to) Laurent Garnier, Derrick May, Carl Cox, Moby or Marusha in 1996 in Bucharest, in post-communist Romania, was a rare occurrence.
Now it looks so simple, go on the internet and find whatever you need, but back then, your 2hr show was one of (if not the only) source of information, music and club-culture for all these eastern european countries. You couldn’t buy that kind of music, there were only pirated cassettes from Poland with shitty music and no CDs or vinyls. So I would record cassettes from the TV speaker to keep that music and listen to it again and again.. so, yeah.. it’s fair to say: “Simone, thank you for influencing my life as much as you did as a teenager and for giving me that kind of musical background”. And also James Hyman, I didn’t see him on camera but I remember his name appearing on the credits screen together with a bunch of people (researchers or whatever).
Anyway when the show ended (I remember you being at a snow party somewhere saying “it’s over guys, they’re taking us off the air”) I was pissed on MTV for that and for all those other changes that started to make the channel to what it is now (common and useless hit rotation machine). 10 years later I’m working as a programmer/designer and, thanks to you, involved in the clubbbing scene here with http://www.nights.ro/; you on the other hand gave up all that crazyness for a quiet life in a tropical resort. That change must have been really tough at first, I mean I would freak out to live in a place with less than 2 million people around, but there’s a time when I do think about family and kids and getting away from this fast pace, but I’m still young and I guess I can take some more clubbing for a few years or so. I wish someday I could be lucky and bold enough to take a decision like yours. For the moment, I’ll put Belize on my destination list if I ever decide to take an extended trip like that, it looks fabulous.
I wish you and your family a great 2007, with only good things coming your way!
All the best from light-snowy Bucharest.
Cosmin
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