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Category: Rants & Campaigns

The Straw That Broke The Camel’s Back

Posted on by John Reed

For all of us, there’s a tipping point. It’s the point where we know something isn’t right. We need to walk away and find a better way. As soon as the news broke that Mark Zuckerberg had lunch at Mar A Lago with the Orange Tyrant a week or so back, I knew the end was nigh. The further news that Facebook (FB) were trashing their fact checking service (such as it was), I knew the end had arrived.

I will be closing my FB account, and therefore its music and radio page, by no later than my birthday, 17thJune. Why so late? Why not now if I feel so strongly?

Well first, I point you to the certainty. There is no question about it. I will be leaving Facebook by the time of my birthday. Like anyone involved in independent music and radio, I have a following on FB. Each has their own set of reasons for staying on the platform or leaving it. Some will just use it less. A few will disagree with the stance I’m taking. So, if you have a mind to understand, let me explain that here.

Creatures of Habit or Obsession?

I’ve been on Facebook since 2007. Initially, it was a good place to connect with friends and family, reconnect with people I’d lost touch with, share common interests, and find new friends. It wasn’t long before I watched in horror as others accumulated thousands of ‘friends’, and the warning signs were switched on that all might not be well.

Those warning signs have been validated since the creation of Meta, and I think it’s reasonable to suggest everything started to go properly down the toilet from that point. By then, I ran a personal page, a music page, and a radio page. It was cumbersome, but in spite of growing reservations, I stuck with it. Since moving my radio show over to Folk Friday Radio, functional problems with the platform have only increased. I’ve received multiple notifications via my Meta dashboard days after I’d already answered them. I’ve been accused of contravening community standards by posting the handles of multiple music artists and the venues where they play, which I do out of a sense of real community.

They think they have us by the balls (well, about 50% of us anyway) because they know each of us would be reluctant to lose what we’ve built on the platform. They know that most of us won’t want the bother of finding another place to be. They know we risk losing connection with people we care for. Let’s think about that logically though. If you’ve developed friendships with people, it’s because you’ve found plenty in common, and in those circumstances genuine friends would want to stay in touch. It has never been easier for us to remain in touch with each other. All we require is the will.

Where Does It Go From Here?

I left Linkedin in 2015. I left Twitter in 2022. I left Instagram last year. I’m leaving Facebook this year.  In business and in music, I’ve left many more platforms, because “something wasn’t right”, but I’ve always given each of them a good run. Have I lost or gained traction for my music and radio projects? I suppose that depends on the perspective, and the motivation for being there in the first place. My motivation is not big numbers because big numbers mean thin relationships, and that doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Many of the people who follow my music and radio work have become good friends. They care to communicate outside of the immediacy and transitory nature of social networks, and I reply, because that’s what I’ve done all my life.

Like 26 million+ others, I’ve taken a punt on Blue Sky Social. Having been there for two months, my current feeling is that it’s a much better place to be. It isn’t run by algorithms and it has its limitations, including a word limit per post, but I’m adapting and overall the experience has been a good one. I credit Blue Sky with my decision to continue the Compendium beyond show #200 in February. So that’s one place where you’ll find me: https://bsky.app/profile/johnreedmusic.bsky.social

I will also be making better use of the ‘Community’ tab on YouTube, and the blog tab on Mixcloud, which also has the option of running a chat feed for a live video/radio show. You can reply and comment on either of those platforms, and I will reply. I will pick up the number of subscriber messages I send on Bandcamp. You can reply and comment there too.I will continue to run these blog posts. So far, very few people have commented on the blogs themselves, probably because they don’t know that’s possible. It is, so feel free! You are also welcome to communicate with me by email: enquiries@johnreedmusic.com

So leaving Facebook won’t have much of an impact on my life, and certainly not a negative one. Of course Zuckerberg runs Whatsapp, and Messenger which I do use, and Threads, which I don’t, but I’ll need to think carefully about how I use those, or lose them, after my FB departure has actually happened. I’m certainly not going to waste any more time talking about it, and I feel very uncomfortable being part of any platform run by people whose views are diametrically opposed to my own.

Time to resume a more human lifestyle. I have better things to do.

Peace.

John

The Thing That Really Staggers Me…

Posted on by John Reed

Human behaviour. That’s what. I’m not talking here about we highly sophisticated and entirely connected humans raining bombs down on each other. I now take it as read that this race will never learn from its mistakes, but I am talking about the problem of ‘habit’. Bear with me, this is good, and the social media magnates will hate it – assuming they would read it, assuming they would notice this minor pinprick in their orb of self-importance. The real problem is that we insignificant, individual humans actually sustain them.

‘Fraid so. Looking back nearly half a century to my student days, I would have been the very last person on the planet who I’d have trusted with running any kind of responsible business venture. Late teens and early twenties are absolutely not the time for us to establish in our garages, other out-houses or bedrooms, a communications system that would over-connect the entire globe for the fifty years following. Look at every social media and music platform, and you will find its origin in teenage. At this point, parents would normally be expressing concern.

Yet here we are, and there they are. The richest man in the world seeks alpha male dominance to change politics forever, and the signs are he’s winning that battle. Meanwhile his nemesis (or one of them, because he doesn’t have many friends) and his cohort of geeks claim they have created a ‘verse’ for the future of this race, where everyone can be connected with everybody, and that wonderful things called privacy is consigned to history.

No, I don’t mean his version of privacy, where all you need to do is issue policies. I mean mine, where every time I open my fridge something apparently intelligent isn’t going to create my next supermarket shopping list. There will come a time soon when all a human needs to do is look in their fridge to instigate a process that leads to the immediate drone or robotic delivery of any missing items. So on current performance you could expect a cauliflower to replace a bottle of milk.

When a business becomes too big it fails, maybe not in all departments but its focus turns away from the customers who sustain it – yes, I’m slowly but surely getting to my point. Sometimes, you need to paint a picture that humans may recognise before delivering the sucker punch that exposes collective, abject stupidity. We are creatures of habit, and if ever there has been a time in our history when we need to break the habit, it is probably now. If we were drug addicts or alcoholics, we’d all have been sent to a clinic by now, some of us for a course of therapy, others to remain there as long-term patients, incapable of controlling our habit.

There is generally a straw that breaks the camel’s back. Remember Friends Reunited,  MySpace, and their ilk? However, the 21st century version of the camel’s back appears to be significantly more resistant, dominated as it is by a few mega-rich humans who don’t just have the ear of presidents and prime ministers, they have them firmly by the balls, and it’s excruciating for us all. It’s dangerous enough on a political level, but we have moved now into a mind-control battle that we minions are ill-equipped to deal with, and do not have the inclination or drive to fight.

Most of us are followers, not leaders. We prefer the comfort of someone else having to do the thinking and take the action. Our lives are busy enough without having to consider existential threats, and that’s where they’ve got you. “Everything will be alright in the end” is not something that can be applied to a world where megalomania is so deeply embedded. So we will all continue to use the platforms set up by these maniacs, on the basis that it connects us with our ‘friends’.

It is one of the joys of social media that we can connect with other human beings wherever they may be in the world. It is also one of its biggest problems, because most of us are too trusting: after all, “everything will be alright in the end”. When I was that awkward, delusional, and rather unkempt teenager I would communicate with my friends by going round to their house, or possibly phoning them up. Occasionally, I would hand-write letters. In fact, I was quite good at hand-writing letters, and used to accompany my writings with biro cartoons. These days, we text or message to find out the most convenient time to set up a Teams or Zoom call. It is reaching the point where an impromptu visit from a friend, or even family, is seen as an intrusion. They’ve got us all by the balls too. See where I’m going with this?

It won’t happen overnight, and in fact will probably take the whole of 2025, but little by little I’m de-camping my music and radio effort to Blue Sky Social, on the pretext that it is run by real humans and doesn’t rely on algorithms to direct who sees what and when. Not perfect and probably temporary, but at least it acknowledges that you’ll miss stuff, which means you have to post more often to be seen. I am under no illusions. Blue Sky will eventually go the way of the rest, because we humans like either to control or destroy anything good. However, when Faecesbook spends more time suggesting I should connect with people I have no intention of connecting with, buy things I’ve already bought, splash unwanted post and adverts across my wall, and notifying me of comments made by other users on my posts several days late, thus actively preventing me from communicating with my ‘friends’, then I’m heading for the lifeboat.

I’ve been running my Compendium radio show since April 2021. It accompanies my wider music activities, and has been both a great way of observing how other musicians promote their music and the best way to promote the music of other grassroots, independent musicians creating original music. For the whole of that time, I’ve supplemented my personal and music Faecesbook pages with a radio page, to help my little show to highlight some of the incredible music that too few people are bothering to listen to. From January, the music page will be ditched. On current form, the radio and personal pages may not be far behind.

As part of my radio offer, I run a monthly show called “What’s On?”. The purpose of The Compendium “What’s On?” is entirely to highlight a sample of gigs by independent musicians and the venues where they play across the UK and Ireland. Every month, I therefore post the Faecesbook handles of both artists and venues. Every month, Faecesbook blocks me from doing that on the spurious grounds that it ‘contravenes their community standards’, yet what could be more community-minded, possibly even selfless, than that? Every month, I feed this back to them. Every month, they don’t give a shit. I tried being polite at first, but I don’t think bots understand politeness. Today, I became semi-abusive, possibly to try and get them to eject me permanently, but I really have had enough now.

“Everything will be alright in the end?” Will it fuck. Not unless human nature changes.

The worst part though, is that having said all of that, I may now, as a member of this race, post this article for other humans to read via Faecesbook and other media platforms, then take no further action over whatsoever….except I will. Make sure you follow me and not them. It’s safer.

Peace.

 

John

The Merch Dilemma

Posted on by John Reed

I’ve never really been a fan of logos on sweatshirts because I resent being used as a mobile advertising hoarding! I don’t much care for tour itineraries on the back of t-shirts because the way I see it, once they’re done, they’re done. It’s a personal thing. Others should do as they like in spite of my grumbling! But most of all, I struggle with the environmental consequence of too much product, while at the same time completely understanding why musicians need additional income streams.

As far as I could reasonably be aware, these t-shirts were at least printed in Germany, but very probably manufactured in a Bangladeshi sweatshop.

Ah. That word ‘stream’. Music fans used to buy music almost exclusively from record shops, but music is consumed very differently these days. The insulting rates per play offered by multinational streaming platforms owned largely by multi-millionaires are not always as ‘good’ for the artist as at first it may seem. Taking Spotify as the most obvious example, no musician earns anything from them until such time as they’ve achieved 1,000 song streams. Spotify then take a cut. After all, their little business has to make money too! They generally take 30%, with independent artists who self-release taking the rest. Musicians working with a publisher and/or signed to a label will have to give away more of their share. So yes, I completely get why independent musicians need to sell merchandise. It’s an important part of our armoury.

 

Beware of Greenwash!

A couple of years ago I became really irritated by one of the music support agencies – it might have been the Music Venues Trust but I honestly can’t remember  – selling sustainably manufactured t-shirts. I asked them several times in a public social media post where the t-shirts were actually manufactured. They eventually came back with a form of words, without actually answering this important question. I had a similar issue with the UK government agency WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) when I was ordering a water butt ‘made from recycled materials’ about 20 years ago. My question then was “what is the source of your recycled materials?” They also came back with a form of words, so I persisted. They eventually admitted in writing that the recycled materials were sourced from China, and justified that by adding ‘otherwise containers we send over there would come back empty’. Hmm. Little did they know I was an international trade specialist at the time, but it wouldn’t have taken a rocket scientist to work out that many times more containers leave China for the UK than ever leave the UK for China.

The Path of Merch

Putting aside the recycling argument for now, when a product is sourced from another country it is generally transported on a truck to a distribution point then carried to port in a container on the back of a truck. Most take space in a ship’s hold, and that ship will use a huge amount of fuel to transport that container and thousands of others to their respective destinations, whereupon the container will be put on the back of another truck to take it to a distribution depot. Good are then distributed mainly by road to a retailer or wholesaler. Yes, you can divide the impact of that by the many thousands of products that are shipped in any single container, but the fact remains that in a world currently in an existential climate crisis, we really need to look at the way in which we sell or consume physical goods.

Simple Solutions

The ‘Merch Dilemma’ isn’t going away anytime soon, but there are easy things that artists and consumers alike can do to mitigate its environmental impact. It starts with the buyers: anyone who buys anything. If a buyer stops buying, demand falls away. If artists see demand falling away, they will react. It starts with simple questioning, as simple as ‘where in the world do you have your cups manufactured?’ Most musicians won’t have a clue, but the fact that the question was asked in the first place might set them thinking about where they source their merchandise.

Those who do think about these things might say “I did a deal with a ceramics factory in Stoke on Trent”. That would mean one shipment direct by courier between the manufacturer and the seller. No containers. No ships. No aeroplanes. Minimal fuel. Supporting local employment. Known manufacturer.

It’s so easy to find out more about the origin of the main ingredients for ceramic cups. The UK retains a positive trade balance in Kaolin (China Clay), exporting £15.2 million and importing £1.5 million (mainly from the USA, Germany, Belgium, China, and India). That means that if you source from a UK factory, there’s a reasonable likelihood that your cup will have been made there, from materials largely of UK origin. You can apply that principle to almost any product on earth: t-shirts, CDs and their cases, vinyl, USB sticks, coasters, etc. Some products aren’t made here, and that gives us other choices.

 

Musicians should use the unique selling point (USP) that their merchandise is locally sourced, sustainably produced etc. but they can play a direct part in reversing the trend of needlessly shipping millions of small items across the planet. It’s very easy to check by the way! I know at least one of the sources for my own future merchandise, which need not be expensive, but it should always come from the heart. Food for thought – I hope.

Peace.

John

Contemplating a Life Offline

Posted on by John Reed

I’m not sure how many more data breaches need to happen before people begin to extricate themselves, insofar as is possible, from their lives online. Today it was reported that Ticketmaster customers’ data had been hacked, and that the hackers have been holding that data to ransom. Last month, it was London hospitals. Before that came to light, Borders hospitals had their customer data hacked. More famously, the banks (where we hold our dwindling savings) have been targeted. These are the latest in a long line of incidences that demonstrate how insecure the online world has become. I for one, hate that.

Every time you sign in to any website you have to endure, and then act upon, the regulatory ‘cookies’ statement. But it means nothing if your data can easily be sucked away by those who do that kind of thing. I struggle to understand the motive of hackers holding medical data to ransom, but struggle further with the concept that these nasty crooks would delete it or give it back after any ransom has been paid. They simply wouldn’t.

In almost every walk of life, there’s a new App that you’re required to download in order to access a basic level of service. Every time you do that, you’re required to give a certain amount of personal data. “Your data is safe with us” frankly doesn’t ‘hack it’ (pun), because we all should know by now that data is king and it has huge value. That’s why companies who say they don’t share it, share it in one way or another. How many times have you received an email that uses either your full name, or worse, just your surname from someone you’ve never heard of and would never wish to deal with?

From time to time, I change my primary email address or resurrect one I haven’t used for ten or more years. So when I receive a speculative email addressing me as “Dear Reed”, it goes straight into the bin. I use specific emails for specific purposes. If I’m buying from a shop and they insist on my email ‘for the receipt’, I give them a false one.

So far, the only time someone’s attempted to scam me wasn’t online. I was busy shortly after setting up my business in 2002. To be honest it wasn’t going so well, so I made myself extra busy by following up every lead and taking every opportunity. In that sense I was vulnerable, and signed up for a ‘free’ listing in a business directory called European City Guide (as they called it at the time). They then bombarded me with invoices and threats of debt collectors for probably two years. Thankfully, I realised very early on how I’d been sucked into their scurrilous system. Their address moved from Utrecht to Barcelona, and several other cities during the time I was tracking them, their directors having been banned from each city where they claimed to have a base. In the end they got bored chasing me, but I know they are constantly scamming even now. Their name changes from time to time, and they’ve long since realised the value of moving their scam online. It’s a numbers game, and they are making huge money out of scamming businesses like that.

I guess that experience put me on my guard, so thank you European City Guide for initiating my defences! I continued to run my business for 20 years without any further incursion of any kind, but I’m getting very concerned about the way in which modern life expects us to be liberal with our personal data, so we tend to be more liberal about sharing it when we feel under pressure. It follows that we should adopt systems to minimise the possibility of it being shared in the wrong places.

My song “Eyes” was number 3 in Ethnocloud’s World Top 40 last month. This month, it’s dropped to number 38. Similarly, in their West European chart, I dropped from number 1 to number 5. There are 14 comments against the song, which appears to have received a reasonable amount of attention, but I know from my long experience of the online world that the majority are autogenerated or otherwise not genuine. I’ve been on Ethnocloud for a number of years, but because they clearly don’t have the resource to secure their systems, I deleted my account with them today. I did something similar with Reverbnation after a similar experience a few years ago. I still receive occasional emails to an address I used back then.

Back to the here and now, and as a musician and radio presenter, I still very reluctantly use Facebook. I have three pages: a personal one; one for my music; and one for my radio show. There are friends and followers on there with whom I’d have no contact if I took the decision to delete my account, but the temptation is there because – by choice –  I’ve never had a huge following on any of them. I stay because I value my interaction with those lovely people. However, as far as the music and radio show are concerned, the numbers don’t stack up for the huge amount of effort I that goes into their creation.

For all these reasons, I’m considering my online future. Nothing will happen any time soon, but in recent years I have been good as my word – in deleting Twitter (I refuse to call it by its other name) and any other music-focused accounts. My only remaining social media links can be accessed via the homepage of my website (top left). Everything else is gone. I have a feeling it won’t be too much longer before I revert to a life offline. Those who value me as a person and value my art will always know where to find me.

Peace.

John  

Don’t Chuck It. Use it. Before You Buy Again.

Posted on by John Reed

We are a throw-away society. From the day the wars of the last century drew to a close to the present day, we have abused the resources gifted to us by the planet with increasing relish and abandonment. The fact that there is minimal mention of our impact on the environment in the run up to the UK General Election on 4th July seems to demonstrate how little we care about what we’re leaving for our children and grandchildren.

I am of course using ‘we’ in the widest possible sense. I doubt that many of the people reading this will be any less appalled than I am. I also doubt that many of you will have too many solutions to this continuing slide into a dystopian future. I find it alarming that people don’t think they can make a difference. We all can. The truth is that every small step you take in the right direction has a benefit.

   

Just over a year ago, we pulled down two enormous garden outbuildings. I will openly admit that our initial plan was to bring in a contractor to do the job for us. Knowing the rates for contractors in these parts, my guess is that it would have cost somewhere between £8,000 and £12,000. Astonishingly, we couldn’t get anyone to do the job, so when our ‘children’ not only offered, but showed distinct enthusiasm for demolition, we couldn’t refuse.

Had we been able to appoint external contractors, I doubt much of that material would have been recycled or re-used. We ordered one skip last year (a standard 8 cubic yard skip) for the material that was either rotten or otherwise un-usable. We are likely to order a second one this year for the remainder. In total, the waste material accounted for about 30% of the total volume from the two outbuildings. The rest has been re-used.

   

Re-use doesn’t need to mean ‘imperfect’, ‘tatty’ or ‘a bit crap’. You can do amazing things with wood, brick and metal with just a little imagination. So far, the wood has been converted into ten different planters around the back garden, a flower bed boundary, sturdy plant supports, and a radiator shelf in our hall, with several longer planks being given away to allotment owners in the area. The brick created two more planters, with what’s left having been reserved for the eventual construction of a set of steps up to the formerly obscured stone summerhouse. Some of the metal roofing sheets were re-used within the family for a log store roof, the rest were taken along with the longer lengths of wood by the guy who runs the Radio Rooms in Berwick to build an outbuilding for his farm vehicles.

Our garden is now alive, when two years ago it was barren. The recycling efforts continue. The latest innovation is to re-use supermarket fruit trays as mini-propagators. At various stages since we moved here in January 2022, we’ve planted two apple trees, one crab apple, two espalier plum trees, two pear trees, a cherry (of the edible kind), two blackcurrant bushes, one redcurrant, two blueberry bushes, a dozen raspberry canes, and a dozen strawberry plants. It will be a couple more years before we get enough garden produce to eat fresh or freeze for a more sustainable lifestyle.

In the meantime, our only option here has been to buy soft fruit in plastic containers. Initially we populated our grey bin with them, but then started to collect them because binning them felt fundamentally wrong. We noticed some of the containers had holes in the side and base to allow the fruit to breathe, while others had no holes at all. It dawned on me that we might be able to put soil in the base for growing seed and use the un-holed trays as covers to aid germination. We’ll have to see how that works, but there’s absolutely no reason it shouldn’t.

I still have a lot of wood to sort and either scrap or recycle. The summerhouse is full of the stuff. It’s fun sifting through it all to see what can be made useful and what is of no use at all. I still have a lot of plastic containers to find uses for, although I know within the next two to three years the need for further accumulation will pass. Between our own garden and the fruits of the trees and bushes in the local area, our chest freezer should enable us to become self-sufficient in fruit and about half way there with vegetables.

Only two of these improvements took a gargantuan effort to achieve. After those two outbuildings had been removed, everything else has been done at a leisurely pace over two or more years. There is still much to do, but as my official retirement birthday has now arrived, I know that physically we’ll be in a position to manage this insane garden on a slope for many years to come.

Peace.

John

Grow Your Own Green Shoots. Get Out and Vote!

Posted on by John Reed

In a little over two weeks’ time, those who care about such things will put a cross in a box and vote in the local and mayoral elections, in areas of the country where polling is taking place. “Local elections – a waste of time” is a common response, or “I don’t vote because they do nothing for me”, both of which are bollocks. Votes are only a waste of time or do nothing for those who can’t be arsed. The rest of us are in a significant minority, and that’s simply shameful when you consider people died to give us the privilege.

Politicians at all levels have done themselves few favours, especially in the last couple of decades, but without the form of democracy they currently deliver, there would be anarchy. That would benefit nobody. The way forward is to vote in such numbers that each of us contributes to shaping the world for future generations. Politicians need your votes, or they don’t get elected. It doesn’t stop there because when they get elected, they are responsible to you. You are the boss, not them. You can also vote them out if they don’t perform. So vote.

We are also months away from a General Election. The options aren’t great, but there is one thing that must happen: we must consign the Tories to oblivion. There really is no hope if you can’t see the extreme damage their 14 years in power has done to this country, while at the same time lining the pockets of those who lend them their support: support which comes at a very high price.

Four successive governments have demonstrated an extreme detachment from the reality of the lives of most of us, and it naturally leads you to question whether a vote has any value. I have always voted, but nobody is ever guaranteed my vote. My vote is mine, and you can assume all you like where that vote may go, but I believe strongly in a secret ballot because it’s the basis of true democracy. I know exactly which way I’m going to vote, in both the local and national elections, and I’ve already given you the only clue you’re getting.

The only way this country will breathe again is for the Tories to suffer humiliating, demoralising, Party-ending losses. I have frankly run out of expletives with which to describe them. Any new administration will inherit a seriously sabotaged inbox, so forget knee-jerking back to another party if the first five years don’t work out. It will take several generations to recover the damage the Tories have done to our international reputation. In order to do that we have to be regarded once again as ‘the place to be’. Our current reputation outside these shores lies somewhere between a sick joke and ‘Billy-No-Mates. Recovering that reputation will involve re-setting the foundations of just about everything good that’s happened in my 66 years on earth.

It takes ten minutes to go and vote. So don’t waste the opportunity.

Peace.

John

Setbacks & Enlightenments

Posted on by John Reed

I’ve spent the last few nights watching the three-part ITV dramatisation “Breathtaking” about the trauma suffered by doctors, nurses, ward orderlies, porters, patients and their families during the Covid Lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. For one, it’s easy to forget how difficult the various lockdowns were for many people, and secondly a good drama can get to the parts other media can’t reach. I consider myself very lucky to have never experienced life inside a Covid ward. People I know who’ve had that experience will undoubtedly recognise much of the detail within this excellent dramatisation.

Many of you will know I’ve had, probably still have, Long Covid but I got away lightly. Just as there are things in the ITV drama that shed new light on different aspects of Covid inasmuch as it affected NHS staff, so too has this last week clarified one or two issues connected with my own illness. I am one of an estimated 2 million people with Long Covid. While like many I have never received an official diagnosis, the reasons for that are also becoming clearer, and it highlights a huge problem for the working population, and therefore national productivity. I retired last January, but even now I know I would struggle to hold down a full-time job.

Last year, I suffered eight migraines, which I attributed then to a change in the prescription for my reading and long-distance glasses. The migraines would come out of the blue, more often than not when I was completely relaxed. Each time it took between 4 and 6 days to fully recover. Today, I went for an eye test and when I mentioned the increase incidence of migraine, the optician said (possibly also keen to support his previous prescription):

“You had Long Covid didn’t you?”

“Have” I said “It’s much better now but it doesn’t leave you”

“It seems to be quite common” he replied “for there to be an increased incidence of migraine in people whose brains were affected by Long Covid”.

Even my migraine specialist GP didn’t tell me that. The conversation continued because he saw my wrist support, and asked about the injury. I told him it was RSI due to too much gardening and instrument playing, but that I suspected Long Covid was also a contributor:

“No doubt” he said “I see a lot of people who are telling me the same”.

This is only anecdotal evidence, but it also confirmed once again that I’m not some kind of nutter (although the jury is still out there!) and it really helps to know I’m not alone in all this. There are countless people with Long Covid who still feel alone in this – some are somehow holding down full-time jobs –  and tend not to talk about it because to many,  Covid is long gone. That’s why the TV dramatization was so important, and at a time when it’s vital also to remind ourselves of the persistent and significant failings of government in the past 14 years. May they be consigned to history, sooner rather than later.

On the way home from the optician, I collected rail tickets from a machine at Berwick station. ‘Big deal’ you might say. Actually, it was! My brain has been unable to process many simple tasks like that. Things I would do without a second thought back in 2019, I now fear. Yes, some of the things this normally confident, bald-headed six-footer has spent a lifetime doing can now seem like insurmountable tasks, made more insurmountable by the fact that most people won’t believe me. If that’s the case, then frankly, “Up yours!” This has been a very real part of my life since July 2020. Next stop: buy a bus ticket 🤣

Peace.

John

Architects Of Our Own Downfall?

Posted on by John Reed

I’ve never consciously followed trends, but I guess we all do from time to time. There’s sometimes a curiosity that needs to be fulfilled, so I might follow a path until either it turns in a direction I don’t want to go, or comes to a dead end. There is nothing wrong in re-setting your direction from time to time. It shows you can make decisions, and have a low fear of failing, although if you change direction too many times, then you are probably directionless and slightly unhinged!

I’m happy to accept being slightly unhinged, but I do like consistency. Unfortunately, we live in a world that now moves too quickly for humans to keep pace. There is too much information, too much misinformation, too much political and social manipulation, too many corporates marketing at us, and seemingly therefore too many decisions to make. An intellectual property lawyer friend of mine once said that ‘the legal profession can’t keep up with the pace of the Internet’, yet humans created the Internet. The real issue here is that we allowed the Internet to run unrestrained too fast and too early.

The world is no longer controlled by governments, but by the financial power of multinational companies. Governments and trade blocs spend inordinate amounts of time prosecuting legal cases against these giants (with taxpayers’ money), whose financial clout enables them to appeal, stall and delay, for decades if necessary. How many times have social media companies featured in news articles, where their CEOs have been sat obfuscating in front of a Select of Senate committee? There is no doubting where the power now lies.

This is relevant by the way! Wherever you take your business, you will generally find few alternatives available to you. The offer has become bland, whether in supermarkets, mainstream film and television, or commercial music. So unless you look outside the square and support independent businesses, shops, film and music, those alternatives will continue to dwindle and become much harder to find. In being manipulated by the corporates, we are allowing ourselves to being forced into what to buy, and actually what to do.

There has recently been a welcome upsurge of vocal opposition to the damage being caused to the ability of independent musicians to earn from their craft by the streaming platforms. I took my music off those platforms in 2017 when I realised how much musicians were being shafted, and have been vocal in my opposition ever since. I’ve said repeatedly that “we continue to feed the beast that’s starving us”, but there’s this innate belief in most of us that things will turn out alright in the end. Perhaps that was once valid, but I think now – if you haven’t yet seen what the runes have been saying – it really is time to wake up.

Corporates like Spotify, Amazon, Apple and their ilk exist only to make money out of you for their already super rich executives. These are not cuddly, pastoral entities. They are manipulative and greedy, and the more you support them, the more manipulative and greedy they will become. We’ve all been conned into thinking there are massive opportunities across the globe for everyone, like a global American dream. But it doesn’t exist in America and it doesn’t exist across the world. No, really!

So as we move towards the end of another year, and in genuinely wishing you happiness and good health for the new year to come, my message is that in 2024, you should do your bit to stop feeding the beasts, whether music or film streaming platforms, supermarkets or whatever. There are thousands of local businesses that would benefit from your patronage, and very often you won’t have to go far to find them – maybe only a short walk to the next block. The rub is that you will probably have to pay more, but you’ll almost certainly find better quality: stuff that tastes better, lasts for longer, and generally gives more satisfaction. It really is no different for music. Seek and you shall find.

Peace.

John

Treading The Next Path….

Posted on by John Reed

If anything, the ‘exclusive’ strategy I adopted for the “Elevation” album has been affirmed in recent weeks by the sale of Bandcamp to a company nobody has ever heard of, and the announcement by Spotify that they intend to screw independent artists still further, having already royally screwed them throughout its 18 year history. Both are corporate business decisions. Both are disconnected from the lives of independent musicians. Neither is good for independent music.

There is nothing wrong with the concept of streaming, provided artists are paid fair royalties, but that has never happened. These poor rates don’t only apply to Spotify, but to Amazon, Apple Music, YouTube, Deezer, and the rest of the streaming services. Of all of them, I have a little more respect for Apple Music and YouTube. YouTube’s rates per play have been consistently one of the worst, but they do at least offer (for the moment) the free video option. Apple Music was the only one of the streaming services to accept a US court decision in January 2019 that they should pay artists 44% more per play. The rest appealed the decision while they continued to whittle away at their derisory rates.

That was then. This is now. It may have seemed like something of a pathetic, one-man protest to remove all my solo music from the streaming services back in 2017. I knew it would have zero impact, but I hate injustice. While I would never lay claim to being a visionary, I saw back then the gross unfairness of their offer, and have enough business experience to know that these situations rarely improve in favour of the little people. It was no coincidence that Spotify expanded into the Asian market around the time of the US court decision, and from a business perspective I can see why they did that.

Independent musicians will continue to upload their music to Spotify just as they will continue to have a profile on Twitter, currently known as ‘X’ and support the many other highly successful businesses that serve their customers so poorly. I understand why the vast majority of musicians feel the need to have a presence on as many promotional platforms as possible, but a stark fact of business life is that scatter-gunning rarely pays off. You either have to find a new focus, or hope you get lucky. In a sense, ‘twas ever thus.

My decision to release “Elevation” exclusively from my website has worked for me because I don’t have expectations. I know the quality of my music and I will continue to set the bar as high as I can. However, I also know that I neither have the time for, nor want to expend the energy on, fighting battles I know I can’t win. I’ve found several times in my business life that stepping back from unwinnable battles tends to help in clearing a better way forward.

So it’s pleasing to report that the new album has enjoyed better sales than any of my previous solo works and each of its videos have longer average viewing times. Nothing ground-breaking, but there’s something really fulfilling about having a steadily growing, albeit smaller community of loyal supporters. Quality over quantity. Overall, I feel very positive about its release strategy, but I’m also realistic that I won’t be able to achieve the same result a second time. Marketing needs to retain an element of novelty, honesty, and it must never feel desperate. So watch this space.

Thank you to everyone who has supported “Elevation” and all my previous works. If you haven’t already signed up for my quarterly newsletter you can do so at the top of the page.

Peace.

John

Journalism….and Music Journalism….

Posted on by John Reed

I once did an interview with a journalist about specialist woodworking machinery. I hosted him for a day at our Windermere factory, providing him with lunch and sustenance for his train journey back to London, and masses of important information about the company, its history, and the products we had manufactured on that site since 1859. He was small, somewhat timid for a journalist, and frankly unimpressive!

The article that eventually appeared could have been written by a school child. It was brief, included little of what I had contributed, none of the history, told one or two brazen untruths, and generally failed to reflect anything serious about the company, its excellent machines, let alone the warmth and hospitality meted out to him from our quiet but highly skilled Cumbrian backwater.

Ever since then, I’ve taken everything that journalists write with a large pinch of salt, whether in articles whose viewpoints I generally share or those whose viewpoints I generally despise and despair of. A journalist is generally after their version of a story first, the headline, the strapline, the juicy quotation – although how you’d contrive a juicy quotation about woodworking machines is completely beyond me.

My experience of music journalism is thankfully very different. Okay, I’ve had the odd unsatisfactory review but views have always been honestly held and most importantly, it’s been clear they’ve actually listened to the thing they’ve been reviewing. I can take constructive criticism. I think it’s helpful, partly because I know the faults in my own music and partly because I know you can’t please everyone all of the time. The world in which we live is one of superfluity. Not everything can be ‘amazing’, ‘fabulous’, or ‘the best thing I’ve ever heard’. To that extent, I find it refreshing when a reviewer highlights something they find less than amazing.

Whiteadder Water enters the River Tweed down river from its confluence with Blackadder Water, and here races towards its big sister.

Honestly, most of the reviews received by my solo and collaborative music projects have been very positive, thoughtful, and have sometimes drawn comparisons I either cannot see or am incredibly flattered by. The music industry has a reputation for being unforgiving, and it really can be, but at independent level we’re faced with a bunch of people who, even when they aren’t or haven’t been musicians themselves, are absolutely committed to getting across the message that you don’t have to be ‘signed’ to be good at what you do. I thrive on being independent. I always have done, in business life as well as in music. I’ve always known my own mind when it comes to the practical side of life. I’ve been less good at the emotional side, but that’s something that I’m correcting little by little as this wonderful life in Berwick moves into a new phase.

 

So support independent music journalists to support independent radio shows who play the music of independent musicians. You’ll find a mine of interesting and inspirational stories!

Peace.

John