Vive La Recessolution

The Day The Music Died

Last FM have announced that they are to begin charging to stream music on their hugely popular site. Last FM has been a fantastic to resource to me throughout the past four years so I think it's a pity they've taken decided on this course of action.

What makes this news slightly more difficult to swallow is that charges for streaming are only being applied outside of the UK, the United States and Germany. Discrimination station.

Image generated from my own Last FM page by Alekc's nifty device.

Part-Time Pioneers

I've decided to give up alcohol for the next six weeks (think of it as a slightly tardy lenten sacrifice). I'd been toying with the idea for a while but, after I did a rough calculation of how much drink I've consumed over Rag Week and how much money I've blown, I've decided to give it a proper go.

Paula has decided to try it as well. Sobriety ahoy.

[Image: Megan Wegan]

Arts and Minds

(published in The College View, February 2009)

It’s all over our newspapers, our televisions and our radio sets. Businesses are using it for all manner of promotional gimmicks. It’s the taxi-man’s topic of conversation du jour. And we’re blaming it for everything from job-losses to ingrown toenails. As Rolf Harris might say: “Can you tell what it is yet?”

The Recession really is inescapable. But as exasperating as it might be to hear people whinge and complain about it constantly, few would deny that the economic downturn has had very real implications for many facets of our society.

As prophesised by the doomsayers, unemployment has risen steadily, consumer spending has dropped and national debt continues to mount. Interest groups can protest all they want, but Brian Lenihan and his cohorts have decided that tightening governmental purse strings is the best approach to take to salvage our tattered economy and that’s unlikely to change.

With less tangible benefits than, say, public transport or healthcare, the cultural arts are perceived as more ‘dispensable’ and, as such, are a likely target for cutbacks. So, is Ireland’s relatively lively arts scene fated to wither and die or is there, perhaps, a silver lining to this big R-shaped cloud?

With less funding to share round, the volume of projects receiving Arts Council funding is inevitably going to drop. However, if creative types are forced to raise the standard of their work in order to secure grants and bursaries over rival applicants, it’s possible that we’ll benefit from an improved quality of output. Moreover, less investment in the arts will encourage greater levels of innovation and lateral thinking as artists are forced to improvise alternative, more cost-effective ways of ‘realising their visions’.

Editor of ‘Vanity Fair’, Graydon Carter, recently remarked that, during the Great Depression in the 1930’s, “creative talent flowered as in no other period of the last century” in the United States. Carter claimed that, in the period of economic turmoil following the Wall Street Collapse, American culture “stopped being all about money, and the country survived and ultimately flourished.”

Although it might be little consolation to those reluctantly joining the back of the dole queues, a perk of being unemployed is that it affords people a lot more free time. For some, this time might be invested in lying in for an extra couple of hours in the morning or catching up with ‘Oprah’, but others may use their decongested schedules as an opportunity to explore their own creativity. It’s only a matter of time before we see plumbers turned poets, receptionists turned rock-singers and school principals turned sculptors, as people get the chance to hone creative talents they’ve previously ignored in favour of a 9 to 5.

A whole generation of Irish people have grown up under the auspices of beloved Celtic Tiger, blissfully unaware of previous economic difficulties that blighted our dear nation. Undesirable as experiencing financial hardships might be, it’s bound to expand our horizons somewhat and maybe even inspire a little creativity. Will St. Leger’s ‘Free Art Friday’, held last month, is just one example of a number of recent cultural events inspired by the economic downturn.

Poverty was a major component of the Irish identity until relatively recently so perhaps the current economic gloom will foster a greater understanding of the art and culture that predated our prosperity. It’s unlikely that a revival of sean-nós story-telling and set-dancing will sweep the nation but some might be surprised to discover just how much fun can be had on a shoestring budget.

Perhaps the key to the question as to whether culture will flourish or flounder lies in the fact that, when times get tough, the arts tend to assume a greater significance.

When we tire of dreary news reports and ‘insufficient funds’ messages, the arts can offer a form of escapism, reassuring us that things have been better and reminding us that things could be worse. Perhaps more importantly, the arts provide us with necessary outlets to express our frustrations, our disappointments, our fears, and our hopes for a brighter, recessionless future.

[Image: Fine Art Blog]

Blue Monday

A number of media outlets are running stories that today, Monday the 19th of January, is statistically the most depressing day in history.

The Daily Mail report claims the collective gloom is a result of six factors: winter weather, Christmas credit card bills. abandoned New Year's resolutions, fears over job security, mounting debt and the house price collapse. They also predict that one in five people will call in sick to work. Disaster.

If you've fallen victim to the epidemic of woe, my advice is to try some lolcat therapy. The abundance of feline funniness on this cult site is bound to lift anybody's mood.









See also:

Cat's That Look Like Hitler

Kitten War

Cats in Sinks

Recession Killed The Radio Star

Una Rocks had some interesting things to say about the RTE cutbacks that have seen Nikki Hayes' and Rick O' Shea's roles on their respective 2FM radio shows being reduced to providing links between playlisted songs.

All non-music items, such as interviews, movie reviews, etc. have been dropped as RTE cuts back on its number of radio producers. Una hits the nail on the head when she says that 2FM are naive to let the talents of these two presenters go to waste as they churn out playlisted pop instead: "Do the people who make decisions at 2fm not understand that if young people want to listen to music, they plug in their iPod or whack on Last.fm? Do they really just want the afternoon slots at 2fm to turn into a soundtrack for customers at Spar or petrol stations?"

And here was me thinking that radio-journalism was the route I wanted to take...

[Image: rte.ie]

My Two Cents?

Or your two cents?

Today I stood waiting in a shop for two cents' change. After about five seconds, I realised that they weren't coming and, at precisely the same moment, the shop assistant realised what I was waiting for and scooped a two-cent piece out of the till for me. A friend of mine had an almost identical experience last night, so I got to wondering: what's the protocol in situations like this?

If you just walk off without waiting for your coppers, is that not a bit blasé? A bit "the extra few seconds of my precious time that I've saved by not waiting is worth a lot more than two bloody cents"?

Or is it perhaps courteous to leave those cents with the shopkeeper, particularly considering the recessionary times we're living in? Maybe all the cennies will build up and help to postpone liquidation just that little bit longer?

[Image: Flickr]