Hello!

So, the Foxes and Convicts Christmas Special went out last week, and the acts were all brilliant! As a special thank you to everyone who’s listened in over the past year, here’s a special video version of the show – all the Christmassy songs in glorious high definition

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Both thursdays in the run up to Christmas, at 7pm, the Foxes and Convicts Christmas Special will be live on Leeds Indie Radio!

Featuring:

Gary Stewart

Martin Plock

Silky

Steph Stephenson

and

Tag Team Preacher’s Steve Ward

Also, in a first for Foxes, we’ll be releasing a YouTube playlist of 5 featured songs from the show too, so you can see the Christmassy magic. It’ll be out on Friday.

Till then, enjoy this wee preview trailer for the show!

Merry christmas! Xx

There’s no doubt google can be awesome. Check out (FNAR) this video they made about online checkouts:

That said, they just can’t get a handle on social media. I have some big problems with G+.

Running the trial almost successfully google-wave-style-choked it, limiting the people that you can share with to a small fraction of the amount of people you *want* to share with… So, they have brought together a group of people to sit and stare at their screens, asking “now what?”.

Also, because g+ has only just launched on google apps, I was using a seperate google profile to use it – now if I want to use my main email address, I have to start all over again… and I don’t fancy that…

I read that Google have canned Buzz, their version of Twitter, to focus on G+. This was after Google canned Wave in order to focus on stuff like Buzz.

Google’s like that chum you have who’s full of GREAT ideas, but stumbles a bit when starting them off. Google do some things brilliantly. Docs, Analytics, tools like that. They’re not that good at Social Media, but why should they have to be? in an attempt to widen their protfolio, they’re in danger of dooming their good work by association with their bad.

UPDATE: I think I’ve worked out what I’m trying to say here… (sorry, I’m very tired)…

By setting themselves up as “the next Big Thing” they have massive boots to fill very quickly – and unless they can claim some big successes (credibly) very quickly, they are inevitably going to suffer from cynicsm towards the hype that they founded.

By becoming a specialist sort of place, for techies and beardwearers, they are probably fulfilling what they should have set out to do in the first place.

Sean will be on the panel during one of this year’s Leeds Digital Festival Lunches, details soon…

I had a nice email in this morning from someone who’s looking into how Rags – University Charity Appeals – have worked together in the past, cos of my work with Martin Smallridge on UKRag.net.

I was rootling through some related stuff and found this absolute gem – it’s footage of the Rag Parade in Glasgow (back then known as Ygorra… as in “Ygorra give us some cash”… yes, really) from 1924. It’s good to know that nearly a hundred years before I was pratting about in a daft costume trying to raise money for charity, they were doing the same.

Unfortunately Pathe don’t let you embed their videos (BOO! What’s up with THAT, British Pathe?) so I’ll have to link to them, but here’s some great archive footage of news reports of the old days of Rag.

SCOTTISH STUDENTS – RAGS – COMPILATION

And here’s some from 1932:

A CITY HELD UP (aka GLASGOW STUDENTS’ RAG)

Which was the same year Middlesex Rag actually kidnapped Santa Claus:

"A CHRISTMASSY SMASH & GRAB" (aka SMASH AND GRAB)

There are over a hundred old Rag films at The British Pathe film archive. Check them out!

This one of my favourite covers of evar. Added story-at-the-start bonus here too

Ever watched an out-of-shape scotsman in his 30s lollop around a garden trying to catch four loose chickens?

YOU HAVE NOW.

This just screams “FRIDAY” at me in my face till Imma happy it’s friday.

Sometimes, I like nothing more than to stand around in a church looking moody/tired.

The other week nice songsmith Chris Selman asked if I would do that in the background of his video, so I was happy to oblige!

And so here I am. There’s a bit of a cameo from something from the Season’s Change video (apart from me, obviously) too!

When I was putting together the list for [intlink id="7187" type="post"]Foxes and Convicts[/intlink] I stumbled across this fella on Leeds Music Forum called Daniel Pearson. He’s been recording at the fast-becoming-legendary Soundmill studios in Leeds with one of the cleverest producers working in Leeds right now, Ed Heaton. If you haven’t heard of Ed before, you’ve probably heard of some of his work recently, producing Hannah Trigwell, Secret Sirens, and a few more including The Finnlys… But I digress.

Daniel is right up my street – So much so I was rather stunned I hadn’t heard of him before. Anyway, if you like your sweeping soundscapes to be anthemic and heartfelt, get involved.

Daniel’s on Facebook here, and Twitter here.

He has a new single – Wishing Well – out now.