Charles on… anything that comes along

Bill Palmer usually uses a Mac; then last weekend he went to a friend’s house, and ended up using his friend’s one-year-old PC with Windows XP and SP2 installed.

Oh, and 34 pieces of spy/ad/who-knows-what-ware. An interesting tale: read it in full. Certainly I didn’t know it was that bad. But I don’t let the Windows machine I have on the Net. (One question this article doesn’t answer is whether the guy had antivirus software etc going. But then, neither does Bill..)

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Ah, witness another idea that’s not going to go very far. (Is this me doing stop energy? Anyhow.)

Excited press release from mobile network 3: History will be made on 2 November as [rock band] Rooster perform what will be the UK's first gig broadcast live to third-generation mobile users.

Er, what? I mean, history, sure, but rather in the style of making history by stacking a million one-pence coins on each other, as in, sure you can do it but what’s the point?

Read on for more detail: 3 is offering 1,000 places to fans of the band to watch the ground-breaking gig live on their 3 mobile, with highlights of the 45 minute performance and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage then made available for download by over 1.2 million 3 customers. The gig, since you’re wondering, is going to be at London’s ICA.

So let’s get this straight: 3 is offering these lucky, lucky people the chance to watch a gig in the tiny video screen of a mobile phone?? Exactly how pointless would that feel? Will the video be able to follow the band’s movement? And what’s the sound quality going to be like?

It reminds me very strongly of the period back in, oh, 2000 or so when performers like Madonna and Elton John were doing online gigs paid for by wannabe “content ISPs” like MSN. And look now - everybody watches gigs on their computer every day, don’t they? Nobody bothers going to Glastonbury, and the TV channels don’t show it, because… oh no hang on.

And so it will be with “gigs to your mobile”. And that’s assuming they can even find 1,000 people who are (1) Rooster fans and (b) own a video mobile. If you get four or five crowded around a single phone, things could get ugly.

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This week’s Independent Science and Technology features are up: I’ve reviewed the PURE Digital Bug, which I have to say I like very much - digital radio you can pause and record - while Peter Marren gives you an insight into the hidden beasts in our lakes, rivers and streams.

Update Thurs: reader Steve Green points out that my article about The Bug has two errors: MPEG-2 is a *less* efficient codec than MP3; and “pausing” live radio could be done with analogue too, if manufacturers had the will. More detail in the comments to this post.

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It’s hard to describe the hole that the death of John Peel leaves. The BBC’s Front Row did a fantastic job, corralling people including Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn to talk about his influence on British music. “The most important DJ since rock’n'roll”; “the most important person in British music.”

It’s only when you hear about the bands who he first aired, or had do early sessions on his show (because he’s never have “famous” bands - apart maybe from The Fall) that you start to realise the breadth of his reach and interest: Pink Floyd. T.Rex. Led Zeppelin (early sessions). Pulp (13 years before everyone else). Blur. Billy Bragg. The list goes on and on.

A couple of the best quotes came from Paul Gambaccini, who put it into perspective: “He listened to more music from more genres than anyone else in history.” And Albarn, or maybe Andy Kershaw: “He had music running through him.” That goes to the heart of it: unlike so many other people, Peel never lost the ability to be enthused by music that had something new, something different, something exciting. You might not see it, but he could, from a long way off. And he could see it before anyone else: “he had this feel for where there was a gap in music,” said Gambaccini. And he could find the music someone was making that fitted it. Thom Yorke of Radiohead said today that when short of inspiration, he would listen to Peel’s late-night show, and be sure that he’d hear at least one track that would give him new ideas for sounds and songs.

And finally, but so, so importantly: Peel never treated music as an industry, as a sausage maker or star-making machinery. To him there was no difference between a local band making a good thrashy noise and someone who’d been at it for years; all he wanted was them to be doing it for music, not fame or money. That’s a valuable point of view that is depressingly rare these days.

I hope though that somewhere there’s a 12-year-old growing up with the same ability to just love anything regardless of genre. It would be such a cruel cosmic joke if that gift were never repeated.

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