Author Archives: Steve Mays

FISTS: “ramshackley, lofi pop music”

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I first heard of the band FISTS in early 2009 when James Finlay wrote asking for permission to use one of my photos to cover a single they were releasing. They’ve used a couple more images since and we’ve stayed in touch by email.

Yesterday we had a nice chat covered lots of topics. I asked them about their infuences, aspirations, etc. They asked me about The Basement Diaries.

I rambled on a bit and the conversation stretched to about 30 minutes, so I put it on YouTube in three parts. [Part 2 | Part 3]

My interviewing skills were never very sharp and have only gotten rustier over the years, but that’s okay. It was fun to talk with the band (Pete Conway, Angie Fletcher, Theresa Wrigley, James Finley and David Bigg).

If we’d had the internet in 1963 or ’64, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles would have been doing chats like this and making videos and all the rest. What a treasure that would have been.

Who knows if FISTS will soar to such hights, or be one of thousands of “bedroom bands” who make their music for the sheer joy of it.

UPDATE: To call my Skype visit with James and his friends an interview was reaching a bit. Fortunately, they’ve been kind enough to provide some of the information I failed to get:

Fists are myself and Angi (long term partners), Theresa is our old friend who we’ve known forever. Angi, Theresa and myself all live together. Our bassist Dave is our most recent addition replacing our old bassist Joe Wrigley who is Theresa’s brother. Dave lives practically next door on the same street with his girlfriend Kiri. We have a fifth member Peter Conway but he was sadly unable to be there for the interview and we neglected to tell you this!? Sorry about that. Pete lives in a co-operative with his wife and two children about 10 minutes walk away.

Our jobs are pretty wide ranging. Angi is currently working as a freelance graphic designer for a software company called Serif, she’s also a lecturer and tutor at the local university teaching Design and Visual Culture amongst other stuff to undergraduates. Theresa also works at Nottingham Trent University as an administrator for the Fine Art Department. Dave is a postman for The Royal Mail. This was a major headache when we recently went on tour and Dave didn’t book the time off work. He was getting to bed at 3-4am after the shows and getting up at around 6:30am for work for the whole week. He was very tired! Pete runs and owns an ethical screenprinting business with his wife Hannah called I Dress Myself. They source their t-shirts from ethical fair trade suppliers. They are made from biodegradable bamboo and their inks are all waterbased. They are one of the very few companies doing this in the UK at the moment. His business is pretty handy for our own band T-shirts! I’m a PA to a Professor of Gastroenterology called Chris Hawkey at the local hospital (Queen’s Medical Centre).

This is where we rehearse.

This is a little video of us performing at the record launch party for our first single which had the gorilla boxer on the front.

Here we are at the Glastonbury Festival last year.

Here we are performing at our second record launch party for the EP with the cool group shot on the front. There’s a whole series of videos from this show on Youtube.

This is a video our friend Dan Toporowski did for us for the first single. Dan is a genius who makes these beautiful animations at home on his battered, old, PC. Dan’s day job was working in a factory until he got made redundant. I’m pretty sure there’s an excellent job out there for Dan doing this stuff professionally but he refuses to do it as a job! It’s also worth checking out his excellent Franklin’s Haunted House.

And there you have it!

Once again, massive thanks for all your support and kindness over the past couple of years. You have always been a very positive, enthusiastic and useful ally of the band and we are very grateful indeed.

Regards

James and all of Fists x

Palace Theater goes dark

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The Palace Theater will close its doors this Sunday. It has been Kennett’s only theater for a long time. Growing up in the 50’s, we had a second theater for a while, until the Ritz burned (can’t recall the year). During the early 50’s, The Palace was “segregated” with people of color sitting in the balcony and colorless people below. I’m not sure if this was by choice or enforced. (Just the sort of question a white kid would ask, no?)

In front of the Palace Theater in Kennett, MO

In front of the Palace Theater in Kennett, MO

Based on the movies on the marquee, I believe this photo was taken in 1954. My father is the one riding in the wheelbarrow. Jimmy Haggett is pushing him (in the annual Fall Festival Parade, I believe) because pop won a popularity contest pitting “pop” music against country.

In its day, The Palace was a fine old theater. We were lucky to have it.

Spreadable Media

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Henry Jenkins the founder and former co-director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, and author of Convergence Culture (what happens when,“old and new media collide.”) In an interview with NeimanLab.org, he talks about his new book, Spreadable Media, which will be out in 2011. A few snippets:

“For things to live online, people have to share it socially. They also have to make it their own — which can be as participatory as just passing a YouTube clip on as a link or making a copycat video themselves.”

“Spreadable media is media which travels across media platforms at least in part because the people take it in their own hands and share it with their social networks.”

“News sites which prevent the sharing of such content amongst readers may look like ways to protect the commercial interest of that content, but in fact, they kill it, destroying its value as a cultural resource within networked communities, and insuring that the public will look elsewhere for news that can be spread.”

And would you believe that within the past month, I had a client say he didn’t want to link to some association sites because he didn’t want to “send people away from my page.”

There are  a lot of old media types who would read this interview and say, “If it doesn’t make me any money… I don’t care how far my story spreads.”

Ohio prison rules could limit inmates’ last words

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The final words of condemned prisoners in Ohio could be edited or shortened under new state prison rules announced Thursday, six months after an inmate recited prayers for 17 minutes before he was executed. The man apologized for his crime, then recited the rosary and other prayers before he died, choking back tears as he repeatedly said the Hail Mary with rosary beads in one hand. At 17 minutes, it was the longest final statement by a condemned Ohio inmate since executions resumed 11 years ago.

via washingtonpost.com

End of the desk-top era

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I’ve had a computer on my desk at home since 1984. A lot of them. Zenith, Gateway, IBM, Dell and, most recently, a Mac Mini. No longer. I’m selling the Mini.

Oh, there are still lots of computers around the house. The MacBook Pro long ago became my main box (slab?). And there’s the iPad and the iPhone. But it felt like the end of an era.

This weekend I’ll replace my printer and scanner with a wireless all-in-one from HP and as I started making room, I was struck by how many usb hubs and power-strips were being relegated to a box in the closet.

Yesterday I had a chat with one of our IT guys about where things are headed from a business perspective. Are we getting closer to the day when a company tells a new employee they can use their own computer (any flavor they choose) and hook into the company content via the cloud.

I took a little further and suggested the device of chose would be some sort of tablet, not a laptop. Whatever shakes out, things are going to be much different for the users and the IT folks who support them.