Icons of England

Whilst searching the net for information on Glastonbury Festival (there are reports that Jay-Z, one of the festivals headliners might be pulling out, possibly due to the poor sales, yesterday) I found this great web site, Icons: a portait of England. It lists the festival as quintessentially British and the "daddy" of all music festivals.

England has a rich and varied culture and heritage and this great site sets out to prove it by highlighting iconic features of the country. It's thought provoking and stimulates discussion of what makes England great and what things are unique to England.

Here's a list of some of the things Icons has deemed worthy of iconic status:

• Alice In Wonderland
• The Angel of the North
• The Archers
• Big Ben
• Blackpool Tower
• The Bobby
• Bonfire Night
• Bowler Hat
• Brick Lane
• Cheddar Cheese
• Chicken tikka masala
• Cricket
• A Cup of Tea
• Doctor Who
• The Domesday Book
• Eden Project
• The FA Cup
• Fish and chips
• Fox-hunting and the Ban
• Glastonbury Festival
• Globe Theatre
• Hadrian's Wall
• The Hay Wain
• Hedges
• HMS Victory
• Holbein's Henry VIII
• The Iron Bridge
• Jerusalem
• The King James Bible
• The Lake District
• Land Rover
• Lindisfarne Gospels
• Magna Carta
• The Mini
• Miniskirt
• Monty Python
• Morris Dancing
• Mrs Beeton's Book Of Household Management
• Narrowboats on Canals
• Notting Hill Carnival
• Oak Tree
• The Origin Of Species
• OxbridgeThe Oxford English Dictionary
• Parish Church
• The Peak District
• The Phone Box
• The Pint
• Pride And Prejudice
• The Pub
• Punch and Judy
• Queen's Head Stamp
• Queuing
• Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding
• The Robin
• Robin Hood
• Rolls-Royce
• The Rose
• The Routemaster Bus
• Rugby
• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
• Sherlock Holmes
• The Spitfire
• SS Empire Windrush
• St George's Flag
• Stiff Upper Lip
• Stonehenge
• Sutton Hoo Helmet
• The Thames
• The Black Cab
• Tower of London
• The Tube Map
• The V-sign
• The Weather
• Westminster Abbey
  

For more information on each of these "icons" visit the site by clicking here.
I'd be interested to know what you would add to this list, especially if you are from over seas. How do you see England? I know our American cousins would add "bad teeth" to this list!

Trailers recut

There's seems to be a trend at the moment of no/lw budget remakes of movies. The films Be Kind, Rewind and Son of Rambow deal with people remaking movies whilst the internet is full of videos of people's own take on the classics.

One of my favourite trends is the film trailer recut: taking a classic movie and making a new promo for it, usually changing the genre, and when done well usually very funny. The first one I saw was the re-edit of Mary Poppins as Scary Mary, a horror film. I since discovered the Association of Independent of Creative Editors runs a "Trailer Park" competition and some of these are entries (25-year-old Robert Ryang won the competition with the superb re-edit of Kubrick's terrifying The Shining, as a rom-com!


The Shining Recut- AICE Trailer Park Competition Winner


Scary Mary - Mary Poppins Horror


Top Gun - should that be Brokeback Jetplane?


Fame - For All Must Eat


The Terminator - 2006 AICE Trailer Park Competition Winner


Brilliant. I'm sure I'll list more of these, or maybe even try one myself. Shows how a create use of music and voiceover can really make an impression (and how trailers work in the first place).

Edopter - Top Twelve Future Trends

Edopter is a web site that lets people predict what new trends and ideas will be shaping the future. Decided on, reviewed and voted on by it's users, it describes itself a "social trendcaster" where it's ethos is to "discover and share new trands in fashion, music, lifestyle, design, pretty much everything...".
Split into six categories they also give a statistic on what age/sex is most interested in each entry. Here's a list of some of the most interesting in each category:

People:
Barack Obama:
"Barack Obama is the agent of change America needs to lead it back into the light."

Hatsune Miku:
"Hatsune Miku ("sound of the future") is the latest singing sensation to hit Japan. No, she's not a new idol singer, she's Yamaha's Vocaloid2 software based on the voice of vocalist Saki Fujita. Anyone can make a song by inserting the lyrics and notes"

Places:
United Arab Emerates - Disneyland of the Middle East:
"The UAE is the richest per capita country in the world. That means they have money, and they just so happen to spend it on the more innovative projects known to man. Hotels, houses, beaches, corporate buildings...just not the way we know them"

Faux-Speakeasy:
A recent trend in nightlife/restaurants - the faux-speakeasy. Back-alleys, secret doors, unpublished reservation lines..."

Things:
Clear:
"Clear registered travelers are able to pass through airport security checkpoints with greater ease on a growing list of airports across the US"

Green Supercars:
"One time gas guzzlers are becoming earth-friendly"

Ideas:
Tap Water:
"Stop buying bottled water, and start drinking tap water."

Boycotting the 2008 Olympics:
"The movement to publicly express concern about the countless violations of every fundamental freedom in China by boycotting the 2008 games in Beijing."

Media:
Upper West Side Soweto:7"
The latest uplifting indie craze, fronted by Vampire Weekend, which mixes indie rock and ska with a traditional African sound. In the same vein as Paul Simon and Dave Matthews Band."

Out-of-Home Interactive Entertainment:
"The slowdown of the arcade has seen the birth of a new industry that uses the latest in immersive display technology and CGi computer power to create networked attractions that can be placed in malls and venues offering pay-to-play fun."

The Web:
Cewebrities:
"A person who is very well known or famous but mainly only on the internet... I bet you can name at least one right now..."

VisualCV Inc:
"VisualCV.com is reinventing the resume by applying Web 2.0 technologies like mashups, video, pictures and professional social networking to make it easier for candidates to truly stand out and highlight their credentials."

Randomness for whilst I'm away

So, a month of blogging and I'm off on a well deserved holiday. Not from blogging but from work. Me, Sally, fellow blogger Vimes and his lovely wife Dory are off to (hopefully sunny) Spain, so I'll be away from my comp and unable to blog for a week.
So to make up for it here's a weeks worth of random links to some lists out there on the interweb:

• Snarkarati's Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time
• Guardian readers songs about missing someone
• The World's Top 50 Restaurants (The Times)
• The Top Green Cars (Which Green Car?)
• The Daily Mail's Best Movie Hairstyles Ever
• Top 10 Ethical British Chocolates (The Guardian)
• The Top 50 Football Kits (The Times)

Radiohead bypass the record companies

Radiohead announced the release of their new album, In Rainbows this week. And surprisingly it will only be available as a download (or you can order a special box set, pictured above), which you must register for and decide how much you want to pay for it yourself! Register here, available to download 10 October 2007

It's the latest in a long list of artists that have benefited from new media, whether by passing the traditional delays that going through record companies can create, or using it as a promotional tool to get your new band noticed.


Obviously Radiohead have benefited from years of promotion and industry backing during their time with Parlophone but here is a list of artists who have used the internet to their advantage:

• Radiohead's new album available via the internet only.
  
• The Arctic Monkeys built up such a fan base via releasing tracks via their MySpace page. They got such a following, with the demo tracks passing between peer-to-peer sites, that their first single, I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor went straight to number one in the charts when it was released and their album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not is the fastest selling debut album in British chat history.
  
• Prince annoyed music retailers by offering his latest album, Planet Earth, free to anyone who bought tickets to his 21 night residency at the Millennium Dome... I mean the O2 Arena and also gave it away free with the Mail on Sunday. Some retailers even stocked the newspapers so as not to lose out.
  
• Indie rockers Ash have decided their latest album will be their last so they can concentrate on releasing single download tracks. They believe it will be more spontaneous, more creative and prevent the time wasted getting the music to their fans by the traditional route.
  
• Folk singer Sandi Thom's rise to fame was accelerated by live web casts from her MySpace page. It wasn't the DIY approach it was made to look though as she had major backing from her record company to get the streaming capabilities right but it still used new media in a way that had been ignored by the majors previously.
  
• Despite reasonable sales for their debut album Lottery Winners on Acid, The Crimea's record company dropped them so they financed and promoted their next release themselves. The free download album was downloaded over 60,000 and their gigs had and marked upturn in attendance.
  
• Virtual on-line community Second Life has hosted a few major concerts, including U2 and Duran Duran but it was Suzanne Vega who first saw the potential of having virtual, invite- only concerts when her avatar played "live" on her virtual island (see video below).

• Manchester indie band The Charlatans have announced their next album will be release on download only, after releasing a free single Cross My Path. Declining sales are the excuse and live performances and merchandising are seen by their record label, Creation, to be the main revenue areas in the future. Which is great from the booming live music scene.

Suzanne Vega "live" in Second Life