28th
WriteRoom:28 may blog
In Berlin, I’m going to meet several people this weekend whom I have never met before, but with whom I’ve emailed quite a bit. is it this kind of pre-personal socializing that Facebook and MySpace were keying into when they appropriated the word “friend” and made a verb out of it? 10+ years ago, email revolutionized improvised music by connecting hundreds, then thousands, of improvisers in a communications economy they could afford: namely, a free one. (as long as they could get to a computer, their own or one at school or the library.) now as I’m starting to write about it, it’s gone well beyond email.
MySpace never caught on much with me, mostly because it felt unsafe, labrynthine, and fugly. other improvised&noise musicians dove into it, but I always felt that myspace couldn’t make up it’s mind: was it for chilling with friends, or was it for professionally networking bands?
Facebook has never made you choose if you are a band trying to get promoted or just a person. and that I’d where I feel it’s a better mesh with improv/noise people. it’s a community, or anyway a collection of scenes, with a very personal, sometimes even self- effacing, view of itself. it makes sense that if would be at home with the more affable, less hype-oriented feel of Facebook.
but that’s just my view; maybe I don’t look at myspace enough. I’m still glad I have it. Let me know what you think about MySpace, Facebook, et cetera in the context of improvised, noise, phonography, and everything that intersects with it. now I just need to get everybody on the scene(s) into Twitter (hit me up at fielderblank).
