NORTHERN PLANNER

Maybe it’s a confidence thing, but I get nervous when there’s no one around to bounce things off. As a one man department it can get very lonely, but there is the freedom to make your own decisions. It’s liberating, but I’m the kind of person that needs other points of view. I’d written a proposal thingy yesterday and got into a bit of a panic when there was no one around to take a look before I sent it on.

I was listening to some old Prince stuff on tape, and I realised how good he used to be when there was a manager, a record label and a sound engineer to tell him when he was wrong. He used to be surround himself with other musicians and steal ideas all the time. Now he’s no one to push against his music’s a bit of a joke.

There’s been a fair bit of chat around recently on celebrities promoting good causes, the Red thing and famous people telling us how to live in general. My initial reaction is to tell celebs to get lost and keep their opinions to themselves. BUT…

The sad truth is that we live in world where celebrities are the new royalty. Celeb driven magazines sell by the truckload, people like Colleen Rooney have their own columns in magazines and people listen. As far as I’m aware, AIDS was never accepted as a heterosexual problem until Magic Johnson admitted he was HIV. Drop the Debt didn’t really become a live issue until Bono made it one (and God isn’t he annoying?). As much as Live Aid could have been about self serving musicians getting a fair bit of free marketing, it brought the issue to wider attention than would have been possible otherwise.

I wish we didn’t need famous people to tell us what’s a serious issue,and what isn’t, or brands for that matter, but if that what it takes, should we embrace it more?

While we’re on the subject of music and radio, this commercial for Radio 2 is breathtaking. It’s also at least as good as the Perfect Day ad for the  1997. Proper pieces of entertaining film you want to watch again and again. Got me thinking what my supergroup would be, hard to choose, although it most certainly would not be like The Travelling Wilberies.

During the last couple of weeks I’ve been driving a car with a tapedeck instead of a CD player. At first this was a pain, then it got quite good. Firstly because I’m listening to the radio more, not only more Radio 4 but the odd foray into Radio 2. One surprise was Chris Evans, no longer smug, nasty or annoying, but rather inclusive, a good listener and some fine music. Even better, the tapedeck is making me fall back in love with music I haven’t listened to for ages.

When Cd’s came in, there was lots of tapes I never bothered to upgrade. I also spent hours and hours making my own compilations. Without the nifty ability to jump around the tracks you want, tapes force you to listen to the whole thing. This means you listen to an album as it was intended, and pay more attention to the songs you were not that keen on. I loved listening to ‘New York’ by Lou Reed the other day, it’s supposed to consumed all in one go, and I remembered why. I dug up ‘Songs for Drella’ the duet he did with John Cale when Andy Warhol died – I’d forgotten  it even existed, yet it’s some of the most beautiful, poignant music ever made. Never have two people buried the hatchet with such dignity.

Some of my compilation tapes are more than ten years old, now I’m older I don’t have to cringe at some on guilty pleasures buried there. Gems like Echobelly, Gene, the underrated Eg (ex-Brother Beyond would you believe), and proudly revisiting Lloyd Cole.  I Haven’t listened to any Suede tracks for ages and out pumped ‘Trash’, as fresh as it was in the summer of ’93, there’s the Beatles’ ‘Here comes the Sun’ that I played after I finished my finals.  Some of the songs here are the soundtrack to days as a student, struggling to make ends meet in London, and other things that make me who I am.

I often recoil with horror when I find myself thinking that music isn’t as good as it used to be (not Echobelly obviously) but I realise now that that the music then represents days that will never come again. That’s not saying that life was better then, just different. So what comes out now will never be the same. There’s some good stuff, but since I’ll never again be sharing a Camden flat with a mad Frenchman and a city trader who plays wargames in his spare time, nor study enough for my finals- and I definitely won’t be dumped by Nina Chorzelewski again, it will never mean as much to me as the music I listened to back then.

‘Northern Planner’ was not a great choice for a name. Not only is it crashingly boring, if you googled it, you got a wierd mix of journey planners and umpteen variations on ‘northern’. Thankfully, enough people have taken pity on me and their links have made the site popular enough to be at the top of the google results. Just goes to show that a bad name doesn’t always ruin your chances.

As my second name is Hovells, I should know.

I finally got round to watching ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ last week. While it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know, it still had a profound effect. For two reasons:

1. The performance was breathtaking. It was a good feminder that having the right data, a strong argument and some whizzy graphics are okay, but that’s nothing next to a well polished delivery that’s paced to perfection.

2. Film is still one of the most powerful way you can deliver a message,  it can entertain, captivate and delights like no other.

I’m working on a coffee project, so maybe all that wittering about proper coffee and slow tea may be worthwhile after all. To help, I’m having as many meetings in coffee shops as I can.

Yesterday morning I was in Durham and found myself frantically rummaging for enough copper to pay for my £2.50 skinny late. Now I’m not against someone not taking debit cards, in fact, if they turn it into some sort of benefit – maybe personal or a return to simple then fine. I do mind them waiting to apprise me of the fact until I’m offering my switch card over my freshly made drink. Sometimes it’s the littlest things that make the difference.

It was Starbucks in the afternoon, for an agreeable catch up with JamesB who’s helping on some digital stuff. Not only did he show why other people should be making the most of his newly available freelance skills, he bought me my first mince pie of the festive season. It’s always a bit dodgy working with friends. It’s nice that you trust them, but you don’t want to fall out and ruin things. James is both reliable and clever, so that’s all right. He’s also the only person who’s worse than I am for getting lost, so it’s worth having him around to make me look good.

The ever brilliant Faris makes a good point about objectiveness in planning here. Come to think of it, there’s one or two brands I like and even buy because I admire the thinking, not necessarily the ads. In between lurking in hotel receptions, Rob Campbell’s (another man proud of his shiny head)has developed some great thinking on Sony that makes me fond of the Walkman again, not to mention robots.

Meanwhile Beeker’s got some thoughts on not being media neutral, and One Woman Running has some home truths about talent in ad agencies. While you’re there, there’s lots of truths about what it’s like trying to get your first job, and life living with Mum and temping.  And so we come back to Faris’ original post about objectivity. Maybe we should all spend a few days temping every year to get back in touch with reality, what do you think?

Helen’s done a good post about neurotic blogging, the way worrying about what you’re writing, and how little you’re able to do end up in you writing nothing. Blogs for me are an outlet, a way of sharing ideas and meeting a few people on the way. When they take over your like your in trouble.

I’m a bit guilty of not commenting on other people’s stuff at the moment, and I definitely need to pull my finger out with Let’s See What Happens, not least because I’m supposed to be not putting things off. But you do what you can.