blogjam

I got an email today from Dave Roozendaal, who does much the same job as I do at our Dutch office. He’s about to unleash his own weblog on a bewildered and cowering world, but is unlikely to get it finished before Christmas (the endless parties, the weekends in rehab, delivering all those presents etc etc). Still keen to find himself a voice so that his end-of-year thoughts are devoured feverishly by an online community of millions, he’s taken the rather foolish step of sending me his Top 10 2000 records, which is normally the sort of request I’d ignore completely, but in this case I’ll make an exception. His taste is actually pretty good (we’ll not mention the inclusion of the Goldfrapp album) and, in keeping with the blogjam tradition, the list is assembled in a completely random manner. (Wow, just four days old, and we already have a ‘tradition’).

• Radiohead – Kid A
• PJ Harvey – Stories Form the City, Stories From the Sea
• Goldfrapp – Felt Mountain
• Queens Of The Stone Age – R
• Paradox – The Musician As an Outsider
• Landslide – Drum + Bossa
• LoSoul – Belong
• De La Soul – Art Official Intelligence
• Mike Ladd – Welcome To the Afterfuture
• Etienne de Cr?cy – Tempovision

Wanna contribute? All Top 10’s gratefully received, maybe even published. By the way, Dave also runs Fluff Girl Wax, a quite splendid record label. Check ’em out.

Compiling end-of-year lists can be a thorny issue. Tom at NYPLM is annoyed with the feisty DJ Martian, who claims that people who don’t announce their top tens for all and sundry are afraid to put their online reputations at risk. Tom responds by declaring that “most people present theirs with only the barest smidgen of commentary and the impression is they’re doing it out of mistaken duty or simply to show off.” The truth for me lies somewhere between the two, having a) yet to develop an online reputation, and b) realised that showing off in this forum is rediculous because c) I’ve yet to develop an online reputation.

So, I’ve compiled a list of my favourite albums of 2000, assembled without care and in no particular order, which may, at the very least, give an insight into my personality. Or offer clues as to why I don’t have a girlfriend.

• Queens Of The Stone Age – R
• The Flying Dewaele Bothers – The Best Of Hank The DJ
• Chris Morris – Blue Jam
• Daniel Johnston – Rejected Unknown
• Gonzales – Gonzales Uber Alles
• Evolution Control Committee – Double The Phat And Still Tasteless
• The Delgados – Great Eastern
• Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker
• Johnny Cash – American III: Solitary Man
• The Jayhawks – Smile

Hell, if you’re that interested, look ’em up. Whaddya think the Internet is for?

Now you’re going to have to understand this, as I’m pretty new to the game. I do a music weblog at my dayjob, but it’s written in a company “voice” , whearas these pages will be filled with my own ramblings and thoughts. So, if I get over-excited initially and scream every time a new URL crops up in my referral reports, you’ll have to forgive me, at least until the novelty wears off. Today, however, Momblog’s Sister, which is the sister site of borrowed blogs as far as I can tell, borrowed my blogjam blog about Random Walks borrowing my blog about… Oh fuck it – see below.

This is fantastic! Today borrowed blogs borrowed my blogjam blog about Random Walks borrowing my blog about borrowed blogs borrowing my blog from borrowed blogs! Or something. I feel giddy, and just a trifle sick.

People often stop me in the street and ask me what blogjam means. “Hey Fraser,” they say, “What does blogjam mean?”

I usually give them this example: A while ago I posted a comment to Metafilter, talking about a blog I’d come across called borrowed blogs, which borrowed blogging from other blogs as its own blog content. Soon after this, borrowed blogs borrowed my original metafilter blog thread as its own. Of course the cat was well and truly put amongst the pigeons, and a second thread was started on Metafilter, drawing attention to the fact that borrowed blogs had borrowed my original post about borrowed blogs. To makes things even more convoluted, Random Walks then borrowed the original borrowed blog blog about borrowed blogs as part of its own blog.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is blogjam.

Perfectly straightforward, really.