So it turns out Ben Folds is running a fan memories contest on Facebook. I’d love to enter, but my prized Ben Folds possession was lost a few years ago, here is the story:

Bottled Ben

Back in the 1996 Ben Folds Five toured the UK. They played the Sheffield Leadmill and I went along with 2 friends. It was a great gig by all accounts, in fact, the 3 of us still look back at it fondly today because on the way home our car broke down and I was left having to walk 1/2 the journey home – good times

Anyway, back to the gig – anyone who’s been to the Leadmill will know it has a very open stage area. You can, for most shows, walk right up and grab the feet of the band (it used to be great for stage diving before all the new health & safety laws banned it).

Because of this layout I was able to get really, really, really, close to Ben’s piano. And for the final couple of songs, while being crushed down the front, I spied that he had taken a few swigs from a bottle of water and left it by the side of his piano leg (it was a baby grand).

After the show when the audience died down and the lights came up I seized my chance to jump on stage and grab the 1/2 drank and pretty messed-up bottle as a souvenir! I now owned some of Ben Fold’s spit! Pretty cool no?

Well, some may say weird (a few did) but I thought it was great (I’m sure some Elvis fans have done weirder things). I kept the bottle on my shelf in my teenage bedroom for many years until it came time to move out to my own house about 10 years ago, this is when the story takes a turn for the worse because during the move, the bottle was lost

I was devastated when I couldn’t find it, my last memory of it is on my CD shelf at my mums old house still 1/2 full of a mixture of spring water, spit and sweat – a magic combination.

I can of course imagine how it ended up being lost. After all, it was an old, battered, 1/2 drank bottle of water and someone would have seen it as junk and probably threw it out with the rest of my teenage memorabilia (posters, magazines etc).

So that’s it! Needless to say, if I had kept hold of my magic Ben-bottle my chances of winning the competition would be pretty high.

Last month I did a presentation on all the different types of CMS tools that are now available at the South Yorkshire WordPress (#SYWP) meetup. You can find the notes here which were awesomely written by Chris Witham.

The rise of the micro-CMS

Some of the popular items were Unify, Perch and Cushy which fall into the category of ‘micro’ CMS applications.All of these are designed to be easy to add to any flat (static) HTML/CSS site. They have no jazzy dashboards/backends to speak of and all pretty well supported.

Pretty Forking Good

Out of all the other CMSs mentioned Fork was the one which got the most interest from the group.

It has a beautifully designed website and a simple, easy to follow dashboard and theme/module system. Everyone in the room commented on how this CMS could go far given the right attention.

All comes back to WordPress

Of course, this was a WordPress meetup and as deliciously inviting as some of these other CMS tools looked my ultimate point was I/we always come back to WordPress for a few solid reasons:

1. Plugins – Need WP to do something? Find a plugin, if you can’t find it, hire someone or hack your own – no other CMS has this many available features.
2. Releases – This sometimes puts people off WordPress but we should all be thankful. WordPress releases are quick and easy to implement and there are no horrible version splits and upgraded sites generally work pretty well with new versions without much worry. (YES I know its not that simple but its better than Drupal with version 6, 7, 8 and even 9 on the horizon all being used and supported).
3. Popularity – Just check the figures. WordPress is now a synonymous CMS brand.
4. Community – WordCamps, meetups, online news forums, the community is not only large its well organized and passionate.

Last night I was lucky enough to see the new Foo Fighters documentary Back and Forth which was screened for ‘one night only’ in selected UK cinemas (but will most certainly be pushed out on DVD pretty soon). It was followed by an exclusive live performance of their new album Wasting Light.

Why the film was awesome in general

I’ve always been a big Foo Fighters fan, but never a die-hard follower. In fact because of their UK-festival-saturation in the late 90s I actually got really sick of seeing them live. So much so that after the release of The Colour and the Shape I took a break from their music until the release of One by One which re-ignited my interest in the band.

Back and Forth was great because it charted the early period of the band that I had let pass me by. I had NO idea that they had had such a hard time finding a final line up. I had no idea that the original drummer (William Goldsmith) quit after Dave Grohl underhandedly re-recorded over all of his drum-tracks with his own on the 2nd album. I had no idea of the stories which went into recording each of their albums and how they toured solidly for almost 2 years after their initial inception. I also had no idea just how much the band were in the shadow of Nirvana and how during the first tour the crowd (made up of 99% Nirvana fans) would scream for the song ‘Marigold’ an old Nirvana b-side that Grohl did the lead vocals for at every-single-show only to be left disappointed as the band never ever played the song.

All of this new information painted a really engrossing and humbling story. I’d always though of the Foo’s as having it pretty easy in the early days but it was far from it. The film went on to describe how Nirvana fans deeply resented Grohl even starting a band never mind becoming a lead singer/guitarist rather than sticking to just being a drummer and how much pain the new-members felt being in his shadow.

There was a great line from Grohl which summed up this dark period that I knew little about before seeing the film:

“most bands go though all of this crap BEFORE they get famous”

(I’m heavily paraphrasing but you get the idea).

Why the film was awesome for me personally

Making a rock-umentary isn’t a new idea, but they are pretty rare these days. When I was young and entrenched in music fandom my friends and I would watch hours of these things back-to-back.

I still remember scenes from Skid Row’s Road Kill, Smashing Pumpkins’ Vieuphoria and the Guns n’ Roses Use Your Illusion tour videos. This was the early days of MTV when we would stay up late to watch the Headbangers Ball show only to re-watch the recorded (VHS of course) version again the next morning. It was addictive and the only way to really get close to the bands we were into at the time.

The other major reason I really enjoyed the film was the final scenes of the band recording their new album, on classic analog magnetic tape and in the Dave Grohl’s garage.

This part was especially interesting to me not only because of the technology and production methods being shown (I did my college degree in music recording before falling in love with the web) but also because of the way the whole process was so comforting to watch. It really was was more like a family recording an album in their basement rather than the reality of the biggest band in the world recording their next big release. Even the notoriously intense Butch Vig came across as a different person in this setting.

What the film teaches you about business

The music industry is a strange place. Its a million miles away now than when the Foo Fighters first entered the scene in 1994 but they have managed to maintain a level of success and quality throughout.

The film subconsciously attributes most of this success to the leadership and genius of Grohl who like an up-start entrepreneur came up with a great product on his own (he recorded the first album alone in 5 days, writing and performing every track) and then matured it over time with new people by tirelessly working (in this case touring) on perfection.

He has poured his heart out over every Foo Fighters song, live show and recording leaving no prisoners along the way – this is the trademark of success in any arena.

The Foo’s now have a great product that is known by pretty much every music fan. They are the evolution of almost every stream of modern rock music able to cross into many different sub-genera’s without shame or hostility.

No other band on the planet has this reach or experience and this film is a tribute to this.

Today is generally known as ‘Black Friday‘ in the USA, a day where our American cousins slash prices on goods and services and generally eat a lot of turkey.

For me however, it was SPAM Friday – a day where I was bombarded with quite a few SPAM/Malware emails from what I consider to be trusted sources, namely Dropbox, ColourLovers, BuySellAds and the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival.

Check out a snapshot of my inbox from this morning (click for large version):

As you can see from the image I keep track of my accounts using the old tried-and-tested method of [sitename][at][mydomian]. This allows me to trace if an email is from the right place AND easily block any cheeky spammers.

Normally I wouldn’t worry, but the question remains – How did the spammers get all of my email addresses from all of these un-linked sites when the only place I use them are on said sites?

Fact is, I respect these sites. I firmly believe that they would NEVER give up my email address to spammers. And the fact that all of these came on the same day at around the same time leaves a really bad smell in my inbox.

What happened? Who knows, did anyone else have the same issue? Not that I know of? Will I/we ever find out what happend? I hope so!