From a poke to a shove: Facebook has chucked me off their site

Facebook has deleted me. They've picked my up by the scruff of my (rubber)neck and thrown me out of the number one social media party. You'll find me in the alleyway at the back door, sprawled among the bins.

The site's insistence on real name usage is a matter of public record, and it left a lot of internet noses out of joint. That policy has now locked me out of my own account.

My name is "not approved". I need to "try again".

Try again at what? I've been Fat Roland online since the 1990s, before Facebook was invented.

I'm not one for skeletons and closets, so I'm not hiding anything. Indeed, my real identity is on numerous websites. You can see my name here and here and here and here and here and here and here. 

But making my pseudonym my primary web identity allows a healthy distance between me and the web. It is a choice; a carefully selected choice.

It's good for my creativity and headspace. Also, I don't want to be tracked down by the bullies from my primary and secondary school days. That said, I'm not going to be a victim about this. There are transgender people, for example, who have much more legitimate beef with the 'book than I do.

Mention Facebook to many people, and they sneer like it's a piddle-stained relative they haven't quite got shot of. Part of me is glad it has gone. However, I will lose touch with people I love. And it will affect my ability to promote events for Bad Language and Blackwell's.

I don't think there will be a fast fix. In the meantime, this is what my profile looks like.

If you need me, I'll be on Twitter and maybe even Ello (!).

And if you fancy joining me in living a Facebook-less life, delete your account and we'll have un-status un-updated adventures together.

Edit: two weeks later, I got back onto Facebook. My new name is even more silly than before. And now I can never change it. Oh, Facebook.

Blaming my weirdness on music that happened in the 90s

Last night, with my head deep in the bowels of YouTube, I realised how much of an island I was.

YouTube is probably one of the most common ways to listen to music. That compression must really bring out the bass. Ahem.

I decided to playlist my evening with a whole bunch of 90s YouTube techno, from The Advent to Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia. I even remembered the Genaside II project which the Prodigy would apparently sample for Firestarter (although on a quick listen, I can’t hear it myself).

And then I realised that I was the only one listening to this stuff. Among my friends, that is. The ones I hang-out with month-in, month-out. I feel like I’m the only post-rave kid in town.

Everyone else is either eighties post-industrial electronic music with its awkward lip-synching chart crossovers or they’re from that post-Kid A world where computers became so ubiquitous for so many types of bands, dance music was no longer a political and musical protest against the norm.

There’s a longer article in this. I may write it for Electronic Sound.

I guess I’m just blaming my weirdness on knowing that there was a third part to Orbital’s Lush 3-1 and Lush 3-2, or that Fish & Chips wasn’t just a seaside indulgence but was one of the 90s’ most blistering acid workouts.

People need to know this stuff. It should be on the citizenship test.

What do you know about 90s dance music that makes you feel like a little island of knowledge? Leave a comment or tweet me.

New musical excess

Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because I no longer blog much, I no longer listen to music. I got loads of musics, mate. Pouring out of my ears, mate.

Actually, pouring into my ears. Let’s not get hoist on technicalities.

Now that I’m only four years younger than Ed Miliband, which is how most age should be measured, I’ve realised I’m surrounded by people that don’t listen to new music. They stopped with Fleetwood Mac in 1984 or with Nirvana in 1993 or with Fatman Scoop in 2001.

Instead they listen to the chiming melodies of mortgages or new-born sprogs. Meetings. Commitments. Responsibilities. Other long words.

“I wouldn’t know how to find new music these days,” they say, despite the internet providing numerous behemoths championing new bands: a far cry when it was basically a choice between a couple of inky weeklies and Top Of The Pops. “It was better in the olden days,” they spout, while cementing up their earholes and burying their head in sand.

At least, I thought so. Yet when I put this to Twitter, the reasons for missing out on new music weren't so simple.

For some, new music can be noise, and noise can be bad for mental health - or conversely, a release. It could be you're catching up on all the old new music, or you could have a time-guzzling project on the go (referring here to Friends trifle star Neil Kilham's impressive plan to listen to all 18,000 of his mp3s - in order).

While some delight in the past and simply have no problem with it at all. Which is kind of lovely.

Although if Fatman Scoop (pictured) really was the last new music you listened to, not even a bloke only four years younger than Ed Miliband can save you now. Lawks.

Shutters - actual shutters

I’ve taken myself away for a 24-hour retreat. I’m in the beautiful Cumbrian town of Kendal. The hotel room has shutters.

My problem is that boredom frightens me. People always tell me how busy I am, but the alternative is slowing down until I freeze into a waxen statue of greasy failure. That’s why this retreat is only 24 hours long – within four minutes of a newsagent – and not some wind-swept three month sabbatical on a sheeped hill in the middle of nowhere.

I’ve used the local library to update blogs. I’m juggling story ideas in high street cafes. I even performed an open mic slot at Verbalise, a live literature night up here in Cumbria that prompted me making this trip. The event featured, among others, Big Charlie Poet and headliner Simon Sylvester (Not The Booker). Both incredible talents.

The next thing on this deeply philosophical silent retreat is opening these shutters, taking breakfast with the hotel cats (pictured), and crossing the lake district on a replacement bus service. Passing the newsagent on the way, of course.

Dramatic PowerPoint Slide: performing in Sheffield

I managed to get lost at least 92 times in Sheffield the other night, but that didn't stop me performing a co-headline set at a prose special of poetry night Word Life.

There were some great open mic acts (a Louis Armstrong trumpet and comically-timed side effects information come to mind). My own piece was 20 minutes of deadpan PowerPointing (as demonstrated by the slide, above) where I careened between dog lists, yes dog lists, and proper short stories ("He sagged like an old house. He... dripped time.").

The turn-out was impressive and the hosting was great. Word Life's next event is in March and it will tap into Yorkshire's radical history.

Earlier this month, I teased an audience with non-origami at a Blade Runner-themed Flim Night. This was one of those moments when a new night has such an energy about it, you know they're going to have a good year. Get preppy for their next one, based on Mean Girls.

If this makes you want to book me and you run something good that's not one of those rubbish nights where everything goes on fire, then get in touch. I don't say yes to everything, but it's worth an ask. Meanwhile, do allow me some shameless self-promotion...

Loving fat roland. We love the screwing up and throwing of the paper @Wordlifeuk @MoorDeli with @charlotte_tim pic.twitter.com/nB8wcUCFwM
— ForAsLongAsLoveLasts (@longaslovelasts) February 20, 2015

I *loved* literally EVERY act at @flimnite Stunning. @FatRoland -as always - a shining highlight. Exemplary work, all pic.twitter.com/p6FyNrgJLd
— Dominic Berry (@thepoetdominic) February 9, 2015

I too am a book killer: the Manchester Central Library book disposal

This is a rant. I have edited it down as much as I can. But it is still a rant.

Firstly, have a look at this story about a Manchester library disposing of books. It's an echo of a similar story in 2012.

Here are my bookseller thoughts.

I don't get the furore over Manchester Central Library​ pulping books, if indeed they have done. We all think about classics and rarities, but most old books are without value, however you choose to define value. Just look at the 1p sales on Am*z*n.

I once found a recycling bin containing old books at the back of a Manchester university. That too was a quiet disposal, albeit on a smaller scale. I was initially shocked - but all of them were crap old academic stock no-one would have been interested in.

Let's assume the reported 240,000 figure is correct. 50 Shades Of Grey weighs 396 grammes. 240,000 50 Shades would weigh 95 tonnes. (That's the equivalent weight of a free Renault Clio given to every member of Take That every day for a month. And I mean a March or July month, not a February or June month.) That's a lot of weight. And space. And 24-hour storage, which costs.

We *could* pour taxpayer money into storing four copies of the third edition of, I dunno, Understanding Glass Making, with all of its out-of-date techniques. I'm presuming their techniques have changed. Bad example. Anyhoo...

Or we could close the beautiful new Archives-plus room at the library so they have space for them all.

Or we could dispose of the old stuff. We could leave it to their hugely experienced expert librarians to save what is worth saving (and there will have been lots of great stuff I'm sure they have kept) and then to choose all the gubbins we never saw or wanted to see anyway.

What's the other option? Produce a 240,000-book list and submit it to a public vote?

And here's the rub. The book industry pulps books all the time. Booksellers fill "red" boxes for that very purpose. I recently filled one of those boxes with a book written by a Manchester lecturer whose department used those very recycling bins I mentioned earlier. That's karma for you. It wasn't a bad book. It was just, well, our industry pulps books. Storage is not infinite but our capacity to produce new books is. It's an uneasy truth for book lovers.

I love books but I am also a book killer. Pulping makes us gasp with horror, but pulping helps new books survive.

I should point out that the full truth of the Central Library story is not clear at the time of writing, and this is indeed a possibly ill-informed rant. They may well have dropped the ball. They may just need better PR. But the public debate needs to hear this: the industry value of books may define 'value' in a way you haven't considered before.

Feel free to throw books at me the in the comments.

More new electronic music for January 2015: Cain, AI, Black Sites

Let's fondle my record bag until it calls the music police.
 
From the snow-capped mountains of the highlands comes an India-flavoured EP from Cain (pictured). It has that same epic playfulness of Loop Guru (indeed the title track of the Savan EP could easily have been plucked from mid-90s Nation Records). More of that playfulness on the upcoming debut album, please.


Speaking of stuff that takes me back to the past, AI drop a debut Forgotten Truths EP for Metalheadz. You remember Metalheadz? Co-founded by the bloke with the shiny teeth that went on to waggle sticks at orchestras? Anyhoo, this is very much in the vein of classic 'headz and it's no worse off for it.


There's droning acid galore on Black Sites' Unit 2669: the track is over ten minutes long and I'd put money on its distorted nastiness destroying your head in a third of that time. One half of Black Sites, Helena Hauff, runs a club called Birds And Other Instruments. With that in mind, Unit 2669 is a twitching, stub-footed town pigeon with a loaded machine gun. Lovely.

Catch my previous new electronic music round-up here. Oh and psst, remember me banging on about Kiasmos? Grab a free Erased Tapes compilation here.

Reaching peak Peak District

I've been a bit too busy to blog this week, so please make do with this tryptich I snapped when I rambled through the frozen wastes of the Peak District.

An icing-cake blizzard was astonishing in its brevity and beauty, especially when the skies cleared and the sun turned everything proper lovely.

Of course, if I told you the middle picture was taken from the wood-fired comfort of a friendly pub, you might doubt my commitment to braving the bracing winter air of the peak district. I let my chips get a bit cold: is that enough for you? Pah.