Net, Blogs and Rock 'n' Roll

Anyone who’s visited A Head Full of Wishes lately might have noticed a prominent advert for a book called Net, Blogs and Rock ‘n’ Roll and may wonder what has prompted such an overt gesture of capitalism so I thought I’d better explain.

The author of the book, David Jennings, has been a member of the Galaxie 500 mailing list for a number of years, and being one of the few list members from London is one of the select members I’ve met in person more than once. About a year ago David mentioned that he was writing a book and asked if he could interview me for it, I obviously answered “yes” although I wasn’t entirely sure just what I had to offer.

We met in the Crown and Sceptre in Shepherds Bush, had a couple of drinks and just chatted. It never seemed like an “interview” more of a chat with someone I felt comfortable chatting with. I cycled home afterwards trying to figure out how anything I’d said could be considered of interest to anyone. A few weeks later David had written the interview into a chapter of a book and sent the chapter to me to check the facts. Chapter 3 is my chapter which discusses fan communities and uses The Galaxie 500 mailing list and A Head Full of Wishes as its example. David has written up that interview more fully on his blog.

Later this month Net, Blogs and Rock ‘n’ Roll gets published. David sent me a copy a couple of weeks back and it’s an astoundingly good and easy read about music discovery in the age of the Internet, I consider myself fairly savvy about this sort of thing but the book proved that there was an awful lot more to music discovery than trawling through blogs, scouring (and scowling at) MySpace or listening to last.fm radio stations. The book looks at the subject matter from all the different angles rather than just from that of the consumer (the only area that I was really familiar with).

The whole book really is a thoroughly good read and I’d say that even if David wasn’t a friend. There’s a blog associated with the book (obviously) and the book is published in the UK later this month, and in the US in October.