I am not a can of soup...

First of all, I would just like to say that I am not a can of soup. Though I might resemble the Pilsbury dough boy these days, I am not any kind of foodstuff...unless you are higher up the food chain than me, of course!

Why the soup? Well actor cyber-chum (I don't know if he'd class me as that, but I am fond of him because he represents the person I wish I could be rather than the person I am - one of those folks who "can do", whereas "I can't"), Daniel Hoffmann-Gill has written an entry on his blog about the nature of web presence. He is weary...and a little wary...of the amount of web presence out there and the need for it.

I think the gist of his argument is that he doesn't like it, but his entry is so shrouded in double-speak that I am not sure exactly what he's getting at. I think he might be upset at someone. He sounds like he's upset at himself. This is a person who is in a business where he markets himself as a brand in order to make money. He is a tin of beans. He is an ingredient to be plucked off the shelves and to be used when needed. In a way, we all are, I guess.

But there is too much ego and self-promotion on the net. This is a symptom of our media-savvy time and Warhol was way ahead of the game. Fame and self-agrandisement is the order of the day and if you have a home computer and an Internet connection you can self-publish in an instant.

For me, the Internet is the great leveller. In the old days, our news output came from trained journalists and was edited and sliced and diced for our consumption. But now, anyone with a mobile phone that has a video camera can find themselves at the heart of the news. Journalism has been reduced to its basic components, it really is all down to who was closest to the events when then unfolded and did they have their mobile phone pointing in the right direction.

The same can be said of magazines too. This is a world I used to inhabit and in the old days we would write reviews of music, films, computer games and whatever, and people would buy the magazines and, well, read them. Now we can all write a review of whatever we feel like and again the Net is the great leveller because invariably the amateur doing the review has paid good money to get the product has has a genuine interest in its quality. There were many times on the magazines when I'd write a stinky review of a product only to be told by my editor to tone it down and up the rating because the publisher of the software had paid for advertising to appear in the issue. One soon learnt to despise the shackles.

But yes, the Internet is the great leveller, it allows anyone with a modicum of talent to get their stuff out there. A million songs have been heard on the net that would never have been given ears back in the old days. Many musicians from the old world resent this, they say it is a waste of time because we aren't proper musicians who have paid their dues and done the gigs and toured the world. They might be right, but who holds court here? Who has the right to judge?

So why am I here? Why do I have a web presence? I've had a web presence since around 1997. My first website was static with some links to some stories I'd been writing. Yes, I used to give novels away back in the old days. That was before the MP3 music format rocketed into our consciousness.

By 1998, I realised that I could use my computer to record multi-track audio, so I stopped writing as a hobby and began recording music with gusto. The intention was to record and release the tracks on the net...for free... This is something I've done for the last decade. It's true that you can also buy my tunes from the likes of CDBABY and iTunes, but any profit I make in a year might just buy me a packet of new guitar strings. But the point is that without the Internet, I would probably have not recorded all this music. There wouldn't have been an audience. And without an audience there's not much point in me doing it.

Remarkably, this site shifts around 300Gb of music data a month. I don't know who is downloading this stuff or whether they even like it as I get very little feedback, apart from the comments I get via YouTube on the videos I post there (though I only did those for about a year before my interest waned). But I am here to make music primarily. When I was made redundant, I took on the blog format because I enjoyed keeping a diary. Being alone as a freelance writer, doing a blog entry kept me sane. Commenting on the postman or whatever took my fancy was a just a folly.

In fact, most of the Internet is just that - a giant virtual electronic folly.

But since my situation has changed, I've not been able to write much about my real life. It would make very interesting reading, but this is not the time. There will be a time, but it is not now. I think it is useful for us to share human experience via the web, though the candid nature of some of the writings out there seem a little unnecessary. However, while I feel I should defend the average Internet user's rights to self-publish, I am just like DHG, in that I am conflicted by it.

We are sliding down a big electronic hole of the self-obsessed. But this is an extension of our media-driven age. We live in strange times where the notion of celebrity is the be-all and end-all of our culture. To be famous is the only way. To actually use your brain is out of fashion. These are strange times indeed.

Why do this? Why open yourself up? I try not to. Most of my entries are either music related, or reviews of gigs or whatever. I'd like to do more review stuff myself, but with two young children, my time is limited and my music is more important. The most popular pages here are the ones I wrote about "In the Night Garden" or about music gear I've reviewed. So while people are happy to download my music, there aren't that many actually reading these pages.

So maybe I should just shut up and play my guitar, eh?