Day: June 21, 2004

One of the attractions of moving to Islington at the start of the year, (apart from its proximity to transport connections for my soon to be ex-work, and its at the time unknown potential for pub-related Google glory–doh! broken my own rule already), was the fact that there’d be a live music venue just down the road, in the shape of the Islington Academy. Despite being inside a shopping centre (Rock n’ Roll!), and having been subsumed, like all music venues, everywhere, apparently, within the ubiquitous Carling branding, I imagined we’d be popping down there once a week to catch some up and coming band, enjoying the security of being able to walk home/not having to rush for that last tube.

Six months on, and we still haven’t even graced its sweaty insides (although we will break this duck in a few week’s time when Sydney’s Alex Lloyd comes to town in a vain attempt to plug Distant Light over here by playing to a bunch of expat travellers pleased to be catching him in such a small venue, and me). The fact that we haven’t been inside is not for the want of trying, though: there have been plenty of XFM-sponsored events there, showcasing the likes of Snow Patrol or Jet, but they’ve all been on-air radio giveaways, “not available through ticketweb“, and, as such, out of my reach. The gigs that you can buy tickets for, however, with Lloyd being a notable exception, have all been, erm, a bit crap–a curious mix of obscure, upcoming bands, and faded former Britpoppers. Still, every now and again I scour the upcoming listings in the hope of discovering a hidden gem. For some reason, I’ve not been tempted by the prospect of the band playing on August 14th “featuring Bonehead (ex-Oasis)”, or previous gigs involving half of Carter USM, or even, playing on August 11th at the 250 capacity Bar Academy (the adjoining small club/room), former indie favourites Echobelly. How the mighty have fallen–I guess Everybody hasn’t Got One anymore.

I still haven’t been doing anything even remotely interesting recently (it rained a bit, we stayed in, we went to the pub, watched some football, you know the sort of predictably boring stuff), so in the absence of anything more interesting to talk about, just one last post on that whole googlebombing nonsense. I was just wondering if anybody can explain this: www.google.com/search?q=related:www.thebarnsbury.co.uk (Google’s results for a search on websites related to our favourite pub website–the results you get when you click on the “similar pages” link underneath a search result).

It’s a very odd list that seems to consist entirely of sites that are also linked from the sites that contained the original googlebomb. For example, I presume the “Kabalarian Philosophy” website appears in the related list because Angel linked to it close to the original entry containing her part of the bomb, but I don’t understand why. What’s the logic here, and how did it determine that only these links were related to the pub’s website, and not the others on the original pages containing the bomb? There’s clearly some kind of bizarre Googlebomb-related overspill effect going on here.

I think that’s all the mileage I’m going to get out of that one, though. Time for something new… In the meantime, later this week I will finally be off to spend some time in a field with some fine music (mudbath? At the time of writing BBC Weather says probably not, although let’s hope Tuesday isn’t as bad as it looks). Expect much excited bloggage on my return.