Social Web - the good and the bad

Control Alt Delete

FIRST: A blatant plug for our favourite, not-very-well-known band (yes, we know someone in it) Iko. We don't like them because we know them - we like them because we think they do really good music!

They are on the verge of releasing their second album and have just released a freely downloadable EP. Take a look over at http://www.myspace.com/ikomusic. To get the EP you'll have to email ikoauto@ikomusic.com with your name in the subject line.

The Social Web

Web 2.0, the social web, networking, life streaming...whatever you choose to call it I'm quite interested in how people use web-based tools to interact, and I've occasionally posted about this in the past.

Lots of people remain skeptical. Facebook is popular but anything else seems to raise eyebrows and questions about what the point is and why it's so complicated. My wife is sometimes amongst these.

The Good - Ravelry

But for some there is this thing called the "Killer App". The one little website or program that gets you excited because it has a real use. And some of my female friends (including Sally) have been getting excited about Ravelry. Ravelry is online social-networking for knitters. You can:

• log what bits of wool you've got;
• log what projects you're working on and your progress with them - linking to the bits of wool you're using in that project;
• register who your contacts/friends are;
• see what your friends are making and what their progress is;
• view and download patterns.

And so on. There are lots of cool things you can do with the information on Ravelry too, such as, if you have some wool, you can look up what other people are making with that type/make/colour of wool and use it as inspiration.

I think it's brilliant site. A really good example of how the web can bring like-minded people together to share ideas and inspire and encourage one another. And the best thing is that it's NOT full of techie people and it's drawn in people who probably wouldn't normally use the web for this sort of interaction.

Well done Ravelry!

The Bad - Amazon.com

This is really an excuse for a website rant. I'm making a vague tie-in to the social-web theme by claiming that Amazon's expansion into social-networking-type activities is killing it.

Well, actually, maybe it was already dead.

Let's remind ourselves about Amazon. It was one of the first big online retailers, selling books, music, DVD's and so on to the masses across the world.

It has since expanded to sell all manner of things, not just from its own warehouses but from a large number of other "marketplace" retailers. It has a complex product reviewing system and, wish lists and customized recommendations.

It was brilliant, quick, easy to use, and sold lots of things that you just couldn't find elsewhere. And cheap too!

This is all well and good, but it's starting to go a little far and, as a result, Amazon's website is now complete information overload!!!

I'd love to paste screen shots but they're technically copyrighted to Amazon, so I won't. I will try to describe. There are some long lists here...for which I make no apology.

The homepage tells me about:

• delivery (and restrictions on delivery)
• VAT rates dropped
• link to personalised recommendations
• link to what to do if I'm a new customer
• "Your Amazon.co.uk"
• Deals of the Week
• Gift Certificates
• Gifts and Wish lists
• Search
• MP3 downloads
• Clearance shoes
• Gift certificates (Again)
• What other customers are looking at Right Now
• Festive streals
• New MP3 store
• Gift certificates (in case I didn't get it the first two times)
• Clothing
• Phillips Imageo candles (2 for £35)
• and all that before I scroll down at which point I get to see Amazon exclusives, email settings, selling and buying stuff on Amazon, more to explore (do I need any more?), web services for developers, perfect gifts for him, UnderArmour performance apparel, Acer notebooks, best sellers in knitwear, shop kickers shoes, powerballs, health and beauty deals of the week, what customers are wishing for in DVD, a Sky TV advert, find great gifts for all the family, featured stores, where's my stuff, delivery and returns, help pages, my recent history and a load of inter-site links.

Phew. Oh, and there's a list of different shop areas to browse, like Music, Books, Electronics, etc.

Most of this is not what I want to see at all. I just want to buy a book and then track the order.

First thing then. I want to buy a book I've seen called "Living Africa". A quick search for this is simple (hooray!) and results are shown in a nice clean search results page with little clutter. This is better. So I select the item I'm after.

One thing that bugs me about Amazon's marketplace is that it's not always clear if Amazon are going to ship you the item themselves or if it will come from a smaller retailer that hasn't yet gained my trust. A small note informs me that this will be dispatched by Amazon (and it's £15 than we saw it in the shops for...bargain!). While I'm hear, I think, I may as well check out the customer reviews, to see if it's any good.

And...AAARGRH! I then get information overload again! Customer reviews is now 4 pages down the screen. Here's what else I can see from the product page:

• Information about the Amazon Prime programme
• My shopping basket
• 2 lots of information on delivery
• Wish list, wedding list and tell a friend buttons
• More buying choices (new and used from other retailers)....twice!
• Details of other editions
• Details of which promotions this book is a part of
• Details of another book that is often bought together with this one
• List of other things that people who bought this book also bought
• Product details (a page and a half down) including more links to other editions and links to update product details and give feedback on images
• Sponsored links
• Product Description (now two and a half pages down)
• Other Africa-related products
• Tags (suggested by others and the ability to add tags)
  
• What customers buy after viewing this item
• Customer reviews (yay!)
• Customer discussions
• Listmania
• Look for similar items by category
• Look for similar items by subject
• Feedback on the details of this product
• Links to other Amazon "stores"
• Sky TV advert
• Where's my stuff, delivery and returns and help pages
• Your recent history

Flip! All I want to do is buy a book! Don't get me wrong. Some of this is really useful. But there's just too much on one page. I went back just now to look at the tags section and couldn't find it in the 8-screens full of information. What good is any nugget of information if it's drowned out by a forest of other text, links and graphics?

And why would I want to tag a product in a shop anyway? It's great that Amazon remember things that I've looked at recently so that I can find them again, but why would I want to assign keywords to something in a shop?

There's lots of duplicated information (mostly related products presented in a myriad of ways) and the basic information isn't prominent enough.

OK, so I placed an order (which I'm sure happened without a confirmation screen), and I later want to check the status of it. I've since logged out and navigated back to the front page.

Now, where's the login button. Go on - check my list of what's on the front page and see if you can see a log in link! There isn't one! I either have to scroll to the bottom of the page and click "where's my stuff" or, randomly, click on the text "personal recommendations". Admittedly, this text is part of the sentence "Sign in to get personal recommendations", but it's confused by the fact that the linked text is "personal recommendations", not "sign in". Where do I sign in if I don't want to see personal recommendations? It's like writing:

Sign in to get charged by an elephant.

Well, OK, it's only slightly like that. You get my point.

Having managed to log in, I find that Amazon have some old credit card details (for cards that have expired) and a load of old addresses that need cleaning out. Oh, and I can now add a user profile so that I can "Share information about myself" and "Connect with friends and other Amazon customers". Quite why I'd want to do this I don't know.

What I'm saying is that Amazon's site is now plagued by chaotic design, seemingly pointless features and information overload to the extent that I'm reluctant to use it.

Phew. That was a long rant. Sorry.

Christmas is coming. And for once I think I might be jumping in my car to head to the shops rather than doing everything online. Maybe a few hours browsing Borders would be nice. Grab a coffee and get lost in the aisles of books and CD's. Yes, that's a plan.

Now if Amazon could deliver me a mellow, fairly-traded milky coffee in the next ten minutes without me having to leave the comfort of my sofa. THAT would be good!

Music: Free albums!!!

We've discovered a great way to use our thousands of accumulated Nectar Points (Supermarket Loyalty Card points)...we can use them to buy CDs!

We recently got three in this way that I'll just give a little write up of. I'm not the best music reviewer, but here are my thoughts.

Amy Winehouse: Back to Black

I confess that it was Sally that wanted a Winehouse album, not me, and so I've not heard it much. I also confess that I'm strangely prejudiced against Winehouse's music because of what I hear about her in the news.

I was surprised, therefore, to find myself thinking that her songs, music and voice were all very good. Certainly not what I'd normally listen to, but pretty cool stuff none the less.

I'll maybe write more when I've heard the album some more.

Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler: Private Investigations - The Best Of

Sally and I went to the cinema a while back and an advert for this "Best Of" came on. At the end of the advert we turned to each other and at the same time said, sheepishly, "I'd quite like to get that".

And so we have a classic Dad-rock album. A load of tunes that we mostly already know really well but never realised were by Dire Straits. Some awesome guitar solos, some classic lyrics, and a great variety of music too, from upbeat rock and roll through blues, to some lilting ballads, but all done with great style and a very high level of musical skill.

Oddly, it gets boring quite quickly, but we're glad to have it in our collection.

Newton Faulkner: Hand Built By Robots

We're not really very up-to-date with new band and artists. For some reason that neihter of us could pin down, we wanted to give Newton Faulkner a try.

And we're glad we did!

Mostly low-key, bluesy, indie guitar music, there's a lot of variety on this album. It reminds me, at times, of plently of other artists - from the swinging accoustic guitar and laid-back melodies of Jack Johnson, to the cheeky pop-rap of Barenaked Ladies.

The album meanders slightly and seems a bit aimless at times, but it's a good, summery, feel-good pop record.

Chicago - Film, Sountrack and Musical

As one of her Christmas presents (I won't say from whom but his name begins with R and he's a very good present buyer!) Sally got two top-price tickets to the musical Chicago!

Sally loves the film version of this, I quite like it myself, and we both wanted to see it "Live". So, yesterday, off we went to London (luckily she chose to go with me), for a fun day out.

As part of the present I'd bought the CD of the soundtrack too. The film and the CD are, as you would expect highly polished, well produced, with dazzling effects, stunning performances from all the artists, and plenty of razzmatazz and razzle-dazzle.

We love the music, which is lively and varied and really captures the mood of 1920's America.

Did the stage show live up to the promise of the film and soundtrack?

Well, yes! But they we're very different. The show was...well...I guess it was more of a show. It was less polished but it knew that and made up for it by being slightly tongue-in-cheek. The show girl scene portrayed in the movie as sleazy and sensational, came across in the show as slightly silly - more Blackpool Pier than Chicago!

The stage was less sophisticated than I was expecting. It was quite a basic set up but with the band on platforms behind a limited stage space. The musicians were very prominent and played a big part in the show. There was even some clever interaction between the cast, the band and the conductor, which worked very well. The music was brilliant and I thought the band were just as much stars as the cast were.

It was highly entertaining and, while not worthy of a standing ovation, very well performed by some very fit, strong and talented people who can dance, act, sing, climb, and do acrobatics - usually more than one at the same time.

All in all it was well worth going to see. The excellent soundtrack (bar the last few tracks which are modern songs "based on" the story) will be revived occasionally I'm sure, but, as is my experience with most musical soundtracks, won't be an often-heard CD. The film, however, will be watched again and again on dull evenings that need a bit of livening up.

File Sharing

I've mentioned Iko, the excellent band that a friend of ours is in, before. The lead singer of the band recently posted an message on his MySpace Blog about filesharing. I spent some time writing a response and wanted to copy my thoughts here. The full thread can be found on MySpace here.

Ultimately, Kieran was starting a discussion about file sharing, whether or not it's beneficial to the music industry, or should it be banned in some way. He hadn't asked a specific question, just wanted to see what people's thoughts were.

---

Hi Kieran and other folks,

I consider myself pretty old-school, I like cover artwork and inlays, I like to have a physical item in my music collection. Not everyone is like me.

I don't do piracy. At least, I always pay for music that's in my collection because it has value. Not everyone is like me.

Hmm....piracy. It's not new. It's not just that we're all selfish now...we've always been selfish! Hands up all those that copied CD or tapes (remember them) before computers and the Internet were fast enough to make MP3's and file sharing a reality? All that's changed is that it's quicker and easier to copy and swap music and, with digital, you don't lose quality with each copy.

But the technology has improved in leaps and bounds - faster than the industry can cope with, it seems.

The Internet truly is a double-edged sword.On the one hand:
- it has made it easy for new bands to promote themselves.
- it removes barriers and makes people equal; Iko probably have as much power as Radiohead on the Internet.
- it has the potential to create an environment where only truly good music thrives because you can try stuff for free and if it's no good you'll leave it and move on to something else quickly (as Dean does).
- it has potential to remove the middle men (distributors and record shops) and have more of the cost of music going direct to the artist...or to even reduce the cost of music in the same way (most people I know that copy stuff do so because they think/know they're being ripped off by the distributors and shops).

So there's a lot of good things about using the internet for music.

On the other hand it has turned music into "just information" that can very easily be passed between people at no cost. In some cases this may be to the benefit of the artist; especially to a decent new act just starting out who wants to get their sound "out there". However, I suspect that in many cases it can be crippling as the monetary value is removed from the art.

I work with technology a LOT. It is a tool. It is a means to an end. You don't own a hammer for the sake of owning a hammer, you own it so you can hit things with it. And like any tool, it can be used, and it can be ab-used. I can use my hammer to hit people, for instance, which isn't very nice (I don't, by the way)

File sharing is a tool. I'm sure it has many legal, useful purposes and that's why it exists. Sadly it seems to be abused more and more. And, oddly, I find that people who are normally kind, sensible, good-moraled, law-abiding citizens, have no problem with using computers for piracy, and seem to think that it's stupid that they have to pay for stuff that they can freely copy around.

So what can we do?

Just banning/outlawing p2p file sharing is impractical and unlikely to help. People will just find other ways.

We can fight technology with technology. DRM (digital rights management) is another method of protecting the artists rights. Giving the purchaser the ability to use the file on a limited number of devices, or for a limited length of time. Sadly this is more complex than it seems. What if I replace my computer and can no longer use that file? That's unfair is it not? People will always crack the technology anyway, rendering it useless. And the technology industry will always want to make as much hard cash as possible, and so you end up with not one technology, but several, with each technology onwer hoping that theirs will become the big one! (e.g. VHS/Betamax, or the recent HD DVD wars). There are many reasons why this isn't a great solution.

Education is not likely to work either. There will always be people who just don't care.

OK - I'm out of ideas. This whole new internet world needs some real creative thinking to work out how artists can best make use of it. Perhaps that's why Kieran started this discussion? The world is not the one we used to know and we're still mapping out the Internet and forming the unspoken rules and morals that surround it.

Have I helped the discussion? Probably not, K didn't ask a direct question, so I've not sought to answer one - in fact, I've raised a few of my own.

What's encouraging is that there seem to be people who share the values that make the internet good. To all the commenters above - good on 'ya. Perhaps one way we can all help is to help is to spread the word about how artists deserve and need the cash. Perhaps we can be role models in that, speak up for the artists, challenge those we know who copy and file share.

After all, we're right that it's wrong.

Aren't we?

A couple of gigs

We've had the good fortune of seeing a couple of gigs lately. We always enjoy live music, but finding bands/artists we like at venues we like on dates that we're free, and at prices we like is always difficult.

However - despite our picky-ness we made it to the following recently (nicely matching with some recent CD purschases!)

KT Tunstall at Colston Hall, Bristol

Now...one of the games we played when we lived in Shepherd's Bush was guessing who was playing at the Empire (a popular music venue just round the corner from where we lived) from the people who were queueing up/milling around. e.g. Jack Johnson gigs have lots of normally-dressed, but pretty stoned, surfer and indie types; The Beautiful South had lots of middle-aged, middle-of-the-road-looking people queueing outside.

For some reason, I was very self-concious at this KT gig. Though the crowd was a real mix, I felt slightly too young, slightly too normal, slightly too 90's indie. Yet, I think if I was playing the "who's on at the Colston Hall" game, I'd have picked me out as a MOR soft-rocker type along with everyone else. And I didn't like that. Part of me is embarrassed that I went.

BUT...I don't really care. The gig was GREAT! KT is a great entertainer, with lots of crowd-pleasing banter. She's confident and charming, but a bit kooky. She's incredibly cool, and very talented, but comes across as homely and clumsy. Her mum and dad were in the audience and she even forgot the words to one song called "Hopeless", which, ironically, is about being just that!

The band were awesome and KT certainly doesn't stand alone, with a bassist, guitarist, keyboards/random sounds guy, a brilliant percussionist (I'm not calling him a drummer because he played far more than just drums), and two backing singers, playing, between them all, a HUGE number of different instruments.

The songs were great, and we had fun, and enjoyed a class act.

Martyn Joseph at Marlborough Town Hall

I was almost certainly too young and too cool to attend this aging, accoustic folk-rockers latest tour, but we love him to bits and we've caught the last 2 tours (and previous gigs too), so I've already lost any credibility I might have had. :-)

We've seen MJ with accompaniment before - a single keyboard player at a gig at Bush Hall in London. But this time he had a little band of sorts. There was a very cool-looking and talented female bassist playing double bass and both fretted and fretless electric bass - not all at the same time of course. And a very un-cool-looking but equally talented wind-instrument guy, playing tenor sax, clarinet and...yes really...the recorder!

I won't say much about MJ. He was on good form and the new songs, which have grown on me more since my album review, sound great live. Though I prefer "Kindness" unaccompanied...it has a certain kind of emotion and tension when it's just the accoustic guitar...it's longing for more sound around it..."how I miss you/my angel and my reason how I miss you". (Though I'm just listening to it again and there's a hint of piano and electric guitar on the album version...so I'm wrong there. I do prefer the album version though).

What did amaze me at this gig was the teamwork, humility and restraint of the musicians. The wind-instrument guy hardly played at all. He only chipped in when it was needed. He didn't, pardon the pun, blow his own trumpet.

There's a great metaphor in here for how we should live our lives. Quietly working in the background, not demanding attention, playing along to the tune of our creator, but remembering always that it's His work. He's the lead, we follow, we play, and if we demand too much attention that will detract from His glory!

Music is a great gift and I left both gigs thankful for the talented people who write and play these songs to bring us pleasure.

Music: A month's worth of new stuff

It's been a good month for music. Sally and I are booked in to see Martyn Joseph and KT Tunstall in the coming months, plus, there was a new Athlete album out that I splashed out on. Thoughts below:

Drastic Fantsatic - KT Tunstall

The catchiest of the new albums, very easy to get into. KT is a good songwriter, a very accomplished musican and singer, and she's intelligent too. We very much liked the first album and this one didn't disappoint as a follow up.

The songs are a variety of styles, there's folk, rock and roll, ballads, pop, even a hint of Latin American.

It's a great album, but I don't think it will quite have the lasting appeal of "Through the Telescope". Enjoying it for the moment though.

Vegas - Martyn Joseph

This is the album about which I'd like to say the most. I became a fan of MJ quite recently (probably after the Bush Hall gig...3 yeas ago?) and missed out on a lot of his older stuff. But he is one of my favourite musicians.

For those that don't know, he's a Welsh folk-rocker who writes about stuff that he really cares about and sings and plays with an enormous amount of passion.

This record is a bit different to some of his other stuff. MJ himself says something like "it might even make you smile". And that's true - there's a tribute to Elvis and some other nice moments, but he remains gritty, slightly angry, political, and, occasionally melancholy.

I must confess that after a few listens I'm feeling like the album doesn't have much new - it feels like a union of the last two ("Whoever it was that brought me here..." and "Deep Blue").

Song-wise examples:

• Vegas is a catchy tribute with an easy chorus, in much the same way as "This Being Woman";
• "Weight of the World" is a bit like "This Fragile World";
• "Nobody Loves You Anymore" is reminiscent of "Six Sixty Six" (though I'll avoid comparisons of George Bush and the Devil - that would be going too far);
• "The Fading of Light" seems to be an updated "Yet Still This Will Not Be";
• and "The things that we have carried here" is like "Whoever it was that brought me here..." in more than just the length of the song name.

But that shouldn't detract from the quality of this album. MJ's consistently good songwriting hasn't gone away. His percussive accoustic guitar playing makes sounds like a single instrument shouldn't. His intricate fingerstyle is beautiful as ever. And his vocals, though mostly lacking range of pitch, vary from the haunting whispers of "Kindness" to the angry growls of "Nobody Loves You Any More" .The little flourishes of percussion, harmonica, woodwind, strings, piano, even an electric guitar or two (!) add depth and interest without detracting from the key elements of MJ's voice and guitar.

I DO like this album. A lot. I will play it over and over. And the gig in November will be one of the highlights of my year. But I'd like to see him writing about something a bit different next time...perhaps a few elections, on both sides of the pond, will make for some more variety in the next album.

Beyond the Neighbourhood - Athlete

And the album I'll say the least about. Certainly the most difficult to get into!

Athlete's first album was a catchy, pop-rock record. The second, Wires, was more downbeat, but more mature. I still haven't quite got to grips with all of it but the music is excellent and it was worth spending time having it grow on me - there's some cracking songs on there. I suspect this third album is like the second. It's in the shadow of two much more easily accessible albums at the moment, but I will persevere.

Musically it sounds rich and intricate and I suspect there's some awesome songs on there - I've just not found them yet...or they've not found me.

Maybe more notes required in a few weeks.

Greenbelt: Thoughts and Discoveries

Last weekend was my first outing to the festival known as "Greenbelt". In fact, it was my first real festival outing anywhere.

Greenbelt is a music and arts festival. But it needs a little bit more categorisation than that. I shall explain.

A note on sub-cultures

Now, I'm always careful about talking about "Christian" stuff in a way that makes it sound like there's a whole faith-based sub-culture around. But the truth is that there IS. There is music that you won't have come across if you're not a Christian. There are books and magazines targeted at those of the faith. There are websites and organisations and a whole host of other things. I think that, to some extent, this is OK and helpful. It's the same with cycling. It's probably the same with Kung Fu and plumbing and...well, every specialist activity probably has some sort of specialist media targeted at it.

What I think is important is that we don't get so wrapped up in the Christian sub-culture that we ignore everything else, or worse, label everything else as bad or evil in some way.

With that in mind I'll try to describe my impressions of Greenbelt.

Impressions of the festival

Before I went to Greenbelt I was under the impression that it was mostly attended by people who would call themselves Christians of one sort or another. Yet I was led to believe that it was not an overtly "Christian" festival. You'd fit in quite well if you weren't a church go-er at all.

To some extent those initial impressions turned out to be true. However, when I arrived, I found myself swinging the other way. There seems to be LOTS of stuff targeted specifically at Christians. As time went on I found myself swinging back to the middle ground. You can't miss the stuff that's overtly Christian, but I reckon you can safely attend and enjoy the festival without having any of this forced upon you.

I did enjoy the festival, though I struggled with the social dynamics of trying to get a group of people to meet up at certain times when they all had plans that changed by the hour. I think next time I'll go with the aim of being more independent and if other people want to arrange to meet me at certain times then that's fine.

The weather for the festival was fantastic. Sun and warmth and dryness for a few days with it clouding over for the last day. As an introduction to festival life it was a very good one. The company was excellent too and we got to meet up, catch up, and generally have fun with some of our best friends who had gathered from around the country.

Festival Discoveries

We probably didn't actually see or do as much as I thought we would. We were quite selective and, often, got turned out of full-up venues. Though we did discover, or re-discover, the following artists:

• Michael McDermott - American accoustic rock guy with an edgy voice and some great tunes and songs. Probably my highlight.
• Martyn Joseph - We're already big fans and he's a Greenbelt regular so of course he was there and of course we went to see him. He was mostly running a show where he interviewed other singer songwriters, but he did play a short set in the music shop tent. He seems to be having a bit of a mid-life crisis; he's started playing up-beat rock and roll (as opposed to his usual hard political folk). But I like this. He's releasing a new album called "Vegas" in September and the stuff he played from it sounded really good. Looking forward to a proper gig in November!
• John Bell - One of the leaders of the Iona community, gets a mention for being a REALLY good speaker. He did a great talk looking at how we can interpret stories from Genesis and apply them to our faith that we live today.
• Kathryn Williams - Referred to by one of my friends as one of the few "proper famous" people at Greenbelt. I love this ladies voice and songs and dry wit, but I thought the overall performance needed polishing. I think she was very nervous about performing a solo live show.
• Core Magazine - who look like an attempt at an english version of Relevant Magazine. Compare the straplines "God, Life, Progressive Culture" (for Relevant) and "Life, Spirit, Adventure" (for Core). I think this is a worthy venture and I wish them every success. Unfortunately they don't seem to have updated the website since April, so who knows what the status of it is.
  
• Iain Archer - who's one of those artists (like the Shins) who sounds a bit dull on CD but, as I've just found, does a great live show. Perhaps I'll look up some of his newer stuff.

Blatant Plug: Iko

I'd like to recommend a band. A band who don't quite have the status of "next big thing" but who, in my opinion, thoroughly deserve it. A band who, as far as I can tell, have been on the verge of being "big" for about 5 years.

I recommend them not because the lead singer and guitarist is an old friend of a friend, but because I think they're music and songwriting is fantastic, and because I think they have a really unique sound that should be appreciated by more people.

I appreciate that music is subjective. You may hate them. But please try them out? They are Iko and they've just released a little video of their recent tour of Denmark. They live at http://www.ikomusic.com and http://www.myspace.com/ikomusic

Thank you.

Community in Teams

I'm in a band! Not a very big or good band, we're just starting out really playing once a month, rocked up versions of contemporary Christian songs to God ("worship songs" for the uninitiated). I love it, I'm passionate about it, I have fun doing it, it's just great and it's just me.

But I've found an unexpected benefit. I feel like a part of a real community.

Community is a huge thing. The Bible's quite clear about relationships and community being essential to life...it's a Christian cliche but we were made to be in relationships with other people.

I also believe that community is very difficult to find in a society like ours which is incredibly transitory. I've not lived in one place for more than 2 years since I left in University and I still don't have a clear idea of where I will settle. Jobs, girlfriends, family and ourselves all contribute to make us move on quite often. Christians in particular are often faced with the guilt trip of being in a "comfort zone" that they need to move out of.

The band is just one example of something that achieves relationship, community and closeness through having common passions, aspirations and goals.

I also play 6-a-side, an activity which I only started a few weeks ago but which has already made me a lot of friends.

These things (and many others like them) should be examples to us of how to form community. Christians should exist in community with each other because they share a common passion for Jesus and a common goal of seeing his kingdom on earth. But we should also exist in community with people who don't believe in our faith.

We need to engage with those around us and that will require finding common ground. Let us get out there and find what we have in common with out neighbours. God wants us to and we might be surprised - maybe there are close friends waiting to be made.