Today I went back to school for the first time in over 25 years to learn a bit of Spanish. At 08:00, when the Enforex school opened the doors on us new starters, I was standing firmly outside of my comfort zone on Alicante’s esplanade. Initial assessment confirmed that I’m an absolute beginner (I took a test and guessed a lot) but my anxiety and nervousness soon crumbled as I got into the swing of things. By the time that five hours had passed I had to concede that I’d enjoyed the whole experience – and I can’t wait for tomorrow’s instalment.
For over a year now, I’ve been part of a closed Facebook group. FB LSC looked like lots of fun when I heard about it back in 2017. The idea’s a relatively simple one – a group of people keen to hear new music and to be pushed out of their comfort zones get together virtually to listen and comment upon new tunes nominated anonymously by others in the group. It all takes the form of a monthly song contest and (one of the immediate pulls for me) the scoring is based on the Eurovision point system.
After getting the hang of things by awarding my points in one contest (FB LSC 24) I was able to nominate a track in the next. I thought I was playing it safe going for a solid number from the back catalogue of The Lovely Eggs but it didn’t register much interest from the other panel members and limped home in 15th (out of 19 songs) place. The winners of that contest by some margin were The Babe Rainbow, a band I’d not heard of before but was happy to be introduced to.
The LSC was founded by Conor Fanning. He still participates in the contest and was happy to provide a bit of background.
“I initially set up the group on last.fm. I cannot take credit for the idea as it is based on the Eurovision voting structure and there are other versions of this idea on the internet. The reason I set it up was I missing a social connection with fellow people who were passionate about music. Through the medium of last.fm I felt it was appropriate. What came from it was not simply just a means to express individual taste but also to form a community. During those days we were on average between 25-30 participating members. And the group as a whole had up to 400 members. The community aspect built from the live shows, people would comment and chat live as the songs were posted. It was a fun environment. It was particularly enjoyable for those who were open-minded to other genres and people’s negative comments on their entries. There were some members who appeared to take these personally sometimes and left the group. What was interesting was you would usually see a band of supporters actually emerge to encourage members like this to not take comments personally. The group also offered a general forum for discussion topics and lots and lots of games. This was a very active space that allowed members participating or new and old members to build a community-like environment outside of the contest. I honestly put a lot of heart into that group on last.fm so when last.fm removed the group function I was rather bummed out. The group on Facebook – I’m not involved with the administration side of it. I was actually asked by Martin for permission to carry it over to Facebook.”
Martin takes over the story:-
“I’ve been involved in the contest since 2010 and the fifth contest back when it was on the old last fm site. At that time we were few in number. Conor was the founder and Jens has been involved since the inception I think. For me it’s provided a group of people who are passionate about an exceptionally wide range of music. It’s opened my horizons to genres that I would previously never have even considered exploring. It’s allowed me to look outside of the English speaking world and find some incredible artists from other nations. It’s inspired my love for nordic female led folk/acoustic music and spurred me on to explore electronica in much more detail than I had previously. To top if off, as well as being an excellent vehicle for musical discovery, it is peopled by a bunch of thoroughly decent folks. There is no nastiness and everyone is free to disagree with each other on the songs. When that happens it is nearly always done respectfully and it is good to get other perspectives. I’ve been one of the hosts now for a long time and when Last fm ruined itself and got rid of the social aspect it was me that started up the facebook group. Jens and I then oversaw the migration to here from last and even prompted a few people to actually set up their first FB accounts just so they could stay involved.”
It’s fair to say that the track record of the tunes I’ve entered to date hasn’t been spectacular. Winning is obviously for muppets but I’m yet to come close. I’ve not even scraped inside the top five and one or two of my entries (which shall remain anonymous) have been placed last (although not with nil points). I randomly entered a song by Nahko that I was somewhat ambivalent about and his musing on dragonflies came in sixth overall – my best effort to date. A PR company has just sent me details about his new track; Hamakua resonates with me more.
To get a sense of the latest LSC playlist, you can look here on YouTube.
Why don’t you take a step outside of your comfort zone today, challenge yourself with something new and throw yourself into this fine bit of social network fun? To join, search for LSC General group on Facebook and request membership. Martin or Jens will then sort you out with what you need. Or, if that sounds too complicated just speak to me. Hasta pronto.
sonicbreakfast 