Reflections on Blogging

I started this blog a year ago now, and it’s really quite interesting for me to see how it’s changed, and how my writing has been affected through the format. I’m certainly glad I started it, and now more so than ever, I’m particularly grateful to have a creative outlet to which I can express myself. Given that it’s now been a year, I figured I’d have a look back across my various posts since I first started this, and simultaneously reflect on them all.

My first experience of blogging was not here at all in fact, but over on the Jack the Cad site. Back in 2015, when I was in the process of completing my Master’s degree, George Browne – who runs this blog – contacted me to ask if I’d be up for contributing a guest post. I was immediately keen, and edited down one of the chapters of my thesis for publication. I was pleased with the resulting post at the time, although looking back, it’s obvious that I was still stuck in the practice of writing in a very academic style. My second contribution to George’s site was a review of Swingamajig 2016, and later that year I published a third article discussing the emergence of the fantastic Alligatorz production duo. I was getting better at gauging the right style by now, and beginning to be comfortable writing in a much more informal manner.

Cut to 2019, and I’m approaching the end of my PhD. I’m keen to keep on writing at this point, and to be honest, it would be a bit of a relief to get to write slightly less formally. The various other online blogs, including Jack the Cad, all seem to have stagnated, so there’s no one really flying the flag for electro swing anymore. Plus, I want to keep my name relevant in the electro swing world, so I figure it’s the perfect time to start my own blog. Following Swingamajig 2019, and my trip to Chicago for the first ever Roaring City festival, I publish my first post, comparing the two events.

At this point, I’m not going to sit here and chronologically go through every post I’ve done since then, as it wouldn’t be remotely compelling for anyone, least of all me. But I’ll give a bit of an overview of the various different things I’ve written on. The most evident is my reviews, which is surprising, as I never really intended on writing reviews when I started this up. I originally planned to mainly post short discussions around my thoughts on electro swing, as with my early electro swing cinema article. But when Cut Capers released their second album, Metropolis, I loved it, and was eager to share my thoughts on what was a brilliant release. The reviews have since taken over the blog somewhat, which is great, as I’ve now become known as a bit of a reviewer for the scene. I now regularly receive requests to review up-and-coming releases, to the point where I occasionally have to turn people down; and I’m lucky enough to have gotten early access to various releases too, as with the cases of Jamie Berry and Dutty Moonshine, amongst others. I’ve since expanded outside of electro swing a little bit, such as with my Aesop Rock review, and I’m keen to do more of this – for instance, I’ve got a review planned for next week which has absolutely nothing to do with the scene whatsoever.

The other types of posts have also remained, and I still really enjoy writing these – probably more so in fact, although they do take a fair bit more effort. I’ve certainly had some unexpected experiences, such as my article on bad reviewing, which caused a bit of Twitter beef with one of these supposed online celebrities, and has subsequently become my most read article. I’d like to do a follow-up to my music theory piece as well, although it’s difficult to find enough examples to illustrate my discussion, but one day I hope to publish a part two. The piece I’m probably most proud of is my roots of electro swing article, as this required a legitimately substantial amount of research; is genuinely educational; and there’s no other source for this information in this much detail anywhere else at all.

Elsewhere, my post reflecting on my PhD presented a discussion on academic life that I hope is useful for others. I’m in the process of planning another piece slightly similar to this one at the moment, and I hope to make it just as informative – if not more so. And very recently, in the wake of Covid-19, I’ve published a few pieces of a more personal nature too, such as my ode to tickets, and my reflection on the best and worst gigs I’ve attended. This has definitely been a change from what I’m used to, and has taken me completely out of my comfort zone, which is always a tough challenge.

So I definitely intend to keep up this blog. I take a lot of pleasure from writing, and I’d like to believe that others enjoy reading this just as much as I do writing it (although I imagine I’d carry on doing so even if there were no one reading). It’s certainly a great way to keep myself occupied at the moment, and even when lockdown is over, I’ll still try to put out a couple of posts a month. Anyway – as I write this, tonight is the virtual Swingamajig quarantine party, so I need to get myself ready for that: readers can expect a write-up in the next few days…