Jem Finer

Jeremy "Jem" Finer (born July 20, 1955) is a British musician and composer. He was was one of the founding members of The Pogues. He was primarily a banjoist, but he played a handful of other instruments as well, including mandola, saxophone, hurdy-gurdy, and guitar. Apart from Shane MacGowan (with whom he co-wrote several songs, including "Fairytale of New York") Finer was the most prolific composer for the band.

Finer was born in Stoke-on-Trent, England, and studied computing and sociology at Keele University. After college he traveled Europe and spent some time working on a barge in France. He finally settled in London, where he met Shane MacGowan and Spider Stacy, and ultimately joined their band The Pogues. He appeared on all the band's albums until their breakup in 1996; he was one of only three original members. During that time he also appeared on MacGowan's solo album The Snake and The Levellers' self titled release; he continued working as a musician and composer after leaving the Pogues.On the first of January 2000, the Finer-composed Longplayer piece of music was started; this is designed to last 1000 years without ever repeating itself, and as currently implemented is computer-generated.

Finer was "Artist in Residence" at the Astrophysics Sub-department of the University of Oxford between October 2003 and June 2005. As of March 2007, his latest band, The Big Eyed Beans from Venus, have finished recording their (as yet untitled) first album. Meanwhile Finer and Hamburg legend DM Bob released their album Bum Steer in August 2005. He has written articles on copyright and the Creative Commons License. In July 2005, Finer won the PRS Foundation New Music Award on the basis for his proposal to build a device that will automatically "compose" a song of indeterminate length by harnessing the creative force of the weather. His proposal read:

The countryside is shot through with holes in the ground; wells, mine shafts, fissures, bunkers, ventilation holes. In this piece of music the venue is a deep shaft in which there will be placed, at different heights, bowls of different sizes and tunings pivoted about their centre of gravity, the instruments. The players, the drips of water, will strike the bowls, ringing them like bells. As they fill with water their timbres will change, and the delicate equilibrium of their pivots will cause them to sway slightly, modulating the tones. Overflowing, a bowl will drip into ones below it.

Amplification will be facilitated by a tube rising up from within the shaft, into a brass horn twenty feet above the surface. Akin to the bamboo tube in the suikinkutsu, the horn not only amplifies the sounds but forms a sculptural object, a focus in the landscape. [1]

The work was constructed and installed over the summer of 2006.

References

• Jem Finer site
• Artangel: Jem Finer
• "Jem Finer". thepogues.com. Retrieved March 15, 2007.
• Guardian article (07/2004)

External links

• The Italian Rover - Italian Jem Finer Web Page