The Blog Is Dead, Long Live The Blog

Last year was pretty dead for this blog (looking back my last post was in March, which is way too long to let something sit here and take up space, in my opinion). If anyone is still out there patiently waiting for new content here, I’m sorry to keep you waiting for so long. There were a lot of distractions to keep me occupied in my personal life. Two major factors were my move from Brooklyn to Long Island, and my only having the time to see the one band that has recently taken over a large part of my life. My writing wasn’t the only area that suffered because of it. I also majorly stopped with my photography pursuits. Fear not though, for my new year’s resolutions for 2014 are as follows:

1) Get this blog back on its feet and start posting content regularly again.
2) Dust off my camera and start taking pictures of anything and everything that crosses my path.

As I mentioned before, there was one band in particular that took over a large part of my life in the past year. That band is a LI ska band called “The Pandemics“. The guy I’ve been seeing for about a year and a half now is their bari sax player. This past year was very good to them, and they got a lot of great opportunities to play with some amazing acts. While I was pleased for them, their schedule combined with my work schedule left me with less ambition to run around taking pictures and writing about everything. I pretty much got in a routine of go to work, go home, occasionally see boyfriend’s band play. It was fine for a time, but it left me looking back on the year and wanting to push myself more in the future. I’m going to do my best to put myself out there and introduce you all to some great new things. Having said that, I’m also probably going to talk about The Pandemics a lot, simply because I have easy access to them and they are a large part of my life. Luckily for you, they’re not just some dumb band that I am close to. They actually are pretty good, and I think you will enjoy what I have to share with you. I promise to mix stuff up though and not just turn this into a lovefest for some guy and his stupid band.

Thank you for being patient with me as I work towards making this space more active again. I already have a couple of posts planned, first of which is going to be about the trip I took to Philly this past weekend. That should be out later this week, pending the status of the annoying plague-thing that has made residence in my chest. Until next time, happy new year and stay warm, kids!

Thinking Back: The Anniversary Post

The blog’s 1st birthday came and went with not much more than a mention on Twitter about it. I meant to do this whole post on the music world and things I love about it, but I think that’s something that will actually sound better when I’m fresh from rambling about it with someone else (although if I warm up now it might just happen later in this post). When this blog was first created, it was honestly something done out of boredom and a passing interest in writing. I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to stick with it, but I figured it would probably be a summer thing. It’s now a year later and the blog is still alive and kickin’ – which I am absolutely thrilled about. A lot of my posts don’t get much notice, but the ones that do are about the things I care most about. It makes me really happy to see people respond to the same things that I get excited over. I try to keep track of the traffic to the site, and was very proud to see the number of views for the Alex Band CD review and some of the entries on Jukebox the Ghost. The CD review was both fun and scary to write at the same time. I was a little intimidated by that one, so it was great to get all the positive feedback after it was posted. The best part though was hearing Alex say he liked it. It’s great hearing from artists and getting to talk to them (both via the Internets and in person). It’s one of the things I wanted to talk about in the “reasons why I love the music world” post that looks like it’s starting to blend into this one. I love getting to meet artists and seeing how they interact with their fan base. My favorite examples right now are, again, Alex Band and Jukebox the Ghost. I’ve been to a lot of Jukebox shows and have been able to talk at least briefly with them every time. It’s gotten to the point where when we see each other we’re usually catching up on life since the last time we saw each other.

Another really cool example of interacting with artists is actually a comedian: Chris Hardwick. I already did a whole post on him so I won’t repeat too much, but Chris met up with everyone after his set finished, and I had a really good conversation with him. It was definitely one of those “my life is awesome” moments.

This has probably been the most personal blog post I have ever done, but I always get sentimental during anniversaries. It’s time to get back to work now, but I’ll leave you with a fun little thing as a birthday present to the blog and it’s readers. It’s something that was posted on w00tstock.net – it’s a spoof on a previous meme that was absolutely hysterical (once you realized it was a joke). And since I feel like adding a video to the end of this thing too, here’s one of the most featured artists on the blog doing a very fun cover of Donna Lewis’ “I Love You Always Forever”

I’m working on a little project of my own that involves this song, but it’s just in the planning stages right now. Hopefully I’ll have something to show you guys soon. For now, enjoy and have a great day.