August 1st 2009 Hatchet Day

A strange month due to the website problems, but more about those later.

Results from last month
Wetwerks actually appeared and left a message on my page. Looks like they're going to be locking themselves in the studio for the duration of the website problems, so hopefully something positive will come out of that in the form of new music.

I haven't actually finished the first post in my "vision" story yet, for those who were wondering. The reason being that I've been spending most of my limited spare time recently with the unofficial bug tracker. I made an initial set of postings in there, and have been drip-feeding a few ever since, meaning I'm currently maintaining a record of having made the initial post for roughly a quarter of the bugs in the database as a whole, even though others keep posting a few bugs as well. And OK, you can argue that under 150 in total isn't that many (yet), but I don't think we'll be done posting for a while, even though there may be a bit of calm while we wait for the promised update. Here's hoping it will fix at least some of those. And hopefully that comment last month about needing a full time job to collect and report bugs makes a bit more sense now as well.

This month's gainers and losers
There have been no gainers or losers this month due to the website problems. I'm going to give it one more month to see if things improve on the artist searching, because it's still a major issue to find artists in the first place. At the moment it looks more likely that artists will want out of the site themselves rather than me having to worry about them. It's also looking unclear from the "last visited" and "last updated" dates as to whether these are actually working or not, as these 2 dates now seem to be identical and quite often seem to be set to the current date when you visit the profile, even though I often can't see any change in the profile itself. Haven't yet spotted one where the dates are different but I'm still looking. It's therefore a completely unreliable method of finding out whether the artists are still around or not, and I'd have to go chasing round elsewhere as a result. Not something I really want to spend that much time on at present.

New investments
All new investments are on hold while the website is in such a dire state. I did get a part in Lip Service, but only as a result of winning a gift part for entering bug number 50 in the bug tracker. And even collecting that giftpart brought out some new bugs.

Watching
This month I'm mostly watching those artists I would probably have bought a part in if the site had been working properly.

Casee Wilson is the first of these. She's been lurking on my wishlist a while, and I had intended to buy a part last hatchet day, but as you know, the website got in the way.

The last Sixpack winner Lani Lewis is also on the list of those left waiting for a part since last hatchet day due to the website being in such a mess.

Finally on the waiting list we have Bermir, who I kind of remember listening to a while ago, but who I only really took a serious listen to when he hit the charts just before the website problems started.

There are also 2 new artists I'm interested in, where I had the opportunity and would probably have dived in as "first part" if things were working. The first of these is Taylor Horn who has worked with Tim from Civilised Tears, who I'm presuming is the reason she found this site. The music has a great sound to it already, given that she's only a teenager and it's quite possible to hear the CT influence in the two songs posted, so this is definitely one to check out if you like them.

The second looks to have come in on or near the "German publicity rush" about sellaband.de. I found them from a seemingly random showing on the artist page where they appeared in the "spotlight" box on the right hand side - I've more usually seen Kirt or Civilised Tears popping up in that one instead. The artist in question is called Poem and it seems they make some very nice easy-listening acoustic guitar style pop. Check them out, the music is well worth it.

Next in the list of artists I'm watching, there are two that have popped up as a result of the chaos on the website and are worth visiting if you want some entertainment. Kluklu makes the best "Sellaband song" I've heard in a while in the form of a tune called "What have you done?". One of these days, someone ought to gather up all the fun songs that have been posted for entertainment value and make an album of them. I mean, who can forget such gems as the "Sellaband rap" by Brian Taylor of Vegas Dragons, or even the "Sellaband Tribune" song by Spellbox. I'm pretty sure we're heading towards an album's worth already if people think about songs that have been around.

And of course, how can I forget MaWa - the artist who is the second of the two in question. The latest song, an epic called "White Noise" can probably fill an album all on its own. Though I'm not sure you'd want to listen to that much of it, if the truth were told. I'm just waiting for the first video to appear on this profile. Based on the songs posted and MaWa's sense of humour it would be an interesting choice for sure. There's a great "protest parts" feel to what's going on here, particularly given the list of believers so far, so it will be interesting to see how long this particular entertainment continues. So far it seems it's been worth $250 - maybe there's a lesson or two some artists can learn from this about involvement with the community.

It's also interesting to see what's been happening with artists in general since the chaos started. Whilst the majority seem to have lost parts, there are a few who continue to gain despite the website troubles. Sylvain Zebo is one of these and whilst I haven't heard anything I like yet, he has to be worth checking out for this fact alone.

Bugfest entertainment
With the lack of a Sixpack this month, I thought I'd give you a roundup of just a few of the more entertaining sights to be discovered as a result of the new website and bugs in it. Whilst this might be regarded by some as a rather irreverent thing to do, I'm of the opinion the state of the website is currently one of those cases where if you couldn't have the occasional laugh, you'd have to cry instead.

1. number 1 or number 2?
At the top of the community page, it's quite clear about the spotlight artist

As number one in the overall charts, Civilized Tears has rightly deserved to be the first to be put in the spotlight as featured spotlight Artist.

But it even now says "Civilised tears - number 2" in the title, despite this having been the case for a while after a large parts drop took them from just under 42K to back down below Lori Greco. Whilst there's more important things that need fixing, I still find this spotlight amusing as a result.

2. To promote or not to promote? That is the question.
We started chasing down some bugs with the "promo tools" link showing in the believer dashboard and reporting them in the bugtracker. Initially someone else brought up the fact there was a link on the wishlist tab to them and that didn't work. I brought up the fact there was no equivalent link on the dashboard for artists you hold parts in. The information in the bugtracker that came back from Sellaband says that to fix the problem they've removed the promo tools link from believer profiles because there are currently no promotion tools. Which then leaves the rather interesting question of that "promote" tab on artist pages, which tells you that in order to promote "you can use any of the following tools". My brain is fizzing at the logic of this. If there are no promo tools, then what is this tab still doing here? Alternatively, there's a "share to various places" in this tab, so doesn't that count as a promo tool? (in which case why remove the link from believer profiles in the first place). Hopefully my sanity on this one can get back to normal when they sort out the new promo tools, because the Sellaband logic and my logic feel currently incompatible.

3. Now you see it, now you don't.
The thing that can most easily get you to question your sanity at the moment is the number of things that appear (or indeed disappear), particularly on your own dashboard. Here's just one example. The "buy album" and "free track" buttons aren't there on your shop tab any more. Unless you have more than one page in that tab, when you'll find they're back on page 2. And then just to make you doubt your sanity, you'll find they're back when you go back to page 1. So if you think you've seen something, but it isn't there any more, or you can't see something and then suddenly it's back, there's a very good chance it's not you, but is in fact another bug. Just make sure you look twice at everything, because you definitely can't trust your eyes first time. It can make quite a game trying to work out what's what as a result.

Video of the month
Well I can't actually delete the old videos at the moment, but it seems I can upload a new one into my profile, which is an improvement on last month. So this month, I present to you a story about how the music industry can go badly wrong for some, in the form of a band called Protocol and the song "She Waits for Me". I originally picked up on them through another song of theirs ("Where's the Pleasure") being played on TV, and having visited their website, I found their debut album was due out a couple of months later. But when it didn't appear, I went looking and found out its release had been delayed. Several months later, a different story emerged. It seems that the record company were unhappy with the promotion of the artist and dropped them because the singles hadn't reached the chart positions they were hoping for. Despite the album having been recorded and mixed, it was never released. And as I haven't linked to the artist website, you've maybe guessed that it appears whatever exactly it was that happened, it seems it was too much of a strain on the band and they split shortly after being dropped.

Sellaband
It's hard to see at the moment how Sellaband is going to recover from this latest disaster. It's not a site I can recommend at the moment. There's just far too much wrong with it, but the biggest worry has to be the question of who is going to be left if/when things do settle down again and the website is mostly working properly. This time things have gone beyond what your average reasonable person is prepared to stand, and I have an increasing feeling Sellaband is going to have to rebuild its believer base from the ground up again once this is over if it wants to survive. And given the history, that's going to be a near impossible task. In the meantime, believers are left waiting for revenues that haven't been paid, and seemingly can't even be calculated, and I'm watching the parts of many artists in the mid-range slowly shrinking as believers either withdraw from the site completely or move money into people higher up the ladder.

Here's just some of the things you can experience today, more than a month after the site went live.

The data may still be in the database, but even deleted data is still in the database. For instance artists who have closed their profiles since the change still have songs available (Just visit my playlist and play one of the "unknowns" if you don't believe me). Even more interesting is the existence of artists who started signing up and never got all the way. One of my Myspace friends is among those. I tried to get him interested in Sellaband shortly after I joined the site, and I thought he hadn't bothered as his profile never appeared. He's there in the new site though the profile is an empty one with an initial signup date corresponding to when I first tried to get him interested. Maybe one day I'll get around to dropping him in "video of the month" and get you to discover some great music from an artist I thought would be able to really benefit from this site.

The new forum software is slightly better than the glorified message board we had as the incarnation before the last one, but like many I'm missing the PHP forum we had before the new site went live.

You still can't find artists. Or at least if you try searching for artists, it's pretty much impossible to tell if you've found a real one or a "ghost" profile that wasn't even there before the changes. The sorting (alphabetical by URL for those on the same budget) makes it impossible to know who has just signed up as well.

Artists themselves are struggling to get to grips with the fact they have a believer profile and an artist profile now - even if they had a believer profile before. Talk about poor implementation! They should have been given the choice when they logged into their artist profile for the first time since the change as to whether they wanted to link the project with an existing believer profile (in the case of no, then the "default" believer profile could be created). As it is now, we have scenarios such as Brian from Vegas Dragons with a Vegas Dragons believer profile, a believer profile for Vegas Dragons 2.0, artist profiles for both of these and his own believer "Brian Taylor" profile. That's 5 different profiles, without counting any other believer profiles he's set up in the past, whereas it should be one believer profile linked to two different projects if the system had been set up right.

So in short, it feels like the place is a man with both legs broken who is still trying to walk. I haven't even covered everything that's wrong in this blog because it would take too long. But in fairness there has been some progress in the time since the site went live. At the moment it doesn't feel like anything significant for the amount of time involved though, so I guess we'll have to wait and see how the promised update (and any others over the next month) changes that view.

I can also guess you're itching to discover the "issue" that had me growling on the forum about a week ago. I have to warn you at this point that what follows contains information of an adult nature, so if this kind of thing worries you, then I'd suggest this is probably the end of this month's blog reading for you and I'll see you next month with your innocence still intact. It was a difficult decision to include this story in the first place, but as you'll hopefully realise by the end, there's still potentially reason to inform, and on balance, I decided that I thought most would actually want to know what had happened.

For those with the will to carry on despite that warning, here's the story. I was quite innocently traversing the new site when I hit the community page and got a bit of a shock. As you've probably realised there are 4 photos on this page and they are taken at random from believer profiles. They don't have to be the main profile photo, they're actually taken from any photo you have uploaded which appears in your "photos" section. And there, staring at me as one of these four photos, was a young lady laying on her back, "flashing the gash".

After a bit of investigation, I determined that my browser had definitely not been hijacked and that the picture in question did genuinely appear on the Sellaband website. Interestingly, the believer profile with this picture contained a number of mud-wrestling pictures and also a series of links to websites which were described in the profile info as "naturist". One link even pointed you to a website where you could "make money from your naturist photos". I didn't investigate any further to determine how true that assertion was, but I kind of get the feeling pornography might have been a more accurate word to use than naturist, given what I'd actually seen.

So the e-mail went off to Sellaband about what I'd found and for the first time ever I actually got an auto-responder reply. An actual response to my e-mail was to come approximately 24hrs after the original sending, assuring me the problem would be dealt with as soon as possible.

Three days later, having been checking the profile on a regular basis, it was obvious nothing had been done. That's about the time I started making noises on the forum. The "spam e-mail virus" story hadn't long appeared, so I'm willing to bet a "Hey look I found some porn on the site" on top of that would have really made for a storm. There's nothing quite like waiting to see if someone else manages to make the same discovery, when you know it's still there waiting to be found. Don't get me wrong, I haven't got any problem with nudity in general, it's just the last I looked Sellaband was mostly family friendly as a site, and not an X-rated one, and some things are most definitely inappropriate images as a result. Despite the other problems going on, I therefore view this as something which I shouldn't still have been wondering if/when action was going to be taken, three days after it being acknowledged by Sellaband themselves - it should have been sorted by then!

Was it a hijacked profile or had I just been (un?)lucky enough to pick up on something that had actually been there for a while. As viruses and "adult" pictures quite often go hand in hand, had this provided some way into the Sellaband system for the e-mail addresses to be taken that were then sent spam mails containing viruses? It's all speculation, and I figure we'll never know whether the two were related or not. A couple of days after I started making noises on the forum, the profile was finally cleaned up. Whether that was coincidence, or the "growling" had been taken as fair warning, I have no idea. I mean, can you just imagine me having to write this story as a case of "Hey I found some porn and guess what.. it's still there!" That would have meant they hadn't looked at it after the best part of a fortnight, and would surely have made for some red faces if I'd published this blog with that being the case.

But for those of you feeling sorry that you actually missed out, there could be a glimmer of hope on the horizon in the form of bug number 0000045 in the unofficial bug tracker. I find myself asking how well Sellaband have actually cleaned up, or whether this bug applies and there's a very slim chance you can still view any of the photos as a result. Good luck finding out though, because four pictures at random out of a few tens of thousands means you might be looking for a while. And if it is in fact fixed properly, you'll be looking in vain anyway. On the one hand, things that are deleted are still showing up in Sellaband, so it's perhaps wise to use some caution if you have younger family members who normally see you accessing the site. On the other, I personally haven't seen any of the images again so far, but then again it was pure luck beating those odds to find out in the first place. Here's hoping they have got this one right, but I've no doubt there'll now be several people looking to find out. (Hi Pieps!)

That's all for this month. I'll see anyone that's still left in the madhouse next month, when I hope even this blog can get back to its normal self.

July 1st 2009 Hatchet Day

So much for my hopes that this was going to be a short post this month. I already knew there were going to be some interesting stories as a result of the knifelady returns, but I never quite realised all hell was going to break loose (but more about that later)

Results from last month
First off I just have to mention Alita's Curse for being the first artist I've bought a part in that has actually said thankyou in a comment to this blog (see the comments on my June 1st post). I get artists saying thankyou in different places and different ways but this is the first time one has come through on here. The nearest I've had before is artists thanking me for giving them a mention.

The story on Mysti's profile MAYHEM also continues. I had a personal message from Ray Baisden in my inbox on Sellaband confirming the split with Mandocello. To quote Ray: "So there is no Spellbox or Mayhem any more". Whilst I've asked for clarification that this means Mysti won't be taking over and chasing a second 50K on the Mayhem profile, that hasn't been confirmed or denied as yet. I can only leave you to draw your own conclusions - mine being that the Mayhem profile is probably a dead one for the forseeable future.

I landed up with an interesting comment from Blair on my profile page as a result of my mention of The Average Person last month, which I thought I'd share part of here

Thanks for the mention.
SAB must love my stuff so much, I asked them to delete my account over a month ago now and they can't seem to bring themselves to do it :)

Enough said I think. I can already see those who have commented on Sellaband's efficiency before smiling knowingly to themselves.

There often seems a certain irony about this blog. Either I plan to write about an artist and they disappear before I get the chance, or I suddenly start taking an interest at around the time they decide to call it quits with Sellaband. And yes, it's happened again in the form of Laixa deciding to leave the site. The biggest irony being that the goodbye song posted (called "Sometimes") becomes the second song of theirs to grab my interest.

Also, one artist didn't thank me last month and I bet you can guess which one it was.

This month's gainers and losers
As a result of Sellaband's second round of deleting inactive artists, I haven't removed any parts this time around. Of the artists listed in my last hatchet day post, only The Sundial Project actually showed up. The rest got deleted automatically.

With the site so hard to navigate at the moment, plus the volume of artists who have had their profiles deleted from Sellaband that are now mysteriously showing up in my wishlist once again (go through and count the "unknown" artists) I haven't officially marked any for deletion next month. I'm going to give it another month to see if/how many of the major problems the new site has get fixed before I decide how best to tackle the problem.

New investments
It probably comes as no surprise that I haven't bought any parts on this occasion, and I don't plan to in the near future either. I'm waiting for the artist listings and search to be fixed because buying parts is just going to be a pain at the moment without it. I do have a couple lurking in my wishlist that were due to get parts this time around, so I'm hoping you'll see those in next month's post, when I'm feeling a little less shellshocked. However I've got a distinct feeling there aren't going to be many parts bought for the next few weeks and it won't be possible to blame it on the Summer, or the credit crunch either. If you're not in the charts, the top 50 artists or signed up in the last month and gained some kind of budget already, the chances are you're currently impossible to find. Looks like a return to the old days, only in a role reversal. i.e. instead of the only way to get to a believer profile being through remembering which artist(s) they have most parts in, now it seems you can only find an artist by first finding a believer who already believes in them (assuming you don't know the artist name already). If you're looking for a particular artist, it seems like a good time to visit one of the "noisy" believers like myself, because I don't see how anyone is going to find artists easily otherwise.

Prior to the chaos created by the new website, I bought another 5 parts in We Love The Underground and Chupacabra very kindly gave me a giftpart as a result of their win in the Sixpack.

Watching
It's very hard to watch artists at the moment for reasons you should understand by now, but I'm still going to have a go.

As part of the correspondence achieved by the knifelady's return, I had a conversation with She's themorning and thenight which I think reveals a lot about many artists on Sellaband. You can follow the full conversation by going back through comments on my page (and obviously on theirs) but here's a little taster.

When I heard about this site I got excited - but then I had a look around and did some research on it, and it's just another place for our music to be - we're going well in other areas - as long as we keep our name here and there it all pays off, so we aren't looking for the money really - just a few more fans. We have access to a recording studio where we get to keep all of our revenue. So we're lucky that way - the only thing we need now is marketing - that's the only difference between us and bands that play sell out shows these days, anyway take care.

It seems to me that this is typical of why many artists sign up to the site in the first place, yet it's not the reason why Sellaband is said to exist. I'll be interested to see how much funding they do pick up as a result. Whilst their music doesn't seem overly different and interesting to me from some other artists on Sellaband, it's one which ought to find some listeners based on what others are liking on the site. So if you're into people like Daniel Ward-Murphy, Kane Sole or Meg and Mark (amongst others I could name), then here's another artist you might find interesting.

Metibla has caught my interest but I'm not quite ready to believe yet - I need more music to make up my mind, so will be sitting on the fence watching to see whether I can find enough I like. Someone has already offered me a gift part in this artist, but as those who know me will know, I don't accept gift parts in artists unless I'm convinced I like their music. i.e. if I'm not "ready" to buy a part myself, there's nothing you can do to tempt me into believing in a particular artist. I much preferred the "free part" gift parts which you could spend in any artist as a result and would quite happily accept those. Guess with the website changes I won't be sending or receiving many gift parts at all any more as they seem to have discontinued these, and you can now only buy a gift part for someone if you first specify the artist it is for. Not fair on the (potential new) believer to choose an artist for them, and not really fair on the artist if that believer then finds an artist they like more and decides to move the part after it's been claimed. With a "free part" you got the value added to your balance and could decide at your leisure - something which seems to me to be a much better way of enticing people in general in, rather than those who have been introduced to the site as a result of a particular artist. To me, the "gift part" system now only works as an incentive basis for artists to try and get their existing fans to support them, rather than something which can be used as a way to introduce new people to Sellaband in general, and therefore I view this as a very bad change.

Antropy is a very interesting new signup, but is suffering from only having the one track on their profile at the moment. I will be watching the profile for more music, but I'm already very interested with just the first track.

I think DJDJ is a very promising young artist, however not being as heavily into the dance/trance styles of music I much prefer the more classical track she's had posted, even though it would appear from the conversation I've had with her it's not representative of what she'd really like to make as an album.

And of course I can hardly leave this section without mentioning The Clooneys. If you haven't recognised them yet, then perhaps you remember the band Snelle Jongens who were on Sellaband, who renamed themselves to Snelle Fellas. Well with the split of that project, Arnold has come back and this is his new project. I'm unsure at this point if I'll find them too rap/hip-hoppy just like I did with Snelle Fellas, but early indications are that I might not, so I'll be keeping an eye out to see if they can convince me to believe in them.

Video of the month
Again, as I'm sure you can guess, there's no video of the month due to the new website. So I'm going to use this opportunity to send you to listen to someone I regard as an up-and-coming talent instead. I first encountered this particular artist as a solo performer, when I ran across a (very roughly produced) acoustic version of one of the songs you'll get to hear an updated version of by following the link (called "Drop Dead Gorgeous"). To quote a friend of mine when I played her the track originally - "The production is terrible, but wow can that guy sing!". Remi Miles is now getting a band together under the name Kuliks. Check out the music on his Myspace page and see what you think of how he's coming along in the 3 years since I first discovered him.

Sixpack Stories
Is the Sixpack no more? I saw a "potential sixpack" (well potential sevenpack really) showed up under the old website, which still has partial navigation based on the route I took from the old forum. The page in question is very slow to load whenever Sellaband are doing something with the main site at the moment, but you'll see the list of artists include Mount Fabric as well as the eligible loser from last week. Possibly a strange choice there - did I miss something, or didn't J A Marczak win a previous Sixpack? Or is my memory at fault and that believer in the list called Sixpack is someone else? Wonder what artists and believers think of a previous winner being put up for it again, if indeed that page I spotted was due to be the Sixpack before the new site went live.

As to my own votes, after voting for Exoluta, Chupacabra were next on the list to receive mine and I voted for Alita's Curse both weeks they were up, despite being tempted to vote for Lip Service as I really like their sound.

Sellaband
Firstly, let's have a look at the easy bit. I guess you're interested in "the knifelady's return". I've had quite a mixed response level to the messages I've left around. Many of those artists I don't contact often have acted as I expected and quite happily responded, but there are a few I was expecting to hear something from and I haven't. Probably the most notable of these is Wetwerks, who also seem to have been going through a slow and steady parts leak over the past couple of months. Even though someone is still obviously visiting the site, the lack of response where they were always very good before does make me start to wonder what is going on.

I've had to put my plans on hold for continuing to see who is out there and what they're up to though. Yes, you guessed it - again it's the website change that's responsible. I'm going to talk about that more in a bit, but it's obviously very hard to find artists when they've been made all but invisible on the site. Might actually be a good way for Sellaband to weed out the inactive ones though, because there ought to be about 4000 artists complaining they're not visible right about now. Personally I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of an inbox of that size, and remember we're only taking into account complaints that your page isn't visible here, not any of the other problems people are experiencing. I can't very well try and encourage artists with the site barely usable, so it looks like the knifelady is going to have to pretty much crawl back into her shell for a bit and just keep in touch with anyone she can easily reach for the time being.

As for the ongoing stories of Sellabration and Arenafest, well we now know that the Arenafest situation appears to have disappeared into legal territory, and that Sellabration is not going to happen (well at least not when expected) presumably due to money being tied up both in preparation for Arenafest and resolving the legal situation that has arisen. I'll leave it open to the conspiracy theorists to decide whether/how much Arenafest is being used as an excuse for cancelling Sellabration or not, or whether there are other factors at play here too.

The next thing to mention obviously has to be the MaWa - Danny controversy. To be perfectly honest, I see MaWa as being guilty of no more than "being German" on this one. And that's no more a crime than me being guilty of "being English". I've been (un?)lucky enough to be employed by a firm with an Austrian parent company back in the days when I held down a regular job, and whilst some Germans might consider it an insult to be compared to Austrians (and possibly vice versa), what little experience I have suggests that Germans tend to hold very similar values and react in similar ways to their Austrian counterparts. "Being German" is not something I can describe any better than that - it's something you've either experienced and got your head around or it's something you haven't. It's quite an alien and frustrating thing to deal with if you're English, and it seems to be even worse if you're Dutch. I happen to think Danny fell straight into that cultural difference hole and couldn't cope with what he found there. Whilst Danny's reaction was indefensible, to me it was also not an unexpected possibility under the circumstances. If it were possible to be... well.. "slightly less German" occasionally, I get the feeling the non-natives might stand a better chance of coping. Something like this could have been stopped before it got out of hand.

I kind of wish you could get an appreciation for the way other cultures think and react in school (particularly European neighbours), but it seems to be something you have to both experience for yourself and more importantly be interested (and open-minded enough) in having a go at learning before you get thrown in at the deep end and (inevitably) fall down a rather big hole as a result. It's one of the things I like about Sellaband. Having been given a bit of a culture shock myself as a result of dealing with Austrians, I like the potential opportunities for at least trying to gain an understanding of others - I think it's an important skill nobody can do without in this day and age, yet I don't think it's one which can be taught.

I'm glad MaWa is lurking round reading this blog still (as can be evidenced by his comment on my last post), because it gives me the opportunity to try and say that I understand, maybe not completely, but enough. I can kind of see both sides of the equation on what happened, with the stressed out IT guy on the defensive as a result of a project going somewhat differently than expected (been there, done that myself) coming up against the ideals of German efficiency and "Es gibt nichts Gutes, außer man tut es." and.. well.. both parties reacting in a way that looks very familiar to me as a result. I don't really have the words to get across the message I'd like to say to MaWa, but let's just say I hold a very English hope that one day that German phrase can reach a point of truth and we'll see him round Sellaband again as a result. Oh, and for all those of you wondering, the English equivalent is not a literal translation, but rather the phrase "Actions speak louder than words".

This "incident" is basically what has prompted me to want to start the story of my own vision of Sellaband. Going through those who have me as friends on Sellaband and looking at the names of those who used to be active supporters and have now either left, have faded completely into the background, or seem to view the site negatively is a very depressing experience. Sellaband isn't the same site I joined, yet at the same time it is. I see so many of the things I "saw" struggling to survive or get off the ground in the first place, and I found myself thinking of MaWa's "Where did it all go wrong" post. At best, it's my attempt to make a difference and possibly introduce people to things they haven't thought of before. At worst it will probably prove to be an interesting piece of history if/when Sellaband should fall. The time is right, and I hope to get started in the next couple of days. It does feel somewhat overshadowed by the rather negative experience the new website is producing though.

And so, finally we come to the mess, otherwise known as the new Sellaband website. I was asked if I would take a look and do some testing on this back in the first week in June. It just so happened that JohanV managed to contact me by mistake on Skype around the same sort of time and he asked me at the time if I'd been invited to take part in the testing. I told him I had, but I'd not had the chance to take a proper look as it appeared I was going to need a pen and paper. Perfectly true, because when I really did get into it, it only took a couple of clicks before I had that "oh dear" feeling. Problems all over the place, and with half the system not even being linked in, some of it was just plain impossible to know whether you were staring at a real bug or something which just wasn't implemented yet. I pulled together an initial list and sent it in, fully expecting that I'd go back in a couple of weeks, (hopefully) find some or most of that fixed and another series of problems would have appeared. Plus I could take a look at some areas I'd not really tested fully at that point, and send a new list in. Having worked in IT, I know how seriously depressing it is to have stressed yourself out on a project and then get hit with a buglist that feels like several years in length, whereas if you get thrown the same thing in more manageable chunks somehow it doesn't feel so bad, even though it is.

It seriously looked like a site barely at the start of its test cycle, not one towards the end of it. So many bugs were popping up it would basically have needed a full time job to have collected and reported as much as I could find, and (like other testers) being merely a "volunteer" rather than an employee, you could say I have more important things to be spending that level of time on. About three weeks after that initial look, the ominous message about "site maintenance" appeared and I found myself thinking that surely they wouldn't be so crazy as to put it live - apparently, as we now know, they were. In actual fact there are things not working in the live system which were definitely working in the test system - the videos were OK for one at the time I looked at them. I'd say there are significantly more bugs in this version of the website compared to the previous one when it was released, and I've got a feeling it's going to be quite a while before the site settles down into a state that you don't need a qualification in IT to work out how to use/get round the problems without someone else telling you how.

Incidentally, I still need to sort out my own "about me" profile information since the change, but at least I have enough knowledge of html that I can probably set things up quite nicely, once I work out what is supported and what isn't. Not going to be the easiest of jobs using the ugly scrolling lightbox that seems to be inconsistent with the way the others work on the site mind you, but at least Sellaband are aware of that problem.

One other word of warning to anyone using an old browser version out there, because I know there are people still using IE6. Boudewijn tells me they are not going to be supporting this, so basically if it doesn't work properly when they've finished fiddling with it (and I know a number of things that don't at the moment) you'll need to upgrade or look at an alternative browser.

And in case you were wondering, this blog won't be migrating into the new blog feature on my Sellaband profile - it'll be staying quite happily here. What I do plan to do though is use that feature to tell you when my monthly hatchet day post is actually live, so that anyone who drops in at random rather than receiving this by subscription knows I have actually got something there for you to look at. Being late on posting this is something I don't like, but when people give me rather a lot to talk about, the inevitable tends to happen and it takes me longer to write down what's in my head than I expected, and this month is no exception.

So my final thought for this month has got to be, please give me less to talk about next month so I can actually get this published on time, but more importantly, please Sellaband give me something positive to talk about for a change!

Defining the vision

Let me share my vision

These are early days, but I already have my own vision of what Sellaband could be in future given the right amount of time and effort. I think Sellaband can be bigger than you imagine!

I'd like to think that every artist who records on here will have such a great memory of doing so, that they'll want to keep coming back again and again. If you are an artist who wants to control their own destiny, this could well be the place for you.

Because why stop at recording music? How about playing it as well?

I see so many artists with fans asking "When are you going to come and play in my country?". Imagine an established Sellaband artist with a list of venues for their tour. Countries they don't think they have the money to visit at that time but where they have fans. Could you prove them wrong and help them raise enough money for a tour date in return for your concert tickets and that elusive backstage pass?

Things are never quite that simple, but... Do you begin to see the power yet? The possibilities?

I am only a believer, but I believe the future may hold wondrous things.

Back in the early days of Sellaband, those words used to be all that greeted someone on a visit to my profile information. And whilst the information I put there has expanded, that quote is still buried in there too. It gives just the tiniest glimpse into what I saw as a potential future that Sellaband could provide, based on what I read on the site.

It was one of those "what if" moments that turns into a "but if that happens, then.." and which basically kept going to the point of "wow, did I really just conclude that?". The future of music, defined in less time than it has taken you to read this far. What I "saw" that day is something I've never explained to anyone else, usually by using the excuse "it would take too long". In many ways it's something I thought I would never go through the process of writing down, purely because it is that big and complicated (yet at the same time so simple really), but the "How to fix Sellaband" post started by Bulletproof Messenger on the Sellaband forum has convinced me the time is now right to go through in detail and share the route I went through the day I had that vision.

Can you see what I saw? I honestly don't know. Am I going to have the time patience and commitment to get all the way through the story? I don't know that either at this point, but I do know that if I don't start I'll never get finished anyway. So let's see how far I can get, and to that end you can now expect a series of posts with titles starting "The knifelady's vision" popping up at irregular intervals in this blog over the coming weeks. Let me tell you my story, and lets see how many I can convince (including myself) that Sellaband is (still) the right place to be...

June 1st 2009 hatchet day

So much for things going quiet as it gets to Summer. It's been an extremely busy month where I've spotted an awful lot happening, so hold onto your hats, this is going to be a long post. Fingers crossed I don't forget anything - I'm half wishing I'd made a list!

Results from last month
First the obvious. Should that be a big hooray for Sellaband removing inactive artists or not? I've not quite decided. On the one hand I do want to throw a big thankyou to them out there for finally getting around to sorting the inactive artist problem, on the other I find myself considering whether a Dutch month is a different length to an English one. See, it's quite simple in the Sellaband Terms and Conditions. 6 months without logging in = deletion. Yet if you go back and look at the list of artists I flagged up in last month's blog, you'll find a grand total of one has actually been deleted, even though several have last seen dates prior to 1st December 2008 (what I would understand as 6 months ago) - in fact some are back in October 2008. So there's been a start, but I'm not convinced the problem is being taken care of, particularly as I haven't seen any further artists magically vanish from my flagged list since the original mass deletion was done. From what I can tell, it looks like the mass deletion got rid of all artists who logged in prior to October 2008. Fair enough at the time, but I've been expecting either the date discrepancy for the 6 month period to be made up (all artists with logins prior to 1st December to vanish on 6 month anniversary of new T&C), or another set of artists to disappear before I finished writing this entry (i.e. an automated monthly clearout but where a grace period exists when the 6 month deadline is up) and so far that hasn't happened. I'll be keeping an eye on this one over the next couple of months, but at the moment it feels like a job half done.

You'll remember in last month's post I mentioned Mysti's second profile MAYHEM as showing worrying symptoms. Well there may be an explanation for why it was (and is still) looking a bit bare. Here's what I've found out over the last month. It all starts because I finally got around to heading off to one of the live Monday webcasts, which had been alternating between just Mysti playing and Spellbox (i.e. Mysti and Mandocello). When I arrived, there was just Mysti on the guitar so I thought nothing of it as I'd got no idea whose turn it actually was that night. But on chatting to others there, I discovered that Mysti and Mando have fallen out and are no longer playing together. Mysti was due to fly out to Portugal for the Nearfield album recording just a few hours after the webcast I'd tuned into, so I didn't want to enquire at the time and I haven't had chance to discover any more since, as I believe she hasn't long come back. Long time users of the site will remember that the MAYHEM profile is the old Spellbox profile though, and that it was usually Mandocello who seemed to post from it, so I find myself wondering if this goes any way to explaining how we've landed up with a profile with no info and only the one song on it. I can only assure you that Mysti is still around and out there and hasn't vanished, and I'm pretty sure Ray Baisden will pop by my profile to let me know when her webcasts start running again if I don't spot them first if you want some extra confirmation of that.

I find it interesting that apart from the one comment left on my blog and a small comment in the "good old days" thread on the forum, nobody has mentioned Sellabration after what I wrote last month. Nobody asking on the forum, nothing from Sellaband.. hey did I see some tumbleweed just float past? Anyone who is awake out there will remember that Sellabration was announced in the Tribune on May 20th last year with the lineup announced on June 10th and tickets reservable from June 17th. Seems everyone is still too busy wondering about Arenafest to wonder about Sellaband's annual event. Given the timescales mentioned in the forum thread about Arenafest, we ought to be expecting an announcement imminently if artists are to confirm they can perform at Sellabration, or we'll be too close to that deadline as well. Hands up who remembers the special edition of the Tribune in July 2008 where JohanV gives answers to a whole series of questions including

Will Sellabration be an annual event? Can we look forward to it every year?

Time to go back and read his answer and then think about what I've previously said?

Finally, on the thankyous note, there were again a couple missing.

This month's gainers and losers
Quite a quiet month this time around. I've reclaimed one part from Marcel Luntungan as he hasn't been seen since 12th November 2008 now and Sellaband haven't deleted the profile. The part reclaimed went into Chupacabra. I get a feeling that if you're into the "fun" side of rock that the likes of Electric Eel Shock seem to thrive on, then Chupacabra ought to be an artist to consider.

I had been hoping there was going to be some more automated removal going on (as stated earlier), but it looks like next month's target list for removal unless they're seen before then, or get deleted consists of Bleeding Black, The Sundial Project and more from Marcel Luntungan.

New investments
It probably comes as no surprise that I immediately bought 5 parts in We Love The Underground on Brad's return earlier in the month. This is going to be a really tough route to 50K, if it can be managed, and probably the most important thing at the moment is to get more music up if he's to attract more believers in. I am worried however that the past history of arrivals/departures is going to put people off buying parts until a decent budget has been formed first. The more times you leave and come back, the harder it gets to convince people you are actually going to stick around and the more likely they'll wait until they consider you a "safe bet".

I've inflicted the curse of the knifelady on Michael George Band by buying the first part. Love the music, worried about the profile though as it has many of the "promo profile" signs about it. Here's hoping I can be wrong for a change and there is someone taking an interest, even if they haven't put up a main profile picture or fixed the "broken" song yet.

Alita's Curse are an interesting new signup, but don't seem to have attracted anyone in yet. Possibly not surprising, given the activity on their forum, but definitely worth a listen. I've dived in with a part, so we'll see what develops.

I've also bought a part in Nikki Murray who managed to hit my wishlist early in the month.

Watching
I got quite a shock from Talentscout's "protest song" competition. If you spotted the conversation I had with Catself, you'll know that I landed up voting for someone I wasn't expecting to. As a result, I'm now watching Laixa to try and discover if it was just a one-off, or whether I can find something in her music that I've missed before.

The cleanup of artists was a cue for me to go and take a look and see if anything was going to surface from the mire. And of course I wasn't disappointed in that regard. One of the first artists I removed parts from despite being very keen on their music is Winter Circle and the last seen date is, incredibly, 5th May 2009 despite the fact the page hasn't been updated since the day they signed up way back in 2006. It's a bit hard to believe there's no new material in the best part of 3 years, but I'll be watching to see if some does surface despite the odds seemingly being against it. It's also one of several profiles I've encountered where there seems to be someone still watching but the information on the profile hasn't been touched for a very long time. Looks like fuel for the argument some had about artists just turning up every few months without being really interested. I'll be re-visiting the murk more thoroughly as part of the "knifelady's return" (more on this later) to see whether I can find anything hidden down there

Reah Valente was going to make it onto my blog anyway this month, but it seems like there's been one of the fastest turn-arounds I've seen of any artist on this site so far. Just one week after joining it looks like the "clean out the profile" job has happened, which is a shame as I thought there was some potential there.

I've seen Boom Goes The Dynamite lurking around the forum again recently. For those who are unaware, this is the sideproject band that Scott from Bulletproof Messenger is in. They've only ever had the one track up despite a second being promised. Shame really as one track is always a promising start but never going to be enough to really tempt people in, even if they do love the main project. Wakey, wakey pick up the ball - a bit of action along with the BPM name could have had a lot more interest than just the $10 that's happened!

I have a soft spot for the underdog and Badboss has my attention as a result. I don't like rap or hip-hop as regulars will know, but I'm a firm believer that things like that shouldn't stop me from mentioning artists that I see out there trying to get attention for their music. He's got a hard job getting spotted in the mass due to the lack of regularly active believers who are into rap, but he mentions his music as a mixture of rap and pop, so is worth a visit if you want to try something a little different to your normal rap music. He seems to have gone a bit quiet towards the end of May though, so unlike the persistence M Harris is showing under equally difficult conditions, I am already wondering if he's thinking of giving it up as a bad job.

Kirt appears to be discontinuing Knaeckebroedt as he is asking people to transfer parts to his Kirt profile.

It also looks like Blair is quietly disappearing. The Average Person is one of those projects which is just so unusual, it's hard to see how it can succeed until there are several hundred thousand using the site on a regular basis. I believe he does have 5000 believers out there in the world somewhere, I'm just not sure they're going to turn up here any time soon. If you're into the really eclectic, this one is well worth a listen so I'd go catch it before you're too late.

Video of the month
My choice of video this month was also influenced by the conversation I had with Catself about our differing tastes in rock. She seems to think she listens to a more eclectic style of rock than me, but I'm not entirely sure that's the case, even though I do generally lean towards the mainstream. I've decided to bring you one of the more unusual artists in my collection as a result, and I'm willing to bet you've never heard of this one before. Iconcrash is an artist I originally came across when I was on my original voyage of discovery of Finnish music. Not quite rock, not quite electronic, not quite gothic, not quite industrial, quite an unusual mix in fact if you go through the material they have available. Every song I hear makes me think of a different artist and that makes it interesting in itself. It's grown from being a one-man project into a full blown band in the past 4 years and the second album is due to be released soon. The video I've chosen actually sounds more mainstream than the material from the first album, so I shall be interested to hear what the rest of the second album sounds like when it comes out. Enjoy "Strange, Strange Dark Star" playing on my profile now and check out the player on their website if you want to discover some of the more unusual.

Sixpack stories
Not that much to report this time around. Despite being one of the artists I was missing a thankyou from, I still voted for Headblow in both weeks they were up for the Sixpack. That's how much I like the music, but I am seriously thinking of implementing a new rule which states "If you're up for the Sixpack and I've owned a part for more than a week, then I'm not voting for you until that thankyou has come in". This is hardly the first time something like this has happened - maybe I ought to make it one of the last. What do you think? Should it be entirely about the music when I'm voting in the Sixpack, or should I take other things into account too?

I enjoyed watching the week that Resistor made artist of the week because it was one of the closest Sixpack weeks (if not the closest) I've seen. As I've said before, they're not my style, but I like the fact they've brought a number of people with them who seem to be very enthusiastic about them judging by the number of believers that stopped by my profile asking if I'd vote for them.

Nikki Murray got my vote in his second week and recently I've been voting for Exoluta.


Return of the knifelady
Yes, I normally talk about Sellaband in this part of my blog, but I've been preparing for the "return of the knifelady" this month. What's that I hear you cry? You didn't know I'd left? Well I haven't been anywhere as such, but those who remember the early days on the site will have seen someone an awful lot more active than I am at present. Like many others on the site I've faded into the background, but nowhere near as completely as most. I'm having a bit of time off after writing this blog, but this month sees the return of the knifelady of old. I don't know whether it's going to be for a limited timespan or not at this point - I guess we just have to see what the reaction is like.

The story is quite long, but basically I pretty much gave up on fighting through the "mud" on Sellaband because the inactive artists weren't being taken care of. That's the main reason why my activity slacked off, but there are quite a large number of reasons that have influenced why I'm now going to try going back to the knifelady I used to be.

Firstly, Sellaband have made some effort with the inactive artist problem that was the main driving force behind me sliding a bit more into the background. They've made an effort, so now I should make some too.

Secondly, and more importantly, believers shouldn't be content to sit back and wait for artists to come to them. It's a two-way process. There are artists out there who genuinely love feedback, even if you do sometimes have to wander through several acres of the unresponsive to find them. And a lot of the time, they don't want to force themselves on you, but will quite happily respond if you approach them. Casee Wilson gives the artist side of the equation in her blog, but just consider - when was the last time you wandered by a forum on an artist's website and saw a question along the lines of "Do the band ever post here?". Yes, there are believers who have had their fingers burnt through an encounter where someone pretending to be the artist has been replying to them and yes there are a lot of unresponsive profiles out there, but if you, as a music fan, are looking to interact directly with an artist, Sellaband is the place to do it. You get what you give here, so if you want that interaction, sometimes you have to be prepared to go and start the process yourself.

Being a believer is genuinely hard work if you believe in more than just a couple of artists though and sometimes I do wonder to what extent artists realise this. As an artist it's quite an easy job to send out the same message you sent to those your mailing list or copy the same "hey come listen to my music" message, but it's actually a lot harder to interact meaningfully as a believer.

Dear (insert artist name),
I came across your music on (insert sitename) and I think it's great. Please can you tell me where to download a copy of your music.

P.S. I loved your video/last gig/radio interview (delete as appropriate)

Interesting that you get the "spam message" from artists, but you don't generally get that equivalent I've posted above going back the other way, isn't it? Believers have to eat/work/sleep etc. too, so to wander off onto the Internet to find out whatever else you can about an artist whose music interests you and then contact them in a way which shows them you're genuinely interested, and then repeat that 2,5,10,20 or whatever times over is a horrendously time consuming process. It's no wonder the "silent majority" exist and pass by like ghosts in the night, often without the artist realising they've been there. If you're a genuine music lover rather than someone just fixated on one artist, there seriously aren't enough hours in the day. That's also the reason why many artists seem to get disappointed after the 50K, because the reality is that of the 1% who find you on Sellaband, only about 1% will buy parts and only about 1% of those that buy parts will probably get hooked enough on your music to want/have the time to actively help you promote your music. It doesn't mean the rest stop caring - many will still ghost along behind and support you by buying the next album in the chain that comes along or maybe turning up to the odd gig, but for the majority the time just doesn't exist to support you in the way you'd really like along with every other artist they also like (who will also be feeling the same way).

I think I am in a unique position amongst believers on Sellaband, as I don't know of anyone else that something like the following has happened to on this site. One of the current 50K artists produced an album to promote them on Sellaband and help them to raise the 50K. I am thanked in the credits of that album. It doesn't sound like anything special until you understand that I don't own any parts in the artist in question because I don't like their music and I hadn't even encountered them before I went to their profile on Sellaband. It's a genuinely incredible, humbling and amazing thought to realise that you've left that much of an impression and someone thinks that much of you, even though you don't like their music (and they know that). In many ways, it's the most special album created by a Sellaband artist that I own (and quite possibly ever will own), because I know the sentiment genuinely comes from the heart. I also know that the credit in the album wouldn't have happened if I'd just ghosted round the place like I've been doing for a while now.

So whilst other active believers seem to be slowly fading away, that's one example of why I'm going to be making an effort to get back to being the knifelady of old, despite the fact it is amazingly hard work. The quote from Francis Rodino's website blog "Love me, hate me, just don’t ignore me!" and something another artist once wrote to me "Sometimes it feels like nobody ever gets to hear our music" are both significant here. Sometimes the most important thing you can do for an artist is to let them know there is someone out there (or indeed still someone out there) rather than have them feeling like they're yelling into a vacuum. So instead of ghosting around and posting a selection of what I've been doing each month in this blog, you'll be seeing a lot more of me posting around on artists profiles and attempting to strike up conversations with artists both new and old alike as well as attempting to give you the roundup every month here as well. People like Mandyleigh would have been tempted to think I hadn't read the blog on her website and learnt about the 10 month publicity struggle she's had, because I didn't leave a comment on the post itself. There are so many cases like this where I've been a ghost and I haven't always made my presence known, so the artist probably thinks I've stopped caring when that's not the case. I may not be able to get everywhere on every day, but that doesn't mean I don't drop by once in a while. It's something I should communicate more, because it's important to artists for them to know they haven't been forgotten.

So I've said it already, but I'm therefore going to repeat it again. Music lovers say they want interaction with artists yet I don't see many of them on Sellaband actively looking for that interaction, despite the fact I'm convinced it's the place for it. If you as a believer want your own "special stories" to emerge, you have to be prepared to put the effort in. Maybe I have to show you what I mean by actually being that knifelady of old, but I'm still amazed that the majority of believers don't seem to have worked out for themselves what an amazing place Sellaband can be when you do take that much of an interest.

That's all for this month. Hopefully next month will be a shorter post (and hopefully actually published on time too!)

May 1st 2009 Hatchet Day

For those interested, I've now added a feedburner link to this blog, which means you should now be able to add it to any newsreader e.g. to your MyYahoo page. You'll find the big orange button just under my picture to the right.

Results from last month
If I thought things were bad in last month's post, it seems they've gone downhill a notch or two this month. The community idea I posted in the forum got a whopping 2 responses by PM, one of those from abroad. And the other wasn't exactly local either. A bit shocking really when you consider I've actually met more than one believer who lives within a few miles of my home address at more than one Sellaband event or gig. Add to that the fact that my favourite Sellaband artist decided to leave, despite having already gained over $10,000 in budget and things are starting to look more than a little worrying around here. And after a perfect record in my blog report last month on the thankyous, it was back to the old days as a couple of artists forgot this time around.

This month's gainers and losers
Windom were the only one of the artists threatened last month who actually showed up, so it's goodbye to Kellie Jaxson, Johane Exen and Off the Deep End. Parts reclaimed have gone to Bench Grinder (that one was overdue tbh), Chapter II and The GoStation

I'm having a "time out" again next month, on the basis that Sellaband should (finally) have the filter for inactive artists in place. Miss the deadline again and the knifelady will definitely be back to chucking some knives around seeing as I've now been on the case of this one since April 2007.

It should also come as no surprise that Phil Tweed regains my "spotlight artist" spot as a result of the departure of Skitzo Calypso.

Given the large number of parts returned from Skitzo Calypso's departure, and the T&C for believers. I've now done something I didn't originally plan and withdrawn some of those parts from the system rather than re-investing them in new artists. I don't believe in the quality of the vast majority of artists signing up each month, and many aren't bringing any new believers with them anyway. It's clear no artist will get anywhere now, unless they do bring some of their own fans, and I can only see money starting to pile up in my account as a result of the lack of believers on the site that are taking any real interest - too much money lands up going round in circles between artists and I'm not going to keep an "excessive" amount of money on the profile when economic conditions mean I can use it elsewhere. The lack of response to my community initiative was really the nail in the coffin that decided my course of action (and yes the investment policy on my profile has been updated to reflect what I'm now doing). Sellaband needs believers who will take an interest in the site and it needs them fast, but more about that later.

New investments
I bought a part in Headblow and TheLights during the month. In the second of these cases, it would appear the band is not only local, but pretty much on my back doorstep and unlike Voodoo Johnson, I hadn't actually heard of them before. As a result, I'm planning to go to the release party for their single later this month to try and get a better impression of them live.

I've also bought a part in The Stetz who had been on my wishlist for a while.

Watching
With the deadline for inactive artists approaching, it's been time to take a look round some of those people nobody ever really talks about, who are lurking round the place, whether regularly or irregularly.

WildRose disappeared for a long time but has been back a few times this year. She has posted 2 new tracks just recently. The first of these "Beautiful" will probably make you think gothic metal if you only listen to the intro, but it's worthwhile listening on because it's one of those tracks that has a lot of surprises in store as it switches through genres and to be honest makes me wonder how you'd actually class it as a result. "Welcome to my grey" is a much slower track and one for all you piano music lovers out there. She's still quite young and this only makes the music more impressive. One to watch if only she can have the devotion to make you watch her, and I would consider the music potential Sixpack material for sure.

Tricky@Trick has been here quite happily plying his trade since just after I joined the site. He's never received any attention, or even asked for it but he's one of those who have been there in the background producing new music on a regular basis and putting it up on his profile for people to listen to. I've seen him grow to $280 whilst being lost in the mist of inactive artists. Take a listen if you like your solo acoustic guitar and see what you think. I wouldn't say the tracks he has up are the strongest of those I've seen posted, but he's definitely worth a visit now and again to see what's new. Irrespective of whether you like the music or not, it's artists such as this, who just keep trying, that deserve attention and who ought to get more interest once the "not really interested" crowd are removed. I'm hoping to get a few surprises and discover some artists such as this that I've missed in the past. Some of whom might actually get $10 as a result.

At the other end of the scale I'm also watching some of those on my belief list who are getting perilously close to the 6 month deadline, but who aren't actually giving any information on their profile that they've gone.

Last seen date on Kristianna is 3rd December 2008. Whilst that's a couple of days after the new T&C came into force, she only has just over a month to put in an appearance before she would be over the 6 month clause.

Another one close to, but not quite in danger from the deadline is Jion who hasn't been seen since December 2nd 2008.

Last seen date on The Sundial Project is November 17th 2008 which does put them quite firmly in the drop zone.

One of those who has been surviving the hatchet for a while now is Elmore (not to be confused with Elmor btw) who haven't been seen since September 2008

Another hatchet survivor heading for removal is Bleeding Black with a last seen date in October 2008

One of the most surprising names on the list has to be Outrance, who now hasn't really been seen since he was up for the Sixpack. Last seen date is in November 2008.

Also last seen in November 2008 is Marcel Luntungan. I really enjoyed his set in Amsterdam in 2007, but it's likely I'll start reclaiming parts next month if he doesn't show up, irrespective of whether Sellaband do anything about inactive artists or not.

I had been planning to include Mysti's second profile MAYHEM in this list, as it hadn't been updated since December 4th, but it has been recently updated. However, there is still cause for concern here as it appears the info page has been removed and there is now only one song on the profile. Here's hoping it's only technical gremlins, but I'll still be watching this page over the next month as a result.

There are others on my belief list who haven't been seen this year, so don't worry I didn't miss them. I've purposely only mentioned those either before, or very close to the 1st December date the new T&C came into force.

Video of the month
Last month I gave you my first love in music. This month is the artist that really started off my exploration into rock and metal. Whilst remembered mostly for their cheesy videos, this is a live artist who really knew how to get the crowd's attention. So enjoy a live performance of "I Wanna Rock" by Twisted Sister.

Sixpack Stories
Nothing much to report story wise in the Sixpack this time around. Acoustic Jim got my vote second time around. Artists have been quite obvious choices for me in general recently with Tarball, Broken Sun and TheLights all getting my vote fairly easily.

Sellaband
Where do we start here? I suppose the first place is not perhaps the most obvious one. Sellaband have actually been watching my latest attempt to galvanise the community into action with some interest. To my mind, we've kind of reached a point where if people aren't prepared to get together to go visit a gig, then what on earth would they be interested in doing as a community on a music based site? When I explained that I'd only had 2 responses, I was asked if I thought writing an article for the news section would help. I didn't exactly decline, but given the fact it would probably have only come out this coming Monday, plus I am no longer convinced there are enough believers (or potential believers if you prefer) who take more than a passing interest in the site, I didn't think it was that good an idea. If/when I see new people actually posting around the place I may reopen the idea of believers meeting to get to know each other and going to a gig, but it's clearly not going to work at the moment. As to the importance of Sellaband watching, well I'm not sure if this is supposed to be kept secret or not, but I think it's important to tell you one thing that came out of my correspondence. Sellaband have still not decided whether or not they are going to hold Sellabration in August this year. Whilst I don't know the full reasons for this (though I suspect the cost, plus the demise of Fabchannel are among them), what I do know is that part of the reason is related to the situation with believer activity. Early 2007 saw a big increase in believer activity on the site as a result of the performances at Paradiso, and I get the impression that it's mainly that active believer set that have gone, leaving just a few early pioneers like myself behind along with a load of people who never got involved with the site. So if I'm failing to draw any interest for my idea, I suspect it only adds fuel to any argument for Sellaband not to hold Sellabration. If there aren't many active believers left, who is there to be interested in turning up anyway for something that I know must cost a fortune to put on?

It's time people woke up round here. The "breaking story with AIOIA" as I write this blog just proves that. Whilst I'm not going to comment on the story itself, something that's come out of it already is very relevant here. Frank has a very valid point that believers on Sellaband are basically trusting what artists say when they put money into them because they've never met them. That act of "blind faith" needn't be so blind though if you could get the opportunity to see an artist play live, or you could trust the impressions of another believer who has seen them play live. This is why events such as Sellabration are important - they give the opportunity for believers to meet and start to form friendships, and they give the opportunity to both see and talk to artists that are on the site that you wouldn't normally get the chance to meet. And to be honest, you don't really get the opportunity for that kind of level of involvement once you get much past a pub-sized gig. That's the other reason I was looking at starting something both cheap and more regularly (mainly) for the UK with the hopes that believers in other countries would start something similar in their local areas too. A meeting once a year isn't enough to foster the growth of a believer community on Sellaband, and if that one meeting goes as well, well I think any chance of a community of real believers is doomed. We've been saying it for a long time now.... Sellaband needs real people to become real believers, not just some fake profile or something you visit once in a blue moon, so it's time all you real people out there should wake up, stand up and be counted.

Arenafest seems to have gone from being the holy grail that holds new believers to being touted as the demise for Sellaband. And yes, at the moment all the signs are that it's going to be yet another PR disaster, but at the moment I think it's more likely a case that Sellaband are in danger of getting their fingers burned at a time when they least need it, rather than being the cause of the problem themselves.

So all in all everything looks very insecure at the moment. With it increasingly looking like Arenafest doesn't hold the key to finding new believers, it's back to the artists themselves to bring them into an ever-growing suspicious community, becoming more reluctant to buy parts unless they see a significant number of other names first. The next two months are going to be very interesting.

That's all for this month. Drop by next month to find out if the inactive artist problem is being dealt with, and for the latest developments in some of the ongoing stories.

April 1st 2009 Hatchet Day

No, this isn't an April Fool's joke but a genuine hatchet day posting after what's been a difficult month in many ways.

Results from last month
Well I got a first for a change in the form of a thankyou from every artist I'd bought parts in. Of course as there were only 2 last month, that isn't saying a lot, but I suppose you've got to start somewhere.

The community idea I have is not forgotten, but rather has been on hold while I try and nail down some details. I realised that what I want to do could really do with some proper planning rather than just diving straight in at the first opportunity, so I've been working on the fine print whilst looking for another suitable date in a couple of months time. I'm hoping to get the proposal up on the forum in about a week's time when I've had time to track down the last couple of bits of information that will be required.

This month's gainers and losers
I've had another big cleanout of artists on the wish list this month and got rid of the vast majority who haven't been seen on Sellaband this year based on their "last seen" date

I've also removed my part from Worow as I've heard nothing more on whether there will be a replacement for the band. Acoustic Jim is the recipient of the reclaimed part.

So after a couple of months off any major hatchet removals, I've now got my eyes on the following artists for removal next month unless they show some signs of life between now and then. Windom, Kellie Jaxson, Johane Exen and Off the Deep End.

New investments
It seems my new investments have been made during the course of the month, rather than today for a change.

First off was Matthew Ebel, who becomes the first artist signed up since the new era started to get more than one part from me as I've now increased my belief in him to 5. In the same way as MOPI were one of the best discoveries of 2008 for me, this man has to be the best discovery of 2009 for me so far. I've only managed to catch one of his Tuesday night shows live so far, due to clock changes and other things (like me plain forgetting!) and I'm kicking myself for that, because I really think he is that good. With 79 other believers on board too, even though his budget is not far over $3000, he's also got one of the highest ratios of believers to money of those currently trying to raise 50K.

After a lot of thinking whether to stay put or not, I also decided to increase my belief in Slim Void to 5 parts before they hit the 50K. The decision was made easier, partly because both Rustie Blue and NOIR decided to leave Sellaband, so I had a couple of parts come back to my balance after their accounts were closed.

I also inflicted the "curse of the knifelady" on 2 new artists this month by buying the first part in them. Simon Chainsaw and Bliss. Like the music, but as you know I'm still waiting for an artist to break the curse and reach 50K.

So after all that lot happening earlier, I decided to put off buying any other parts today. I was thinking about a couple of artists on my wishlist, but I've a feeling they may land up winning next month instead as a result of some of those who are under threat of losing parts.

Watching
I'm watching a mix of artists for various reasons this month.

First up is the interesting pairing of Apple Eyes and Harrison Hope. The music is interesting in both cases but I also note that both artists signed up a couple of days apart and both have recently been featured on BBC6. Coincidence? Or is someone out there watching the site? I'll be interested to see if either can make any serious headway with the way Sellaband seems to be evolving.

Next up, we have Resistor, who are completely not my style at all, but who seem to have a few different people going round trying to tempt people to listen. Don't know about anyone else but I've had a couple of friend requests and also some messages from believers who believe only in this artist saying they think they might be right up my street and I should take a listen. So ten out of ten for persistence so far, but zero out of ten for doing your research into my musical tastes first. If you like the Prodigy, they might be well up your street for a listen though.

New artists of particular interest to me at the moment are Eden Burning and High Tolerance. Don't know if it's the fact I'm getting pickier, but I'm finding less and less artists at the moment that are managing to hold my attention long enough for them to even make it as far as my wishlist.

I'm also watching to see what happens with micgun. This is an artist that has been on my wishlist for a while, but currently there is no music on the profile. The profile was last updated a couple of weeks ago and the artist last seen yesterday, which means the warning flags are now starting to appear.

The Words seem to be back after having not done anything much about their profile since they signed up. They've been on my wishlist a while now, so I'll be interested to see if/how long it takes before they disappear again.

Grooveduke caught my interest through his interesting approach to Sellaband using his video blog. I'm not sure that evangelical approach is going to achieve converts though - well maybe it might in the USA, but it's more the kind of thing that sends me running screaming for cover. I haven't been able to watch the video the whole way through as a result as it's been more of a case of "pass the remote". Musically I'm undecided. He's right on the edges of what I would listen to, so it will probably take something pretty special to grab my interest and want to buy a part.

Video of the month
Whilst there are artists whose music you like and listen to, I think everyone has a "first love" - that artist or band that really got you hooked on music in the first place. This month's selection is mine. Howard Jones found fame in the town where I grew up, at the time I was growing up and has helped to shape the music I listen to today. The video I've chosen for you is a live performance from his 20th anniversary concert in 2003 - a concert in 4 parts and more than 3 hours in length. Enjoy "Pearl in the Shell" from the acoustic section of the concert. Performances from the electronic set, the retro set (with original equipment from 1983) and his performance with a full live band (all from the same concert) can also be viewed on his official youtube profile.

Sixpack Stories
Well after Matthew Ebel reaching the top of the Sixpack, I've had some rather intermittent voting patterns. I haven't often felt the "must vote daily" urge, something which seems to be compounded by what happened the week Caterpillars won the Sixpack.

In probably one of the most interesting stories I've had for you in this section for a while, I was basically presented with the choice of voting for my love of Finnish music (in the form of Essentia) or my love of classic rock in the form of new signup (and local band) Voodoo Johnson. I decided to go with who I perceived as the underdog in the voting, by voting for Essentia, but I also decided to watch and see what happened, rather than trying to stimulate any interest myself.

I'm given to understand from Sellaband that artists selected for the Sixpack competition receive an e-mail telling them of the fact. In retrospect, I should probably have posted something on the Essentia forums after the event to say "hey, why didn't you tell people to vote for you" and therefore test to see if that message did indeed get through, but the fact that neither the band themselves, nor any of their fans posted anything on their forum urging people to vote is definitely interesting. It kind of confirms my suspicion that Sellaband seems to be more of an online presence for them rather than something to actively chase. It also confirms the theory that a lot of people sign up to Sellaband to support "their" artist and basically don't really visit afterwards, seeing as I know which of their current believers are regular posters on their own forum.

I've been voting for Apple Eyes last week and so far also this week, though fairly intermittently as I said earlier rather than every day. It was a hard choice this week to pass by Acoustic Jim though, because there's just something about "Life Two Point Oh" that makes you want to listen more. So far things have been pretty quiet in both camps though, and that probably isn't going to tempt me to take Apple Eyes off my wishlist in a positive fashion any time soon, given the fact they've been in the Sixpack for 2 weeks now.

It feels a bit to me as if the Sixpack is getting a bit old and tired already, but I can also draw many parallels with what buying parts in artists is like on Sellaband to start with. There just seems this overall feeling of "Hey great music, but how interested are you really?" and I've a feeling that the vast majority of artists who are getting put up for the Sixpack vote are fitting into that area of it being "another place to advertise your music", rather than necessarily being hungry to raise the 50K and with any kind of existing fanbase.

Sellaband
In many respects it's been a month of chaos with believers leaving, whether quietly or not so quietly. And maybe the odd one coming back under a different guise yet again. We had a troll in the Slim Void countdown chat which has to be the first of any countdown chat I've seen, and I succeeded in missing the listening session for So What, which I think is a first for any artist I hold parts in.

Throughout the chaos though, one thing is most present in my mind and that is the fact that Sellaband is evolving. The era of the "Big Believer" is over... well at least until(or if, if you prefer) a "known" name signs up. My gut feeling tells me it's too soon for this to happen, because the replacement of "quantity of believers" just doesn't exist yet, nor does there seem to be anything happening to try and attract that volume in and keep them. Community initiatives can't succeed without a community, and with so many key figures leaving and seemingly nobody replacing them, it's beginning to feel like a believer "ghost town" out there. Can Sellaband survive this evolutionary nightmare? Will some of the more quality artists start leaving even before Arenafest? Will there even be an Arenafest? In my vision of Sellaband when I first signed up to the site, it cannot succeed without a believer community and I therefore now have an ever increasing feeling that this is make-or-break year for the site. Unlike others, I'm not packing my bags just yet, but rather am watching to see which way things head next. I've a feeling next month's hatchet day post could prove to be an interesting one as a result, so watch this space.

March 1st 2009 Hatchet Day

It's been a strange month all told. It seems my last blog post inadvertently caused the outbreak of a serious case of chaos and mayhem when part of it got quoted on Sellaband (but more about that later).

Results from last month
I don't know if you remember I mentioned Liza Lee? Well it seems some of her believers persuaded her to return just to provide a contact point. You'll find her new profile here. I'm kind of in two minds about behaviour such as this - on the one hand I completely understand the desire for artists to want to stay in touch with people and grow their fanbase, on the other, it's already hard enough trying to filter through all the artists on the site without those who have basically given up on the idea of raising 50K being there as well. I still think that the money side needs putting separate from the networking/grow fanbase side, rather than all artists being lumped together as the current situation just makes the average person even less likely to spend money until they see a decent fanbase appear first - there are just too many "dead"/promotion/friendship etc. profiles. Enticing people to buy early parts has to be a priority unless you're expecting the artists to bring all the people themselves. (and in that case why bother with a community based website for raising money in the first place!)

On the story of thankyous, it probably comes as no surprise that I still haven't received a visit from the 2 new investments I highlighted last month. And of those, I'm going to highlight Fables Last Stand in here once again, because whilst their profile has been visited in the last few days, I see there's still no mention of the fact they're through to the regional finals (to be held March 15th) of a music competition for one of the biggest, most important and longest running TV networks in the UK.(wikipedia link for all my non-UK readers) So if you read back to what I wrote in my blog last month about them, maybe you'll begin to understand why I'm currently hearing the sound of a ball being dropped. But by whom? I'll let you decide that for yourselves.

This month's gainers and losers
I've taken a time out on the parts removals this month because I haven't given the wishlist a real good spring clean for a while, so I've been going through paying particular attention to artists under $100 in budget who have been on there a while to see when they were last seen and have removed quite a few. Having looked at some of the ones I've left, I'll probably be having another spring clean on the wishlist next month too. I've also removed The Shivery from my wishlist as they've done the old "clean out the profile" job, but I see there are still people with parts in them, so maybe it's time to reclaim your money folks.

New investments
I've added parts to 2 new artists this month.

Voodoo Johnson are actually a local act to me and well in keeping with my tastes for rock. They've been played on Bruce Dickinson's radio show for the BBC in the UK (yes THE Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden for those who were wondering) and with a gig later this month just round the corner I suspect it's more than about time I went to see what they're really like live. One thing's for sure, it'll be a lot cheaper than travelling all the way down to London like I usually have to.

It's probably also no surprise that I've bought a part in Matthew Ebel. I could have been within the first couple of believers to get in there, but instead I stuck him on my wishlist and am kind of regretting the fact given how much budget he's picked up since. Then again, maybe it's a good thing that the knifelady curse starts at over $2,500 rather than the under $100 level I normally seem to manage. I'm hoping to catch his webcast one of these nights, but if my timezones are correct I worked out his next one of 6pm Boston time 3rd March is the equivalent of midnight Sellaband server time (11pm UK time on 3rd March) so I'll need to check I'm not doing anything the following morning!

Watching
My watching section this month is focussing mainly on those who signed up in the past month. With a small cash injection from album sales, I've been looking for interesting new people to listen to and perhaps throw a part towards.

I can hardly pass this section by without mentioning Peelander-Z who arrived in a blaze of colour at the beginning of the month. I have to admit I'm not sure how well they'll do from the current believer base on here. In my own case, putting on a show is one thing but having the music is another and whilst I think EES manage to walk that tightrope, I don't think Peelander-Z do the same. For me, the result is that I'm looking at something which looks like it might be more at home on childrens daytime TV than anything a serious music fan would listen to. I've got no doubt the Japanese love them and if you're into cult music then maybe this is one for you, but I don't think you'll persuade me to buy a part.

Another artist I'm watching but am unlikely to buy a part in myself is Dancing Lotus, because as you should know by now, I don't like rap (and yes that includes Maitreya, sorry! - apologies for the in-joke based on a comment from Whaley). However if you listen to these guys you'll find they are miles away from your average rap/hip-hop artist. Chuck the rap in a bucket with some rock, some classical music and anything else that takes your fancy and shake vigorously and what pops out is actually an interesting infusion, and (at least) I think a very fresh sound. The profile has a bit of a "hey I'm sitting here just to promote an artist" feel about it though, so I'll be interested to see how things develop. At least they've worked out how to leave a message on their own page.

But getting onto artists I am more interested in, Five Sorrows is an interesting new arrival. I'd particularly recommend this artist for a listen if you're into Nine Inch Nails, or you like some of the heavier stuff from Vegas Dragons.

Caterpillars have more of a Coldplay feel to them. I haven't quite made my mind up on them musically, but will definitely watch to see what happens as they're one of the few new artists I've seen recently trying actively to contact believers.

The Stetz seem to have made it into the Sixpack already. If you've listened to them already and are undecided I'd recommend you go back and keep listening. I personally have found their tracks to be more "growers" than something that automatically makes you want to leap in and give a part.

If you like something that little bit more eclectic then Vanband is worth a listen. Watch out for their track "The Infant" because it has about 30 seconds of silence after the initial spoken introduction before the track itself starts, so it would be easy to think the player is broken - make sure you wait for at least a minute! All their tracks are quite long and tend to change as they progress, so what you first hear isn't necessarily what you end up with.

I'm watching Matt Roberson. I don't mind a bit of Christian rock occasionally, but I'm also interested to see if the Sellaband site has a new problem. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, check the date on his blog tab, then check his last seen date. Unfortunately I didn't look at that blog tab before 1st so it's impossible to say if he was just suffering from a case of premonition or whether something is genuinely wrong. I'll be watching to see if something like this pops up elsewhere.

Finally there are a couple of "long-termers" I'm particularly watching. Firstly, if you missed their announcement, Sheet Metal are back with a new bassist, but it may be a while before they get around to putting new material up as Dreb has exams coming up. Secondly Slim Void seem to have started the final push to 50K having overtaken Radius recently in budget. Whilst it's not quite a final race just yet, if their current speed continues, we might well have them as a recording artist before my next hatchet day blog, so if you were still undecided whether to buy a part, now might just be the time to make up your mind.

Video of the month
Video of the month is of the first Finnish band I ran across while actually on the hunt for Finnish rock bands. L-60 have released 2 albums to date and are in the process of mixing number 3. The track I'm giving you is called "Love me" which appears as a bonus track on their second album but is actually the first time they did a video. Unfortunately their website isn't yet up to date with the latest info, but you can find that over at their Myspace profile instead. From the first sample on the Myspace player it sounds like their new material is going to be a bit heavier than their releases to date.

I was lucky enough to get hold of their first album thanks to a German fan who was able to order it from the one remaining source available online when it threw a wobbly at the fact my IP address was from the UK and not Germany. Thankfully you'll find their second album available digitally and samples from every track on that album available on their website, so go ahead and discover what I think is a very underrated band.

Sixpack stories
Despite my worries about tAIT I landed up voting for them in the Sellaband Sixpack after a hard choice between them and another artist I've been watching called SPiN. Interestingly both these artists have been seen on their own profiles recently, but neither have made any particular noise around to let people know they exist. Likewise the following week Fables Last Stand was my choice - I've already said plenty about them though, so no use repeating myself! Since then I've been voting for Matthew Ebel and as it's been a short month there isn't a lot more to say.

Sellaband
OK folks, has everyone gone completely mad? Seriously I knew the perspectives of some were getting a bit skewed, but I wasn't expecting quite the reaction that turned up as a result of netvalar posting a piece of my last hatchet day blog on the forum. People are getting way too wound up at the moment, making it impossible for anyone to say anything - it's no surprise the community manager is hiding behind the plants in the Sellaband office and probably wondering what to do. Wake up and tell me you also saw what I'm about to post in this section, or realise the dangers caused because you missed it. Yes there are problems out there, but let's get some reality back into the picture.

There's been a lot of talk about the Arenafest competition. In many ways I have to agree that Sellaband/Arenaworks should just have decided who they wanted to play from the off, but equally I can see the logic behind asking people to vote on artists in case there is someone with a whole heap of fans out there willing to back them. I know how hard it is from a believer perspective to get an idea of what an artist is really like, particularly when you're not even in the same country and therefore have very little chance of finding out what they're really like live and whether they really have 2 fans or 200. Despite the fact it seems to have largely been removed from the Sellaband site, believer is actually a very accurate term, because you're often putting your faith in the fact that what you hear/see online is pretty much as good as things are going to be in practice. Cutting through the hype and finding reality is a nigh-on impossible task and it's not just something believers have to do in a case like Arenafest - people like Sellaband HQ actually have to do it too.

So whilst people have been busily throwing stones at HQ about "fake profiles" and the voting therefore, how many of you actually noticed that one of the artists in the competition put out a bulletin which contained some very interesting information? Apparently the artist in question had been contacted by Sellaband and told they would be thrown out of the voting if the "multiple profile voting" that was going on continued. Obviously the miscreant(s) weren't the artist in question or there would have been no need for them to post the bulletin asking whoever it was to please stop what they were doing. I feel sorry for the artist in question, as I know they're one of the "working bands" who spend more time playing live than they do on Sellaband to start with, but I'm also glad something like this has happened because it's proof that Sellaband HQ are taking an interest, despite what others might think.

In many ways it's a real shame we can't see the actual numbers of people voting, but I'm inclined to think some of the wierd-looking voting has a lot to do with the fact that a) there are very few active believers so the "true believer" voting is spread rather thin and b) some of those in a) probably aren't even bothering to vote in the first place because they've made up their minds there's no point. i.e. I think it might actually be rather easy to get well up the voting table on relatively few votes.

Sellaband needs real believers in order to grow - I think anyone who has been around for any length of time recognises that statement is as true today as it was a couple of years ago. You only need to look at the total number of votes on the poll in the forum to decide what option on CDs people wanted to see just how small the number of real people taking a proper interest actually is. Whilst it's important to remember there are real concerns out there, it's also important not to actively scare people off. Believers can help to grow the site, but you can't do it by friends and family alone. You've got to cross the breach and start influencing strangers positively, rather than always sending out negative messages. Don't lie, but keep it real. Don't forget, even if Sellaband manages to attract people to take an interest, what those people actually see will influence their decision of whether to take any further part in the site. Believers can chase potential new believers away far easily than Sellaband itself ever can, irrespective of whether they mean to or not. Keep it in perspective people, if you actually want to see Sellaband succeed!

The community doesn't have the hang of working together yet to attract and/or keep people that become interested in the site. One person can start an initiative, but if they're the only one that takes part, there's no way it can succeed. I haven't worked out whether it's just the case of ideas that aren't appealing enough or whether the global nature means that people feel they're just spread too thin and the apathy sets in. Maybe the latest idea I have can change that, but I know that it's only going to work if people are prepared to give it a shot. I believe I've got something which can result in both active bands and new, interested, real believers. The way I think Sellaband should be. The first step is for me to create a poll on the forum to which I believe I know what the answer should be. The second is to propose the idea (assuming the expected answer comes back) and pray that the apathy doesn't take hold of the people I need for it to work. One thing's for sure, it won't succeed unless others actually take part. So watch the forum if I've got you intrigued, because I'm hoping for a first genuine shot at what I have in mind before my next hatchet day post.

That's all for this month. Here's hoping for some positive outcomes on some of the ongoing sagas before next month's post.