Hello 2009, Goodbye 2008

At this time of year, I've traditionally listed the Sellaband artists and songs I've been enjoying the most over the past year. You'll find the old lists on one of my previous experiments with blogging here. Given that I've started this blog (and more importantly kept it going!), and also that I like to take a bit of a break from the hatchet over Christmas, I decided to put the 2008 lists in here instead and actually turn it into more of a proper blog post in the process by telling you a few stories and generally expanding the information rather than just presenting you with a list. So, the normal "hatchet day" post will be back on 1st February - this is just a one-off special.

But before I get into the good stuff, here's the answer to the question you've all been waiting for. Did Sellaband manage to meet the challenge to have a system in place to deal with inactive artists on 7th January (about a week after their own reported deadline of Jan 1st) and manage to win themselves 5 giftparts from me in the process? Sadly, the answer is no. Just one of the examples I've been keeping my eye on is here in the form of Lone Pine who were last seen back in March. I had been hoping Sellaband would save me the trouble of having to move this part, but it looks like this is just one of the targets for hatchet day on 1st February. And just for you to prove to yourself that there really is no change, go to the find artist page, search by budget and they'll still come up in the listings, so it isn't even a case of inactive profiles still being accessible but just hidden from view.

Favourite Sellaband artists
Never confuse the number of parts I have in an artist with how much I like that artist because there is no direct correlation. There are a number of factors influencing my parts, including the fact I'm awkward because I'm female so it's very easy for me to confuse people with what I'm really into as a result. If you want to know what I'm really liking, then these yearly lists are the best way to get a feel for my musical taste. So this is the definitive list of the 10 artists I've been liking most this year, with the main criteria for inclusion being that either you're new/have a new profile on the site, or you've posted new material for me to listen to during the year. And yes, some artists have shifted positions relative to each other in the listings for the previous year. This is generally an indication that I've had a wider range of material to listen to and they were close together in my list of likes to start with.

1. Skitzo Calypso
2. Phil Tweed
3. BulletProof Messenger
4. Francis Rodino
5. MOPI
6. Morris
7. Sheet Metal
8. Radius
9. The Jade Diary
10. Tarek Sidani

Seriously, it is VERY close outside the top 3 and I've got absolutely no idea what a 2009 list is going to look like as a result. I therefore have to make a special mention for Marc Supsic, Silverimage, Civilized Tears, Six Eyes Lost, Essentia and Conflict in the Sky as being particularly "near misses" for my list for one reason or another. The biggest news if you hadn't realised it already from my change in spotlight artist earlier in the year, is that Phil Tweed was finally knocked off his perch as my favourite Sellaband artist. In many ways it's amazing that he lasted as long as he did, given my fondness for rock, but it's a testament to the strength of his songwriting that he's been able to do so - and indeed that he's just managing to keep BPM in 3rd place. There have only been 2 artists on Sellaband to date where I've gone "I must absolutely have a piece of that" less than 30 seconds into the first song, and Skitzo Calypso become the second of these (BPM were the first). I'm particularly fond of the Niki Thunders stuff that Brad has done, but having heard a random selection of the Skitzo back catalog, I know they're currently headed in a musical direction I like the look of very much indeed. Francis Rodino moves up to 4th, mostly on the strength of his new album and MOPI become a somewhat surprising entry in 5th through being seriously way too catchy to ignore. I seem to be loving every track they're posting at the moment. Morris, Sheet Metal and Radius are all proving solid long-term likes, with Tarek Sidani and The Jade Diary being the other "newcomers" that particularly grabbed my attention.

Favourite Sellaband Songs
Given the amount of music on Sellaband, I've extended the list this year to my current 20 favourite songs. The only criteria here is a maximum of 1 track per artist and the fact the song had to be one of the three on the player when I wrote this blog. You can catch all of these songs and more of what I like if you listen to the playlist on my Sellaband page.

1. The Sickness of Dreams - Skitzo Calypso
2. Bring me to Life - BulletProof Messenger
3. Another Sky - Lawrence Collins
4. Who do you find - Morris
5. The Alphabet Song - Second Person
6. Open Her Eyes - Silverimage
7. Feel it down - MOPI
8. 7:30 plane - Matt Byers
9. Twenty To Life - Sheet Metal
10. The Universe is Burning - Marc Supsic
11. Love called me home - The Jade Diary
12. Julie Julie - Phil Tweed
13. Candy Whore - Six Eyes Lost
14. Prayer - Tarek Sidani
15. Passion - Essentia
16. Death Clock - Conflict in the Sky
17. Long Way Down - Guy Barnes
18. Next to Me - Radius
19. Uncomfortable Skin - Danny
20. Last Tear - Steel Temple

Special mention here for The Queen of Something New by Daniel-Ward Murphy which misses out due to being in his video section. This song would have been number 6 otherwise.

Dropped the ball
Here's my top list of artists on Sellaband that I think have real 50K potential in their music, yet they've pretty much disappeared into thin air and haven't been seen round Sellaband for absolutely ages. Check them out if you've missed them.
1. Matthew Clay
2. Matt Byers
3. Lawrence Collins
4. Guy Barnes

Argh I missed it!
This section is dedicated to songs by Sellaband artists that you may have missed when they were on the player that I think are particularly worthy of attention. Go pester an artist - who knows they may make both yours and my day by putting them back up for you to listen to!

I Wannit - Francis Rodino
Not only is this the song that got ME hooked on Francis, it also happens to be one of very few Sellaband songs that's had my husband going "Who's that?". If any track of Francis' has sure-fire hit written all over it, I reckon it's this one, yet I'd say the nature of the song means it would be difficult to get a live performance to live up to the recording - very hard to explain in a few words but think of it as a radio song if you will. The average SAB believer usually seems to go for one of the ones which probably translates better live, so it's interesting that my husband also immediately loved this song when he heard it when he can take or leave the rest of Francis' stuff. He spent a week during the summer playing it at full volume on constant repeat in the car and nearly made me sick to death of it as a result every time we went out.

Brave For Me - Wetwerks
This is probably the song I have both the biggest hopes and fears for with the new Wetwerks vocalist, as I mostly fell in love with Wetworks on the strength of this song, and I find myself wondering if this change is going to affect how I view it.

Bitter Pill - GD Allan
Whilst GD has gone down an electronic path with his new project Broken Sun, this track still represents the ultimate in GD Allan for me. You can still catch the video for it on the Sellaband Youtube channel and discover a side of him you may not have seen if you weren't here in the early days.

50K albums
What's my favourite of the 50K albums produced so far? Just a top 5 here as we don't have that many out yet. The main factor deciding the order is how much I like the tracks on an album and therefore how likely I'd have been to go out and buy it if I'd heard it first.

1. Arm Yourself - BulletProof Messenger
2. Circles and Squares - Francis Rodino
3. In Control - Nemesea
4. The Elements - Second Person
5. Until the Morning Light - Daniel Ward-Murphy

I've been lucky enough to hear the BPM album already in its entirety as mp3, even though it's not out yet, and I can say that if you've liked what they've had up on the player, their album is going to be right up your street, even though none of those songs are included. As a result, it just managed to shade Francis and his preview of Circles and Squares into second place. You might find some of my choices in this area quite surprising, but a lot of it really does come down to my musical taste. A lot of you are probably also wondering about the lack of inclusion of Vegas Dragons at this point. Whilst I think it's a much better, and certainly more consistent album compared to their previous ones, that also seems to be its problem because although I found a few "growers", I didn't find any particular track leaping out and saying "listen to me" as I have done on their previous albums.

Live Performance
Again top 5 of who I've enjoyed most performing live. Obviously there is some influence of whose music I like to start with and the number of times I've seen an artist live definitely helps, so I think you may find some surprises in my choices. To be eligible for this, I must have either been there to see you play live or seen a live web broadcast - videos just won't do.

1. Daniel Ward-Murphy
Like many people, I used to think that the quality of live performance was the ultimate decider in how good an artist actually is in practice. That theory got blown out the water when I went to the launch party for DWM's album. I now think there's something even better than going to see a live gig. You see, I happened to be staying overnight with Martin Nicholas, and he'd won a competition to attend DWM's soundcheck, so yours truly got to sneak in as well. So whilst for most people, live is still the best you're likely to get, if you ever DO get the opportunity to go to a soundcheck for an artist, take it. Even though my ears aren't as "production-sensitive" as many, it was still possible to pick out what's the artist and what's the sound guy tuning in and setting up the sound levels in the board, and you can learn an awful lot about the quality of both in the process without there being the usual distractions such as people talking that you'll find at a live gig. What particularly stood out for me in Dan's case were 2 particular things. First, you could shut your eyes and it was seriously like you were hearing his album. So many times in live performance, you can hear a definite difference compared to a recording, particularly in the sound of the vocals - this wasn't the case here. The second thing was when the sound guy asked for a particular style of playing for an instrument so he could determine the levels and the group of musicians had to pick up and play a song from somewhere in the middle. The timing of the lot was spot on to the extent you thought you'd just hit a button on the stereo to un-pause the track. Whilst DWMs music itself doesn't tend to be one of my real favourites, I have to give credit where credit is due and what I saw from that soundcheck opened my eyes to him in a way I perhaps haven't viewed him before. If you want real music with real musicians, go see him live, you won't be disappointed.

2. Mysti Mayhem
Having been online watching a number of the Spellbox live webcasts, I have to say I think you got short-changed at Sellabration 2008. Not because of the length of time Spellbox play in their webcasts, but rather because you missed out on Mysti playing 12-string guitar which is where I believe she really shows her talent.

3. Electric Eel Shock
Whilst I can't see them winning many prizes for their lyrics (well, at least we can they're easy to remember), it's hard not to get drawn into the show. This is a band to be enjoyed for its show even more than its music, so if you believe a show is an important part of live performance you won't go far wrong here.

4. Francis Rodino
For me Francis is still the king of gig improvisation. I'll probably get shot for using the word "busker" but it's the nearest single word I can use to describe what I'm seeing. For me his key strength is his ability to just pick up a guitar, go play anywhere and pretty much improvise something of a show around it. This was easily demonstrated by his street performance in Amsterdam in 2007.

5. Bulletproof Messenger
The single performance I've seen here can best be described as extremely solid, and being one of my favourites this is definitely an artist I want to see again just to prove to myself that they really are that good consistently.

Special mention goes to Sheet Metal for narrowly missing out in my top 5.

Disappointments of the year
You may not realise it but there are a few occasions where I've felt somewhat let down in 2008 because things have not been what I've come to expect.

1. Vegas Dragons listening session
With the amount of time Brian Taylor normally has for people, I was expecting this listening session to be something special. In fact, it became the biggest disappointment of the year for me. I felt so sorry for all those people who'd got up early, or rushed home from work just so they could listen to the album and talk to Brian, only to find he spent a total of about 5 minutes on the computer and instead spent the rest of the time with the people who'd turned up at the Sellaband offices for the party. A number of people online also drifted away as a result. Seriously Brian, what were you thinking? You had a load of people online who would only be around for just that one hour, and yet it seemed you'd rather spend that time with a group of people who'd presumably been around for some time before the session started and who would also presumably be around for some time after it finished. I'd liken the effect to waiting around in the rain after a gig having been told the artist would be out to sign autographs, only to find that when they do finally appear, they head straight for the tourbus and only sign for the lucky few who happen to be standing on the route there. Kudos to Phil Tweed who got up in the early hours of the morning and stayed online for the entire session - I actually felt quite sorry for him too, particularly as people kept asking where Brian was.

Whether something like this hasn't helped the listening sessions, but like many things on Sellaband it doesn't surprise me if they are being scrapped because they too have been downgraded and to my mind have lost a lot of their appeal as a result. Hands up who remembers the early listening sessions which were broadcast with webcam. There were problems with the technology e.g. which lead to Manda from Nemesea writing mesages on card and holding them up to the camera because there was no sound, but to a large degree that was part of the charm - you felt there was a real interaction and that has now gone. Think of Lily with her questionnaire about the songs and the fact you could actually see her jokingly threatening you with all kinds of doom if you didn't fill them in for her. If you weren't there in the early days, am I at least giving you an idea of the "special something" I think has been disappearing?

2. Francis Rodino at Sellabration 2008
I have absolutely no idea what this sounded like in the hall, but the live internet feed was absolutely terrible. Whether it was nerves, the recording sessions for his album taking a toll, too much alcohol (or lack of it) or just some bad sound work, I have no idea but he sounded awful. I'm also used to seeing Francis play on one of the "postage stamps" we like to call stages that exist in a lot of the pubs and clubs in the UK, and I often think that he ought to translate well to a larger stage with his energy, but on that score he looked a bit like a fish out of water too. I'd say the problem on that was the fixed microphone - on a really small stage there's nowhere to go and yet when Francis is the front man (rather than when he's playing with another artist such as Maitreya) you can see he really doesn't want to stay put. So this performance most definitely wasn't the Francis I know and love and it really makes me think he also ought to consider a setup where the microphone goes with him when he's performing on anything that's more than about 6ft wide, because I think that's going to better suit his style.

3. Sellaband
So let's give you that story I promised you in my last blog about why I think Sellaband is moving further away from the community and why I'm actually feeling somewhat upset and frustrated at the moment as a result. I've already mentioned in a previous blog post that I'm suffering from "believer fatigue", and there's been a lot of things floating round the forum for quite some time now, many of which I agree with at least in principle, but which also are the kinds of things which will set off real alarm bells in any potential new believers. My usual way out of this situation is to find something positive to do, in order to try and rebalance things. I still believe Sellaband is a very good deal if you're looking to buy an album - my views on a 1 part purchase haven't changed at all, even through the new era. I probably wouldn't even be here if they had! Things like the forum I set up before Sellaband had one of their own and even this blog have come about as a result of frustrations I've had in the past. Whilst I believe it's not good to hide problems and try and pretend they don't exist, I also believe it's possible to make things appear much worse than they actually are. In everything, I like to try wherever possible to look at both sides of the equation.

So back in September, I came up with an idea based on comments I'd been seeing round the forums, plus my own experiences and thoughts about Sellaband in order to try and solve some of the multilingual problems and promote artists at the same time. I won't go into specific details because that would take too long, but lets just say that the idea revolved around creating a series of videos. I spoke to Sellaband about it, because it was going to require some fake profiles that they would need to take care of after I was done with them and the response I got back was encouraging but basically along the lines of just "go ahead and do it". Fair enough. I've only edited one video before, and that was the Vegas Dragons 50K video (I haven't even shot one), so something like this is quite a challenge on its own for me without any unforseen problems getting in the way. That thought doesn't scare me though as pretty much everything I've ever done has been self-taught. I wouldn't claim to be an expert in anything - rather my skills seem to lie in getting a long way in a short space of time. If the idea is as good as I think it is, I know someone with better skills than me is going to come along and improve upon it once they've seen it and that's something I'm prefectly comfortable with.

Anyway, I was just starting to test out the technology when the alarm bells started ringing in the form of the "new era" banners on the website. Nobody at Sellaband had said anything about a major website change to me and what I was aiming to do relies very heavily on a nice stable, working website. I decided to put off recording until the "new era" arrived. I'm glad I listened to my own alarm bells because any work I might have done would have been useless. But if you've been following my blog, you'll know that the Sellaband website is still not working in a manner I would consider stable, and there's been no indication from Sellaband as to when it might be. Until the speed problem is fixed, I'm basically stuck with an idea I can't do anything about and it's getting me rather wound up, given that I originally had it 4 months ago and the fact the balance of good points vs. bad points that new people would see on visiting Sellaband seems to be getting steadily worse.

In those 4 months I haven't had one single enquiry from Sellaband as to how the project is going. I don't know whether they think I've forgotten about it, whether they have forgotten about it or whether they just don't care. Let's just say that if I was the community manager and was genuinely interested I'd have at least checked in by now to find out what's been going on.

Most people would have given in by now and just given up on the idea. Unfortunately I'm not most people, which is why I decided to let you folks know what's going on in the hopes that someone at Sellaband can actually be made to wake up and take an interest.

We've had discussions in the past about tools for believers to help them promote the site and unfortunately the most promising looking sources of those tools got snapped up by Sellaband to work for them and nothing useful has appeared since. Until Sellaband helps its community, its community cannot help Sellaband. Given the number of artists I believe in, it's more logical for me to do something to try and help people within the site, rather than wandering off on individual artist projects that may conflict for time. But I am starting to wonder whether I should just forget about Sellaband as a site and pick a few artists and concentrate on helping them with whatever they're up to instead. At least I know I'm dealing with interested people there.

And Finally...
Is it just me, or are my posts actually getting longer? Either way it's time to say thankyou to some of the people I never seem to get around to thanking before I go and give you a few new artists to listen to until my new posting. So thankyou to everyone who is following this blog, irrespective of whether you comment or not. I do read everything you leave for me, even though I have to admit I'm likely to be very lazy getting back to you with any kind of response. And a special thankyou to netvalar. I know you leave a lot of postings around on Sellaband with ideas that nobody ever seems to reply to. I for one appreciate them, though I rarely if ever reply. One day I hope some of it will combine to give me an idea I can work with, because it definitely has that potential.

My first part of the New Year has gone to Ian Bel. I'm also currently watching BIT, Tanja Dankner and SpiN as being interesting new artists. Let's see if I have more to say about any of those next month.