Semester Final Write Up

The Original Goals (A review of the ProjectProposal)

My Executive Description states: ?I plan to create a blog that focuses on music. It will have a conversational tone, yet it will also feel sufficiently serious and polished.? My Overview section goes on to say, ?my compulsion as a music fan has been to deliver the discovery of good music to new people.? After further identifying the blog I hoped to create as a topic-style blog primarily, and a secondarily a filter blog, I say: ?blog I want to make myself, by focusing on my interest in and knowledge of music, a conduit between what I have found to be enjoyable, quality music and people who will benefit from the same knowledge.?

The Project Details section of the proposal laid out some specifics about how I planned for the blog to take shape. I stated that the more topic-oriented aspect of the blog would center on essays of 300 to 1000 words. I called these posts semi-journalistic, and predicted two accounts of live music events, audio or textual interviews, and at least two album reviews. I also outlined how the ?filter-blog characteristics? would be represented by the shorter posts which were to be, ??mostly highlights, brief thoughts, and links related to the music I?ve been listening to on that day.? I planned for most posts in the blog to contain at least one image. And with links, audio, and video available, I hoped these shorter posts would contain ?a lot of potential information.? I planned to average nearly a post per day. And for each artist I discussed I hoped to link to both the artist?s home page and their MySpace page. Together, I hoped that should the reader decide to do so, they could navigate the blog and truly treat it as a ?playlist.?

I stated that I would build a blogroll of the various sites that I find useful when I want to read about music. I also vowed to do what I could about improving the design of the blog from what it was at the time.

I explained a little about why I have a background that might suggest I know what I am talking about. And finally I stated that, as a volunteer programmer on KAXE radio, I would attempt to get my blog added to their web site. And finally, I hoped to be able to report in the spring that I would be continuing the project.

How the Blog Progressed

To a degree I had begun this project even before I wrote my Project Proposal. My first post essentially states a less specific version of the Project Proposal. And right away I posted a review of a Wilco concert(link) that happened in Duluth in 2007, a post which contained neither an image or a video. This early start is partly because I knew coming into the class that I wanted my main project to be a music blog. The Project Proposal served to help me think more specifically about how I wanted it to take shape.

A little while before the project had officially begun I wrote my About page. For this I tried to offer mostly information that pertained to why I felt like I had something worthwhile to say about music. I did mention being in school, but for the most part, it reads like a conversational resume as it relates to music. For the image on my About page I turned a mistake into a happy accident. This photo, also taken in San Francisco, was shot by my wife. She had neglected to notice that my face was obscured by shadow. It works out perfect for a blog where I choose to stay in the proverbial shadows a little bit. I don?t care if people know who I am, but I don?t really love the idea of splashing my face all over the place either.

In short order I reviewed all of possible themes offered by Wordpress and their various attributes. I ultimately decided that after all that, I still preferred the theme I had chosen to begin with. It did have one major flaw though. That was that the blog name did not appear prominently anywhere in the layout. My solution for this was to use some of my knowledge of Photoshop to embed my blog?s name into the header photo that I had cropped from a photo I took in San Francisco. I came to believe that the reason few others on Wordpress had chosen this layout theme was because of this flaw in its design. And by working around the problem, I was able to go against the herd, and therefore have an attractive layout theme that few others had chosen for their blogs.

The blogroll was another component that I got set up right away. I added Paste Magazine, Pitchfork Media, Shoot Out the Lights, and The High Hat. The last two were created by Hayden Childs, a guy who participated with me in music discussion groups on Salon.com and Peoples Forum around the turn of the century. All of the above were listed in my Project Proposal. I also added a link to [http://www.johnvanderslice.com/index John Vanderslice?s site]]. Though he is a musician and producer, he maintains an active blog that I thought made his site interesting in relation to the course. He is also someone that I consider to be the most interesting artists out there today both in terms of his past output and anticipation of his future work. Finally, I did add Ryan Wells? album review blog Dirty Blvd. to the blogroll. He and I had been reading and commenting on each other?s blog posts, so it seemed like a nice, convenient, and social thing to do.

And now we get to the posts themselves. Throughout I included little bits of personal information in the posts. Early on there were a few that were entirely personal, but eventually any personal aspect included was just meant to be seasoning for all the music content. One early post even stated that I was going to draw the focus tighter on the music as soon as the course content allowed this.

I have broken my posts down into six categories. But these categories are not concrete, there is overlap, and I have derived these categories mainly to facilitate this discussion of what my blog has become. I will first say that in my earlier posts, like the one titled A Nugget and One Half, I was still figuring out the best approach to linking out and sizing images. Eventually, I was linking out in almost exactly the same fashion described in the Project Proposal. I also settled upon a consistent size for formatting the images that represented album art. Both characteristics can be seen in this post titled Ivy?Ivy?Ivy Ivy Ivy. Though I wouldn?t really call myself a graphic designer anymore, by default, much of my knowledge in this area was employed in tweaking the look of the Lazyczech Playlist. This is because I want people to read the blog, and I know how important it is to make any text as inviting as possible.

At their most basic, all the posts on my blog are either reviews, or they are not. The first type of post under the umbrella of ?reviews? would be what I have called ?now playing? posts. These are rather short and concise. Despite their short length, I felt I was able to say a lot due to my style of writing. This combined with links out, an image, and usually album art made posts like Wet Paint and New Music contain more than they appeared to at first glance.

The next type of ?review? post would be what I called ?quasi-reviews.? These were usually 150 to 400 words, and got into more depth about the record itself, the artist?s career output, or the genre in general. Goo the Noble Beast is a very good example of this type of post.

The third type of post, also under the umbrella of ?reviews,? are the more typical reviews of either live music events or an album. These generally contained at least 300 words, usually a fair amount more. Brian Jonestown Massacre-Live in Minneapolis, 3/26/09 is good example of a review of a live music event. This is also a great example of the voice I was trying to employ throughout the blog. The Magnolias-Off The Hook, One of the Most Under-appreciated Records Ever, is a great example of my writing about a specific record, though I did include some more broad biographical information about the band.
Betty Davis, I Love You
The fourth type of blog post under the ?review? umbrella would be a more biographical/homage type of post. The post that represents this category is Betty Davis, I Love You. This post comes in at 1235 words. In this post I have given up trying to act neutral in my voice. It is obvious that this artist has won my allegiance, and I am trying to convince the reader to surrender to Betty as well. The major motivation behind this highly involved post goes to the root of why I wanted to create a blog at all. I know that surprisingly few people are aware of Betty Davis? powerful music, and I wanted to do what I could to change that, both to do justice to the artist and so the reader might enjoy the same sense of discovery that I experienced in finding her music.

The fifth category of post is where I offer information pertaining to my next radio show on KAXE. This post is good example of this type. The final category of posts occurred mostly early on in the project. There are only a few posts in this category, most of them early in the blog. The post titled 2.1.09-Chapter 3 and Other Stuff is a good example of this type of post. They mostly reflect personal information.

Things That I Noticed

One of the more interesting aspects about my blog that I noticed throughout the semester was the way in which different types of posts had their own way being popular. The older and/or more obscure artists started of sluggish but have steadily built up to represent the most popular posts. While something that was more current, and buzzing, would get a decent amount of hits fairly quickly and then fall off. Betty Davis, I Love You has become the most popular post with a current tally of 50 views. But I don?t think it has ever had more than four views per day. While Brian Jonestown Massacre-Live in Minneapolis, 3/26/09 got quite a few views within the first week two weeks and has been very quiet recently. Finally, one post got a reaction that I have attributed to an anomaly. Ol? Yeller and The Winterpills(link) received 108 views in the first two days of being published. I noticed that the post got picked up by some web site that seemed to be generating highlighting posts related to specific categories. I?m pretty sure it was mistakenly picked up as a blog post related to the book . Neither the band Ol? Yeller or The Winterpills are well known enough to generate anything close to that kind of traffic. And the post has gotten less than ten more views after that first day. I also intended to link though KAXE?s web site to the audio of an interview I conducted with Rich Mattson of Ol? Yeller that I produced for Centerstage Minnesota, the station?s show that focuses on Minnesota musicians, but I discovered that I could not do so because no matter where in KAXE?s web site I navigate, the web address stays the same as their home page.

In my Project Proposal I said that I am a volunteer programmer for KAXE radio. Because of this I planned to inquire about getting my blog added to KAXE?s web site on which they have a list of staff and volunteer blogs. Well, I waited until I had enough posts that the folks at KAXE would get the idea that I was serious about this a personal project. They put the link up the same day that I asked about it. They spelled the name wrong, but that was cleared up within one week. The surprising part has been that I received much less traffic through KAXE?s web site than I had anticipated. My guess as to why is because they have an older demographic. I?ve seen the numbers. I think most of those in KAXE?s demographic who do have the internet aren?t using it to read blogs. I still feel it is important in the building of my blog?s popularity due to the visibility it gives the blog. This is where perception plays a role, and only I see the stats. David Bowie once acted more popular than he actually was to present the image he was a huge star, and it made him a huge star.

I also think that this blog has made me a better programmer for KAXE as well. For each post I am usually searching for information and media for at least two bands/artists. This has me more prepared to offer interesting tidbits of information while I am on the air. And I can further point people to more detailed blog posts should they desire more detailed information than I have time to relay while on the air. There is a symbiosis between the blog and my on-air duties at KAXE.

When I started out I thought this would primarily be a topic blog, and a filter blog second. I think the blog that has formed is either the reverse of that, or they are equal. The blog definitely stays on the topic of music. But the filter aspects of the blog are very prominent. The last time I participated in online discussion about music, either as conversation as in the past, or more as a one-way loudspeaker like my blog, there was not audio and video available. We could only write to communicate the music, though we pretty much agreed with Lou Reed on the matter. Now I can write enough to get someone interested, and the conclusion is really when they hear the music through some other web site.

I had fears going into this class and more specifically this project. The music discussion groups I participated in around 2000 took a lot of my time, too much really. But I was also discussing music with some people who really knew their stuff. And many of them were successful writers. Though the conversation was casual, it was often intense, and I really believe this is where I honed the writing skills I used in this blog. In addressing the above-mentioned fear, I purposefully tailored the blog so I could, in theory, produce the content rather quickly. But the economy I had learned in my past experiences was what I would draw upon in order avoid having the blog take over my life. The thing is, I was still somewhat unaware of the degree to which I had developed this style and voice in those more informal discussion groups at Salon.com, and later Peoples Forum.

I don?t feel like there is a whole lot that I would do differently. The Studio Tour responses support this. Hanna did mention that her computer was old and it took a long time for the site to load. And in regards to that issue, I felt I needed to keep looking forward, and accept that some people just aren?t going to be able to read the blog. I felt that the audio, video, and images are far too important to the blog to change things to accommodate old technology. Other than that, things pretty much went as planned. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I know pretty precisely what I wanted to do from the beginning.

Without this method of publishing, I doubt I would ever have made a serious effort to publish my thoughts about music, though I always thought I might be good at it. This method has allowed me to put my toes in the water. And who knows where it may lead. For now, I simply plan to continue with the project, maybe at a little slower pace. I spent a little more money on trips to see live shows and such, to generate blog content, than I can afford over the long run. At first it discouraged me that I wasn?t getting more views per day. But over the semester, I realized that the posts about the acts I enjoy the most got the least views due to the obscurity of the subject. And it brought me back to one of the main reasons I wanted to start a music blog to begin with. That reason was directing attention to music that doesn?t have enough of it, and to direct music fans to new music they will like. This approach means I am operating in the gaps, and I?m alright with that. And I?m having fun with it.