Endispiece - Alperton

Its been over a year since Steff mailed me about doing a music webzine, and now twelve months since I started reviewing gigs here.

Stats
289 bands
130 gigs
6 cities
4 writers


12,000 page views
7,000 unique visitors
73 comments
£700 paid on the door

I'm done.
There'll be one fewer gig review website the internet, one less quiet chap stood at the back scribbling. One less relevant link on the google search for your band.

Bands what I saw most
The Plimptons - 10 times (kind of predictable really)
The Just Joans - 7 times
MJ Hibbett - 5 times
Pete Green - 5 times
Pocketbooks - 5 times
The School - 5 times
Ally Kerr - 4 times
Deep Fried Wolfknuckles - 4 times
My Sad Captains - 4 times
Roy Moller - 4 times
The Hermit Crabs - 4 times
Tom Snowball - 4 times

Most popular posts appeared to be The Gresham Flyers at Indietracks and Abi Makes Music at The Good Ship, which kind of suggests that being incendiary is the way forward. Other things that could be the way forward in this sort of venture include:-
Getting on guestlists for gigs
Talking to the more familiar faces at gigs
Putting up downloady tunes from the bands
Having a buy now button for merchy from the bands
Beating other people with sticks to write reviews
Plimptons writing reviews of their own shows
Arguing with other reviews

Mulling
It was 1995, July. Me and the boy who'd become Pnos Love, out in Manchester the first gig I ever went to, at The Boardwalk, Cast with The Longpigs as support. There were other kids from my class at school in the crowd, we nodded recognition in the sweaty haze. I got mugged on the way home, bleeding in the back of Pnos's mum's car.

October 1995, Boo Radleys and Electrafixion at Manchester Academy, I met the girl who became the first girl I kissed.

It was a long time ago.

Glasgow Indie Eyespy was a game I came up with in the middle of the decade, after some drunken discussion with Gav from Camera Obscura about doing Glasgow Indie Top Trumps. I realised there were too many people, so instead it was just a list of everyone, you got points for spotting them at gigs. I came up with a convoluted method of ranking the bands, based on google, technorati and Last.Fm, it was a bit jolly for the bands involved to check how they fared each week.

Last Night From Glasgow was a daily video webcast thing, I got bands to come and play in my bedroom and slung up the videos on YouTube. It kept me occupied when my girlfriend moved hundreds of miles away, it kept me distracted. I ran out of bands I could persuade to come round, and it was too much hassle pimping it on hundreds of messageboards for the ten people who actually tuned in to watch. Good idea, mind.

Now what
Until I come up with something more wholesome to do online, I devote my time with the pen to my graphic novel / webcomic / personal blog
ill Theatre
and office based erotic art
Naked Chicks on Post-it Notes

Enjoy.

and thanks

That was Last Night From Glasgow Indie Eyespy and it was great, I know, cos I was there.

manc_ill_kid
at
hotmail.com
24-Feb-2008