You Say It's Our Birthday!

What a long strange year it's been....

It feels like just yesterday...

Webster's dictionary defines "blog" as...

We didn't think anyone would ever read this thing....

This blog started as a way of sharing all things music with a couple friends. It allowed us to provide news, links, and videos for each other in a more fun and creative way than IMs and email. After a post about the reunion of Crowded House, during that first week, a small number of Google Search hits started rolling in. Through that, we quickly realized that some other people could actually be reading what we were writing. And then on February 8th everything changed. On the evening before, we attended an on-stage interview of Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio by rock critic/writer Anthony DeCurtis. Before falling asleep that night, I wrote a quick recap of what transpired at the 92nd Street Y on the Upper West Side. And I awoke to check our blog statistics, finding a flood of hits like we never imagined possible. I was immediately bouncing around the room (forgive me...sometimes you just have to go with what pops into your head first). As it turned out the 92nd St Y's own blog had posted a link to The Weight, sharing my review with anyone who stopped by their site. And quite a few people wanted to know what Trey had to say about his recent arrest and the future of Phish. And the rest, as they say, is [P]history. We were hooked.

The next highlight for us came three months later when we decided to publish a live song-by-song setlist from inside an intimate Phil Lesh and Friends show at SOBs in New York City. With one of the WeightStaff embedded inside the show, and myself behind the keyboard, we posted each song as it happened to both our site and PhilZone. I never thought that waiting by my cell phone for sporadic text messages over three hours could be so exhausting. All the effort paid off though and it resulted in what's been the highest one day volume of traffic to this site over the course of this first year.

I've obsessively tracked our traffic, initially getting excited over first time visits from new states and new countries and later keeping an eye on our most read content and tracing back to random links from other sites to us (I'm looking at you 'republicans.independent2008.net'.) We've reached all 50 States (thank you 2 visitors from Sioux Falls, SD) and 98 countries (we're HUGE in Slovakia!). We've had over 10,000 unique visitors, some of whom actually came back more than once! We've been amazed at how many people were interested in the Verve reunion and Richard Manuel and how few have been interested in Hair Band Trivia and Brooks and Dunn.

It's been a great deal of fun keeping this site going with my friends. And we look forward to continuing to provide you a glimpse into what keeps us so interested in music. As Robbie Robertson said, "It's a goddamn impossible way of life," but we will continue to keep on doing what we're doing and hopefully we can bring a few companions on this ride.

::wipes away single tear::


A few thanks:

The WeightStaff, official first commenter and self-confessed heroin addict/Brit/blogger Gledwood, official first fan Partyin' Peeps, staff photographer Charles Ton, Hits From The Blog, Hidden Track / Scotty B, 92nd St Y, Bob Lefsetz, The Band, Phish, Wikipedia, my Dad, and Eggo waffles.

I will leave you tonight with the final cover in the first annual Birthday Countdown. It is The Weight performed by Smith.

Listen here: Smith - The Weight