Big Rock Finish… reviews of independent music

Alright so I’m running WordPress since it’s the “one-click install” on my webhosting program, and it’s also what I was given when I first started a personal blog a good many years ago by now. (Scary to think how long I’ve been publishing my life online!)

Anyways I went to go upgrade them all when the new upgrade was released that patched a lot of security holes that I wouldn’t understand if my life depended on it.  And of course the first thing that happens is my personal blog looks and works fine.  I go in to update the database and all is peachy.

Of course.  I go in and check out how Big Rock Finish is faring, and am finding that there’s some scary database error showing and none of my page is set up anymore.  After freaking out, running in circles going “ohmigod  ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod”…

I finally realized there was an e-mail stating to update the database FIRST before viewing your newly updated blog so to avoid seeing scary database errors.

Update the database.

Blog is… mostly working.  My theme reverted back to it’s original, and now I am scrambling to re-insert code, because as only I can do, I didn’t bother to save it before upgrading.  Mostly what I’m sad about losing are my little buttons, as those took a while actually to find/locate and to do it again (even though I only hd a few at this point) is feeling quite daunting.

Back to the grind!

So I’ve started to promote the blog on Myspace, mostly by hitting up bands and adding them as friends.  (www.myspace.com/bigrockfinish) I fully admit in that I’m cheating and using an automated system, I can’t help it, the idea of sitting and clicking over and over again on the “Add Friend” logo on band pages sounds daunting, especally since bands usually have their music in the myspace player, which has a tendancy to crash my browser. (I will be getting a new, less-crashable computer soon!)
The response so far seems pretty good.  I’ve stumbled upon bands who are already telling me about upcoming shows they’re doing, bands who are informing me about their next EP releases and trying to figure out how to get demos/EP’s to me, and I’ve even found a few willing writers who will hopefully bring this site more music than I would know what to do with.

I’m also getting excited the release date of this site is becoming closer. I can see the little count down on my first pending entry.  I’m also seriously nervous since I still have so much of the back-end programming I need to coerce my friends into helping me with because I can’t figure PHP out to save my life.

Alas, I’ll sign off now, and continue to plug away!

Bah, I still have to backdate an entry about the latest jemo show.  I’ll do that next!

~rokky

Surprisingly enough I’m not that fond of randomly messaging people, so the idea of approaching people, and bands, is a toughie for me.  I’m getting the hang of it a little more though.  I’ve sent messages to everyone that I’ve reviewed so far for live shows just now through myspace.  Granted, the majority of these bands are also my friends so it wasn’t nearly as hard, but there were a few musicians/bands that I didn’t really know before their set and still don’t really know well afterwards.

I hope everyone likes what I wrote about them.  I did all of the reviews thus far all in one day, and there’s only so many ways to say “That was awesome”  I’m getting feedback already and it seems so far people are liking what I write about them, and are announcing to their fans that they’ve been written about, which is always cool.
But yes, www.BigRockFinish.com has a myspace page.  If you’re interested in becoming our friend, check us out at http://myspace.com/bigrockfinish

Great.  So after giving in and agreeing to do live show reviews (for shows that I go to personally, and this will be on a case-by-case basis) I finished writing 7 reviews of what I consider to be important shows I have gone to in the past six months.  They’re all backdated so the dates of the posts correspond to the date the show happened.

It’s definitely a lot harder writing about shows from that long ago, rather than about the ones that happened yesterday.  I know I’m a very wordy person and I’ve been trying to keep it brief but I don’t think that will ever really pan out for me.  Well I’m glad to have been introduced to another great artist from last night, and I have more CD’s I can review.

I hope my little volunteer writers are also writing away! We have a big day coming up pretty soon!

So I’ve had a lot of people message me (both bands, and fans of indie music) ask me if I plan on reviewing live shows.  I didn’t at first, I figured that reviewing albums at my own leisure would be enough work, without having to go to shows and be critical and analyze everything that passes before me.  Especially since my memory is not always the best and I may forget half of what happened.

Alas, I’ve always been one to succumb to peer pressure, and I will likely be back-dating a bunch of shows I’d been to in the past two months or so (depends on what I feel like) and will be writing short reviews on shows that I end up attending.

I promise nothing fancy.  They will likely be quick and to the point, and speak more of odd quirky things that happen just as much as I speak about the music.  There will be no proper format for reviewed shows other than my own interpretation and feeling on the event.

And I do work a full-time job, that gets me up very early in the morning.  I can’t make it out to every show, especally if I feel my precious few hours to myself at night are better spent sleeping when I need to be up before the crack of dawn.  This may end up being a live-review section of all my friends bands, but whatever.  It’s music. It’s all good.

Let the reviewing begin!

I’m just finding out now that my DNS hasn’t fully moved over to the site yet.

This domain name used to be pointed at another server which is still up and running.

And about half the people I get to visit the site (From all around the world) are sitll seeing the old site.

I changed this over a week ago so I don’t know what’s taking so long.

I hope it gets fixed soon so that more people can check us out!!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE start working!

Just thinking that it might be a nice service to also offer a listing of shows of bands that I’ve either reviewed, or going to review, or just bands that bother to message me with their upcoming shows.  The problem is in the logistics, I know that shows can get booked pretty last minute so I don’t want to get people hearing “Sorry I already posted the list” or anything.

I’m thinking of doing this twice a month.  And only announcing shows that are happening within two weeks time.  So that if a band is going on a big gigantic tour, they don’t take up all the space on a post, and at the same time their dates don’t get pushed into posts three months behind.  If I post on the 15th and the 31th of every month, the 15th will have shows showing from the 16th to 31st of the month, and the post on the 31st will have upcoming shows from the 1st to the 15th.

This makes it so it also won’t inundate my review posts, which will likely happen every 8 or 9 days, so there is an average of 3 reviews per month, and two upcoming show posts per month.

So many things to think about…

Whoever said setting up a blog was easy, obviously wasn’t trying very hard to set it up right.

Much love,
~rokky