Chapter 4 of Ariel's Book – or – Bogged Down By Blogs.....

Wow, Chapter 4 of Ariel's book has a lot going on! It takes on the enormous topic of a band's presence in the 2.0 web. There are a lot of great suggestions - however, I did get a bit overwhelmed at a certain point (but not that easily! I have been plugging away at this pretty steadily!), but I am proud to say I just started a 'blogroll' for the blog here (look a ways down the page in the right-hand column).

The part of the chapter I had some difficulty with is a large assignment to find 50 blogs you'd like your music to be reviewed on. She suggests adding them to a blogroll on your blog, as well as reading / commenting on / interacting with them. Well. I got a bit bogged down and boggled looking around the internet at blogs, and realized it will take quite a while to find 50 that might be a good match for my quirky little band. So in the spirit of trying to keep my life in better balance (it's a struggle for me to have time to play music & get enough sleep let alone work and exercise!), I decided to begin with a modest blogroll, and expand it as time goes on.

I started the blog roll with a few music/marketing type blogs I already had on my Google Reader (such as the always great Derek Sivers' blog - and Ariel's blog of course :-)). Then I added a couple of blogs that reviewed our previous CD, 'green' - Collected Sounds and musicdyke. Beyond that, I added a variety of music blogs in a few different categories, from online music sources I've enjoyed (somafm, KEXP), to west coast-based blogs located in areas that I want my band to play or play again soon (Portland Mercury and KZSC Santa Cruz for example) as well as a few others that looked interesting. Please check out the list and feel free to suggest more!

Here are two other things I did that Ariel suggests in the chapter:

- Joined the Podsafe Music Network. This is apparently now called “music alley” from mevio, and I added our song Velveteen.

- Create a Flickr Photostream for the band. I had started a Picasa one a little while ago, but hadn't gotten very far... So, I went ahead and created a Flickr one that has a more pictures, and also joined a few groups there that Ariel suggested.

She also suggests using twitter, which we have already had started doing (Follow us!! :-) ).

Whew! This has all been great, but ok, I'm tired now. Better go play some music, as that is what this is all about in the first place! And - also work on our record release which is coming up very soon!!! Yay!!!

- Melissa

p.s. - My back has been feeling quite a bit better this week, thanks for asking. ;-)

A Greener Musician

One thing that I will be exploring is: how can I be a more eco-friendly musician? Examples of areas I will be researching and striving toward the greenest choices I can afford:

1. Travel - Renting an eco-friendly vehicle for out-of-town gigs and touring

2. Paper/Plastic - For our next recording, and future printed promo materials, use recycled and eco-friendly products

3. Instruments – Here's an even higher-level expense – it would be great to know that one's guitar or other instruments were made of wood (and other products) grown sustainability....

At this point I think this is enough to concentrate on – as we know from the last post (where I called myself EOG = Easily Overwhelmed Girl), I could go on as follows until I have overwhelmed myself into deciding it is all just too much (imagine the air around my head cluttered with thought balloons):

It would be best to be a “no-impact” band – let's see – using a solar generator for any electric instruments and other amplification, only playing local gigs, and getting there with bicycles pulling trailers...

... do all band promotion and communication online, to save paper, but then we have other whole categories of eco-trouble – the manufacture of computers, the power generated to use the computers – oh, right, we'll have those solar generators....

So! I will be concentrating on numbers 1 & 2 above for now! Of course, I wouldn't turn down a guitar that fit the #3 category!....