Weekend of local rock volume 43
For the seventeenth time, Skip Dixon held his annual Christmastime tradition last weekend.
Okay, so it was only nine bands who show for the annual 12 Bands of Christmas event. Still, The Pour House in Ocean City was the place to be for local rock, as those nine local bands wailed through the night. And unlike previous events, there was a nifty prize to be had:
The reason the autographed Paul Reed Smith guitar was being raffled off (at $25 per chance) was to raise funds for Melanie Davis, a 9 year old Pittsville Elementary student who was hit by a car in October, with the family racking up over $150,000 in medical bills so far with her care. They also had a 50-50 drawing and passed the hat, collecting a few hundred dollars more. It’s amazing how many shows I go to which are like that – the local music community is always happy to lend a hand.
Before the hat was passed, though, we heard the Phantom Limbs and it was good.
As always, they entertained with their mashup of punk, surf, and jam music – so much so that they only played four lengthy originals in their set.
But the crowd was gathering while the Phantom Limbs jammed to see the next band play.
These guys had to play early or else the bar would be in trouble – none of them are over 18 yet. But The Hooplas showed talent some bands with much more seasoned players couldn’t match, and it will be interesting to see what happens as they mature in the local music scene. All I know is that these youngsters packed them in, apologizing for not knowing all that many cover songs. Fellas, I don’t mind a bit – keep doing those originals!
…was next. As opposed to The Hooplas, they did all cover songs but picked out a heavy set which included a reasonable version of ‘Master of Puppets’ that got me screaming out the lyrics. “Taste me you will see…more is all you need.”
Apparently this singer doesn’t always sing for them, and I can’t recall who he normally sings for. (I want to say Lime Green?) But Slackjaw played a couple songs as a three-piece, too.
Livin’ the Dream also played part of their classic hard rock set as a three-piece. They put the host to work back on the drum kit, as you can see here and in the next photo.
But midway through the set they picked up the second guitarist to play some Van Halen and other classics. Yes, there was a KISS song too – ‘Detroit Rock City.’
We reached the midway point with another hard rock cover band, Dust ‘n Bones.
While they played a solid, workmanlike set I wonder why they don’t play their namesake Guns ‘n Roses song. Maybe next time I see them.
One has a bad leg, another has a surgically-repaired wrist, and they’ve gone through more drummers than Spinal Tap lately. Yet Semiblind keeps on playing as they remain a staple of Skip’s events.
But Jim Hogsett’s wrist held out and Michele Hogsett managed to stand through the whole half-dozen songs they played, gamely going through several of their newer cover songs. Semiblind doesn’t just play standard classic rock anymore, as they can toss out some country, funk, or Top 40 too. They are perhaps the most versatile band playing about these parts.
We took a short break to draw the 50-50 winner and hear a little bit from this friend of Skip’s.
Tim “Thunder Walrus” Yarosh is a comedian of some repute, although I wasn’t familiar with him. But perhaps I should check him out further since he was kind of a funny guy. (That or he may threaten to stay at my house.) I won’t dislike him simply because he didn’t draw my 50-50 ticket. Nor will I blame him for messing up the sound, as I’ll explain a bit later.
After the brief bit from Yarosh, we got back to music. A band which apparently hadn’t been playing around here of late was Abby’s Cage.
Just by a close listen I thought maybe they weren’t quite as tight as a couple of the other bands, but that would come back as they return to the fray. And Abby’s Cage liked the hard stuff, too.
Yet most of those who stayed waited to hear We Might Collide, a band making their debut at this show. The six-man band could be construed as a local supergroup of sorts as it includes three former members of the popular local band Lennex and two others from the late Baltimore-based band Fourth Element. Both of these late, lamented groups were talented enough to write a number of good, original songs – some of which I own on CD.
And they played all new material, too. So when I figured out that these guys shouldn’t have been that rusty, I had to concede that the last bands in this 9-band show suffered from a lack of sound quality – the mix didn’t seem right to me. Perhaps it sounded great in the stage monitors that the bands hear themselves from, but on my end it seemed too muddled together. So I’d rather not judge either Abby’s Cage or We Might Collide based on this show.
The sound was really off by the time Witches Brew, the final band of the night, took the stage. I couldn’t even hear the drums on the first song and the overall sound detracted from should have been a better effort to close the night.
I know Witches Brew can play their Judas Priest covers better than they sounded, because I’ve seen them enough – they’re also reliable veterans of Skip’s shows. But I have to chastise the fans as well.
Sure, they probably came out to see We Might Collide. But it always annoys me that so few stay around to see the last band, which gets to play to a half-empty bar but works just as hard as the other bands do. To me, it’s just common courtesy to stick around. Maybe that’s just me, and of course I wasn’t looking to get smashed or pick up someone. I just wanted to hear some good tunes and support local music. It’s what I do.
So the next time Skip has one of these shows – probably Spring Luau 2012 – come out and stay for all the bands. You won’t be sorry.
Best local blog: the return
This will be the third year that I provide the opportunity to secure bragging rights as the best local blog around, as determined by my readers. For the last two years, the music-based blog afterthegoldrush has come away victorious thanks to Ridgely Griffith’s loyal following, and he’ll get the chance to defend his title this time around as well.
But things will be a little different this year. Last year I had 24 contenders, but it seems that a number of them have fallen by the wayside over the last 12 months. There are 13 which didn’t return because they stopped posting on a regular basis, and I probably could have eliminated another few which are getting updated rather infrequently – but then I would have been back down to a dozen as I was two years ago. Still, I cobbled together a list of 18 contenders – but if you want to nominate another that’s not on the list feel free to comment and I’ll check it out. But there are some guidelines: the blog must be updated regularly (ideally at least once a week), it must be locally based (essentially within the lower Delmarva area), and it can’t be a personality-based website. Those I have so far are all sites I link to, so there are likely others I’m unaware of.
Given those parameters, here are the 18 which will be contending. An asterisk (*) means they are new this year.
- afterthegoldrush
- Atomic Donkey Brewing*
- Chesapeake Journal*
- Crisfield News
- Delmar DustPan
- Delmarva Observer (formerly Delmarva Dealings)
- Delmarva Progressive*
- Delmarva Shorebirds Blog
- Lower Eastern Shore News (formerly The Salisbury Grinch)
- Random Thoughts of a Citymouse
- Reflections on Delmarva’s Past*
- Right Coast Conservative (formerly Right Coast Girl or just Right Coast)
- Salisbury News
- Salisbury Soapbox
- Sussex County Angel*
- The Other Salisbury News*
- The Pocomoke Public Eye
- Twirling, Twirling, Twirling Towards Freedom
If others are included, I’ll work these into the schedule somehow in order to maintain groupings of three, with wildcards added as necessary.
The first poll will be Monday, so blog owners need to let their supporters know this holiday tradition is back!
monoblogue turns six
Another year, another dollar. Actually, $95.40 to be exact because that’s my server fee for the year.
As I embark on another year of monoblogue and celebrate the achievements of the last, I’m reminded of something I wrote five years ago this very day:
On my previous blog site, my best week readership-wise was 197 readers (according to my Site Meter) but generally I would get between 30 and 50 readers a week. I was hoping for 100-200 a week from monoblogue…
Sheesh, did I have low goals or what? Since that point, I have had over 250,000 readers – and that’s the ones my Site Meter and other tracking systems caught. If you add in the places where I’ve had my works reprinted and republished I daresay I’m well into seven figures. Judging by the decline of my Alexa numbers (lower is good, and I reached my all-time low today of 333,458 for world rank and sit at a near-record 57,457 for U.S. rank) I figure someone has to be reading this space.
Getting an audience isn’t that difficult, though – the trick is keeping them. Once I had over 5,000 readers in a day (my Rushalanche) but most of them have drifted away. Not for lack of trying to keep them, though.
I normally don’t share a lot of readership information (although my Site Meter has been open for most of the time I’ve had it) but when I checked the other night my analytics showed that just under 56% of my readers were “new” while the other 44% or so were “returning” visitors. Presumably, if I had 1,000 visitors in a given time period, 440 of them had visited previously.
However, I also checked the trailing three months and found the percentage of return visitors had increased from 42% to 44% – not huge, but encouraging. Obviously I don’t want 100% return visitors because that would mean my audience had reached a saturation point but I think something in the 50-60 percent range would be healthy. So that’s my first goal for the next year. I don’t doubt readership will jump – I have a mostly political site and it’s an election year – but I want them to be a base for even bigger things in the years to come. So they have to be regular readers and a foundation to build around.
The second goal for 2012 is to fill out my advertiser base.
Unlike some other sites, I really don’t want ads to line both sidebars all the way down the page because, frankly, it looks terrible for the site layout and it’s not fair to the advertisers at the bottom who may never be seen if I write a truncated post. But I would like to first of all maintain my loyal advertisers – thanks goes to John Robinson and the Robinson Family of Businesses, Marty Pusey at The Perfect Dress, and Muir Boda of Sby4Rent.Com – and add three to seven more. I think 6 to 10 advertisers is a reachable goal, and given the fact my readership extends well beyond the local area it may be a good opportunity for national or regional clients. I don’t charge a ton for space, and perhaps it means I don’t monetize this site like I should, selling myself short. But I’d rather have plenty of business charging a little than no business charging a lot.
Oh, by the way, I’m also an Amazon.com affiliate so if you have Christmas shopping to do, by all means do it through monoblogue.
My third goal is going to be the most difficult to achieve. You see, for most of the last three years I wasn’t working outside the home, although that was certainly not by design or choice. When the local building industry went away, so did that fulltime job. And though I have accomplished a small amount of success as a freelance writer for various outlets, it’s not an easy market to break through in because millions of other people around the world fancy themselves as pundits, too.
So now I have a good job but it’s one which frequently necessitates I work for most of my day outside the home, therefore it’s not as easy for me to create plentiful content. Still, in looking at my monthly posting numbers I’ve found that I’ve put up nearly 500 posts over the last year so I get at least one in per day. Surprisingly, I’ve never cracked 60 posts a month or 600 in a calendar year so my pace isn’t that bad right now, and more importantly it’s manageable with my schedule. Granted, there will be times I’m a little behind on the news but my bread and butter is commentary anyway so if you can put up with 450 to 500 posts a year we’ll be just fine. That may violate the idea some bloggers have of writing no fewer than 2,500 words per day but I’d rather write 600 good words than 2,500 words of fluff. (Some take the easy way out and copy and paste to get to a certain number of words or posts, but I don’t – hence the phrase up top “mostly original content.”)
My last goal, though, is probably the most important for my goals in the long run. You see, everything I have built here comes because I have taken the high road, stuck to the facts and reasoned opinions, and stayed away from making this a personality-based site. Unfortunately, from time to time I get caught up in the various personality battles which occur in this small town, no matter how much I try to stay away. I am getting better at this, though, and perhaps it’s a sign of maturity on the part of all the local blogging participants that the “blog wars” are more or less behind us. By no means do all the local website owners like each other, and as a group we ain’t going to be singing “Kumbaya” by the campfire anytime soon, but the differences of opinion seem to be a little more civil.
Admittedly, I don’t think I’m ever going to be everyone’s cup of tea – certainly some readers probably can’t figure out why I do Shorebird of the Week or Weekend of local rock on a political site, but that’s what keeps me from getting burned out.
And Lord knows I don’t often pull my punches when I write, but I don’t lose sleep over my content and that’s what’s important. For a website, respect is the toughest thing to build and the easiest thing to lose.
With that, I start anew on another year of this website. As always, I’m hoping to make it a better year than the last one and there’s a lot of writing I want to get to before the next year closes on monoblogue, including wrapping up a manuscript I’ve been working with off and on over the last three years. It may be ready by year’s end, so if you know something about publishing I’m all ears.
In closing, I want to give thanks to my readers and my supporters. I’m not always on the winning side of the fights I pick and choose, but (as it were) I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees. There’s plenty of fight left in me and battles everywhere I turn, so there’s no use waiting on me to give up this ship or not having fun in the process.
Happy Thanksgiving 2011
As always I’d like to take a little time on this holiday which values family and the things we hold dear to wish you and yours a blessed Thanksgiving.
In my case it will be spent with both friends and family, although technically I haven’t married into my significant other’s family. I don’t suspect that will be the case for all that many more years, and it will give me something more to be thankful for when the day arrives.
For those who travel, it looks like the weather in these parts will be conducive for doing so. I have about two hours of driving between the two stops I’m scheduled for, but luckily these are both pretty much off the beaten path so traffic shouldn’t be an issue.
So I hope all of you who take the time – whether daily, weekly, or even a first-timer – to read my site have a great holiday. Even though times have been somewhat rough over the last couple years, I’m thankful for what I have and look forward to spending time with people I hold dear (while watching my Lions taking on the Packers and hanging that first L on their record.)
After today, we’ll be into the hustle and bustle of trying to find the right Christmas gift and making New Year’s plans, so it’ll be six weeks of overdrive for our schedule and overindulgence for our bodies. So take the time today and relax. Work will be back before you know it – heck, I have to work Friday.
Happy Thanksgiving, all.
Preview
Just some items I’m planning on, for your reading pleasure. Aside from a simple Thanksgiving greeting I’m taking tomorrow off.
I’m finishing up the 2011 version of the monoblogue Accountability Project. All the vote tallying is done, so all I need to do is the little writeup as to why I would vote for or against a certain bill. I’m shooting for Monday to release this.
Later in December, baseball fans who are warming themselves discussing the Hot Stove League will get to enjoy the newest induction, honoring players now eligible for the Shorebird of the Week Hall of Fame. I have a lot of new members this year!
If all goes well I’ll have a couple new Weekend of local rock posts and perhaps bring back Friday Night Videos.
And of course I will have plenty of political news to comment on. Remember, the Iowa caucuses are now less than six weeks away.
I’ve noticed readership is back on the upswing, so it’s up to me to keep you coming back as I close in on monoblogue’s sixth anniversary. Hopefully you’ll agree there’s a lot to look forward to, even in a slow news time of year.
Checking in
Well, day one of the Maryland Republican Party convention is just about in the books. On the bylaw amendment front, it looks like there’s a decent chance change is a-comin’.
In case you were wondering (and I’ll have much more on this tomorrow or Sunday, depending on the time this wraps up) there were suites for both Herman Cain and Mitt Romney here, while Ron Paul has a table as well. Both Dan Bongino and Rich Douglas had spaces, although Bongino had a ballroom.
So I’m giving you this quick update at the end of a whirlwind day and week for me. I already have plenty to write about, including my Red Maryland Radio debut. (That’s called a tease.)
Back with more tomorrow…
An open letter to the Maryland GOP
Just in case the recipient doesn’t get their e-mail, I’m reprinting it here. Those interested should also make their local Central Committee members aware that you have a vested interest in the adoption of this proposal.
To my fellow Central Committee members:
On Saturday, you will be asked to consider a change to our bylaws. Obviously our last get-together was full of acrimony and angst over a proposed revamping of the document and voting system just a few years after we had done this exercise to modernize and streamline it. So you may have received this news and said, “oh no, not again.”
Well, this time it’s different. Rather than cosmetic changes or creating committees out of whole cloth, the proposal co-authored by Heather Olsen and I has two very simple purposes: one, to strengthen the neutrality section of the bylaws by placing it in its own article; and two, to prevent the Rule 11 fiasco of 2010 from being repeated.
It’s our belief that the party should not be putting its finger on the scale in a contested primary situation. The paragraph on neutrality (5.4) already in the bylaws didn’t seem very strong as it was buried among other items, so this proposal moves it to lead the new Article 7. That’s probably not very controversial.
The more contentious aspect of our proposal is where we require our representatives to the national Republican Party to get permission from the state’s Central Committee before asking for a waiver of Rule 11, as they asked the national party in 2010 for Bob Ehrlich and Andy Harris. Both were in contested primaries at the time. The timing of the deal is what rankled me and inspired the creation of this proposal, since there was ample opportunity to bring this piece of business before the 2010 Spring Convention in Ocean City; however, the Chair at that time chose not to. Doing business behind closed doors is what we associate with the other party!
We originally made this proposal before the Spring 2011 convention in Ocean City, but the unfortunate aspect of a strict time limit meant a lot of business – including this particular bylaw change and many others proposed – went unfinished. However, this is the only bylaw change I’m aware of going before this convention.
In the meantime, Heather and I discussed the proposal more based on feedback we both received. In addition to integrating the neutrality aspect in general, we also decided to lower the threshold for waiving this prohibition from a 3 / 4 to a 2 / 3 majority and added the option of having the counties vote on it separately when the situation dictates, at the discretion of the Chair.
There has been more recent feedback concerning the voting method in the proposal, which was written as a “one man, one vote” balloting. This was my idea, and the reason I decided to do it this way was to balance the two situations: if a vote is taken in a non-convention setting, I reckoned it would be tallied as one man, one vote so I thought the two scenarios should be equal. But I’m willing to allow a change to the standard weighted convention voting (if a vote is held there) if it helps to pass the measure through.
I believe the time has come to end the politics of the proverbial smoke-filled room and allow the candidates the most level playing field possible to get their message out to the voters. The Maryland Republican Party must have a extremely good reason to take a stance during the primary season, and perceived electability is not good enough.
It’s time to take a stand for good government, and not politics as usual.
Michael Swartz
Secretary
Wicomico County Republican Central Committee
Much ado about little
Our Special Session ended yesterday, and all of the bluster was, well, just talk.
In sum, there were three bills passed. Of course, the new Congressional gerrymandering was just one of the three, with the other two being changes to board of education districts in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.
And as I predicted without knowing the results until today, the local Democrats don’t mind gerrymandering as long as it’s not applied to them. The trio of Rudy Cane, Norm “Five Dollar” Conway, and Jim Mathias all dutifully supported the governor’s plan. On the other hand, while the Republicans were united against the bill I salute Delegate McDermott (and 11 others) for even voting against the suspension of the rules to allow two readings in one day – heel dragging as necessary.
So we had three days of peace and love or however the old song goes, but no huge jobs bill or tax increases yet. We had quite the buildup on this session, didn’t we? But in the end there wasn’t much to it.
What this also means is that I can complete my monoblogue Accountability Project for 2011 and simply add the redistricting vote into the mix. In theory I could add some of the floor amendments but those votes were by and large reasonably the same. Look for that in the coming weeks.
And since an opportunity has presented itself for a couple days off, I’m going to take advantage. It’s not often that I spend time away from my site, but this weekend will be one such time. I may moderate comments but don’t count on it.
Come Monday it will be back into the fray. Now that the Special Session has reached sine die, we can expect a few political moves from would-be Congressional candidates I’m sure. As predicted, Rob Garagiola wasted no time getting into the Sixth District race now that he has a friendlier voter composition. Don’t you love ambition?
The 99 percent solution
You know, I haven’t been following this whole “Occupy Wall Street” protest all that closely because, to be perfectly honest, I work for a living (unlike them.)
It must be nice to be able to go protest all day without a visible means of support, since one has to assume that for them to hang out at Wall Street for days on end they must not have jobs, unless they’re selling their bodies or some such act. Judging by what many say they must be getting a government check of some sort, probably unemployment benefits.
On the other hand, I have two jobs outside the home and writing clients I do work for inside the home, plus I run this website, volunteer in my community, and try to spend a little quality time with someone special when I can. Now, would that make me a member of the REAL 99 percent?
Perhaps those playing anarchist in various cities around the country don’t understand that demands like a “free” education or forgiveness of debt would make Atlas shrug in a heartbeat. I was reading their idea of a “fair” salary for everyone and saw that many millions of Americans would take a tremendous pay cut. Do you REALLY think union employees would agree to that? And why would you start a business in order to take a $10,000 salary when you have to pay your hired laborers twice that much?
I guess the first thing not being taught in schools is basic economics, because it’s obvious whoever came up with this redistribution scheme has flunked the course. Nor do they understand human nature.
Remarks on an elected Wicomico County Board of Education
ICYMI – these were the remarks I delivered at tonight’s County Council meeting regarding the prospect of an elected Wicomico County Board of Education. You might catch this on PAC-14 over the next week or so, but trust me: it’s best delivered here.
To the members of County Council and those assembled here for this meeting, good evening.
I’m speaking to you on a subject that, had the original plan been taken to completion, would be on its way to a decision by the voters of Wicomico County. But a funny thing happened on the way to that forum – there was some double dealing perpetrated in Annapolis by opponents of a common-sense proposal to allow we, the citizens of Wicomico County, to decide whether to adopt an elected school board or not.
Instead, they gummed up the works by insisting other questions such as whether we wanted to maintain an appointed school board be included. As it was, the answer would have been obvious – if voters wanted an appointed school board they would simply vote “no” to the question presented. To me, this was simply an attempt at obfuscation dreamed up by opponents who want to maintain the status quo for political purposes. It’s those opponents who I came up here to address this evening.
Are you being served?
After this post, my readers will either think I’m crazy or revel in my genius. I guess that’s all up to you.
I was having a conversation with a friend the other day when the subject turned to some local news topics. My friend was very adamant that certain points of view weren’t getting out and the conversation turned in a direction I’ll share in a little bit.
But first, let me preface this with a little history lesson. How about winding the clock back to around 1980? Ah yes, the Reagan vs. Carter “are you better off than you were four years ago?” election. I can paraphrase that and ask the question “Are you more informed about local news than you were thirty years ago?”
You see, I don’t know what the situation on the ground was here on Delmarva – apparently WMDT-TV was still in its infancy but WBOC-TV and the Daily Times were already here. It’s similar to what I grew up with in rural northwest Ohio – three local television stations with news at noon, 6, and 11, the one Toledo daily newspaper, and a weekly paper in the closest town. In other words, local news wasn’t that easy to come by because there was only a few minutes devoted to it on television and the newspapers gave it to you a day (or even a week for hyperlocal news) later.
Obviously the game has changed in the three decades since. Another phenomenon just barely started in 1980 was the 24/7 news cycle brought on by cable news networks. Add to that the advent of the internet as a news source – but not just a static source like print, because we can feature audio, video, or both. We even have some real-time aspects and most likely the advances in technology will soon make on-the-spot live video reporting possible for even technophobes like us. (For all I know, maybe that’s available. I just write this stuff and place the jump in an appropriate place.)
New advertiser
If you’ll notice in the right-hand sidebar, there’s a new advertiser here at monoblogue.
But it’s much more than an ad. I was asked by the publisher of Salisbury4Rent to contribute content, and the first issue is my print magazine debut. Each quarter you’ll be able to read an editorial piece I’ll write on “anything from politics to sports to music to whatever else strikes me as the publishing deadline approaches.” I share billing in this issue with Salisbury City Council member Laura Mitchell (the subject of the magazine’s first interview) and national political observer Lew Rockwell.
While the magazine is advertiser-supported (thus, free for the taking at a number of local distribution points) its success depends on patronizing these advertisers and spreading the word. It’s not a coffee-table glossy full of fluff pieces about the advertisers like Metropolitan, but reading one can sink their teeth into. Once you get your hands on the issue, you’ll wish it came out more than once a quarter.
Running a magazine is a tough business, but Salisbury4Rent has some solid backers and well-written commentary. I encourage you to give it a try. As a special treat for those outside Salisbury, I’ll link to my article once the content portion of the magazine goes online in the next few days.
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Please note that the opinions expressed on monoblogue are not necessarily those of the Wicomico County Republican Party Central Committee, of which I'm a member. (But they probably should be.)
