 |
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
All Comments To: eccx@mindspring
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
|
|
To My Loyal Fans Many of you who were at Ricker College may remember “The Lunch Menu”, which was a somewhat irreverent quasi-editorial column I wrote in Cambiar, which was the Ricker College newspaper. I also wrote the actual editorial, but “The Lunch Menu” usually got more of a response. Since I left Ricker and Houlton, ME (I’m pinpointing its location for non-Rickerites, which is most of the world’s population), the Internet, web or whatever you wish to call it, has become one of the primary means of communication (duh). And finally, as threatened several times, after a thirty-one year hiatus, “The Lunch Menu” is coming out of hibernation.
Many of you may wonder what I’ve been up to the last 30 or so year. Simply put, a lot. For the past 11 years I’ve been working in IT, primarily as a database developer, but also many other things. Dr. Shakir will probably be thrilled to know I can list the NY Times as one of the companies I do work for.
Now that the explanatory details are out of the way, it’s time to turn to the actual subject of this column, which is titled “My fans in the Czech Republic”. Most of you know I have been involved in music most of my life. After I left Ricker, I actually tried to make a go if it full time for about seven years, before coming to terms with reality. By 1982, my songwriting skills had evolved considerably, and most of the efforts I put into music were here. The years up to 1988 were prolific, but for some reason I stopped writing, and didn’t come out with anything new until February of this year, at which point I came back with a vengeance. Slightly earlier, in this past fall, I started recording new versions of my material using computer audio recording software. The sound quality is comparable to what was available only in professional (Read $) recording studios in the 70’s and 80’s. When I managed to get a rare five-day vacation in September I was recording one song a day. I decided to do something with it and started working towards getting enough together for a CD, and in December, I signed up as an artist on mp3.com, and let the world know I was there. The results have varied, but typically I get around 500 plays a month, and currently have over 3500 since I went online. This isn’t bad for someone who’s 53 years old and doesn’t have any tattoos, chains, or nose rings. It would be kind of impressive if all of these people were in the same place at the same time. As far as individual songs go, a Christmas song I wrote got into the top 3000 one day, which isn’t bad for a system that has over 2,500,000 songs. I’ve had one song that made it to number 26 in Traditional Country (and got some response and queries from music industry types), and another listed at number 31 for General Jazz. You may wonder why I don’t have anything significant in Rock. Well, that’s part of my problem. As Mr. Frost once said, I’m on the road not taken. I have one really schizophrenic trait which is having some songs in Jazz, and others in Country, as well as the more conventional material. This spring, if you went to mp3.com home page, you wouldn’t see Jazz or Blues listed as main genres. In order to find them you had to go to the “More Genres” page first. But this was only in the states. On the European and Asian portal sites these were on the home page. As part of its “Platinum Artist” membership, mp3.com includes a statistics page, which lists play by region for a seven day period, typically an entire country. In April I began to notice some discrepancies in the number of plays shown in the premium stats compared to those in the standard stats, which show daily figures for plays by song. According to the premium stats, I was receiving close to twice as many plays compared to the standard stats. Where were these plays? According to the stats they appeared to be in Europe. Where in Europe? The answer was the Czech Republic and Hungary. I have no explanation for this. My employer is affiliated with eurosystemsdevelopment.com ( www.eurosystemsdevelopment.com <http://www.eurosystemsdevelopment.com> ), a web application development company in the Bucharest area of Romania. I knew any of the hits I was showing from Romania were from people there, and that some of them would occasionally travel to Hungary for special events, such as the Budapest equivalent of the Octoberfest, but this didn’t explain everything. Meanwhile, back in June, mp3.com’s parent company, the Vivendi Universal, announced it would be closing the European Portals, and was looking for a buyer for mp3.com. This was in spite of all of the income generated by what has to be the most obnoxious pop-up adds on the web, including some classics for “The Hulk”, Mentos, “Blue Crush”, and the US Army. They wouldn’t be so bad, but they also include audio, at least for those detected with broadband access. In late July, which actually was towards the end of the shut down date listed for the European portals, I noticed a large flurry of activity from Hungary. July had been one of my best months, with a version of “Georgia On My Mind” doing fairly well in the Jazz Standards charts. Finally when August came, I noticed a large drop in plays. I guess everyone in Eastern Europe didn’t have ready access.
This morning I checked the stats for this site ( www.rockandrollmind.com <http://www.rockandrollmind.com> ), and I found a huge increase in access, primarily due to the Ricker Reunion pictures. But yes, there were other sources. The greatest number of hits after those from domestic origins (meaning major domain categories such as com and the US government) were from Hungary. Obviously, something has to be done, and I’m going to look for a European music site to fill these needs.
Going back to the mid-80’s when I first went online, I’ve found the Internet to be a great equalizer, but I didn’t seen to realize how much until I saw the number of hits from Eastern Europe. The idea of getting together the thousands of people listening to my music is mind boggling itself, but the diversity of their origins is even more so. I’m glad I went online with my material. It’s one thing to know you have a gift, but the validation of this from others is even more so.
Finally, Remember the line from Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock”, “I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes, riding shotgun in the sky, turning into butterflies, above the nation”? Last weekend the Phish had their annual weekend concert and rock festival on the site of Loring AFB, making the lyric a reality. It was a significant enough event to warrant a feature article in the “NY Times” detailing the technology and logistics involved. Among other things, the 70,000 plus in attendance constituted the largest city in Maine for the weekend, and lo and behold, the people of Aroostook County welcomed them with open arms and attitudes, which is a far cry from the fall of 1968. Times are a changin’.
Best regards,
E. Clifford Colton
|
|
[Home] [Krime Duzn't Pay] [Guestbook] [The Faces Of PETA] [Pix] [Misc News] [Here And There] [The Lunch Menu] [Lunch Menu Archives] [Sounds] |