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Yesterday marked the start of Another Form of Relief’s second year. This crept up on me so quickly that I didn’t give the whole thing a great deal of thought until the day had already passed. Sometimes it feels like only a few weeks ago that I started all this, other times like I have been doing it for years. If you’ll allow me to ramble, I’m going to write for a little bit about this blog and how it has affected me over the past twelve months.

The idea to start this blog first came toward the end of January of last year. I’d gone through a not particularly fun break-up earlier in the month, and the structure of my job changed significantly, both of which left me with a fair bit of extra free time on my hands. It was also in the weeks leading up to this time that I’d first discovered music blogs, and I started tossing around the idea in my head. The first time I actually voiced my intent was in an email to a friend on January 23, when I wrote

I’m thinking about starting up at mp3 blog. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the appearence of these, but they seem to be popping up all over the place over the past few months. Not sure what I can add by doing one myself, but it’s something I’d like to try. Not really sure what’s involved logistically just yet (mostly the storage and legal issues), but there seem to be a large number and they aren’t going to jail, so I’m going to look into the idea.

It turns out that most if it was surprisingly simple to setup, and on February 26, Another Form of Relief launched with a rather low-key post on The Young Republic. Over the next few weeks, I tweaked the design a little, and made various changes in how I formatted the posts. “Buy it now” links quickly disappeared, the original design didn’t make it past the first six months and I found myself writing in increasing detail about the bands I featured. I’ve also been through the “to have ads or not have ads” debate more times than I care to remember, each time seeing them disappear and then reappear on the site.

I think I hit my stride a few months in, and by the summer I was updating pretty much daily. By this time I seemed to have attracted the attention of various promo companies and bands. I’d start getting songs regularly sent to me by email, both from promo companies and bands. The songs sent by bands themselves were invariably better than the promo company ones. Suddenly I was being offered free CDs, which led to me opening a PO Box out of paranoia of giving out my address to all these potentially scary bands. They arrived rarely at the start, but one year on, I have a mountain of CDs on my desk that I haven’t even listened to yet. Offers of guest list places for gigs began to arrive, although these were usually turned down on the grounds that London is kind of a bitch to drive to unless I’m already in love with your band.

I don’t know when I realised that blogging was hindering my ability to listen to music, but it’s become increasingly noticable in the last few months. The constant chase of the “next big thing” or even just a good new band to write about means I end up neglecting those that I already like. I can’t even tell you the last time that I listened to an album in it’s entirity, nor can I remember when I last spent more than 30 seconds judging a new song. Both of those things are certainly not a good thing for either music or me as a listener, but that’s the reality. I don’t have time to give everything new several listens when there is always a pile of stuff I haven’t heard even once yet. The result of this is that my music taste has ended up skewing toward the upbeat and catchy, or anything that has a hook to quickly grab me. The idea of the a song that grows on me is increasingly becoming a thing of the past.

That doesn’t mean I’m unhappy about what I do here though. I’ve never taken to a “project” as much as I have this one, even if some bad comes with it. On the most part, I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I’ve found and written about music that I never would have considered listening to in the past. I’ve met a bunch of great people, from other bloggers to musicians to just readers, and for that I am grateful. Then there are the “perks”. I won’t deny that I’ve made a little money through the ads I’ve run on this site, but that probably hasn’t been enough to cover even the hosting bills completely. The “swag” is also fun – there’s nothing quite like getting a handcrafted demo CD in my box. The thing that leaves me most smug is probably when I see my blog pop up in other places though. I was overjoyed when another blog first linked to me. It was a lot of fun when bands started including things I’d written on their websites. Every now and then the blog or something I’d posted would turn up in more mainstream places, like the Best Week Ever blog, The Toronto Star, or my personal favourite, The Guardian.

As I move into the second year of this blog, I’d like to think that I’ve hit my stride somewhat. There are some things I would like to improve though. I’m trying to write more regularly again, but a number of other factors keep getting in my way. This is why I’ve started writing posts in a format that let me include a bunch of things at once. It’s the only way I can even come close to keeping up with everything I want to tell you about. I want to try and do some more “interviews”, as the ones I did back in the summer were a lot of fun to do. It’s just a matter of choosing some bands and making that initial contact. There will also be more Another Form of Relief promoted shows (next one this thursday! – come down and say hi!) and a number of other fun things.

If you’ve made it through all of this, I commend you. I probably wouldn’t even have even bothered reading all this myself. I really just wanted a small history of this blog and some of my thought processes that go into it. There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t touched upon that I probably should have, but I guess I’ll save that for the two year celebration.

Many of you may have been aware of the problems being experienced by ezarchive, the host I have generally used to host non-label mp3s here on Another Form of Relief. This has come to a head in recent days as ezarchive have “upgraded” their system. This has resulted in a reduction of quality for mp3s posted on the blog, and has seen an introduction of bandwidth limits which any mp3 blog will burn through in a few days, thus rendering the account almost useless.

As such, I’m going to be moving my hosting to a proper provider. I’m already in the process of setting this up, but it does mean there’s going to be a disruption in service here at the blog for the few days. Granted this might not seem like a massive change given how haphazard I’ve been with my posting lately. Anyway, all official band and label mp3 links will still work, just nothing that was on the ezarchive account. Once the new hosting is up and running though, we can all look forward to mp3s that aren’t disappearing every other day or me not being able to add anything new for days on end thanks to some random problem.

For our finale today though, we have the pathetic begging part. It costs me a little to run this blog. Not a great deal, just a little each month which I don’t mind at all as I enjoy doing this so much. Everything is paid monthly which makes it pretty easy to stay on top of. Unfortunately, the new hosting doesn’t work like that. I need to purchase a whole year’s worth in one go. I can afford it at a push, but it is a rather hefty amount. So without sounding too lame, if you like what we do here, please throw us a few dollars via the Paypal button on the sidebar. I certainly won’t ask for anything further in this manner, and believe me, the end result will certainly be worth it.

Thanks for reading, and I’m sorry for all of the problems we’ve been experiencing of late.

Another Form of Relief presents..

IT HUGS BACK
4 OR 5 MAGICIANS
FAVOURS FOR SAILORS

Wednesday 6 December

Tunbridge Wells Forum

8pm / £5

More as we get closer..