john-rzeznik.com

I never get shit done unless I make a list, and even then, there’s no guarantee. But here’s a list of stuff that I definitely want to address over the course of the next couple months.

1. Weekly GGD Newsletter - This is high priority for me. It’s an idea I started tossing around when someone told me that all the SSCW demos were available from WOG, and then someone else told me there was another board with a lot of song-trading, and I was just like, “How is anyone ever supposed to find out about these things?” When I saw that AG announced their Friday Rewind feature, I thought they were going to implement what I had in mind, but it’s not really the same thing at all. What I want is a one-stop place at a permanent address where people can check in once a week and catch up on everything in fandom that they’ve missed. It would have categories like “Next week’s TV appearances,” “Upcoming presales,” “New articles,” “Interesting discussions,” “New downloads,” shit like that. I think that as this fandom has become increasingly message-board oriented, it’s also become way more fragmented. Back when I first became a fan, everything was done by mailing list. Some days, I’d get 100 new emails, and that kinda sucked, but at least I knew that every single thing that had gone on that day was at my fingertips. You don’t really have that anymore. Some stuff is only posted on the IM, which means that if you don’t pay up, you’re left out. Some stuff is only on AG, and if you don’t know to check there, you’re left out. Some stuff is only posted on smaller boards that you might not even know exist, and again, you don’t know, you’re left out. And god forbid you go on vacation and miss an announcement that’s 12 pages back by the time you’re on your computer again. Screw that, man. Information wants to be free, fandom wants to be inclusive, and I really, really hate cliques. So then I think we really have room in this fandom for a resource that rounds up everything into one tidy weekly package and says, “This week, Miyoko posted twice at the GC myspace, 3 rare videos were posted to youtube via WOG, and there’s a really thoughtful and interesting conversation going on at AFG about how the price of gas influences CD prices. Plus, John’s on the cover of Rolling Stone, and Mike is running for president.” Obviously, that shit is all made up, but that’s kind of the idea, except with a different structure that I don’t feel like getting into right now. I would absolutely host this on an offshoot of my domain (thisweek.john-rzeznik.com or something), but it would be very reliant on volunteers to say, “Hey, this is what happened last week that I found interesting or important,” and depending on the response it gets, maybe a whole crew of people besides myself could be involved in actually updating the site. I don’t have the details worked out yet, but I just wanted to put the idea out there and see if there was any interest. It just makes me sad when someone says something like, “I know Robby posts on myspace, but I don’t have one, and I don’t know how to get the posts.” That shit has permalinks, dude. No fan left behind.
2. Album by Album Analysis - Over at IM, there are couple threads about favorite and least favorite songs. So I thought maybe I’d work up a list, but it all started getting very complicated. Like, maybe I consider this song a favorite because it’s so much better than anything else on the album, like it stands out in that context, but does it really measure up to the other things I have on this list? Or conversely, do I only dislike this song because it doesn’t jibe with the rest of the album? So what I really want to do, I guess, is talk about every single GGD song, album by album. This is actually something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but I never really thought I had an audience. But I feel like, now that I have this site, I finally have a place to discuss all the random GGD shit my friends are sick of hearing about.
3. Absolute Goodol - Goodol is coming back! AG runs a contest where fans cover GGD songs. I enter with the hopes of doing just well enough not to completely embarrass myself. I’m leaning towards “Lazy Eye” this year.
4. Fucking Up Takes Practice - I may have mentioned before that I’m a complete fucking geek. I like numbers and math and graphs and charts and all that. I also like when John fucks up a song. This year, I want to keep track of the setlists of every major show the band plays, and I want to keep track of how many times he gets it right vs. how many times he gets it wrong. I think it would also be cool to have a place that just lists the setlists of every single show the band plays. There’s a Matt Nathanson fansite that keeps track of some song statistics, and I think that’s neat. Basically, I am looking around at other fandoms and seeing why they are more awesome than ours, and then I just want to steal everything and make ours better.
5. Coding Shit - I need to fix these stupid fucking style sheets already. Back when I learned HTML, CSS didn’t really exist, so I never really learned how to manipulate it, but I just need to figure out a way to make shit not look so awful around here. Everything looked great when I started out in IE, but I use Firefox now, and looking at my own site design is so depressing, because it never does what I want it to!
6. Podcast? - Months and months ago, I was joking around with Gretchen and saying that we should do a podcast. I don’t know what it would entail, I don’t know what I would talk about, I don’t know who would even want to listen, but the idea still amuses me too much, so I’m not ready to write it off completely.
7. New Music Day-that-ends-in-Y - GGD talk a lot about other bands they like, and that often convinces me to go out and listen to them. Sometimes, I like what I hear, and sometimes, I’m more ambivalent, but I sure do love talking about music, and maybe some of y’all would like to hear another opinion before deciding to go ahead and buy that Weakerthans CD (OMG GO AHEAD AND BUY THAT WEAKERTHANS CD, THEY ARE TOO FUCKING AMAZING FOR WORDS).

That’s about all that comes to mind right now. Basically, I need to get more content up here that isn’t just NMT, and I would like it to be content that generates discussion. Because that’s the fun part, talking about this band that we all love so much. That’s why I started this site in the first place. If you have any more ideas for features you would like to see on this site, or if you can think of something really great about another fandom that ours desperately needs, let’s talk it out.