In Year 6, I Fell Short I was finally unable to keep up the monthly schedule earlier this year. I could see it coming; issuing the Notes was taking longer and longer, with my August post not coming out until after Halloween. I had decided earlier in the summer that I am going to try to keep up a quarterly schedule after this year: December, March, June, and September. They are just taking too much time to write and are coming out too long. I was also getting sloppy: There was a perfectly good Wikipedia article on Haymarket Square, but I hadn’t even bothered to look there to see if there was one until I had already finished writing that post. Additionally, I was having trouble keeping up the enthusiasm; for instance, after writing about the songwriting angle on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I knew that I should follow up with posts on the Who and the Kinks. Maybe that will come at a later date. I am more than halfway through the post for December 2015, so it won’t be long before that one comes out. In any case, I got my “Martin Winfree’s Record Cleaning Guide” out there (a twin to “Martin Winfree’s Record Buying Guide” from a few years ago) that discussed how someone should go about restoring a record collection if it goes through something like Hurricane Katrina, as mine did. I had wanted to issue it on the 10th anniversary of Katrina, i.e., August 2015. So at this point in time, I think that I have written about all of the topics that I wanted to cover in these posts; and as far as I know, I have described all of the bands that have been in my unwritten list of Under Appreciated Rock Bands and Artists for more than a little while. That doesn’t mean that I have nothing more to say, or that there are no more UARB’s and UARA’s to talk about; but if I never got any further than this, I would be satisfied that I have created something of a legacy (if I may be so bold). My sister Alison Winfree Pickrell, who passed away around Labor Day, has published six novels, with at least two more already fully written that are yet to come out. I will never come close to matching that, but what I am leaving behind has been on my mind this year. Besides my usual commitments at work and at home, I am still busily sorting out my past UARB/UARA posts into my website on Google Sites, which can be found at: https://sites.google.com/site/underappreciatedrockbands/ . I am up to nearly 2,000 web pages now, and I am getting into the meat of the writing: I am now working on my “what might have been” post in June 2013 about “the day the music died” that includes info on various rock and roll pioneers. That was the first time that I exceeded the 65,536-character limit that Facebook has on their posts. That has happened several times since, including twice this year alone. I have made a couple of additions throughout the website in the past year: I now have introductory sections from Wikipedia (except naturally for the Under Appreciated pages) at the beginning of each web page. I also figured that I didn’t have quite enough colors yet, so I have marked place-names with violet (though I have not tried to set up any web pages on those). These are the UARB’s and UARA’s from the past year (2014-2015), and as usual, I am pleased with the variety: December 2014 – 2000’s American surf revival band THE SILENCERS January 2015 – 1970’s American garage-rock revival band THE CRAWDADDYS February 2015 – 2000’s-2010’s American singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist BRIAN OLIVE March 2015 – 1970’s-2010’s American singer/songwriter/guitarist PHIL GAMMAGE April 2015 – 1970’s Russian R&B band BLACK RUSSIAN May 2015 – 1960’s British R&B band MAL RYDER AND THE PRIMITIVES June 2015 – 1960’s American psychedelic band HAYMARKET SQUARE July 2015 – 1960’s American garage/psychedelic band THE HUMAN ZOO August 2015 – 1970’s American psychedelic/R&B band CRYSTAL MANSION I really don’t need to do the “Picture Gallery” anymore; beginning in December 2012, I have plenty of photographs in the posts. I am also not planning to keep up the “Flashback” segment on the UARB from two years earlier, laying out where YouTube clips can be found; they are easy enough to hunt down without my help. But I likely will keep putting out what I call the “Story of the Month” (I have my web pages broken down into short “Items” and longer “Stories” on whomever or whatever I am talking about) that I uncover as I load up the web site. These Stories are on well known (well, better known anyway) songs and albums and rock bands and other topics that are not of the Under Appreciated variety. I started those last year and meant to list the ones in my year-end post last time but forgot, so here is that list from the past two years: December 2013 – The Standells January 2014 – (skipped) February 2014 – Hasil Adkins March 2014 – Bobby Darin April 2014 – Nuggets May 2014 – The Nerves June 2014 – The Outsiders (American band) July 2014 – The Million Dollar Quartet August 2014 – Scientific Proof of the Existence of God October 2014 – Walter/Wendy Carlos November 2014 – The Trashmen December 2014 – John Birch Society Blues January 2015 – John Mellencamp February 2015 – Child Is Father to the Man March 2015 – Dion DiMucci July 2015 – “Lola” August 2015 – Bob Dylan the Protest Singer |
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Sixth Year Review
In Year 6, I Fell Short |