Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to False 45th!

I started this thing a year ago today. Looking back on my first post, I haven't deviated too much from what I said I wanted to write about. That's actually kind of surprising since I didn't really know what I was doing when I started this blog.

I had been sharing music via gmail with a friend in LA that is very computer/internet savvy when he suggested I start a blog. Seemed like a decent idea so I tried it.

The biggest surprise I've had about writing this blog is how many people I've met as a result of it. I never thought writing a blog would lead me to making so many new friends. I could probably point to a dozen people I've met over the last year that I would not have known if it hadn't been for this blog. It's been great.

As someone said, "Blogging makes the world feel really big and really small at the same time." I agree with that line since I'm constantly amazed by the number of bands and topics I find to write about which make the world feel infinite. However, meeting all of these people through blogging has made it feel incredibly small as well.

A few factoids about the first year:

1. The first musician I wrote about was Sufjan Stevens. That was followed by Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, Radiohead, Sambassadeur, Art Brut, The Go! Team and The Cloud Room (in that order). Pretty good list. I'm happy with that start.
2. The first comment I received was from some guy who wanted to punch me in the throat for introducing him to The Cloud Room.
3. The post that got the most comments was my review of Justin Levinson's album. Oh, that was a fun week.
4. The post that has received the most hits was my post on Ronaldinho's Nike commercial where he hits the crossbar a number of times while juggling the ball. I accidentally left the "h" in his name out of his name in the title of the post. Since then, I've gotten every bad speller soccer fan in the world coming to my site to watch that clip. I probably get about 10 hits every single day just from people googling "Ronaldino".
5. I didn't start Site Meter right away on my site but it was sometime towards the end of the first month. Site Meter misses a lot of visitors but during that time, it logged 29,049 visitors and 44,667 page views. 19,049 of those visitors have been since late January. So, readership has ramped up a lot over the last five months.
6. I've written 413 posts. Considering I've gone weeks at a time without posting, I'm happy to be averaging over a post a day. At roughly 350 words per post, that's 144,550 words. Geez, how long is a friggin' novel?

Thanks to everyone who has read this blog over the last year. Your comments and interaction make the entire experience worthwhile.

Jens Lekman | Happy Birthday Lisa (Live)
Rose Melberg | Happy Birthday to Me