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Thursday, November 17, 2005

Butterfly is dead, long live e-Butterfly

Butterfly Crush, one of our favourite fanzines, will no longer be produced in paper form due to a lack of any increase in the number of their subscribers.

Always a bit of a shame when paper zines bite the dust but the economic reality of it is significant. Web zines cost only time. Trifling things like photocopying and stamps not required, of course.

As such I direct you now to read it online at www.livejournal.com/users/crushzine. It shouldn't disappoint you, particularly if you have a love of underground indie-pop and the like.

Of course, there may well come a time when VP ceases to exist outside of the world wide web, indeed the number of copies produced has come down out of necessity and practicality and instead of dropping them in record shops and gigs, I am trying to build a subscriber base, and there have a been a few respondents already. I am not delusional or greedy, just a handful of regular readers is enough to keep me going, and so thanks to those who have sent stamps for the next however many issues.

Also record label people should know that to save my stamp costs, I will only be distributing paper copies to the 'industry' mailing list every three issues. Most seem fine with the e-mailing web updates thing though and if you want to keep up to date with additions to the website, get an RSS feed going from this blog to automatically see updates.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Seeing double Cardiacs

After my yearly pilgrimige to London for Cardiacs annual November London shindig, I usually supply some thoughts on the whole affair but, it seems, two of Vanity Project's other esteemed writers have beaten me to it. So I'll just keep my giddy buzz within this year.

Firstly Grebo reviews their show at the Wedgewood Rooms on his VP Live Review annex. You can also read Grebo in The Portsmouth News and the esteemed Organ. Southerly Turbonegro fans should also direct themselves his way!!

Then Leon Michael Tricker provides an experiential overview of both that Pompey show and the London thing. God I wish I'd been at the Portsmouth one too - my favourite band (he's right about that) in my favourite venue (205 visits, with Southampton's Joiners next best with 38).

Mind you I did see them there in '99, but I am a greedy soul for sure.

VP fanzine new reviews - 16nov05

The following have been added to www.vanityproject.co.uk today

Album Reviews:
*Akron/Family + Angels of Light – Akron/Family + Angels Of Light (Young God).
*Angels of Light - Sing Other People (Young God).
*The Atlantic Manor – Failing By The Second (Do Too).
*The Atlantic Manor – Sneaking Up On The Death Scene (Do Too).
*The Atlantic Manor – Special Is Dead (Do Too).
*The Atlantic Manor - The Trouble That You Left (Do Too).
*The Brian Setzer Orchestra – Dig That Crazy Christmas (Surfdog).
*Deerhoof – The Runners Four (ATP).
*DJ Ordeal/VB12 – Usher/Guitango/Usherette (Sparticus Stargazer/Other Worlds).
*Hell Demonio – Greatest Hits (Wallace/Robotradio).
*Laura Veirs - Year of Meteors (Nonesuch).
*The Mission - Lighting the Candles.
*The Morrisons – Psycho Surfin’.
*New Model Army – Carnival (Attack Attack).
*Pink Noise – All Is Nu.
*The Pocket Gods – Pondfield Solstice.
*Portal - Waves & Echoes (make mine music).
*Quintron & Miss Pussycat – Swamp Tech (Trans Solar).
*Serena Maneesh – Serena Maneesh (Honeymilk).
*Sigur Ros – Takk (EMI).

Single Reviews:
*Champion Kickboxer/The Interiors/Chuck – Thinking/She’s In Japan/Kill ‘Em All (Wrath).
*The Golden Virgins – I Am A Camera (Bunker UK).
*Halflight – Pick Me.
*Humanzi – Fix The Cracks/Get Your Shit Together (Fiction).
*Johnathan Rice – So Sweet (One Little Indian).
*The Legendary Ten Seconds – Hung Up On The Past.
*The Lodger – Watching/Not So Fast (Double Dragon).
*Man From Uranus – Moogimals (Strange Lights).
*Piskie Sits/The Old House – Props/Relationships Hooray! (Wrath).
*Silver Sun – Immediate (Invisible Hands).
*The Sound Explosion – Apollo (Captains of Industry).
*Spraydog – Allison Blaire.
*Various – We Are Legion (Gestalt).
*The White Stripes – The Denial Twist (XL).

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Caressed by one hand, hit by another

You may have noticed a slight revamp on the VP homepage. Having discovered the Feedburner Headline animation tool yesterday, my life in terms of updating the HTML of the VP homepage just got a whole lot easier. Allowing an easy view of the latest posts on the associated VP blog sites run by myself and the man Grebo.

This also kicked my arse into gear to contain the info on the homepage in a better way - was never satisfied with one long column but could never find the time to update it into tables. I think it looks a lot better now and doesn't really hide anything away from those unwilling to scroll, which was always a worry.

It appears though that I needn't worry about attracting the hits too much as a look on the site stats shows that the monthly hit rate on www.vanityproject.co.uk has doubled in the past year from 300/400 to 800/900. There was a massive surge in the summer of this year with a record 1205 listed in July.

I'd like to think this was due a period of legendary writing or excitement about our Magic Band interview. However the knowledge that Steven Page of the very popular Barenaked Ladies has a side-project called 'The Vanity Project' which released a debut album in mid-June brings the VP ego back to terra firma with a sickening boney crunch.

Still, all publicity...

If anyone has ended up here looking for information on said band - buy their record here.