Introduction
(Navigation Hint: Use the "Labels" menu on the left --or in the 3-line menu at the top left on a phone--to find posts by artists or by series.)
Hello everyone and welcome to my new blog! Thanks for coming to check it out.
Since you are here, you likely already know that I have been posting album reviews and artist spotlights for a while on Facebook. If you found it some other way, you are welcome too! It began in September 2023 when came across a special issue of Prog Magazine that had a (re-published) list of their "Top 100 Prog Albums of All Time" as determined by a readers' poll a few years earlier. I thought it would be fun to go through each one with my prog friends on Facebook one by one, twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays and discuss each one. I was pretty consistent about posting them, albeit with a few delays around holidays and busy times. A year or so later the challenge was complete. I discovered along the way, especially after the first few, that I was really beginning to do song-by-song reviews of each album, which I believe got better and better as I went along. I had been bitten by the writing bug.
When that was coming to a close, my beautiful and smart wife Allison asked me, "What are you going to do now?" So, I decided to keep reviewing albums, but focusing on more recent ones, mostly, but not exclusively prog oriented. Also, I had been wanting for some time to do bios of bands, particularly "newer" prog bands, but also non-prog bands that I enjoy that some of my prog friends might appreciate. I often see people on Facebook searching for newer prog artists to check out and they don't know where to begin, so I am trying to help them out, and give those artists some exposure in the process. I decided to keep the Monday/Thursday schedule with the reviews ("Scott's Song by Song") on Mondays and the bios ("Scott's Spotlight") on Thursdays. Again, they have been pretty consistent with occasional delays.
I did have a bit of a faux pas when I decided to post my reviews to ProgArchives.com and did so much too rapidly much to the chagrin of some regular reviewers there, as I unknowingly was knocking their reviews off of the home page. I issued an apology on their message board and most accepted it. Since then, I have been posting them one at a time when one the album is on their site.
After I had put a few up, I noticed that, although they weren't getting mega-views, some people were taking notice. A friend from middle school and high school called me on the phone via Facebook messenger to tell me how much she was enjoying checking out some of my suggestions. Some of the artists in the bands began to reply to my posts, which blew my mind! Some of them even shared the posts on their websites. A few weeks later, an artist I had never heard of, named Andy Toomey, reached out to me with words of encouragement, and to tell me that he was releasing an EP with legendary prog musicians "The Stick Men" and asked if I would post a review. (He is one of my biggest supporters now, along with Allison, of course!) Then Facebook offered me a professional account as a "content creator". While my posts are theoretically able to be "monetized", I haven't seen a penny yet, which is OK. What it did allow me to do, however, is cross-post to various Facebook groups simultaneously when I post it to my page. Of course, when I post a prog-related issue, it goes to several prog groups at once. At first it allowed me to post to 3 at a time, now it is more. When I posted the spotlight on Magic Pie a couple of months ago, not only did band members reply, but also their PR agent Anne-Claire of Bad Dog Promotions, who represents a number of bands in the prog community, reached out to me about reviewing some of her clients' releases, to which I agreed. The only compensation I get from it are downloads of the albums in order to review them. To be clear, any time a review is requested, I always let them know that I call it as I hear it. Another artist, Italian keyboardist and composer Massimo Pieretti, also reached out to me for a review as well around that time.
While it gets a little overwhelming sometimes, as I still work full-time as an elementary music teacher. I really try my best to keep up and post on schedule. As my body of work is increasing, I felt like it would be a good idea to have a place to archive all of my reviews and spotlights, so that is what I'll be doing here, although I still intend to post on Facebook and ProgArchives, at least for the time being. I will post my new ones here as I go as well. I will begin by posting the "100 Greatest Prog Album Challenge" reviews, then the "Song-By-Song" reviews and "Scott's Spotlights" and may occasionally post my thoughts along the way. I hope you enjoy!
Rock on!
ReplyDelete