Marking my fourth year of Facebook posts on Under-Appreciated Rock Bands and Under-Appreciated Rock Artists (I have last month’s band, Chimera on as I write), I began to appreciate that there is a lot of good information here that needed more exposure. As I suppose most of you know by now, I write about much more than just a rock band that hardly anyone has ever heard of; for instance, in November, I started off Part 2 of “Women in Rock” with a piece on the 1970’s cartoon show, Josie and the Pussycats.
Thus, I launched a website on Google Sites and put all of my previous posts on the regular Internet. Here is the URL: https://sites.google.com/site/underappreciatedrockbands/home. My Facebook friends get first crack at the new posts; I don’t put anything on the website until the next month.
I have been a bit frustrated at the limitations of what I can do on Google Sites, but the price is right (free), and I didn’t need (or at least take) any training to start using it. One problem is that my labels don’t behave the same way on all computers; they look different on my home computer from the way that they look on my office computer, and I suppose they do on other computers as well. I probably won’t solve that problem until I can upload everything to my sister Alison Winfree Pickrell’s website for her novels, as she has promised to do for me.
I got the idea to split out “stories” – relatively long pieces – and also short “items” that I wrote on other rock bands and artists (and TV shows, and movies, and books, and all sorts of other things). I have redesigned the website a couple of times, adding a photo for everything also; and I basically have the first 13 months (December 2009 through December 2010) fully indexed now.
I started out with a lot of lists of the items and albums and songs, but I finally decided that everything should have its own webpage – I probably have 500 or so by now, and I have used 49% of the 100 megabytes that Google Sites allows me. Needless to say, I will have blown through all of that space long before I even get to 2012.
And that is not the only limit that I have reached: In June, after mulling it over for several months, I decided to talk about “what might have been” in rock and roll and reached the limit of 65,536 characters that Facebook allows for Notes before I was even close to being finished. I wound up dropping several planned topics, but even so, “Part 2” of the June 2013 post might very well be the second longest post. Ironically, the Under-Appreciated Rock Band for June 2013 has the shortest name thus far: Fur. I have tried to keep the length of my posts down some, but talking about one rock band seems to lead into another and another and another . . .
Just about every year, I have added a new section to my posts; and for this coming year, I will put in a “Story of the Month” from one of my earlier posts about a better known rock band or artist. First up: the Standells, of “Dirty Water” fame.
Here is the roster of the UARB’s of the past year (2012-2013); none are individual artists, and there has been a lot of psychedelia and just one punk rock band. There is never any plan; that’s just how it worked out this time.
Dec. 2012 – THE INVISIBLE EYES, 2000’s garage/psychedelic rock band
Jan. 2013 – THE SKYWALKERS, 2010’s Dutch psychedelic rock band
Feb. 2013 – LINK PROTRUDI AND THE JAYMEN, 1980’s retro instrumental rock band
Mar. 2013 – THE GILES BROTHERS, 1960’s-1970’s British duo in numerous bands including King Crimson
Apr. 2013 – LES SINNERS, 1960’s-1970’s French Canadian garage rock band
May 2013 – HOLLIS BROWN, 2010’s roots rock band
Jun. 2013 – FUR, 1980’s punk rock band
Jul. 2013 – THE KLUBS, 1960’s British mod rock band
Aug. 2013 – SILVERBIRD, 1970’s Native American soft rock band
Sep. 2013 – BLAIR 1523, 1990’s British psychedelic rock band
Oct. 2013 – MUSIC EMPORIUM, 1960’s psychedelic rock band
Nov. 2013 – CHIMERA, 1960’s British psychedelic rock band