I'm reposting the  below bulletin to help spread the word.

~Sunshine
The BassGod Webzine

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: FoDD (Fans of Duran Duran)
Date: Sep 23, 2008 9:49 AM


We thought you might like to check out  "Duran Duran Fans Unite" which has been set up by a fellow fan and is a great place to meet up with like-minded souls :-)

You get your own profile page, a bit like Myspace, but its just for Duran Fans.


Check it out ;-)

http://duranduranfans. ning. com/main/authorization/signIn?target=http%3A%2F%2Fduranduranfans. ning. com%2F

Source: http://www.duranduran.com

BIRTHDAY MESSAGE FROM JOHN
June 20th, 2008
I've never considered myself a political animal. What moves me to tears has always been most likely art; a particularly emotional scene in a movie (I even shed tears in 'Kung Fu Panda'), or a song whose melody or harmonies cut me like a knife. Rarely, but sometimes, a book I am reading can affect me powerfully, and by that I mean not only induce sadness in me, but can make me laugh out loud. Perhaps the best release is the kind of laughter that keeps on coming until it turns to tears. The best of both (feeling) worlds. I often say, 'I don't like real life, I only like art'. For years I avoided newspapers, and even now, I stay away from the news channels on TV.

I'm feeling different about all this today, because 'real life' has come and bitten me on the butt, inspired me so to speak. I really just want to take this opportunity of getting to write a Birthday message by telling you all how strongly I feel about Barack Obama. I was recommended to read Obama's book, 'The Audacity Of Hope'. I downloaded it off I-tunes. The author read it himself. In my work I rely almost entirely on intuition, I don't know much about music theory, and I don't know how to read music. I just know what I like, what thrills me, and makes me want to weep. I'm a lightning rod in a way, rather than a musician, and as I listened to this book, I could not believe how much I liked this guy, and how much hope, literally, he was filling me with, as the virtual pages turned.

I don't come from an artistic family particularly, although my Mom loved music and music stars. Mom's idea of a perfect Sunday would be to take a drive around the wealthy estates in Warwickshire, and muse over which house might belong to whom. If ever we spotted a personalized car number (license) plate, we could obsess for hours over whom that car might belong to. Quite what Rod Stewart was doing in Solihull High Street that Sunday in June 1972 I don't know, but RS 1 was spotted by both of us, and who else could it possibly be? No. That's not an artistic family.

My mother's father was an important man in the early life of the English Trade Unions. He came from Liverpool. I never met him. The Lord Mayor of Birmingham was present at his funeral. My own father despised the trade unions. His was a go-ahead personality who had no use for the lowest common denominator, which he believes all unions ultimately serve. Dad went down on the ship, like so many other men from the Midlands, when the British car industry sunk itself, due to unrealistic expectations and the changing economic climate.

Obama is a democrat. He believes in unions. He is also a pragmatist. Listening to him, telling his story, outlining his ideas and ideals, I could not initially believe he was a man that could become leader of the United States, and therefore, the most important man on the planet… But inside my head an idea had been planted, 'But what if he was?…'

Like I say, I am all about instinct. It's all about a feeling I get, for people, places… songs. Either I get it or I don't. There's no debate. Hopelessly naive? Possibly.

I wasn't around for Kennedy, but I saw how excited people got about Clinton. Truthfully I was more excited about Hillary back then. Unfortunately for her, time has moved on, and whereas Bill and Hill were the future in 1992, the future now has different needs, and Obama is it. He is America, but he is also all of us. He makes me want to think politically because he is authentic in a world that has an almost total absence of authenticity. And I don't just mean politics. Look at our TV; the reality crap, the talent show crap. Everyone is acting, saying whatever they think they got to say to get ahead.

Obama raises the bar. The speech he gave on Father's Day brought a tear to my eye. He is a wake up call, and when America elects him to office (no, I cannot vote) it will send a fantastic signal of hope and change around the world. It will prick up the minds and ears of the most deeply rooted of America-haters. It's a god-given opportunity.

No one is perfect, I know, and I'm not suggesting he is. I just wanted to use this year's birthday message to let you know a little of what is going on in my mind regarding the biggest event of the coming year. For those of you who are skeptical I urge you to pick up the book I mentioned and check it out; you'll believe a pig can fly!

Thanks everyone who sent me good wishes. It's been an extraordinary year so far (do I ever say anything else?). It's been hard this last few weeks losing Nick's father, Roger. He was a very important influence of me when I was a hard-headed teenager. Seeing my oldest friend cope with his loss with such dignity and courage has been a real inspiration. I love being on the road and getting to play night after night, and seeing so much of you guys warms my heart. Thank you for staying with us, we'll always try and make it worth your while. Thanks to my family who challenge me every day to become a better person, and to my friends who are my guides.

Love and peace,
JT

190 "friends" (Love to all!) and not one reminded me that I had "Do They Know It's Christmas"on my page for the past 5 months! LOL!

Anyway, we now have something a little more appropriate up.

I should remind you all that the John Taylor Terroristen live CD hit it's 10 year anniversary last week! Can you believe it's been that long?

Take care,

~Sunshine
The BassGod Webzine

I've created a musician page for JT on Facebook. If you have a Facebook account already, you can now "Become A Fan" of JT.

Search for "John Taylor" and click on the "Pages" tab. You'll find the right one fairly easily from there.

Alternately - just go here: facebook.com/JohnTaylor (I promise this just links to the Facebook page I created. No whammies!)

Look for the "Become a Fan" link on the right hand side.

Obsessed much, us? LOL

Thanks!

~Sunshine

(Note: The photos I'm using on the page are my own from the recent Roseland gigs. If anyone wants to contribute their photos, they are welcome to post them. I just don't want to get into any copyright infringement battles.)

I hope all of you get to spend your holiday celebrations with family and friends this year, and here's wishing you good things throughout 2008.

Thanks so much for being a "friend."

The BassGod Webzine

Okay, this is something I feel I have to write about. I'm going to post the same thing on my personal profile as well, because it's become that much of an issue for me here on MySpace.

I am more than happy to add just about anyone who wants to be a "friend" on this profile, but I am having issues with profiles that crash my browser (aka - make it come to a full stop while waiting for your 20 massive images, 10 animated gifs, 4 slide-shows, and 5 videos load). As a rule, I don't accept those profiles, because I don't think it's good netiquette (a polite way to conduct oneself on the 'net) to build a page that is so graphic heavy that it hinders someone else's enjoyment of this thing we call the web. Let me state that I am on a high speed connection, and have fairly up to date hardware (only 2.5 years old), and am really frustrated when someone's page holds me up, KNOWING that I have a decent connection. Imagine what someone on dial-up is having to deal with if I'm upset.

As a result, I do not add people whose pages crash my browser.

So, here is a list of Do's and Don'ts when it comes to being a responsible member of the internet community (esp. on MySpace):

Do...
Show your love for your favorite musician/band/TV show/celebrity of choice, etc. on your page

Keep the accrued file size of your page below 2mb (or 2000 kb), this means that you add up the file size of every image you put on your page and keep it below 2000 kb. This may require resizing images to keep each one under 100kb. If you don't know how to do this, find someone who can help you. Each image you add to your page, be it animated gif, still image, cascading snowflakes (hearts, DDs, weasels) or slide show, adds to the amount of time it takes for your page to load.

Resize your images, resize your images, resize your images! I cannot express this enough.

Keep slideshows to one per page, please.

Keep videos to less than 3/page and make sure they are not set to start upon loading (YouTube videos are automatically set the right way)

Keep animated gifs to a minimum of 3. Each animated gif is made up of several images, and each image has to load before someone can view the animation, and if the collective size of each gif is 200k and you have 6 of them, that's 1200k/1.2mb and you are really making someone wait a long time to view your page.

Be a REAL profile and not a "pseudo slut" that overrides the myspace code to bring you to their porn site, advertises a dildo business, get rich quick pyramid scheme, work from home scheme, dating service, etc. Tacky doesn't begin to describe it. (I'm wasting time typing this because those profiles are all robots anyway.)

Fill out your profile with more than just a pretty layout... tell us something about you, more than your location (and Flevoland is not a real location, is it?), or else I won't know if we have anything in common. I don't add people I don't have SOMETHING in common with. And on this profile, I don't really plan to add bands that aren't related to JT or Duran Duran in some way. This is really about the man and the fans.

Don't...
Have more than 2 or 3 animated gifs (aka moving graphics, blinky graphics) on your page.

Have more than 4 images at 150 kb on your page

Let people post too many multiple comments with huge graphics and animated gifs on your page (it adds to the loading time). Let them know that you're trying to keep your page user friendly, and I think they'll understand. If not, they probably have a non-net-friendly page themselves and don't even know it.

If you don't understand this image size mularky, then do the world a favor and don't add images to your profile.
------------------------------------------------------

If you've added this page and were denied, please take the above into consideration, fix up your page, and please re-add me.

Please take this knowledge and go forth... create beautiful pages, but keep them simple, please!

Thanks,

Sunshine & The BassGod.com Crew

Reposting the following from Fans of Duran Duran:

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Fans of Duran Duran
Date: Aug 24, 2007 6:10 AM


Hello Everyone..

Exciting news from Martha at Dom's official site. If you haven't added him yet.. do it and get your hands on his album :-)

Dom has just recorded a solo album featuring John and Roger on 2 songs and many other great musicians.

Pre-release copies are available for friends and fans from Dom's Myspace... not officially releasing it for a few months.


Check this link: http://www.myspace.com/dombrownmusic

Hello friends new and old.  Please feel free to subscribe to this blog.  I am not sure what it will contain in the future, but I've been far too overrun presently with life-stuff to think about it.  I suppose I hope to keep up on new Duran stuff, but there are plenty of people that already do that with their tribute pages.  I am sure that from time-to-time I'll share videos, or other tidbits I've found on the web, and perhaps someday I'll get the actual website updated (shocker!) and will post updates here.

Anyway, welcome to our myspace profile.  I'm still trying to figure out what exactly to do with this page.

Yours,

Sunshine & The BassGod.com Team

I just found this on YouTube and had to share. It's a piece that appears to have been done around the time of the Wedding Album/Thank You tour, and it starts with a signing in NYC to promote Thank You, has an interview with Simon, and then ends with a tiny bit of the Jones Beach performance in montage. Enjoy!