My dear, dear readers..

I have had a feeling, for quite a while now, that all that was exciting about the internet has somehow been killed.. be it through an over-abundance of self-serving-html-coding-ad-bot bands on myspace, by the sheer weight of choice of what to listen to, or, indeed (and this is my main diagnosis), by the spread of Facebook.

I myself for a long time was a Facebook hater.  I found it a shallow way to "connect" with my real-life friends, yet far too intrusive and personal for my fan-friends or acquaintances.  It's funny how the world changes so quickly nowadays, it's actually, ridiculously, leading us back to our original form - the Band Website.  Facebook isn't customisable at all for bands, so that's a no-no, at least maybe it's useful just for LINKING to the band website.  Twitter is, for obvious reasons, the same - excellent for linking, but in itself, rubbish for creating something interesting.  Myspace had been the only site that combined an excellent creative platform with an outstanding networking platform.  It is, however, no longer the latter.  Facebook has become (by far) the best platform for information-spreading, and indeed, friend recommendation.  What is a shame is that it has no real link to art, music, film, culture - at least, not a DIRECT link, whereby it becomes PART of the virtual world we inhabit.

So, what we have now is what we started with, people - websites which link PEOPLE to eachother, but puts the spreading of art back into the hands of those people.  There is good to come of this; no more annoying band add requests (which now make up 90% of my requests, and which get turned down), no more html flyering, and even better, no fake-gratitude by bands who couldn't give a damn about the listener, just as long as there is an extra number on their friends count.  It's back to basics, people.  Be good, give away stuff, spread your art through creating your art to the best of your ability.  I, for one, am petrified by what's going to happen next, but at least it gives me a reason to start again.  It's time to dissect, destroy and put back.  I, for one, can't fucking wait.

toph.