What A Strange Month!

 

For the first time in I Don't Hear A Single's life, I felt drained and all the music listening sort of caught up with me. This combined with a heavy real life workload and an illness that just wouldn't budge took its toll. In my life here, August used to be a month that you could rest up a bit music wise, kids summer holidays etc, but the last couple of years have been like any other month, release wise.

I just sort of burnt out. It all became work and sleep and when I left space for music, the muse had deserted me. I finally feel back to normal and lessons have been learned. I need to take more mini breaks from stuff and maybe re-organise how I do things.

I love it here and the independence remains vital. But the constant moving on from one thing to another needs to be planned. The end of year Best Of Years are very popular here, but are a lot of work. So they need to be planned better and the preparation start earlier. 

There were already plans to change it slightly as I was always concerned about putting one album before another order wise and so the plan is to list the 100 albums alphabetically and then name an Album Of The Year.

The Listening To This Week Playlist has been surprisingly popular, it was only ever meant as a small thing to note great songs that weren't on EPs or Albums, but took on a life of its own, submission wise. Then again this place was only ever meant to be a smallish thing and grew and grew. In its 11th year, it is the longest that I've stuck at anything musically.

So maybe the playlist will have an occasional week's break as the compilation and listening takes up a lot of time. The LTTW has managed to get compiled and posted in August. The fifth appears tomorrow and that will be given the space of the full day.

That means Reviews will be restarted properly on Tuesday. There are currently almost 60 to catch up on, with more likely to come, but they will be approached gently on an as and when basis for the rest of September. That will lead into a 31 Reviews in 31 Days in October.

The amazing thing is that site views have remained as high in a much quieter posting month. Over 300,000 so far this month. A reflection of the popularity of the Playlist and listeners going into the Reviews Archive.

Sorry I've made this a bit about me. It is never intended to be. This place is about the musicians and the music. I am forever appreciative of the support that you give these artists in a world that makes it hard for any of them to get any attention.

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