Since I’m a fairly big reader of, and huge supporter of The 9513, I must promote the incredible blog to get more votes, for its nomination at the 2008 Weblog Awards. I’m sure most readers of my blog already know about it, or whatever, but it doesn’t hurt. Other blogs are getting the word out too, so I guess I’m jumping on the bandwagon…but only because I care haha. You got until Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 to get your vote in. Click here to vote, or the picture, for the link. Do it for country music (and yeah, I do realize I kinda morphed the “person” into the tv 9513 image, and it’s bad editing, but whatever. It’s kinda funny, anyway).
The 9513 – Vote to be the Best Music Blog of 2008
iCF Music Site Rolodex (11.19.08)
I am loving the new amount of traffic that’s been coming through here lately (I had about an average of 35-40 different people per day reading the site this week, which is pretty impressive for this blog). July had the most visitors for the month, but it died down as my blogging lagged, and that makes sense since people lose interest when there’s nothing new lol. We’ll see how the end of this month does compares to then! I actually had lots of visitors for the CMA Awards entry (probably because of all those artist tags ha). I gotta thank Ken Barnes from the “LISTEN UP” USA Today Blog, for linking to this site for this week’s playlist for his Crystal Shawanda recommendation (there are others on the list as well) Anyway, for this entry, I wanted to recommend the links from my “Other cool music sites” heading on the right, and explain why I chose them to be there. This is one of my tributes to them and their great work (you can see my “blogroll” tribute here).
(I chose this picture because it was cool and kinda signified the link between my site and these other sites. They are part of the puzzle that makes the online music world greater. We may not always “fit in” with others, but we make it work, somehow. A “necessary connection”, if you will. Alright, enough with all the corniness. It’s mostly because I think it’s cool to look at!)
So, let’s get to it.
iCF Music Site Rolodex:
- O.K. I admit; this is a shameless plug for one of my own other sites lol, but why not? It needs more traffic especially with all the info that’s been posted on it. It’s a message board dedicated to two of my favorite artists, George Strait and Lee Ann Womack. I spent lots of time on it over the years (the forums officially started July 2004!) and it has changed much since then. It used to be only a Womack board, but became Strait too, in May 2005. It’s had its in and outs, but I called it everything but quits ;). Anyway, not to give a history lesson, but you can read more about the history here and check it out! Tag-line is: “It’s where you’ll get the good news and the bad news (and anything in between)” - a reference to their first duet.
> All Music Guide :
- One of my absolute favorite sites I go to. I constantly visit them to read their reviews and listen to audio clips for music. I used their clips for this site because they’ve got tons of music to sample. I really like the way all the information is organized and I’ve learned a lot, musically, from there. They’ve got a music blog too, but their entries about country music seem to be lacking…
> Angry Country :
- This is an online magazine with plenty of country album/concert reviews, interviews, news, and such – “Honest Country Music News” is their tag-line. I enjoy this site, though I do remember when it was different in the past and a bit more critical (which is more to my liking lol) on artists and a bit more traditional-sided. Guess they’re not as “angry” as they used to be. Still a worthy place to visit, for sure.
- Just like it says, this is the site to go to for interviews and Q&A’s and also, CD/concert/video reviews and lots more! There are a good amount of pages I still need to get through! So much. The site is structured around frames, so it’d be kinda hard for a visitor to link to a specific page if they didn’t know the whole “right click, copy properties” method, but it’s a nice set-up, overall.
- This site always impresses me with its colorful, diverse images and consistency with the latest country news. I believe the site is run by Derrick and Dustin, both gentlemen who I’ve run across and talked to online many times and they’re good guys and have a huge commitment to the site and are also huge fans of country music (how’s that for a run-on sentence, but it’s true). I’m so glad the site seems to be going strong and I’m a big supporter of it all. They be goin’ places! Definitely check it out.
iCF Music Blogroll…
For this entry, I wanted to highlight my side blog links (just because they inspire me so, and if you read this blog, I’m sure you’ll like these too!). I am lovin’ how popular blogs are these days.
(the above pic was taken with my camera phone because I couldn’t find any pics online that I wanted to use for this entry, so I just took a pic of Country Universe – the Pam Tillis feature to be exact lol – and as you can see, and what I just realized, is that my room is not lighted too pleasantly haha and it’s messy, but just ignore that. It may be the cheapest looking pic I’ve ever used on this site, but it works… I think.)
From my Blogroll:
- I dunno what happened with the site. Now it’s a protected blog, and you need to login to get access. I really like it. I’m going to keep it up, anyway, because hopefully someday it is open to the public again.
> CMT Blog :
- I really like CMT.com’s blog, because it has a lot of different viewpoints (though some of them, I strongly disagree with, and the “Link Ray” posts can be annoying because those ones seem to highlight the already overrated artists – how many times do we have to read about Taylor Swift, seriously? - but there is interesting news in them, regardless). Lots of cool stuff available there.
> Country Mike :
- This is Mike Sudhalter’s blog, a fellow country music fan, who shows a lot of enthusiasm for the music he likes, and offers cool insights on different things. I usually agree with him, and he likes most of the same artists as me, so check his blog out (I wish there was a “comment” section to his posts though!). His blog is part of Country Standard Time (I’ll get to them later).
- All entries are written by “cowboybleau”, filled with plenty of detail and lots of reviews (so many that I don’t have enough time to read them all!). He recently redid the look and format of his blog and it looks even better. His most recent entry is about Ray Scott’s latest album.
