Hear that sucking sound?
That is just my Saturday
Drained away by work

I moved here because
the weather is very nice
Stuck at computer

I logged into my GarageBand.com account on Tuesday for the first time in years. GarageBand.com is one of the oldest sites dedicated to independent music. It was around before things like embeddable media players and MySpace became so ubiquitous. I started using the site in 2002, mostly because I enjoyed writing song reviews. In 2004, when my last band recorded some songs, I posted one to GarageBand.com. It was met by a lackluster response, which was no surprise. The majority of the reviews submitted to GarageBand.com are done by artists who are trying to rack up enough karma in the GarageBand.com engine so that they can post their own songs to the site. It’s in this way that GarageBand.com sets itself apart from other music hosting sites; If you want to post your own music, you’ve either got to pay a fee for each song or you’ve got to review a bunch of other peoples’ songs. Overall, it’s a pretty clever way to run this kind of site. And five (or more) years ago, it was easily the biggest site of its kind. Of course, newer sites like MySpace don’t have any prerequisites for uploading songs. And that leads me to wonder what the value of GarageBand.com really is in 2009? I was considering creating a GarageBand.com profile for The Sidebars, and I realized that, in order to get our songs on to the site, I’d have to write a bunch of reviews. And there’s nothing wrong with that except it takes time. Time I could be putting towards recording or doing other things. Back in 2004, there was more of a return on the investment of this kind of time, as having your music on GarageBand.com was essential if you wanted it to be heard online. That’s just not the case anymore. Sure, there’s something to be said for having the music available through as many outlets as possible. But it just seems like taking the time to make the song available to a website that’s frequented primarily by other musicians is just a waste of time. Maybe it’ll be something to consider down the road, when we’re done with recording. In the meantime, if anyone out there would like to work as our official intern and write some GarageBand.com reviews, please let me know.

I’ve never seen a bird like this before.

All of the rain that fell
Is good for the earth and plants
Also makes weeds grow

We’re in the process of recording the next song for our RPM Challenge album. If all goes well, we’ll have it out by month’s end. Of course, that’ll only give us three songs. That’s not enough to officially complete the challenge. And that’s OK. We’re going to keep recording after February’s over. All further songs will be posted on this site. Eventually the band will have its own website. But I’ve got a few other projects (not everything on the list, just a few things) that have to be finished before I can start on that.

To give a little more background information on the album, the working title is “Love & Friendship In The Time Of Spiders.” The underlying theme is that most of the songs are inspired by or based around people we only know through the Internet. “The Side Effects” was of course written several years ago. But I do feel like it fits well with this project. It is a love/acceptance song, after all (at least, it is to me). And Jen and I did meet through the old Yahoo! Personals (back when that service was still free of charge). “Hey, Wesley” was inspired by Wesley, the third song, the one we’re working on now, was inspired by a Facebook chat that Jen had with one of our podcast pals in Australia. And the fourth song I’m particularly excited about, as it’s actually a collaborative effort between us and Colin in the U.K. Beyond that, things are still up in the air. I’ve got a couple other songs I’ve just barely begun. But we’ll get there. We’ve got time.

Water drains slowly
For days and days and days
Maintenance needed

First part of the day
Very productive, but then
Motivation gone