This was originally posted on 9/18/08.

In the months following the post we actually broke the 200,000 barrier only to drop back to 325,133 as I type. During this time our monthly visitors have gone up and up. The only explanation is that other sites have more visitors that use this dang ratings bar…

It’s been just about 2 years since the idea of the Rock Town Hall blog was first discussed. 1/12/09 will be the official 2 year celebration of the blog’s launch.

At the time of launch, RTH’s web rankings were in the high 7 millions. As I type this, our world wide web ranking is 454,276. What started out as a creative outlet and a means to reconnect a friendship has humbly taken off to a degree much higher than we had ever imagined.

And now we want to see how far we can bum rush the show!

The web ranker of the day is Alexa. It is an Amazon project and as flawed as it is in determining web popularity it is the currency of the day. It works like a Nielsen box. It counts hits on sites from browsers that have their “box” installed.

It is called the Alexa Toolbar and the more of us here at Rock Town Hall that install it, the more our ratings will increase.

I have had it installed for over a year and Mr. Moderator and others have had it installed for several months. No one has had any issues with it. Once installed it gets tucked into the lower right corner of your browser and looks like this:

Then you can see, and improve, the rank of every site you go to.

I understand that some of you might have big-brother issues and that’s cool. But sometimes to stick it to the man, you have to use the man’s own tools.

So this is a call to arms Townspeople. If you’re interested in participating in this mission go to http://www.alexa.com/site/download and follow the directions.

A few weeks ago, I downloaded a copy of the Minutemen‘s Double Nickels onto my iPhone, and it’s been in heavy rotation. Listening to it with the kind of focus you can achieve during the commute to and from work has made me realize more than ever that Double Nickels is one of those true rarities: a flawless album.

A week or so ago — after I’d fully assessed the greatness of Double Nickels — I received a copy of the Minutemen rocku, We Jam Econo, from Netflix. In it, Mike Watt reveals that the band was recording a single LP during the Double Nickels sessions, when they heard that Husker Du‘s next album — Zen Arcade — was going to be a double. This caused the band to start writing in a frenzy, and after a week or so had passed, they now had double the number of songs they had before, and were well on their way to recording their own double LP. This, by the way, meant that they now had 22 new songs to record, bringing the album total to 44.

My point in this thread is not to sing the praises of the Minutemen or the Double Nickels album. We’ve all been down that road before. My point here is: holy SHIT. How hot do you have to be — how completely at the peak of your musical game — how effortless must the writing process be — to thrash out an entire records’ worth of new material from nothing in a freaking WEEK?! And have it all be perfect, where not one note ought to be changed in any way? That’s what I call firing on all cylinders!

I admit I’m veering into back-story-land here, but how many other examples of this kind of lightning-strike brilliance can we think of? I’m not talking about “five-star albums” or “great albums that were recorded quickly;” I’m talking about albums that were produced in a similar blaze of effortless brilliance, by bands that were so freaking tweaked that they produced perfection at a pace that makes the rest of us just gawk in slack-jawed amazement. The Beatles’ Rubber Soul/Revolver run in the middle of the Beatlemania frenzy is the only other one that comes to mind.

Curious to get your thoughts —

HVB

In our Rock Town Hall Basement Bunker Edition, Townsman dbuskirk passed along the following find. I think it’s worth bringing to The Main Stage, as I think is the case with just about all of db’s ruminations. (Hint, hint…) A couple of songs by these artists, including a Fela tune featuring Bowie, follow. Dig.

While surfing around on that thing they call “the internets” I came across this pretty amusing short interview about Lester Bowie‘s experience with Fela Kuti.

This picks up where Bowie flies to Lagos, knowing no one and looking to meet area musicians. A guy tells him to go see Fela.

“Who?” “Well just get in a taxi cab and say, ‘Take me to Fela.’ Everybody knows where Fela is.”

…Fela was asleep. So he took me to a room and said, ‘We’ll get Fela up.’ Fela got up and we talked for a minute. He said, “Ah Lester Bowie, you’re from the Chicago Art Ensemble.” I say, “Yeah that’s right.” And then he tells this guy to bring in a record player. And he tells this other guy, “Bring me my horn.” The record was one that just had a rhythm section, so he figured we’d play along with that. So I just blew. I didn’t know anybody in the town, I was playing my heart out there! So after I play about two [verses], Fela says, ‘”STOP! Stop. Go get his bags. He’s moving in!” [laughter] And I stayed there I think for about six months.

I stayed as an honored guest, so I was treated with the same respect as Fela was treated with. He said, “I’ll show you how to be an African man. You want to be an African bandleader? I’ll show you what it’s about.” And he showed me what it was about! They’d bring us food. Nobody else could eat until we finished. Which I wasn’t used to, but I just played it off like, you know, ‘Cool with me too!’ [laughter] He showed me about all the wives. He had eight wives at that time. At that same time, I was believing I should have more than one wife. At the time I was getting divorced, I was between marriages. I thought the best thing for me to do was have a couple of wives. But after I stayed with Fela for that time, I saw that one was better! [laughs] And I told him, “Fela, you’ve got too many women. You don’t have time to put into practice. You want to get into jazz, it takes time, you know. You’ve got to practice. You can’t just be mediating arguments about who get the clothes or who get to drive this or do that…

Art Ensemble of Chicago, “Hippparippp”

Fela Kuti, “No Agreement”

Lester Bowie, “BBB [duet]”