It’s a quarter to six a.m. on New Year’s
Eve and I’ve been thinking about the year gone by. It’s had its highs and
its lows but we’ve had a lot of fun here at antiMUSIC giving you our take
on things and enjoying yours.
Instead of the regular look back at the
music of 2003, I wanted to take a look back at the year in antiMUSIC and
some of the highlights for the network and my personal favorite articles.
Yes, it’s a bit self-indulgent but what the hell; it’s New Year’s Eve!
(The regular antiTorial will return next month).
In other news, we launched the Day In Rock
report on July 18th and it’s proven one of our most popular features. antiTainment
returned in October and it’s been fun reporting on non music entertainment
stories.
Views
In my opinion what makes antiMUSIC is our
regular readers and their interaction with our writers and each other.
Most of our regular writers were regular readers who stood out and we asked
to contribute to the sites. This year we brought on some new writers and
it’s been a lot of fun.
DeadSun premiered his mock TV show “The
Not Quite So DeadShow” in October and took on Hillary and Snoop Dogg
in parody interviews.
Dan Grote has been on our review staff
for some time but he debuted his very first editorial in Jan when he took
over for aG for the RANTitorial series and penned his look at year gone
by with “2002 OVEREXPOSUREFESTARAMA”.
This month we welcomed Tim Byrnes to the
anti fold and he not only turned out a record number of CD reviews in a
single week (not all have posted yet) but he also brought some of his writing
from his site Punk Rock Blues
in his new anti rant series “3
Chord Monte”.
But the most outspoken and controversial
writer in anti history, a guy that gave Scott Slapp a run for his money
in the amount of hate mail generated was our very own Hobo! He kicked off
his rants last January with “Commercial
Radio to Destroy Society” written under his original pen name SouthOfHeaven.
Since then he has sparked more than a few heated debates and is always
ready to spew forth his venom against “tards”.
Our wittiest writer Greenmuse had many
mulleted adventures this year but one of my personal favorite columns from
him came in February
when he broke out his green crystal ball and predicted what would transpire
over the next year. Was he on the mark? Go back and read his predictions
to find out!
Our longest running ranter, Dr. Fever continued
to give his gonzo take on the world in general in 2003. Perhaps his best
exploration was into the dumbing down of the masses with his November rant
~@~!ItZ KewwL
2 bEe Dumm.@~#.
We even had a couple of parody series in
2003. Dirk Spencer checked in and told us how he attempted to help
Limp Bizkit find “the
illist guitar player known to man”. The O’Reilly Factor got turned
on its head with the antiFACTOR.
And we had our first dose of Unreel
news in November.
There were far too many reviews posted
this year to cover all of them here but I want to mention a couple of our
writers that haven’t been mentioned yet. Linda Spielman turned in a lot
of great features this year. She even flew all the way from Pittsburg to
Los Angeles for her November Artist of the Month feature on Dishwalla.
She was rewarded with an unforgettable anniversary show from the band,
which played their longest set in history. This past year she has covered
everyone from Bret
Michaels to Fuel
to Tonic and
Three Days Grace.
Our UK correspondent Rachael Reardon kept
us ahead of the curb in many ways. Before anyone here had heard of Electric
Six she managed to sneak in an interview with the band. That featured
ended up one of our most read feature articles of 2003. She was all over
The Darkness
before the album even reached US shores but I think her best work of the
year was her journal like account of the Leeds
festival.
As you may have noticed most of our reviews
are featured in different series. Here is a list of the Top 10 most popular
reviews of 2003:
One of the most controversial reviews of
the year came from Hobo and his take on the new one from Mushroomhead.
Most played out cliché joke of the
year? Lars and Pot and Pans. Sorry but I couldn’t help myself, it’s
such an easy target. One of our readers, Jeremy Knedler (frontman
of Real Mother), thought so too and created this funny picture.
2003 was an interesting year for us here
at antiMUSIC. I want to extend a huge thanks to our writers, each and everyone
one of them have helped put anti on the map and have helped give the site
a unique personality. We do have quite a diverse cast of characters here
and they always go way beyond the call of duty to bring you their take
on things. If I could give them a standing ovation I would. They are the
best.
I thank you for indulging me in this look
back at 2003 but I also want to thank you for helping make this another
successful year for antiMUSIC. In April we head into our 7th year and from
day one it has been the readers that helped make the sites what they are.
I’ve had a lot of fun interacting with many of you, whether in email or
through Fan Speak. And it’s great to get to know a little bit about people
from all over the world. Our regular readers do represent a global audience
from India to San Diego to West Virginia to Canada and the UK and Down
Under. There are millions of websites out there, thousands with music news
and reviews but what has made antiMUSIC stand out is the unique personalities
of our regular readers and writers. So thank you for 2003 and hope you
stick around for 2004!
Have an anti New Year!
Keavin
7:14 A.M. 12/31/03
Fan Speak:
What do you think?
What were your favorite anti features of 2003?
