Hi all! Just wanted to say happy holidays and thanks to all of you for the support over the past year. We hope that neither orange alerts nor rampant mad cow disease stops you from having a tremendous holiday season. Be sure to check back over the next couple of weeks, as Shane will be dropping his Best of 2003 column, as well as the results of our annual member's poll! Enjoy your holiday turkeys... or hams... or tofu... or, for the really brave, your mad Christmas beef.

Ajay, Liz, and Shane
Your Excellent Administrators 2003

Hey Kids! It's been a long time in the making and we've gone through a few hiccups this morning, but... our present to you for Valentine's Day.... FLIRT!. It's a totally downloadable (and legal) compilation with 25 of our favorite musicians singing their hearts out for your Valentine's Surprise. Enjoy!

Wow. Thanks to everybody who listened to the radio broadcast unveiling the year's top picks - and there were a BUNCH of you, too, judging by the number of e-mails we've received over the past hour. Anyways, click on Read More below to get the FULL final results of our 2002 Members Poll.

Just a quick nod of thanks to everyone for another fantastic year. There aren't too many non-profit music websites like ours around anymore... and we don't pat OUR backs for it, we pat YOURS - as YOUR loyal patronage and visits have kept us inspired, kept us motivated, and kept us functioning.

We hope each and every one of you has a healthy and fun holiday season.

Be sure to check back soon for our 2002 recap, including our picks for the year's top records.

Also, not to let the cat out of the bag TOO far in advance, but we've got a grand suprise coming your way in February, so stay tuned.

You might have noticed a new name popping up around here on the news page recently. We'd just like to pop in and give an official welcome to LIZ SCHWARTZ, our newest administrator here at Excellent Online. Liz comes to us from the Windy City and is an old friend of ours. The good news: you'll be seeing a lot more updates to the site. The bad news: no one can EVER badmouth Saint Etienne again without hearing the Wrath of the Lizzie! Cheers and welcome aboard, Liz.

The 2001 poll results have been calculated and we finally have the results here online. We broadcasted most of these results over the Indieshop a few weeks ago and you can listen to the archived broadcast here. For those of you that want to visit the good 'ol days, then you can check out all of our past poll results here.

Well, we're still here. No Y2K catastrophies. No apocalypses. No second comings, unless you're talking about Travis. 2000 wasn't the last year of our lives, just as 2001 likely won't be the year we make contact. In fact, 2000 might only be known throughout the annals of time as "The Year Radiohead Made That One Album... You Know, The Weird One."

But... for all the hubbub (or lack thereof,) what we DID end up with was a pretty good year for music overall. Lots of new heroes, lots of returning champions, lots of great tunes from both sides of the Atlantic.

Our annual April Fool's Day gag follows below... the following news story ran untouched all day on our site. FYI: we received no fewer than THREE messages going, "Where did you get this information from? This is SO weird!" etc. We LIVE for April 1st...

Well, here it is, one last monument to a dead century - the 1999 Excellent Indie-UK Mailer poll results. The fourth annual Excellent poll featured more responses than ever before, thanks to the continued growth of the list and the success of the web site. A big shout out, then, to Ajay our web-slinging list administrator. Thanks to everyone for participating in 1999 and we'll see you all again next millennium.

EXCELLENT ONLINE is moving! You may have noticed that things have been pretty quiet around here lately. Well, we've been busy packing up for the move to our own domain and pulling together a number of upgrades to the site. We've got new columns, new interviews, and new additions to the site, and it's all set for launch on WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3RD. The new address and further details will all be posted here on Monday the 1st.