Several months ago twitter changed the way that you can post to their site.  Many sites had to scramble and update.  Since twitter is unfortunately an afterthought for me, it took me a while to get around updating the site.  I know our 23 followers were crushed but they can now rejoice as the service should be up and running again!  hiazzah!

I'm going to enable cell phone updates so I can post more random stuff that I see, especially when I go to shows.  Not being a music writer means that I can pretty much sum up all my thoughts about a gig in 140 characters or less.

After many many years, we finally have our tour dates page back online!  I was introduced to Excellent Online back in the late nineties when someone emailed me a copy of the "New Music Release List" that assembled together by hand.  It looked like something that needed to be online.  So I contacted Shane Brown, joined the mailing list and quickly began work on Excellent Online 1.0.  One of the other features that we really wanted was a tour dates page, something that I used heavily.  Back then we updated all the dates by hand and it was a very tedious process.  This time around I wanted something automatic so that I know it will be kept updated.  So we're now working with songkick.com to automatically fetch the tour dates for the bands that we have previously mentioned on this site.  So check it out and we hope you enjoy the new feature of the site.

UPDATE 2009-12-31 12:11AM:  Holy crap.  We've been going though all of our old posts and catagorizing them.  You can see the start of the work in the "tag cloud".  As a web visitor I never really like tagged clouds but I guess it does give you a high-level view of the bands that we talk about on this site.  Actually, right now it's focused on the bands that we talked about in the late 90's.  Hopefully it'll be more balanced out when we get into current headlines and not so Blur, Verve, and Oasis heavy. 

The tide is turning...

But the ocean stays the same. Excellent Online is about to undergo an epic overhaul. If 2007 proved one thing, it's that we admins have let this site quietly slip away from us. Be it advancing years, the chores of life, the creepy word "responsibilities" that I've tried to fight for most of my time on this planet... we can blame whatever we want. Well, I guess we can't blame one thing:

PASSION. We could easily say "Hey, our heart's not in it anymore." But that's crap. The music of our time has defined us as people. It's what initially brought us together, it's what has forged the friendships -- be it in the real world or this very community -- that I hope hold strong forever.

E.M. Forster once wrote, "The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world." It was the power of music that brought us all together under this banner, and it's the power of music that will NEVER let this site die.

I hate change. Detest it. When friends move away or even get new jobs, parts of me cringe. So to totally do away with this site in favor of our new launch soon -- turning Excellent into a news-collecting aggregate where stories are voted on and published by YOU -- makes my stomach churn a little. But when I stop to think about it, it brings me solace.

Solace because the thing we care about -- the music -- will still be here. Different faces may pop up on the cover of NME, sure -- but there will always be a band out there to take our breath away, there will always be an artist whose words speak to our very soul, there will always be an amazing record we can use to escape the doldrums of a cloudy Sunday afternoon. And while the site as you know it will soon become radically different, it's our passion for music that will always stay the same -- it's our security blanket through life, and I couldn't imagine a day without it.

Our e-mail discussion list will continue to flourish, and the members of Excellent -- stretched out across the globe, some who have even met and married through this site -- are still as passionate as ever about the tunes that shape our playlists, that shape our lives. We couldn't have done it all these years without you, and we dedicate the legacy of this site to all of you.

To that extent, we have finished tabulations on our 2007 Members Poll for the best music of the year, and you can see the results by clicking "Read more" below.

Here at Excellent, we bang to our OWN drum.

If we wanna post a story about a band that we like and nobody else on the planet's ever heard of, we do it.

If we wanna post rumors about a Spice Girls reunion, we do it.

And if we wanna post the results of our Best-of-2006 Poll three weeks past it's relevance, we do it.

Okay, so we're not the timeliest of people. But we ARE the most finicky. Which means it takes time for the many members of our mailing list to comb through the releases of an entire year and then hash out the best of the best. Well, the collective nerdgasm is over. The poll is done, the votes have been counted. Wanna see our picks for record of the year? TV show of the year? Our favorite Beanie Baby of all time? Well, you can see at least TWO of those (and oh-so-much more) by clicking READ MORE.

Well, folks, welcome to 2007.

If you haven't noticed, we've been slacking. It ends here.

One of the sucky things about not getting, umm, PAID to run a website is that we're forced to hold day jobs. And occasionally night jobs. And midday jobs. And some of take classes. Some of us teach classes. You get the drift.

In the latter half of 2006, we let it get the best of us, and the information you've come to expect from Excellent suffered. It's a fresh year, we've got a breath of fresh air, and it's time to get back to business. We're not going anywhere. So stay tuned as we once again bring Excellent to the quality you guys expect from the site.

Priority #1 is belatedly holding our 2006 Year-End Poll of our members. That's going on right NOW, and we'll have the results posted for ya in just a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, we're about to open the flood gates with information galore. We've already added a boatload of new tour dates, and be ready for the influx of shows that'll start happening around SXSW in just a couple months.

Keep checking back every day. We're on a roll.

Feel like helpin' us? We can always use another hand scouring the net for stories, reviews, and general tomfoolery. Drop us a line and we'll talk.

Ah, 2005, we hardly knew ye.

It seems like just yesterday we were tallying up the votes for the 2004 poll, blissfully unaware that we were mere months away from using the words "Arctic Monkeys" in everyday conversation. Yet 2005 arrived, Arctic Monkeys and all, in all its glory. We had some great records, we had some crap records, and we had a whole lotta inbetween. That's where our annual poll comes in, wherein we let the members of our e-mail discussion list sort the year out for us (basically so that we don't have to.) Hundreds of ballots later, we've got our tabulations and present to you once again the results of our 2005 Members Poll. (Click on READ MORE to, well, read more.)

Ah, 2004, we hardly knew ye.

It seems just last year we were like, "Franz WHO?"

Now it's a new January, and of course, time for us to get all music nerdy on ya with the results of our 2004 poll of the members of Excellent Online. Ready to learn what our top-voted album of the year is? Who the Indieboy of the Year could possibly be? Want to know how many times we can type the word "Interpol" in one news story? Then read on, dear friends... check out the poll results by clicking on "Read More" below!

Since the site started we've been hosting at Digital Odyssey and they've treated us well (for the most part, they disabled my account when we released Intertwined). But now they've decided to dump all their Linux machines and run a full Windows shop so we had to move on. Now we are being hosted by a new startup, Shift Refresh, which is comprised of me and a friend. We're on a much more powerful web server running the latest versions of apache and php. Things that were a little slow before are much faster now. If you notice any weird problems, please drop us a note (eadmin at odc dot net).

We're still a bit shell-shocked from all the end-o-the-year hubbub around these parts. Every December, we ask the hundreds of folks on our e-mail discussion list to vote on their favorites for the past year in music. Just click on READ MORE to see the full list of winners. If you need us, we'll be over in the corner, nursing our headaches and sore typing fingers.