February 2012 Numbers: Making the Leap
I’m pressed for time here, but as per protocol, I wanted to take a second on this first day of March to say thanks to everyone who checked in over this Leap Year February. The numbers worked out to beat January even with two fewer days. Your continued patronage is appreciated, and to those who hit up the site for the first time, thanks to you as well.
As you can see above, The Obelisk pulled in 192,762 page views for February 2012. The bounce rate was a little higher than I’d like at 55 percent, but I’m not really sure what to do to fix that other than a redesign — thoughts of which have been kicking around in my head lately — and I don’t really have the time to implement that right now, so I’ll make due with what I’ve got. Visitors came from 135 countries around the world, which I’m pretty sure is a new best.
The top five countries, as ever, were the US, UK, Canada, Germany and Australia. Sweden was number six. In America, the top five states were California, New York, Texas, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. That’s the same as January as well. Kind of standard operating procedure, I guess. Cool by me. Wyoming sent an astounding 16 visits.
January’s all-comp podcast has been downloaded 225 times so far, and as of this post, the forum has 922 registered members, with 62,211 posts in 4,253 topics. I’ve also been debating the merits of overhauling the look of the forum, if not the functionality, but again, time. I gotta work for a living, you know.
Speaking of, as I’m once again short on time, here’s a few updates I want to put out there as we go into March:
Columns: This has been going really well so far, I think. Woody High‘s column went up this week, and it was killer, and last week Mario Lalli‘s was great, as was Tim Catz‘ “70 RPMs” and Tommy Southard‘s beery adventures before that. I’ve asked Beaten Back to Pure/Birds of Prey frontman Ben Hogg to contribute a series on Southern living and Southern heavy, and he’s already turned the first one in. It’s called “Fire on the Mountain” and it’ll go up next week.
I’ve been thinking of doing a column myself too, but the debate continues, as I don’t exactly think The Obelisk is hurting for my opinions on stuff. We’ll see. Definitely not like I already have a post-it note with potential topics on my office wall or anything. Definitely not.
The Maple Forum: As you can see in the sidebar, there are 71 copies of the HeavyPink 7″ left. If you’d like one, and I think you would or I wouldn’t have put it out, click here to get it.
The Clamfight record has also been mastered and we’re looking at a June release date. It’s an excellent record. I’ve been grooving on it heavily the last couple weeks and I look forward to raving more about it once it’s pressed up and ready to go. They’re just putting together the art for it now. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to give away the title yet, so I won’t, but it fits the songs.
Reviews: A slew of new discs just got logged, and I still have a bunch I’ve been carrying around for a while. This month, look out for records from Wizard’s Beard, Vibravoid, Black Rainbows, Caltrop, Mendozza, Melvins Lite, Mangoo and several others that may or may not start with the letter ‘m.’ March is also a huge shows month. Tonight I’ll be checking out Windhand/Pilgrim in Brooklyn, and there’s also Black Pyramid and (maybe) Scott Kelly this weekend, and Truckfighters and Alcest later this month. Still undecided on making that trip to Portland, but if I do, throw Mars Red Sky in there too, because there’s no way I’d miss that provided I happened to be on the same coast.
Features: The reason I’m in a rush with this post is that I’m slated to interview Fursy Teyssier of Les Discrets in less than an hour. I hope that one turns out well, as I really dug that record. If all goes according to plan, look for that feature to go up this month. Tomorrow my Q&A with Joseph D. Rowland of Pallbearer will be up, and I’m hoping as well to sort out a phoner with the dudes in Truckfighters about their documentary and more for tomorrow afternoon, so keep an eye out for that as well. I also still owe The House of Capricorn (it’s been months) questions for a Six Dumb Questions and Sula Bassana ones for a full email interview. Argh.
audiObelisk: I’m hoping to premiere stuff this month from Iron Man and Eye, though there’s a lot of coordination involved with these things and I don’t know how the timing is going to work out. Either way, there never seems to be a lack of music around here, and I’ll have a podcast up next weekend. I think the theme is going to be the year 2008, so if you have any suggestions, please feel free to make them in the comments.
Other than that, I think it’s business as usual, which means a lot of business, so stay tuned. And thanks as always.
Sincerely,
JJ Koczan
Horrent Panegoist Taskmaster
