Well, if you can’t see the big orange letters above, The Obelisk had a whopping 212,304 page views over the course of March, which is nearly 20,000 more than February. What had been some slow growth between the first two months of the year suddenly shot up into what I can only assume will be a continuous exponential ascent to interwebular prominence, until The Obelisk is like some kind of profit-averse Google and I’m like a broke, fat, beardo Steve Jobs, or whoever it is who’s in charge of Google. Sorry, I don’t keep up with what’s happening online outside of this site, the forum and the alternating softcore porn and stoner metal YouTube clips that endlessly appear in my Facebook feed.

A bit of fun.

In all seriousness, thanks to everyone who made March such a stellar month. If you came through to listen to one of the many streams under the audiObelisk heading, I hope you enjoyed it. I took the Greenleaf one down today and was more than a little sad to do it, but there will be plenty more where that came from, so no worries. We’ll get there in a minute, but first let’s run down the March stats. Because nothing’s more fun than stats and we all know it.

You can see the page views above. Those came from an astonishing 138 countries, the top five of which were the US, the UK, Canada, Germany and Australia. In America, the top five states were California, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Texas. Some shuffle there, with Texas dropping back — perhaps everyone was too busy getting hammered at SXSW to check in — but otherwise the same five as last month, with my home state of New Jersey in sixth. Perpetually last, Wyoming was down three visits from February with a grand total of 13.

On the forum, there are currently 957 registered users and 64,715 posts in 4,540 topics. The build there has been gradual, and I’m glad for that since it’s a long-term thing and I don’t want it to explode. Lots of good people and a mostly cool atmosphere despite the occasional shitstorm that’s unavoidable from time to time. In any case, pretty wild, and I’ve been using the news forum to post press releases and stuff that I might otherwise not have time to put on the blog, and that’s been going really well, so all around, no complaints.

I guess the all-2008 podcast was kind of a flop. There wasn’t much of a comments response and it was only downloaded 133 times so far. I guess you can’t win them all, and maybe it was too soon. Not the end of the world, in any case. It’ll be up for a while longer, then I’ll have my usual post-Roadburn ‘cast upon my return from Europe in the middle of this month.

Speaking of that trip, let’s talk a bit about what April has to offer:

Adventure: Thursday I fly out to London to cover Desertfest this coming weekend. I cannot fucking wait. I’ll be in town Thursday night if anyone’s around, I’m staying in Camden a couple blocks away from where the shows are happening. It’s going to be a blast, and I’ll be reporting on it pretty much as it happens night by night over the course of this weekend.

Next week, instead of flying home, I’m staying in Europe. My plan is to hit Paris next Monday and do the tourist thing, then hop an overnight train to Berlin and go record shopping there on Tuesday before making my way to Amsterdam on Wednesday and either setting up camp there or continuing on to Tilburg in advance of Roadburn starting on Thursday, April 12. I’ll stay in Tilburg and cover the fest’s four days with words and pics, as I’ve done the last several years, and then over the course of Sunday night, April 15 into Monday, April 16, make my way back to London’s Heathrow Airport and fly back to the States at noon on Monday. It’s a trip like nothing I’ve ever done and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what comes out of it — other than fatigue, which is pretty much inevitable. Thanks to The Patient Mrs. for her support and coordination throughout this whole process.

Reviews: I’ll be honest. I’ve got a backlog of stuff here waiting to be done — digital promos apart from “big” albums are falling by the wayside faster than I can stop them from slipping through the cracks — and I know I’m going to bring a lot with me to listen to as I make my way here and that over the next week and a half, but if it’s go see the Mona Lisa or review some album, well, the album will still be there two days later, so I’m not going to kill myself to get these things done. I can only assume I’ll be doing a great deal of writing about the travel, and I want that to be my focus, so while I’ll have the stuff with me, I don’t want to guarantee and say, “I’ll definitely be doing this or that.” That said, I’m going to try desperately to get an Ufomammut review posted before I leave, and before April’s out, I’ll have writups on new ones from Black Space Riders, Candlemass, Pyramidal and others.

Interviews: In about 45 minutes, I’m gonna call up Sam Taylor from Caltrop and hopefully get that interview in the can, and I spoke to Dave Chandler of Saint Vitus this past Friday, so look for those before the month is out. I’ve also sent emailers to Sula Bassana of Electric Moon and the dudes from The Dirty Streets, and hopefully they’ll be back in sooner rather than later. If I can meet up with Ollie Stygall from Grifter at some point before or after his band’s set at Desertfest, I’d love to finally get that in the can, and if not, I think I’ve finally found a way to record from Skype, so one way or another, that’ll get done after their tour with Orange Goblin. Down the line, I’m hoping to put together interviews with Greenleaf and Ufomammut as well, probably emailers. I don’t know if that’ll be in April or not, but I figured it’s worth mentioning.

audiObelisk: Tomorrow I’m putting up a stream of the new Mangoo album, front to back. Over the next couple weeks, I’ll also have tracks from Barr and Adrift posted, and I’m hoping to lock down a few more before the month is out. As regards the podcast, I’m going to wait until I’m back to put together the next one with the spoils of whatever I’ve picked up along the way. I hear the exchange rate is nightmarish, but I can only imagine I’ll pick up enough odds and ends to put together a killer mix. I’ll probably talk over it too, if I can work out the timing on doing so.

Columns: I’ve been really thrilled with how these have gone so far, and I’ll definitely keep the rotation going while I’m gone. We’re already once through everyone’s rotation and then some, and this week will be Woody‘s second installment of “Spine of Overkill,” followed next week by Ben Hogg‘s second “Fire on the Mountain.” So far it’s a blast and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these dudes’ work as much as I have. To Woody and Ben, and Tommy Southard, Mario Lalli, and Tim Catz: thank you for your contributions to the site. I couldn’t be more thrilled than I am to have you guys on board going into the rest of 2012 and beyond.

From today to Wednesday is kind of a mess getting things ready at work (as I’m sure you can imagine), but as ever, I’ll be posting as much as I can in the interim. I just want to take one more opportunity though to say thank you for checking in this past month, and thank you for checking in over April to come. It’s going to be unreal and I hope you enjoy whatever comes out of it as much as I expect to.

Sincerely,
JJ Koczan
Heuristic Papyrocrat Taskmaster

Tags: self-aggrandizing, The Numbers

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2012 at 3:46 pm and is filed under The Numbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.