A to Z 2k18: Reflections as a daily blog

As any of you who have followed me for more than the last month will know, I'm a daily blog.  You might have picked up from the fact that this blog is called "Song A Day", but I can totally understand if you would assume I don't actually post daily.

As with years past, my greatest challenge was simply visiting other people's stuff.  I had 3 blogs I read every post of this year (which is about 3 blogs more than last year), but other than them I was super bad about making sure to check out other people.  I also was still bad at commenting, so apologies if I visited and almost never commented, I promise I probably liked your stuff.

I suppose the biggest issue with that is that I always come into this challenge hoping to find somebody else who talks about music.  There's not as many music bloggers here since you all are mostly writers, but as in the past, I have found that's not too big an issue.  I also feel a lot better about my posts, since I'm a better writer than I was a few years back.  I've also mostly managed to blend my tastes and more publicly enjoyed music for the posts, so I'm sure that helped.

That's a biggie too, this year I managed to post a few more Metal tracks that actually went over well!  I did a quick look through years past, and I discovered that this is one of the best years I've had for conversations too!  It's just been a great time all around.  Even though we had a lot less people signing up than in the past it still was a good year for people like me who just had quick entertainment pieces.

Shoutout to my fellow song blog I found run by Lauren Mayhew too.  She had the bomb idea of posting her top iPod song plays, which was just a blast to follow.  I'd never heard of The Wanted or McFly before April, but you'd better believe I heard about them by the end of it, haha

I liked the individual sheets for posts too, that's not a bad addition at all.  Honestly I loved the Google Forms signup too, it was a really good play that helped fix the issues that arose last year.  And the categories?  Good options there.  Took me a second to see what I qualified under cause "Entertainment" is a pretty broad category, but that's alright.  I loved being able to sort people by categories that worked much easier than years past.  It kinda helped me find some people that were more in the same vein of posting as I was.

A good year, all things considered.  Hope some of y'all will swing by as the year goes on to check out what I have going on.  The music selection is generally a bit out there, but I enjoy it, and since this is mostly a passion project that's what really counts.  See you guys next time, enjoy the song.

Band:  Dire Straits feat. Sting
Song:  Money For Nothin
Album:  Brothers In Arms (1985)
Genre:  Classic Rock

Song wise today we're kicking off a nostalgia trip of the first music I got loaded onto my iPod by a friend of mine.  We're gonna walk through the mess of me realizing I liked Metal music with a slew of Hardcore, , Hard Rock, and way more.  I'm pumped about this, so I hope y'all enjoy it too!  We'll start it out with Dire Straits, who's guitar riff in Money For Nothing made me realize that's what I was after in music.

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A to Z, the Reflections Post

Artist:  Tech N9ne feat. Krizz Kaliko
Song:  No Can Do
Album:  Everready (The Religion)
Genre:  Rap, Hip Hop
Language:  Strong

Skip down a bit if you want to just hit up the reflections portion of the post.

I was originally going to go with Starship's song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now", but after much deliberation I realized something.  Firstly, I really strongly dislike 80s Pop.  Secondly, the song is much more suited for my S post for next year, yeah?  But mostly because theme wise, this song kinda fits my blog's feel more, ya dig?

The song has a really bouncy beat to it that really just pulled me in right from the "Y'all can't f*ck with us" line.  It set the tone of the song straight out the gate and from there on out it just grooved right through the rest of it.  As per usual, Krizz manages to nail his flow as usual.  A steady feature in a lot of Tech's songs you pretty much know what you're getting from him.

xXxReflectionPartxXx

As I've said for the last couple years, as a daily blog already the A to Z isn't as big an issue for me as it would be for a bi-weekly or monthly blogger.  The hardest part of the month continues to be freaking Q and X honestly.  The first year I did albums and out of the 6 albums I found that begin with the letter X, 2 of them belong to Mushroomhead.  That's straight up ridiculous honestly.

But honestly my favorite part of this is that people actually will visit and comment on my blog.  Due to not budgeting my time too well I don't really comment on too many blogs.  I said I'd be better last year, but apparently I lied.  Maybe next year, right?

This brings me to the List.  If you participated the A to Z this year you'll know that the facilitators decided to axe the list from years past since it was really hard to keep up with on their end from a maintenance standpoint.  That made a lot of sense to me, and while I was sad I wasn't gonna be able to cash in on those free page views that I was getting before it's not like I can blame anybody but myself on that front.

Dude, some of those guys got way more annoyed than they needed to.  It reminded me of people who ask an artist to paint them something.  When they get quoted a price and the first thing they shoot back with is "It can't really be that hard, that's ridiculous.  Can't you do it for *less* amount?"  That's what everybody who was talking about how the list couldn't be that hard to maintain sounded to me.  They never had to monitor 1000+ blogs to make sure the ones who weren't active were removed from the list, so they don't get a vote.

Honestly this turned out great.  I noticed a lot of comments when I actually was active on other people's blogs, I almost managed to get my name out a little, and some people found me cause I got added to somebody's personal list.  That was my favorite part honestly, I managed to get myself added on somebody's watch list.  I'm curious to see how long that lasts since I don't exactly post music that is widely loved by the blogging community.

What kind of music do you punks like anyway?  I keep hearing that what I post "isn't my scene" or "Just not my cup of tea", but only one person actually posted what they listen to.  I love interactions where I get to talk about music, so gimme something to talk about, eh?

Heck, if you stick around as a reader and occasional commenter I'll even post music you'd like on purpose.  That's a pretty dope offer, eh?

Happy A to Z guys, see a pile of you next year, and hopefully throughout this year.

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Reflections 2016: Queen - We Are The Champions

Band:  Queen
Genre:  Classic Rock

We're gonna do a lovely thing here where I ramble about how I bumbled my way through another year of the A to Z.

I managed to not have the time to visit almost anybody's blog this year.  It really bummed me out actually cause I really liked the visiting aspect of last year's adventure.

Post wise though I feel like I'm a better writer than I was last year.  Yeah, my grammar sucks.  Yeah, my punctuation sucks.  Yeah, these short little sentences suck.  It's the way I talk, I was never really good with writing.  My bad.

Theme wise I liked this year's theme of going with a band and a music video as opposed to the albums from last year.  I think  it was a better idea that was more streamlined in its execution.

Honestly though I already blog every day.  Daily blogging is something I'm used to so the hardest part of the challenge was actually managing to keep it all in order.  I ended up keeping a running list of all the stuff I wanted to post but couldn't cause it didn't fit the theme.  That would be a load of Death Metal, Rap, and a few album reviews if you're interested.  Soon........

I've gotta go though, I'm writing this on 4 hours of sleep rom the show on Sunday and I have to be up in 5 hours.  Still though, thanks for reading and if you visited, thanks for visiting.  I'll still be here, so swing by again some time, eh?

EDIT 5-9-16:  Well dang, this sounds so much weirder reading it again.  I don't really know what I was thinking trying to write this at like, 11:30 at night instead of earlier in the day, but I suppose that really manages to sum up how I had been managing from the rest of the A to Z as well.

Congrats to all else who made it by the way, forgot to say that.  Cheers!

A to Z Reflections as a daily blog.

Firstly, let's do my music blog thing and cue some sappy music.

Let's start by recapping what I said yesterday.  It was a lot of fun, and I really can't wait to do it again next year.  I will need a slightly altered theme to be sure (freaking Qs and Xs), but it will be a crap ton of fun anyway.

I feel kinda bad, cause I made a lot of my posts up till the last 8 or so a good time in advance so that I'd have time to visit other people's blogs.  As it turned out, I visited a lot, but didn't comment on too many because, as somebody who isn't a writer, I didn't have a lot in common with you guys.  I'm some "punk kid" who listens to a lot of "screamo" and "hippity hop music", so I really didn't anticipate many of you guys enjoying mine either.

As it turns out, a couple of people did seem to actually enjoy what I was doing.  I had a few people who I had visited early on stop by and say hey, and I had one Stephen Tremp stop by a lot after the half way point.  Honestly, that was probably the coolest thing for me.  I don't care if it's just because he was one of the co-hosts and visited everybody anyway, getting comments is something that I seriously enjoy.

On a different viewpoint though, I already have a daily blog.  I post a song every single day, Monday through Sunday, and what this challenge did for me was possibly a little different than what a lot of you guys did.  I don't have an issues getting out a lot of posts, but I do have an issue getting a semi organized thing going.  I might do theme weeks, but I keep them at weeks cause I don't have the gumption to actually organize myself up any sort of thing that resembles a cohesive thing.

Now though I have plans for recurring themed days, more holiday themes, actually getting more album reviews going, and all kinds of stuff.

I hope that those of you who enjoyed following my blog during the challenge will continue to follow afterword, but if not, I understand.  I play loud noises in a land of writers and since my mom is involved in that community I get that these things need quiet and less chaos than I enjoy in my life.

Happy A to Z everybody, I hope to see you next year, and congrats to everybody else who made it all the way as well.