On the Occasion of Your First Birthday and Impending Funeral

As a last act before starting to put the shutters up on this lemonade stand, I've finally recovered all of the posts that we lost when the original website crashed in November of last year and archived them here for future posterity. I found myself reading several of the old posts in the process and had to remark on Jay's uncanny ability to be the first person to write about some wonderful bands (Jose Gonzalez, The National, The Boy Least Likely To, Art Brut...).

As I remarked earlier this year in our interview with Muzzle of Bees, I don't know anyone who knows more bands or has more stories about his life with music than my brother. I know that was one of the reasons I thought that this website would be a really good idea. And looking back now it is definitely something I'm very proud of. There seems to be a backlash brewing against music blogging ("too many of them", "their influence is overrated") but I have to tell you- a thing like this requires A LOT of effort and is not to be discounted.

I was talking to someone about the website right after the aforementioned interview. They asked me why we kept things going in spite of the time and energy it took. With possibly the exception of the entry for Jose Gonzalez's cover of "Teardrop" we never drew a particularly large following- 350 people a day at one point and just under 200 recently. I told them that the core of our readers was in fact other music bloggers! There is in fact a very welcome communal aspect to music blogging that became very evident during South By Southwest this year. I'm not sure where we ever fit in but I can safely say the following: I hope that Audio For Drinking's legacy is like that of The Ramones and The Velvet Underground who didn't necessarily sell a lot of records when they were playing but did inspire everyone who saw them to start their own band.

Keeping in mind with our original mission statement of sharing music we like with hopes that someone else might discover it, the last thing I'd like to offer to you is from a friend of mine who asked me to listen to a song he had just recorded. Maybe a year from now someone will be writing about him.

"On A Bicycle Tire"/ Only A Fool