Dizzy Blog - CackBlabbath, the story so far

It's been a while since I have updated this blog thing, but given the incredible growth of the website (and associated media empire) I thought it was about time to post an update. Hopefully it'll serve as a bit of an inspiration to anyone considering doing something similar.

It's been about 4 months now (seems like much longer) since this all kicked off with that very first review of Triaxis' key to the kingdom and so far the success has exceeded anything I could have anticipated. It wasn't long after the site went up that I started receiving download links to stuff to review. Some of it was very good, some of it was not at all very good but the important thing was that the site was being seen by people 'in the business' as a place where it was worth soliciting an opinion.

Not long after that I got the first 'physical' promos. OK, it's early days yet but there is something of a buzz about getting a jiffy bag full of CDs through the door, especially when I usually have little or no idea about the bands I was about to subject my ears to.

The other thing that has come as something of a surprise is how quickly bands, labels and PR companies have been able to find the site. Emails have been received from places as far away as India, Chile, Romania and New Zealand, from bands and representatives asking if they can send CDs or download links. This quickly got to the point where there was more stuff arriving than I had time to listen to. That's when Amanda joined the team, bringing a slightly different perspective to the reviews and hopefully making the site a bit more 'balanced' and a bit less 'what I think'.

The site has also given me access to people and places that I couldn't have imagined those few short months ago. Whether it's interviewing Gama Bomb, The More I See, Blaze Bayley, Godsized, Furyon etc, or just hanging out backstage in the Camden Underworld with Imperial Vengeance and Sabbat the site has taken me, in a very small and barely significant way, from just being a fan out front to being a 'part' of things.

But it's a two-way relationship. When Blue Gillespie sent me their Synesthesia album (which is brilliant, by the way), I was able to pass them the details of some other music sites that I thought may like to review it. Well, they did so when I got back to the band and asked for an interview they were happy to oblige. It's a weird, symbiotic situation.

The highpoint so far has been getting press accreditation (based on a speculative email) for the SOS Festival (and getting the marvelous Gemma Lou Harris to photograph it for CackBlabbath), and the biggie, 2010 Bloodstock.

Want to know why I started the site... here's why....

I mean, if life isn't about meeting idols from your, ahem, younger days, what's the point.

Oh, and she was lovely.

So the next steps, that's the difficult bit. There's just not the time to devote to making the site into a 'news resource', many of which only seem to republish press releases. I don't want to go down that route, but it may be the only way to get the number of visitors appreciably increased. But then time spent doing that will be less time for listening to new music, going to gigs and getting those reviews done. This was never intended to be a full time job, but it's surprising how much time it can eat up if you let it.

If you are good / lucky you will almost definitely get drawn into your local scene too. Once acts know that you are there they will come to you inviting you to gigs or to send you promos. They know that although CackBlabbath is not exactly Metal Hammer in scale we do feature quite well on Google search results and pimp our stuff to the best part of 1000 people via Facebook and Twitter, so it's definitely exposure that's worth having.

So, if you're thinking of starting something like this go for it. Get yourself a catchy name that people wil remember (thanks Dom :) and write about what you enjoy reading about. If you go out trying to be huge you will probably fail. The growth of CackBlabbath has tailed off a bit of late in spite of loads of new content, but that's the way it goes. You can spend hours lovingly crafting an article you think will be huge and have hardly anyone read it. Or you can make a one sentence mention of a band like Demonic Resurrection and get thousands of visitors.

It's a funny old game :))

Dizzy

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