So last night I had this dream that in some form or another, I was having an e-mail exchange with AJ Daulerio who heads up one of the most well known sports blogs worldwide, Deadspin. We were having a free flowing conversation that was to be posted as it unfolded on Deadspin and centered on the most hilarious sporting news of 2008. Like any good dream, the specifics of our conversation are murky at best. I was startlingly lucid in my compositional abilities given that only the subconscious hemisphere of my brain was in operation.
But that wasn’t the point. What made it such a good dream is that I couldn’t wait to e-mail to all of my friends, post bulletins, and basically scream from the rooftop that I had made it onto Deadspin. Making it into Bill Simmons’ ESPN mailbag was certainly an accomplishment, but comparing it to Deadspin is like looking at the Rockies from the peak of Eagle Mountain. That my words could make it with legitimacy into one of the most well read enterprises in the world – not in the voyeuristic desire for fame that is craved by reality TV stars and those drunk on Warhol’s hourglass – but to be considered a peer for even a fleeting moment was a moment of accomplishment that even if only in the dream world was a high of rarely matched intensity.
Recently, the powers that be in Cwn Annwn decided, among many promotional endeavors, to start a blog. We are starting with that same base of idiocy found in all aspiring bloggers that what he have to say is somehow more interesting, compelling, and entertaining than the screaming cacophony of our fellow kin. Whether that proves to be true or not remains to be seen, but we do need to latch onto that trait shared by those that are actually interesting – we tried.
We want to try to give the listeners of Cwn Annwn music another medium of entertainment. The same minds that go into our music will go into this cavalcade of disheveled thoughts. You may or may not find our thoughts to be worth much, but you know what, we didn’t care that you couldn’t pronounce our band name, we didn’t care that you thought less of our music because we didn’t adhere to the conventions of what was popular or that it just wasn’t good enough, and we didn’t care that you were mad at us because we accomplished something that you felt was beyond our talent. Everything that we’ve done as Cwn Annwn was to make ourselves happy first, and quite honestly, while we’d rather you here than not, we’re not going to change to accommodate what pleases you.
Nothing is going to be off-limits. Already I have ideas about music, pornography, food, traffic, video games, football, and everything in between that I feel I can at least eke out a couple of paragraphs about, and that’s to speak nothing of the horror my bandmates have in store. We’re not looking to constrain ourselves with a subject medium, or even a convention like we do with our music. We’re just going to go, and hopefully, this gives you a little insight into who we are as people.
With our band, we started out knowing nobody, and while we still have miles upon miles upon miles to go to reach our goals, what we’ve accomplished today is a testament to our diligence in honing our musical craft and our hard work to cultivating our fan base. Maybe it’s the half bottle of leftover Cabernet Sauvignon from New Year’s Eve that I’ve downed while writing this, but I have an unwavering belief in the strength of our music, and I believe that the average Joe after reading us stands a fighting chance of thinking of our web page when he’s looking to entertain himself during his fifteen minutes of down time at work. And with any luck, we will reach that point where we scrubby unpronounceable musicians from Saint Paul will be telling Daulerio that T-Jack’s getting a raw deal, and the world will listen.
- Neil
