The Future.

Hello – this is Wes – this is a fairly hard update to write as I know it’s going to disappoint a few people – the bottom line of it being – there won’t be another go at the ‘Storm the Charts’ campaign, at least not with me at the helm.

The overriding reason for this is that I can no longer see the end goal. I watched the Cage Against the Machine campaign (to get John Cage’s ‘silent’ track 4’33” to Christmas number 1) with great interest – in my opinion that campaign was brilliant. But as it went on, and particularly towards the end of their download week; it really dawned on me that if, with almost 100,000 followers of their page getting updates and a huge amount of national and international attention – if with artists with literally millions of followers on board, the CATM campaign couldn’t break the top 20 – then our attempt to push for lots of unknown bands at once and even hope to get one of them up there had moved from ‘ludicrously ambitious’ to ‘actually impossible’.

I don’t mind anyone pointing out if they said it was impossible in the first place, by the way – but this is the difference between being able to dream and share that with others, and trying to kid myself I can make something happen that I can’t!

So – with sincere apologies both to those listeners who enjoyed our first Storm the Charts attempt, and to any artists who were hoping to feature in 2011, I’m really sorry, but I can’t make it happen.

This is what I am going to do:

1. This blog is long overdue an update from the 40 artists we tried to get in the charts in July. In the next few weeks I’ll try to pull together updates from as many of them as I can and present them together. Some have gone onto amazing things – and if you didn’t know, the lead singer of one of the bands actually won X-Factor (!!) (it’s a small world…)

2. I’m going to start keeping a music blog of my own – if you’d like to follow it, I would be very flattered, you can find it at heartbeatofarabbit.blogspot.com

3. I am a creative writer myself and I edit a zine called Attack!!!!, which is an occasional series of collections of new, original writing, artwork and music produced in response to given themes. It is all new and interesting stuff by independent artists made specially for the zine. Please ‘like’ the facebook page if you want to see updates on that when they come.

4. I’ve become involved in managing a brilliant Bath-based band called The Hysterical Injury – they were one of the bands who applied for StC, and I must admit I’ve been a fan of theirs from the beginning. Needless to say I think you should check them out – but I guess I would say that, wouldn’t I! : )

5. I am doing everything I can to help to save my local library, where I also work (and incidentally you can now find a few Storm bands’ albums on the CD shelves there!) – the future of libraries are a huge issue in this country right now, if you’re not sure what the picture is in your area, check the highly disturbing closures map.

I’m sure that’s more than enough plugging of my own activity now – I hope people can see I am going to try to continue to do my bit for independent music – I would be flattered if any Stormers wanted to follow me along any of these various avenues too.

I would love to know if any Stormers have kept following artists who they found through the project. I was overwhelmed by the response in the wake of the download week in July. Thank you all so much for your support for the project through last year, and do watch out for that update on what the 40 have been up to since.

With thanks, best wishes, and an eye to the future,

Wes