2010 Blog Winners – Kevin Smith, Superchunk, Jimmy Pardo, Beastie Boys and Rizzo the Rat

Thanks to WordPress.com for providing the following summary.  It was a fun first year (well, half year) for One Good Minute.  I still do not understand the Internet’s obsession with Rizzo the Rat.  Here’s to more great stuff in 2011.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 7,300 times in 2010. That’s about 18 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 202 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 61 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 12mb. That’s about a picture per week.

The busiest day of the year was November 2nd with 1,226 views. The most popular post that day was Kevin Smith’s “Red State” Poster is very Non-Kevin Smith … in a good way (Updated).

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, mergerecords.com, videogum.com, stumbleupon.com, and facebook.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for rizzo the rat, rizzo, beastie boys short film, jon wurster, and rizzo rat.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Kevin Smith’s “Red State” Poster is very Non-Kevin Smith … in a good way (Updated) November 2010
2 comments

2

My Fake Jimmy Pardo T-Shirt Design November 2010
2 comments

3

Superchunk Singles – The Singles’ Singles Album (now with less singles!) August 2010
3 comments

4

Superchunk Album History – Part 2 [1993-1996] September 2010
2 comments

5

Beastie Boys Short Film Starring Seth Rogan, Elijah Wood and Danny McBride? December 2010
3 comments

My Personal Analysis

Looking at these results and some of the underlying data, I am a little surprised at the various ways in which people found the top posts.  There is not one clear winner in terms of referral type.

• First place comes from Twitter thanks to a Kevin Smith shout out.  Given the power of Twitter I am surprised that it did not dominate the rest of the spots.
• Traffic for number 2, 3 and 4 came primarily by way posting to message boards.  A good chunk (pun intended) of number 3 also came from a Twitter shout out by Superchunk.  This plus the first spot all make sense, given that people are monitoring these avenues for specific topics that I posted on.  This sort of targeted promotion beats out any of the more generic promotion blasts to places like StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.
• The biggest surprise for me has been search traffic.  The number 5 spot was almost fully driven by search results hitting my site.  This, plus the whole Rizzo the Rat phenomenon, is not something I expected given the lack of time spent on SEO.

Holidays 2010 Wrap Up

The holidays are always good, because, well, they are the holidays and not work.  Unfortunately there was a lot of sickness in my house this year (including my own) derailing my plans for a lot of fun and exciting blog work.  Here is a little wrap up of the holiday highlights.

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Album Obsessions: He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper

I was certainly exposed to rap before He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper.  Run DMC‘s Raising Hell, the Beastie Boys‘ License to Ill, even early 2 Live Crew (which truthfully frightened me).  I think that DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince were able to bring it down to a level that a young, white, suburban kid could appreciate.  I mean really … my parents didn’t understand either.

Great Listening Round-Up

Here is a handful of great musical releases from the recent past for you to listen to / watch and enjoy.

Of course I have to start off with Superchunk.  Here is Crossed Wires from an in-store at Sonic Boom in Toronto on December 9, 2010.  I missed this but did enjoy the show that night.

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Video from The New Pornographers for the song Crash Years off of the album Together released early in 2010, complete with introduction explaining the Oxfam connection.

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She and Him sing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas with Conan O’Brien.

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Jeff Mangum played a surprise 10 song set recently, 5 of the songs you can listen to over at International Tapes.

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The Rural Alberta Advantage‘s first release off of their upcoming album.  The song is called Stamp, the album is called Departing (due March 1, 2011).  You will have to go to Pitchfork to stream it or Saddle Creek to download it yourself.

Superchunk Live in Toronto

I went to a Superchunk show this week. It still seems weird and exciting to me. I think I just assumed that I was at the point in my life that I didn’t go to shows any more. Anyway, enough about me. First, the facts (and then more about me later):

• Superchunk played at the Sound Academy in Toronto
• It was December 9, 2010
• They were opening for Broken Social Scene
• Doors opened at 8pm, Superchunk went on at 9pm and played until 10pm
• The two photos below from the show were taken with my iPhone and then run through Instagram to try to hide the shoddiness

Great Mac McCaughan Moments – The Future of Radio

Mac testified before Congress. That in itself sounds super cool and important. Seriously, though, Mac testified on the future of radio, putting forth the importance of non-commercial, independent radio. Here is an excerpt:

I also want to urge this committee to take the necessary steps to ensure that our media landscape does not become even more consolidated. The deregulation that followed the 1996 Telecommunications Act allowed for unprecedented consolidation in commercial radio, which has resulted in a homogeneity that is often out-of-step with artists, entrepreneurs, media professionals and educators — not to mention listeners.

Full transcript can be found here and the audio version is found here.

Great Mac McCaughan Moments – Art Class

I knew that Mac (and Laura) were responsible for most of the Superchunk album artwork, but I did not realize to what extent Mac was a visual artist until a post on his blog contained this image (among others).

Great Mac McCaughan Moments – The Perfect Little Door

Up until 2001 I was luke-warm on Portastatic.  I liked a lot of the songs but my heart belonged to the rockin’ and rollin’ of Superchunk and the lo-fi fiddling of Portastatic just did not click with my brain.  Had I been aware of the Superchunk drought we were about to embark upon I would have been even more excited, but the writeup of The Perfect Little Door actually had me quite stoked.

Great Mac McCaughan Moments – Falsetto

I’m not going to walk through Superchunk’s album history again as I covered it in my 4-part series starting here, so I will summarize to say that their first 5 albums (plus 2 singles collections) were all manner of rockin’.

Great Mac McCaughan Moments – Slack MFer

Mac McCaughan is very prolific.  Co-founder / front-man / chief songwriter for Superchunk.  Main dude for Portastatic.  Co-founder / owner of awesome Merge records.  Defender of independent music labels and makers.  Visual artist.  And more.

All of these things have resulted in a constant stream of output over multiple decades.  Mac’s passion and talent can hardly be contained in his smallish frame, perhaps fueling the on-stage fits of rock-spasm that has always been a signature of Superchunk live shows.  This list highlights a number of moments that made me sit up, smile and think “Who is this guy?  Is there no end to his coolness?”.  This will be a multi-part series so please follow me on twitter or sign up for email reminders to stay on top of future posts.