Last week marked this blog’s fifth anniversary. It largely came and went without much notice from myself. I happened to see last month that my first post was 06.03.09, and then I remembered the date a couple days ago. I’m impressed that, ~175 posts later this thing is still stumbling along. Without getting into too much retrospective sentimentality, a few thoughts…

I blogged quietly and inconsistently the first ~18 months or so. While the focus remained the same – music only – I didn’t “advertise” outside of a link from my main website. That changed in 2010 when, after starting to occasionally review albums, two reviews were unexpectedly highlighted by the artists themselves via social media within a couple weeks of each other. The first was my review of PRISM Quartet’s Antiphony and the second was Dave Liebman’s Joy: The Music of John Coltrane. (Oddly enough, PRISM and Lieb are playing together tonight in NYC.) I’m proud of the fact that they each remain one of the higher-ranking/trafficked reviews for said albums. That was when I realized that, at least occasionally, people were reading this, and so I started to take to social media to promote posts, ensure respectable linking etiquette, and to write with more regularity.

Including the above, some posts have received much more traffic than I would’ve ever anticipated, particularly those on Wagner & Seinfeld, Tord Gustavsen Quartet’s Chicago concert, Scent of Soil’s eponymous album, and earplugs. And of course a number of others that I thought would get some eyes went unnoticed. Also surprisingly, some posts have been put me in touch with some great and interesting folks whom I otherwise would’ve have been in contact with. (Unfortunately, when resuscitating my site after a hack late last year, I lost a number of the comments from these folks – none have been deleted by me. Good thing I still have the emails and any subsequent correspondence.)

Much to my continued amazement, traffic and RSS subscriptions continue to increase slowly but surely. I’m just glad that the site is still up and running – I had feared it would’ve become just another abandoned site. And, fortunately, it remains more than just a link farm. Often blogs (d)evolve into a series of entries pointing to other articles. Here’s to hoping that continues to be avoided. Much like The Dish – though on a much smaller scale – the goal is (hopefully) consistently thoughtful content and not a race for clickthroughs.

For readers old and new and regular and sporadic alike, thank you very much for reading. Onward and upward…