Driven Far Off

The latest on the indie, alternative, and rock music scene including news, music, contest, interviews, and more. Best described as your favorite place to find new bands.

Article #10 – Band Websites

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With the release of Anberlinâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s newest album â┚¬Ã…”Citiesâ┚¬? the bands website has been redesigned around the theme of cities. When you get to the website the first thing you see is a black and white spinning globe with different orange spots on it to represent certain cities from around the world. When you click on a city you then zoom in with a very cool transition to a content area of the site. New York City has the bands news and Seattle has videos of the band and so on. Some of the little touches make this website such a pleasure to interact with, for example, as soon as you start playing a video the main sites media player fades down to a pause and when you stop the video the media player starts back up again.

The Anberlin website made me start thinking about other bands sites and just band websites in general. Do bands need a website; do they need elaborate ones, what should be on the bands site? First of all I think bands do need websites, but I think a lot of time they are over done and a waste of time and money. This doesnâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t apply just to bands but for a lot of bands out there I think a free MySpace, or Purevolume page is all they need.

When Iâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢m looking up and finding out about a band there are some key things I am looking for and I want to be able to find it quickly and easily (if they can do it in style then even better). The main thing Iâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢m looking for is a couple songs to listen to, either download or stream. The next is lyrics which tend to be a hard thing to find on bandâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s sites, the third is shows and a short bio and contact info is always nice. Those are some of the things that make a site useful for a band.

One of the worst band websites Iâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢ve seen has to be the Matchbook Romance website. It takes about 45 clicks to get through all the â┚¬Ã…”puzzlesâ┚¬? to the actual content, not to mention waiting for the loading times. There seems to be a growing number of bands/labels that just donâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t get the internet and how to present a band to the world through their website.

Is there any bands that have a website that youâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢ve thought are really good, or really bad? I sure there are, let us know which sites attract you or just repel you.

www.anberlincities.com

Anberlin Debuts at #19 on Billboard Top 200

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Congratulations to Anberlin who sold an impressive 33,525 copies of their album Cities in its first week! It was good enough to make it the second highest CD debut for a Tooth and Nail artist and to snag the #19th spot on the Billboard Top 200!

They are also set to make their late-night television debut when they perform â┚¬Ã…”Godspeedâ┚¬?–the first single off CITIES–on the â┚¬Ã…”Late Late Show with Craig Fergusonâ┚¬? Monday, March 5.

A message to Lydia fans

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Below is an update about why Lydia had to cancel their current tour with The Spill Canvas.

hello dear friends

I don’t know what to say right now really. I’m writing this from my sidekick in the middle of nowhere illinois. We are driving home from ohio, halfway through an amazing tour with our friends the spill canvas. Extremely bummed right now to say the least. The last few days leighton has picked up some sort of a stomach virus flu type of sicknessand has been incredibly sick, but manned up and played the shows even thought he was not feeling up to it at all.

Then last night he started to feel a bit worse and went to urgent care before our show, they said it was just an upset stomach and he should take it easy, but he came back to try and play the show anyways. As we took the stage to a sold out crowd, more stoked than ever to play, 20 seconds into the first song he passed out cold on stage and we ended the set there, tried to get him to the hospital again but opted to sleep at the hotel and shake it off.

This morning he woke up feeling even worse and we talked about maybe taking the day off and letting him get better. On his walk out to the van, he passed out cold once again and hit the concrete going into convulsions, we called 911 and got him the hospital immediately to find
out that the “upset stomach” was internal bleeding for the past 3 days and a torn esophagus and if we waited any longer who knows what could have happened. Leighton will spend the next 5 days to a week in the columbus, mt carmel hospital with his parents while the doctors try to
determine how this happened and get him all fixed up and we will be driving 28 hours home over the next day or two.

This is definitely Something far more serious than any of us could ever imagine and we are
so incredibly bummed that we won’t be able to make it to these shows. Things have never been better with the band and we have some really amazing things coming up in the future, so please, Please keep leighton in your prayers. And I promise we will be back out on the road and
making new music as soon as possible.

So much love from us. Loren.
Evan. Steve. Leighton