Yesterday, I tried to do something that I don’t do a lot. I went to The Dandy Warhols MySpace page, and tried to add them as a friend. I try not to add bands as friends anymore. I like having other local and regional bands as friends. This way, we keep up on each other’s events, and stay in the loop. I have added a few national and international bands as friends, because I like them, and I want to support them, though they don’t need my support so much. It also gives my friends and fans a look at “What Jonathan Likes.”
Now, there is a dark side to bands adding bands. In the early days of MySpace, before it became “the next Xanga” for middle schoolers to trawl around and to give out too much personal information, bands would call clubs and make claims like, “Dude! We have like, ya know, over 30,000 MySpace friends! Ya gotta, like, book us as your Friday night headliner!” The use of such stats irked many club bookers who fell for it once or twice. Of course, after a dead audience or two –cricket! cricket!- such claims became evidence to these bookers of how lame you may be. Outside of the booker audience, it can, however, still look impressive to have a large number of friends.
So, there is that ugly word “gaming”. It happened on MP3.com, it happens all over the internet. People find ways of adding friends to pad the list. One such way, unfortunately, is adding other bands. Now, your neighbor, Cindy, won’t just allow anyone to add her as a friend. A band, though, doesn’t generally care who you are. A request to be the band’s friend means that you are interested in their music. And it’s essentially another name on the band’s list to send information, and maybe have more people at their shows, and to buy their CDs and schwag. And having other local and regional bands as friends helps fans of one band find other bands in the area that they’ve never heard of. If a band, however, adds all the signed, international bands that they can think of, they may only be doing this to have 500 friends, instead of just their 4 girlfriends, the drummer’s dog, and Tom.
Now, about those Dandy Warhols. My wife and I are big Dandy fans. My wife’s personal page has the band, plus each of the members as friends on MySpace. She tried to add Dandy friend, and sometimes guest artist Sean Gothman, as a MySpace friend. That request is still pending. Now, her friend, whose MySpace page has few similar artists on it, mostly Irish bands, requested the Dandy Warhols and Gothman to be her friend. The Dandys accepted, of course. Gothman, contrary to my wife’s still unanswered request, was accepted within about 60 seconds. We think Sean looks at the photos, because our friend has a much more sensual MySpace photo of herself than my wife does.
When our friend showed me Sean Gothman’s attempt to sell his car on his MySpace page, I couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t already added these guys as friends. So, yesterday, I logged into MySpace. I went to The Dandy Warhols page. I clicked Add As Friend. I received the terse message, “The Dandy Warhols does not accept add requests from bands.” Wow! Cool feature. Sucks in this instance, but cool feature. So, I went to Gothman’s page, knowing full well that my lack of T&A on my page would handicap me in a quest for his MySpace “friendship”. I valiantly clicked “Add”. The heavily hit MySpace server responded, “sean gothman does not accept add requests from bands.”
I withdraw my offer for Gothman’s car. (wink!)
Courtney, Zia, call me.
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Tags: dandy+warhols sean+gothman gothman myspace friends courtney+taylor-taylor zia social+networking+sites xanga
Now, after years in Kansas City, our ballad-rendering friend has been garnering a good sum of well-deserved press. As I mentioned in an article a few months ago, our man, and one of Dublin’s Top Expatriots in Kansas City, Eddie opened a coffeehouse in the West Plaza neighborhood last year. The business has been building, and Eddie has two baristas on staff. In addition, some of my other friends, and many other musicians, have been popping in to perform in the courtyard. Artists have included Eddie and his band, Kelly, Roger Landes and Chipper Thompson, and many other local and regional bands.
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