Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to welcome you to the brand spanking new Faronheit! For those of you stumbling across this website for the very first time, I’m pleased to say hello, and hope you’ll stick around and become a regular reader. For the rest of you, having read my rambling entries for the past few years, let’s play a little bit of catch up.

Previously on Faronheit…
We’ve been through thick and thin since this Faronheit music blog officially started in July of 2006. We were nearing our fourth anniversary and building towards a celebration, when tragedy struck one week ago in the form of a standard boilerplate letter from Blogger, informing me that my Blogspot address had been shut down and all my content removed after a “series of complaints” against my site. Well, there are a number of facts and emails sitting in my inbox currently that would argue against that fact, given that many of the supposed “complaints” lodged against me were for mp3s I had previously been given clearance to post. It’s all part of the continuing series of disconnection between U.S. record labels and the European ones. Where one hand giveth, the other equally takes away.

Now I’ve been told that should I want my old Blogspot address back, and my content restored in full, I need to file a counter-claim affirming that I did in fact have a legal right to post the content I did. That is something I’m currently working on, but for the time being and foreseeable future, we’re going fully independent. Breaking away from Blogger, what with its free and extremely easy-to-use platform hasn’t been easy, and losing 3+ years worth of content doesn’t have me smiling either. I’m hoping to regain access to all those old (1,000+) entries and archive them here, but that might take a bit of time.

In the meantime, let’s try to focus on the positive. With this now full-fledged dot com status, Faronheit is now freer than ever to explore the vast expanse that is the Internet. What I’m trying to say is that with this new site, there’s more of an opportunity to try new things and see where those avenues lead. You’ll be getting more content than just 5 entries a week, some mp3s and occasionally smart wordplay. What exactly that other content will be…well, you’ll see, and hopefully it will enhance your musical horizons in one way or another. Aside from that, I hope you like the design of the new site. I spent last week, when I was blog-less, designing it and putting it together. Things aren’t at 100% functionality just yet, but we’re 95% there, and I’ll be tweaking things here and there in the next few weeks. If you pay close attention though, you may notice a couple little snarky new bits in places.

Finally, I want to thank you, the reader. Without you, this site wouldn’t exist, and I’d be just some guy who talked about tiny little bands with his friends, who would never understand a word he was saying in the first place. You’re all my virtual family whether you like it or not, and we’re united by a common love of music and the idea that the best stuff isn’t necessarily played on the radio. We will continue this journey together until who knows when, and I hope you’ll stick with me through all the good, bad and in-betweens. In return I promise to try and consistently deliver compelling and engaging content that challenges your ears and your perceptions. Thanks for showing up.

-Faronheit

P.S. – Official content begins just before midnight with the Lollapalooza 2010 full lineup announcement. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you might know that I’ve already revealed 95% of the bands. If not, prepare to be (hopefully) pleasantly surprised. 🙂