Whatever

Andrew Smith writes some stuff and you read it. Pretty clever mind control, huh?

Whoa. What a quick year. It's summer already. Don't think I'm complaining, mind you, I'm just taking note. It's warm. All over Burlington, people are smiling. Time to get out of the house. While you're out there, go see some bands, will ya?

So, what's happening with us? Well, since you asked, I'll tell you. This here magazine is Issue #8, and we hope you'll notice how much we've grown. We're in Boom town, baby! Not only have we gone from quarterly (insert 'sporadically' joke here) to bi-monthly, but we've just gone from 56 pages to 64 pages, just like that! We owe it all to the kind advertisers who are making this happen, and we really hope that you'll take the time to thank them for us.

The big news on the music scene in the last month or two has got to be the new club in Winooski called Higher Ground. It's got a lot of things going for it, although previous clubs in Winooski were never known for their longevity, and we hope that Alex and the crew down there have a long and prosperous life on the Burlington music scene. We also hope that Metronome and Toast are successful at maintaining the niches they've found, and we hope that they continue to grow and offer us the riches of local and national acts that they've been bringing us for years. Check out our story about our pal Anne Rothwell and the Metronome on page twenty-nine. Go ahead. We'll wait.

The Good Citizen Video Hour filmed a new episode live at Club Toast recently with Never Again, Spill, Dysfunkshun, Zola Turn and Chin Ho! The whole show was filmed by Azure Moon's Karen McGregor and it's been running on Adelphia Channel 15 in the Burlington area for the last couple of Sunday nights. The bands were interviewed in various parts of the club, and if you're wondering who that stylin' vee-jay was, it's the one and only Chelsea Condos. Chelsea is fifteen and she's a student at South Burlington High School and she also interns at the Burlington Music Conference. Hope you liked her because we're going to talk her into doing more shows for us.

What else? Uh, we're working on a new episode in the continuing saga of Burlington Does Burlington. Volume Three. Gotta tell ya, it's a doozy. If you thought our double CD collection was huge, wait till you hear the next one. Obviously, things could change between now and then, but our tentative line-up includes come pretty amazing bands like Strangefolk, Zola Turn, Construction Joe, Bag of Panties, (sic), Spill, Non Compos Mentis, the Four Color Manual, Never Again, Seth Yacovone, Smokin' Grass, Aaron Flinn's Salad Days and the Scoundrels. How's them apples? No sophomore slump here. We're trying to get fifteen or sixteen bands who weren't on BDB Volumes One and Two to cover bands who weren't covered on One and Two. Whew. There are SO many bands in this town. We hope you get to see every single one of 'em. We'll try to help you at least hear every single one of 'em, eventually.

Keep your eyes and ears out for the Burlington Music Conference. End of July. All over Burlington. Participate. Please. Thank you.

Enjoy the magazine.

Be a Good Citizen,

Andrew Smith