Well, life has pretty must been speeding past, and I've barely had enough time to breathe, let alone continue to add blog posts...especially since there probably aren't many who even read them, if anyone at all. But, basically I began this blog to essentially give me another output medium for my thoughts, if nothing else as a way to keep my sanity and put my thoughts and feelings into words.
I have been thinking about the point of keeping a blog, and remembered the original reason for starting this blog, which can be found by clicking here. So, since I'm getting very tempted to read the book Feed by Mira Grant again, and I know that it will give me the kick in the pants I need to start writing here again, I might as well start now. That....and I can't sleep.
So, I'm hoping that I can start writing again, giving brief updates of my life, some music-related, and others that are not. I want this blog to be another way for me to express myself, as doing so through music has been put on hiatus since the break-up of my band Formerly So (which I will talk more about later). So tonight's post will be about an incident that I would like to mention involving the band, mainly because it is already past 2am and I don't want to be up much longer.
As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, my band Formerly So officially disbanded in May of 2011, which is foreshadowed by some of my blog posts around that time. However, I don't think that I ever mentioned the disbandment on this blog, although I did on Facebook, Myspace, the band's official blog, and all of the other media used with the band to notify our fans, in the form of an official Press Release.
Here is an actual copy of the press release, as it was posted on Facebook:
Although the band may not have split up under the best of terms (the full explanation would require much more time to describe than I want to spend tonight), I still consider myself to be friends with every member of the band, albeit I haven't communicated with two of the members in quite some time, outside of the occasional Facebook "like" or comment.
In fact, not too long after the band broke up, I actually got together with Brayden (the vocalist) and his cousin Andrew (who was Formerly So's rhythm guitarist for a short time before we found Tim) and attempted to begin a new project. We wrote a couple of songs, and even laid down a the guitar and bass tracks in ProTools on Andrew's MacBook. Jason Stapleton, Formerly So's keyboardist--who had since returned from his mission to Romania and which whom I currently work--also stepped in for a time to make some music with us.
Unfortunately, the new project never really got off the ground, mainly because of schedule conflicts and the lack of a drummer, which slowed the motivation. So, once again, I was without a means to play my bass, except by myself to my dog or along with iTunes.
I have thought often about doing some kind of solo project, especially now that I have a Mac Mini with 8GB of RAM and GarageBand, but that hasn't happened yet. But, musically related, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I have recently jammed with Jason, in an attempt to work on some more piano-and-bass driven songs that we could hopefully perform. It is extremely fun to jam with Jason, as he is one of my closest friends, and we have written some pretty sweet stuff together.
I also will be trying out with a really good band called Goodnight Annabelle in about two weeks, for which I am super excited. They are a great band, their members seem extremely friendly and chill, and I am very impressed with the music they have already written. There is also another musician with whom I've been in contact, who wants to get together and see if I want to jam with them and possibly start a project. So there is still potential for me to reintroduce myself to the music scene.
But now for the whole reason that I decided to write a post tonight. As I mentioned, I am still in contact with both Brayden and Jason, but have also been in contact with Adam and Tim, if only via texts, Facebook, and other technological means. Today, for example, Tim texted me and asked if I still had administrator rights to the Formerly So YouTube channel, which of course I do. He informed me that some Internet troll had posted some pretty nasty comments on a couple of our YouTube videos, and to see if I could remove them.
Today was the Priesthood session of General Conference, so once I was home and able to sit down at my computer, I checked out these comments:
As you can see, this person decided to attack the band because of the number of views that the videos had received. One post was on our official music video, and the other was on the video posted by Utah Music Scene, where we were interviewed at the Salt Lake City venue Club Vegas.
Due to YouTube's new layout, it is much more difficult to remove posts, even if they are on your own videos. I immediately changed the music video's settings to allow comments only by the owner's approval, and marked the comment to be removed and to block the user.
I even sent a private message to the poster, as I was so confused by why he would randomly attack my band, saying the following:
Hey man,
I just noticed your comments on a couple of our videos, and I'm wondering what would cause you to say all of that. Looking at your previous comments on your channel, it looks like you singled out this band for all of your hate comments and trolling, when I really don't see a reason.
Yeah, we didn't a ton of views on our video, but who cares? We were a local band, and were doing what we could to make it in an industry overflowing with local music. On top of that, we were a bunch of friends, getting together to do what we loved: making music and performing. If that's a sin, then put me down as a sinner.
So, clearly you have some kind of beef with the band, but either didn't do 30 seconds of research enough to find out that it had disbanded about a year ago, or hold a grudge on behalf of a member of the band due to reasons that you completely do not understand.
Regardless, your comments were childish and there was no reason for them. If you don't like the music, move on to another song from another band, it's as easy as that.
But the fact of the matter is that, despite the band not growing in its fanbase and disbanding due to reasons that you are not privvy to knowing, we produced some music that every member of the band is incredibly proud of, and we see it as a great accomplishment.
So, I would appreciate it if you would keep those ill-informed comments to yourself, and focus your efforts on something more worthy than attempting to demean a band that has parted ways such a long time ago.
If you really want to continue acting this way, then be a man and talk about it to us personally. I welcome your response: send it to formerlysoband@gmail.com and, assuming it's more than belligerent hate and prejudice, I promise to take the time to thoughtfully write out a response to any question you may have.
Thanks.- Jeff
I posted the same message as a comment on his actual channel as well, as I noticed that somebody else had commented on it after being bashed by him for some stupid reason. Also, because the second comment (which appears in the screenshot above) was on a video not uploaded by me, I wasn't able to remove the comment, but instead posted the same message above in the form of a reply to his comment. I believe that the reply was frank, yet professional in the sense that I didn't result to vulgarity or name-calling, so if anyone is to read it, they will see that he truly is a troll, and hopefully believe that it was handled well on our part.
I sent Tim the message via Facebook, but he replied back several hours after I had removed the comment, and told me that it was still visible, so he didn't know if it just took time to remove, or if there was more I needed to do. I tried several things, including marking the comment as spam with several accounts and replying with a shorter version of the above message (just in case). I'm not sure what exactly I did to solve the issue, but the comment is now gone from our music video's page. It shows my reply and has a link to show the original comment, but when clicked on, an error message displays, saying that the original message has been removed.
In closing, I don't understand why people decide to bash others for really no reason. The comment on the music video page said something along the lines of "since this band only has X amount of views in a year's time and other mediocre bands have tons more, they should think they're a great band," whereas the comment in the screenshot above goes on to claim the reason why our band didn't succeed, which--for the record--is definitely incorrect, as we were successful and could have continued on to have a bigger fan base and more success, had other obstacles not hindered us.
Anyway, I don't know if one of the band members was disgruntled and was complaining about the band to someone, who went on to "help" by placing those comments, but I don't believe that could be the case, because it made all members of the band equally look bad. I'm guessing it was just some Internet troll, who was just hate-filled and wanting to cause a stir. Basically, being the quintessential Internet troll that everyone knows and hates, that CollegeHumor depicted so well in this video:
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