Very interesting. It appears Ken Mosher, a former member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, visited my site and posted a link to his new project in a comment to a very old post of mine. Or perhaps an Agent Of Mosher visited. I can't decide what I think about the comment.
The awful advice from a "search optimization" guru which I mentioned some time back advised that your appalling advertisement should be "in dialogue" with the blog it's smeared across or some such. And this actually is -- the comment is responding to something I wrote in my post, about how people keep telling me they've got some new band that sounds like SNZ, about which I'm invariably disappointed.
But it's a very short comment, clearly just a blatant plug, and it could have been posted by someone masquerading as Mosher. As you can see, I've accepted the comment for publication... I'm flattered, I guess, that "he" made it here, and I think I'd like to support his music... but it's likely whoever posted found my site through a search for sites referencing SNZ. What would you do? Ask him if he actually typed and submitted the post with his own two hands? Stop worrying and learn to love the word of mouth?
Posted by Gus at January 28, 2006 11:06 PMIt was me posting. You might be surprised that I don't have an army of agents working for me. I was indeed plugging a new project, which might seem whorish, but without a label, we are our own publicity team (in addition to booking shows, publishing, and a million other things we do to keep playing music for a living). So I have to troll around, looking for reviews and tracking college radio play.
As you can imagine, Maxwell Mosher Band is not as catchy as Squirrel Nut Zippers, so sometimes I find things under "Two guys from Squirrel Nut Zippers" etc.
Anyhow, I'm not exactly sure how I found your site last time or this time. I think Google has its own mind some days. And I see I probably misinterpretted the original post, too: I was assuming that you liked SNZ, but you may have been using SNZ as an example only.
Anyhow, carry on. Better me than the NSA
Posted by: Ken Mosher at May 31, 2006 3:01 AM
No *kidding* better you than the NSA, and it was really nice to see a comment indicating you'd *returned* amongst the literal thousands of spam posts about drugs and p0k3r which I have to wade through each week. You're clearly *actually* in dialogue with your fans. Hats off to you, Mr. Mosher. I just wish all the media worked this way; there'd be less Jessica Simpson for all of us.
And I do
Anyway, I'm assuming you've sent your stuff out to KCRW? They ought to give you play. I think The Eight Track is the most likely show. And if you sent *me* a CD, I'd be happy to pimp it too ;D I'm doing some freelance writing this summer -- an editor at New York Magazine wants to see pieces from me, and anything I don't sell to her will be duly trotted out to the Voice, New York Press, Bitch Magazine, maybe even the New Yorker, though I only have contacts at the Voice and Bitch.
Posted by: gus at June 2, 2006 11:41 AM
Write me through the website and I'll be glad to send a promo of the new record and some new stuff. We have sent to KCRW and selected other college/public stations, but it is still hard to break away from the Zippers name... I do (and always have) had dialog with fans. I set up the original Zippers website in 97 an ran it until my departure in 99. I was always told that it mean a lot to get a message from the band and I believe it. It's just hard to find the time to troll around the web!
Pray for our country! Ken M
Posted by: Ken Mosher at July 3, 2006 9:21 PM