October 22, 2005: First Post

10/22/05

This is the first post for the Some Assembly Required blog. Hi! My name is Jon, I'm the host and producer of Some Assembly Required, and this blog is an attempt to make the show's website a bit more personal. More interactive? We'll see if people comment or get involved. Who knows? It will also give me an opportunity to share more about the show and the work that we play, since I'm much more comfortable writing than talking. For those of you familiar with the show, you're probably aware that I spend a lot more time playing music/audio art than I do talking about it. This is partly because I'd rather let the work speak for itself, but its also because I'm not really the kind of person/DJ who likes to go on and on about things (well, not on the air at least!). I think I've gotten a lot better about this over the last couple of years though. If you were listening back when the show was first produced, you may remember the famously short breaks where all I said was what was being played. I've been slowly warming up to the idea of speaking my mind a bit more, and I think it is making for a better show. Hope you agree.

Anyway - I have big plans for the blog. One thing I'm hoping to start doing in January 0f 2006 - once I've mastered the basics here and am ready to start adding features - is an online archive of old shows. I'm looking for a place where I can put them, and the plan will be to upload a new one each week and provide a link to it here. I figure we'll start with the last episode of the 2nd year and work our way backward for two years, until the first two years are archived online.

Another feature I hope to work on is a weekly artist profile. I've already started emailing various artists who receive regular airplay, asking them to answer a few basic questions. The plan is to share those with you, via the blog.

My other goal is to start podcasting! I have no idea how to do this though, so hopefully I can find a mentor, or a good FAQ and have that project ready to launch in a couple of months.

In the meantime, to give myself something to do with the blog - to get started - I'm going to start the weekly posts with a little history of the show. This will serve as basic blog training for me - I'll upload images and create all the weblinks, etc - and at the same time provide a little background on the show for those of you who are curious. I hope there are a few of you out there at least! I'll start by posting this the way it is and then I'll edit it and add links and things. fun fun fun.
thanks for reading!
Jon Nelson

www.some-assembly-required.net