Happy New Year! I hope you're all surviving the dreaded INXS concert withdrawal. So far there are no gigs listed until Europe in June 2007. I do hope the guys are enjoying some well deserved time off.
Recently a few things have taken my mind off how painful INXS concert withdrawal can be:
The elusive INXS Fanclub DVD is arriving in mailboxes, and we get some behind the scenes content as well as a lengthly question and answer period with the band members. Reading the reports on the forums posted by those who have already watched it is like really good foreplay. I can't wait to get my hot little hands on this baby. Even the vertical hold problem on my television, which leaves the top third of the screen all blurry, is not going to get in the way of my enjoyment of this long awaited krack.
And just after Xmas there was the hilarious cat-fight at the Fortune 448 Forum over Lukas Rossi between someone called Pink Mermaid, who said she was Regina Russell, and someone referring to themselves as Lukas Rossi, who it turns out was actually Lukas's girlfriend Kendra. It's some of the most entertaining forum content I've seen, and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.
And there was the controversial MSN artist of the year poll, in December 2006, that ended up being a battle between INXS and the David Crowder Band (DCB from here on). Early on INXS were in top place, and then suddenly DCB galloped into a huge lead overnight. The MSN poll mysteriously disappeared mid-month after a number of people wrote to MSN suggesting something had to be wrong because, while the poll may not be scientific, it was statistically almost impossible for DCB to have gained that much of a lead in such a short period of time. When the poll started up again DCB acknowledge that INXS fans "started chipping away at our lead." Yes we did. Vote by slow vote over the course of about a week, we drew even with them. Which is quite a feat given how far ahead they were. We got the word out to fans via the forums to vote whenever they could.
Then we started seeing cheap shots at INXS on DCB fan sites and blogs, and suggestions by DCB themselves that INXS must have their whole management and PR team working on this. The funny thing is that on the official INXS website they did not even list the MSN poll. INXS fans did not do likewise and slag off DCB. We showed class, and focussed on making our favourite band proud.
Then fans of DCB accused INXS fans of using robotic voting, whatever the hell that is, and a few of their faithful posted a script for auto-voting on a DCB band blog. I am a very frequent visitor to the majority of INXS forum sites, and I never once saw a single auto-voting script on any of those sites. If they had appeared, the mods would have taken them off. It was DCB fans who used the script first, and as early as December 27 a fan bragged about it on a DCB blog. In the final days of the poll after millions of votes were being logged in for DCB, numerous people contacted MSN about the cheating, and got no satisfactory reponse. Then some INXS fans decided to fight fire with fire and converted the auto-voting script that was continually being posted on DCB fan sites. Again, not once did I see that script on any INXS related site. Most of the ardent INXS fans did not want to stoop to cheating, and continued voting manually, vote by slow vote. In the end DCB won by a small margin. The use of auto-voting by DCB fans is acknowledged by a member of the band in a blog here. Quite hypocritical that a Christian rock band thought their fans cheating to get them the win was entertaining and fun. Shame on them.
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