December 1st, 2008 12:01am

This is MBV

Hi.

I know what your first question is:

“MBV? What’s that stand for?”

To which my reply is this: Do you know what IBM stands for? How about RCA? DOP? GSM? KMT?” To wit: don’t worry about it. “MBV” = “MBV.”

And no, we’re not a My Bloody Valentine fansite.

Listen, if it puts your mind at ease, just imagine it’s “Music Blogovision.”

On to your second question, which is:

“So then, what is this, exactly?“

And my reply is this: MBV is a new music website. It’s writing from five venerable voices of the music blogosphere… the Catbirdseat, Chromewaves, Fluxblog, Largehearted Boy, and Said The Gramophone. Plus, it’s other interesting music-related stuff, courtesy of yours truly and Mr. Matt LeMay. Plus, it’s contributions from the myriad other talented writers, artists, and music lovers we know.

And hopefully, it’ll also be contributions from you. Intelligent, engaging music conversation is frighteningly rare out there, and I find that strange, considering all of the sharp-minded music lovers I know. I hope MBV will be a place you can come to engage in interesting music-centric conversation, free of the usual knuckle-dragging comment trolls (who I will execute with wild abandon).

We’re the blogs that started this thing. Music is important to us, and we know it’s important to you. So what’s say we get back to basics? No wall-to-wall banner ads, no nine zillion navigation links, no winking, blinking, farting widgets littering the screen, no software algorithms spewing out “recommendations.” Just music lovers, telling you, every day, about the music they love.

- Ryan Catbird

12/1/08 9:27 am

Marco says:

Cool idea, these are all great blogs, subscribing right now!

P.S. Love the clean design

Cheers

12/1/08 11:59 am

brian says:

Hi all. Everything looks good, and I’m on board & excited for actual, intelligent discussion.

Contribuditor; nice.

12/1/08 12:48 pm

Nadim says:

Am I missing the link to the rss feed? I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Or is that a “farting widget”?

12/1/08 1:01 pm

Ryan Catbird says:

Go to your feed reader, click “Add New Site” or whatever, then type in ‘mbvmusic.com’

12/1/08 2:34 pm

theOCMD says:

Love the concept – and look forward to streamlining my RSS feeds
Way to keep pioneering the indie music blogosphere!

12/1/08 3:16 pm

Wait... says:

so it’s like a aggregate of stuff at other blogs in one place? or like…actual music writing? or just another place for y’all to talk about music?

if it’s music writing, this might be a sweet deal. if this is just an excuse to post more fluxcasts, link lists, poetry, sick concert photos, and sharp witticisms then, uh, I call lame on you guys.

12/1/08 4:21 pm

so it’s like a aggregate of stuff at other blogs in one place? 
Sorta. It’s *some* of the stuff from all of our blogs.

or like…actual music writing?
 Yes, that too. I would even urge you to contribute, if you’re so inclined; we don’t have any hard-set criteria or editorial guidelines; no ‘box’ you need to fit into. If you’ve got something to say about music, we’d love to hear about it, really!

or just another place for y’all to talk about music? 
That too. Ideally, it won’t be just us talking. Hoping to make a place here where we can have discussions free of “YOU ARE TEH GHEY LOL101010″ comments, or focused on how “God, you have no taste in music if you don’t know about Franz Knarlydick’s seminal 1969 album, Scratching Corncobs Across Limbo.”

if it’s music writing, this might be a sweet deal. if this is just an excuse to post more [etc.] I call lame on you guys
And seriously, please do call lame if you think it’s lame. But then again, why bother even typing it out…

Thanks ~~Spect~~ idontgetit@all.com

Cheers,
Ryan

12/1/08 4:40 pm

That Franz Knarlydick record was sick though. Way better than his first one.

12/1/08 4:43 pm

Ronnie says:

So if I am a person who already subscribes to these five blogs, would you advise that I subscribe to MBV but also retain my original subscriptions?

12/1/08 4:44 pm

Is the answer just “sure! just do that and see what happens”? I think so

12/1/08 5:12 pm

Ha! Nice one, Ronnie.

Yeah, you’ll get all of our blogs’ content in toto from our blogs proper. The blogs’ content that’s ported over here, though, is selectively chosen- ’tis not everything.

And this site’ll add more material into that mix, (though there’s not a whole lot at the moment– soon), so in fact there’ll be some things here that will exist here only.

For the skeptics, it’s not some sorta ploy to try to grab a bunch of double-subscriptions from people or something. It’s just a slightly different way of doing things. Everybody likes to read and digest content in different ways.

I imagine there are a number of people out there with a reaction something like, “WTF? This is stupid, I don’t want to have to subscribe to this stupid site just to read content I probably already get elsewhere”– and for them, the answer is simple: don’t read this site! No one’s twisting anyone’s arm– and all of our blogs remain exactly as they always have been– so no harm, no foul; move on!

Thanks Ronnie, (PS, looking forward to The Lifted Brow 4!)