So here’s the story, originally I was going to call this month’s “From The Editor” piece Jambands 3.0. Then, shortly after we launched, I noticed a blog entry written by Hidden Track editor (and Jambands.com/Relix contributor) Scott Bernstein, which he titled, Jambands 4.0.

So which is it?

Well I suppose a bit of both.

Take a look at this. Scott did a nice job of displaying the logos we’ve had over the years.

My initial thought had been that we’ve experienced three eras of the site. The founding era, the Relix era and then our current Relix 3.0 era. Back in the summer of 1998 we put out the call for contributors and the site launched shortly afterwards. Andy Gadiel, the original webmaster was with us for a little over a year and then he stepped away to focus on JamBase. At this point David Steinberg and Sarah Bruner took over as webmasters, although to my mind we still kept most of the same team and our monthly focus. It wasn’t really until we began our association with Relix in 2002 that we overhauled the site. And now, 7 years later we’ve finally (FINALLY) changed things up again.

Except as I think about it now, there’s some fuzziness at the boundaries. Our Daily News began in August of ’99 after Jeff Waful became a full-on daily contributor (although for a while Jefferson posted only one or two stories per day). What’s more, we created the Jammys in 2000 as we began an association with Peter Shapiro and Wetlands. So come to think of it, maybe that 1999-2001 time span should be classified as a discrete era in its own right and we’re far closer to 4.0.

I’ll tell you what, I’ll split the difference in Scott’s favor and call it 3.75.

Regardless of how we classify it though, I hope you’ll notice that the new site allows us to present more information to you at first glance with a much cleaner look. Frankly, for some years there, it seemed like much of our best content was buried at the bottom of the page. It’s my hope that with this new site that you’ll be able to appreciate how much we really do have going on here at Jambands.com on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

The work’s not done as there are still some formatting issues and the like that were working out with our ld content (which is what happens when you move over 18,750+ articles) but hang on, we’ll get it right. So poke around and enjoy. I think you’ll find we have quite bit going on and some rather entertaining archival pieces as well.

As you do, please email me your thoughts, suggestions, high praise, low anthems and all that jazz…

Later days and peace,
Dean