JUST BACKDATED – The Top Thirty

The first week of the year seems like a good time to review the performance of my Just Backdated blog, and bring the Posts Chart up to date. In doing so yesterday I discovered that the number of hits in the Top 20 listed in statistics automatically conveyed to me by my Blogspot host differs considerably from the number of hits recorded when I look at each of the 1,041 posts individually, specifically that there are far more hits registered in the individual listings. Computer science baffles me and this discovery of mine surely indicates that it isn’t an exact discipline even though those behind it would like to think it is. Accordingly, I have revised the chart considerably and opted to list the Top 30 this time around, with the result that although posts about The Who still dominate, there are many newcomers. 

        Nevertheless, aside from one remarkable instance, there isn’t that much in the way of changes from the top 10 I wrote about in March 2022, when I last did a survey like this, this one to commemorate notching up 1,250,000 hits. That figure has now risen to 1,810,987, so the two million mark looms, perhaps later this year or early next. Either way, the number of hits Just Backdated gets every month is increasing all the time, probably the result of more readers becoming aware of it. 

        The big surprise is that my synopsis for the abandoned book with Mandy de Wolf, Keith Moon’s daughter, has now clocked up 45,100 hits, still in second place but closing in rapidly on the number one post, my review of The Who’s Live at Fillmore East 1968 CD which has remained pretty much static all year. In 2022, The Fillmore CD had 47.7k hits, with Mandy on 20.3k, so its acceleration is quite remarkable. Barely a week goes by when it doesn’t get between 2-300 hits, and I keep wondering where they all come from. These two posts are streets ahead of all the rest. 

        Many of the 25 comments on the post about this proposed book – which I provisionally titled Moon Girl: My Life in the Shadow of Rock’s Wildest Star – suggest it should be published but for personal reasons Mandy has told me she’s no longer interested in writing the book, with me or anyone else as a ghost writer. Naturally I respect her wishes. 

        As before the chart contains far more Who posts, with 14 of the top 30 all related to the group or its individual members. Posts about Keith and John seem to win out over posts about Pete or Roger, though the last post I wrote – about those dodgy Daltrey books – has racked up over 800 hits in a few days, which is not bad going. Led Zep come second with five. Slade have just one post in the top 30 – my obituary of their much-loved tour manager Graham ‘Swin’ Swinnerton – but lots of posts about the group have clocked up between 1,500 and 2,00 hits. One day, if I could be bothered, I might tot up the number of hits each act has received across all my posts about them, and I’m pretty sure Slade would be third. 

        Non-Who post that have somewhat expectedly racked up well over 2,000 hits include my review of Look Away, the Sky documentary about the exploitation of girls/women in the music industry, my review of the Melody Maker movie largely devoted to our ace photographer Barrie Wentzell, my obituary of Pete Overend Watts of Mott The Hoople, a post about my friend Adrian Boot’s punk photo exhibition review, an obituary of Robert Stigwood, my Steely Dan interview, two close encounters with the odious Jimmy Savile, seeing CSN&Y in Denver in 1974, and my adventures with Lynyrd Skynyrd. 

Here’s the Top 30, with the number of hits and the 2022 placing in brackets

1) The Who Live at Fillmore East CD,  50.7k hits (1)

2) Moon Girl, 45.6k (2)

3) Jimmy Page – Boleskine House, Tower House & More, 18.9k (3)

4) John, Paul & Keith, Santa Monica, 1974, 16.6k (4)

5) Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight, 12.41k (newcomer to chart)

6) Jimmy Page – The Day Jimmy Met Robert, 9.1k (5)

7) Keith Moon’s Living Arrangements, 8.6k (13)

8) Palazzo Dario – The Palace that Tommy Bought, 7.68k (6)

9) Deep Purple – Trouble in Jakarta, 6.99k (11)

10) The North of England Beer Drinking Championship, 6.4k (15)

11) Marianne Faithfull, 1980, Book Extract 6.2k (new)

12) Keith Moon & The Pythons, 6.13k (8)

13) Pete Rudge, Who/Stones tour manager, Interview from MM 1973, 5.3k (new)

14) The Who UK tour 2014 announcement, 5.1k (7)

15) The Who in Hyde Park, London, June 26, 2015, 4.78k (12)

16) Dennis Wilson MM interview, 4.45k, (new)

17) Abba Live At Wembley Arena CD review, 4.4k (new)

18) The Who Live in Ottawa review, 4.4k (new)

19) The Who – My Hidden Gems album, 4.28k (10)

20) Led Zeppelin in Chicago, 1975, 4.21 (new)

21) Launching Dear Boy, 4.15k (9)

22) Eric Clapton On The Road 1974, 4.03 (new) 

23) Jimmy Page Biography review, 4.02 (new)

24) Johnny Ramone’s Mosrite, book extract, 4.0k, (new) 

25) My 70th Birthday Playlist 3.9k, (new)

26) Graham Swinnerton, Slade tour manager obituary, 3.8 (new)

27) My Introduction to Debbie Harry, 3.5k (new)

28) John Entwistle (1944-2002), obituary, 3.4k (14)

29) The Who in Birmingham, December 2014, 3.3k (new)

30) David Cassidy obituary, 3.1 k (new)

An honorary listing ought perhaps to go to my reports of The Who at New Bingley Hall, Staff, 1975, which was in three parts whose combined hits total is 6997. 

Finally, my thanks to all who visit Just Backdated. The number of hits I get makes it all worthwhile and encourages me to keep going.

REVIEWING MUSIC BOOKS

My review of David Hepworth’s Hope I Get Old Before I Die on Just Backdated earlier this week was the 114th music book review I’ve posted since I launched the blog 10 years ago, and it occurs to me that Just Backdated just might have become the largest dedicated rock’n’roll book reviews website on the internet. I say ‘might’ because for all I know there could be a site along these lines of which I am unaware but when I type ‘rock and roll book reviews’ into Google, all that comes up are individual reviews of individual books, not a site that is dedicated to reviews of lots of music books. If there is such a site, then please tell me about it. 

        When I launched Just Backdated back in 2014 it was never my intention to create a site that featured primarily music books reviews. It just happened that way but I suppose it was inevitable. After all, I spent 33 years as the editor at Omnibus Press, the world’s largest dedicated music book publisher, and in the course of that employment commissioned and edited upwards of 800 rock books, probably more than anyone else in the world, and read many more than that, some to check out as potential Omnibus titles, others purely out of interest. So, I guess I’ve read a few more music books than most people. 

        Nowadays authors and publishers send me loads of music books to review. In many cases the authors are known to me, but some publishers have become aware that they might sell a few more copies if a decent review appears on Just Backdated. Some of the books I’ve reviewed I’ve bought, of course, but I’d say that 75% are sent to me as review copies. BTW, before I buy a book I always always scan the acknowledgments page: if there’s a long list of relevant names then the chances are the book will be OK but if it’s on the short side and the names don’t mean much to me I’ll pass. 

        In my opinion, music book reviews in magazines are invariably too short. In some cases, it’s pretty obvious to me that the reviewer has merely scanned a book, especially when whoever is writing the review uses the opportunity to write more about the act – the subject of the book – than the book itself. In others it seems to me as if all they’ve read is the first chapter and maybe the blurb on the back but I can’t really blame reviewers for this. After all, unlike the hour it might take to listen to an album for review purposes, or the two to three hours or so at a concert, it could take up to a week to read some books in their entirety, and knowing how little magazines pay freelance book reviewers that’s hardly optimum use of time on a sliding pay scale. I don’t get paid for writing book reviews, of course, which goes some way to explaining why most of those I write exceed 1,000 words, far more than you’ll find in any music magazine or even the book reviews pages in most newspapers. Truth is, I do it for fun and generally I’m pretty benign. Only when I decide a book is a load of old rubbish do I say so and, of course, I tend to avoid such books anyway. 

        Inevitably, our house is chock full of books though in 1997, during a house move, I was obliged to sell about 500 music books for space reasons. In those days there was a shop on London’s Denmark Street called Helter Skelter that specialised in music books and its manager, Sean Body, now sadly deceased, and I became quite friendly, so he sold them for me. We split the proceeds 50/50. Now I wish I’d kept a fair few of them as I realise some were quite rare and are going on Amazon for well over their original price.

        I chose to illustrate this piece with one that I will never sell, The Rolling Stone Illustrated History Of Rock’n’Roll, published in early 1976. I was living in New York at the time, working as Melody Maker’s US editor, and was sent my copy by someone at the magazine. I recall being impressed by the book’s scope, the quality of the writing and pictures, and the attention to detail in the discographies that followed each act or genre it covered. I loved Nik Cohn’s piece on Phil Spector, and Paul Nelson’s investigation into Bob Dylan, written in the hard-edged style of a Raymond Chandler short story. I found only one mistake, a picture of Uriah Heep vocalist David Byron identified as Ian Hunter but when I pointed this out to the magazine someone there told me to fuck off (as if they didn’t believe me!). This book can still be picked up on Amazon for a reasonable price, and is highly recommended for connoisseurs of this kind of thing but be sure to pick up the original edition above and not later, smaller sized, editions in which the photographs are reduced in size.

        The first rock book I ever read was Hunter Davies’ Beatles biography, in 1969, closely followed by The Sound Of The City by Charlie Gillett, Rock From The Beginning (aka Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom) by Nik Cohn and Elvis: A Biography by Jerry Hopkins. In those days rock books were few and far between, unlike today when rock books vie with books about film, sport or the royal family in the non-fiction departments in bookshops. 

        Inevitably I have far more books about The Who than any other act. My first Who book was simply called The Who, by Gary Herman, in 1972, and I have reason to believe that the copy on my shelf is a reprinted pirate edition as the cover is in b&w and not colour: see below, with my copy above the genuine one.

        This was the first ever Who book to have been published (in 1972) but now there are over 70, and 68 of them sit on a shelf in my study; biographies of the group and its individual members, day-by-day chronologies, discographies, collections of press cuttings, fiction by Pete, photo books, sheet music books to which I contributed editorial matter, books that focus on one phase of their career and even one on John Entwistle’s guitar collection. Three of them were written by me, and a fourth co-written. There’s about half a dozen Who books I haven’t bothered with because I sense they won’t be much good but by and large the group has been unusually well served by biographers and chroniclers, which is a testament to their cultural importance, though Pete Townshend’s own literary ambitions may have something to do with it. 

        And like my reviews of books on Just Backdated, I didn’t set out to amass a Who library. It just happened that way. 

JUST BACKDATED - ANOTHER ROLLING (MILE)STONE

While I was posting those memoirs last week I failed to notice that Just Backdated had notched up 1,250,000 hits, another milestone which – like other big round numbers along the way – I will comment on with a bit of analysis.

        JB reached one million hits in October 2020, at which point I’d notched up 828 posts which averaged 1,207 hits per post. There are now 908 posts which means that figure has risen to 1,377 hits per post, so it seems more people have discovered Just Backdated in the past 18 months, probably as a result of lockdown and folk spending more time surfing the internet.

        With one notable exception, the top 20 of posts with most views hasn’t changed much. The surprise is that my rejected proposal for ghost-writing the autobiography of Mandy Moon, Keith’s daughter, has leapt into second place with 20.3k hits, easily dislodging the story about Moonie with John and Paul Beatle in Santa Monica in 1974 which slips to fourth place, with the post about Jimmy Page’s houses sneaking in at number three on 14.7k. In the last survey I did the Mandy post had 6.07k kits, so over 14,000 hits in the last 18 months makes it the most popular recent post. Quite why is anybody’s guess.  

        Equally oddly, while the synopsis post has had over 20k hits now, the actual sample chapter I wrote (and posted three days later) has had only 797 hits, which implies that less than 5% of those who read the synopsis went on to read the actual chapter. Explanations on a postcard please… 

        With 6,000 fewer hits, Jimmy’s impressive real estate is unlikely to challenge Mandy, who’s obviously on a roll, for second place, let alone top spot which, as ever, is my review of the CD of The Who at the Fillmore East in 1968, with a still magnificent 49.7k hits, the same evened-up number as 18 months ago though it’s probably a bit more now, just that the computer doesn’t register increases of less than 1,000 hits at this level. Whatever… almost 50k hits is still well more than twice its nearest rival, a massive lead unlikely ever to be contested. 

        The remainder of the entries in the top ten are pretty much as before, with 16 Who related, two Led Zep, one Deep Purple and the wild card, my story about the North of England Beer Drinking Contest in 1968. I’m well pleased that this tale of gross intemperance still holds on to fifteenth spot. The top 20 now reads: 

1) The Who Live At Fillmore East CD review – 47.7k hits

2) Mandy Moon book treatment – 20.3k

3) Jimmy Page’s residences – 14.7k

4) John, Paul & Keith Moon at Santa Monica – 14k

5) Jimmy Page meeting Robert Plant – 6.6k

6) Palazzo Dario, Kit Lambert’s Venice Palace – 5.59k

7) News of Who UK tour (2014) – 5.16k

8) Keith Moon & The Pythons – 4.29k

9) Launching Dear Boy – 4.15k

10) The Who, My Hidden Gems CD – 4.15k

11) Deep Purple in Jakarta – 3.91k

12) The Who in Hyde Park, 2015 – 3.59k

13) Keith Moon’s residences – 3.01k

14) John Entwistle Tribute – 3.22k

15) The North of England Beer Drinking Contest – 3.14k

16) The Ox (John Entwistle) book review – 2.91k

17) Pretend You’re In A War (Who) book review 2.83k

18) ‘Underture’, Keith’s Great Triumph – 2.82k

19) Pete Townshend Interview (1974) – 2.75k

20) The Who at Stafford in 1975 – 2.7k

        No change in where the hits come from either, USA followed by the UK followed by Russia, and while hits from Russia (on 123k) have tailed off in the last few weeks for obvious reasons, Canada, in fourth place with 37k, has a long way to go to challenge for the bronze medal. I’m mildly suspicious about all those hits from Russia, especially as they have fluctuated wildly in the past two years, like 5,000 one week and zilch the next. 

        Anyway, thanks once again to all who visit Just Backdated and I’ll try to keep it up for as long as I can. 

JUST BACKDATED REACHES 1,000,000

 

“I could live a million,” sang R.E.M. on one of their earliest tracks, though few had a clue what Michael Stipe was banging on about. Well, sometime last night someone somewhere in the world became the 1,000,000th person to read a post on Just Backdated, and I’ve decided to bang on about it. Materially, having 1,000,000 hits at last won’t affect me in the slightest as Just Backdated is a hobby and not monetised in any way, but psychologically it vindicates my decision, prompted by my daughter, to launch this blog at the end of 2013 and continue with it now for almost eight years, just for the fun of it. 

    Few organisations or individuals pay me to write about music these days but, then again, I’ve always thought that writing about music wasn’t really a job in the ‘work’ sense anyway. It’s not like making or building or repairing or selling things, or even creating music in the first place. I was just lucky that 50 years ago I was able to slip into a situation where the publishers of Melody Maker paid me to listen to music and interview musicians, then set down my thoughts on paper, which was something I liked doing, so in a way it wasn't that different from being a painter or musician or professional sportsman or woman, or anyone else who’s been lucky enough to get paid for doing what they want to do. 

    I was able to enable those seven years on MM into a few other jobs that were more like work in the traditional sense, especially the 33 years as editor at Omnibus Press, but the truth of the matter is that it all really boils down to MM, as can be seen from the posts on Just Backdated. Well over half of them relate back to that period of my life and the statistics reveal that those who visit the blog prefer to read my reminiscences or reports from that era than whatever I write about newer music. 

    Frank Zappa said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and defined rock journalism as ‘people who can’t write, doing interviews with people who can’t think, in order to prepare articles for people who can’t read.’ Of course, he was trying to be contentious so that some writer who didn’t much like him might rise to the bait and I agreed with him to a certain extent but carried on happily doing what I did anyway. As a matter of fact, Frank almost always got good press so I could understand his attitude better if it came from an act disliked by critics, like Queen or Rush or Neil Diamond.  

    It's not as if I have a million readers, of course. The blog tells me I have 16 ‘followers’ which is a bit disappointing but whoever you are thanks. What obviously happens is that people go back again and again to read stuff. I should add that the total isn’t skewed by my own visits, which aren’t registered, so when I go onto the blog to edit my posts slightly this doesn’t count as a hit. When I first danced about architecture – thanks Frank – Melody Maker was increasing its circulation to around 200,000 copies a week, a figure that never ceases to astound me in the light of the tragic demise of the UK’s weekly music press, so a million hits in eight years is tiny in the grand scheme of things. 

    Now for some other statistics. This is the 828th post on Just Backdated, so that averages out at 1,207 hits per post but as I’ve noted before that statistic is flawed because posts about The Who and, to a lesser extent, Led Zeppelin, especially those linked on their own fan sites or FB pages, usually outnumber almost the other posts by a tenfold margin. But just for the record here’s my top 20:

1) The Who Live At Fillmore East CD review – 47.7k hits

2) John, Paul & Keith Moon at Santa Monica – 14k

3) Jimmy Page’s residences – 12.1k

4) Jimmy Page meeting Robert Plant – 6.59k

5) Mandy Moon book treatment – 6.07k

6) Palazzo Dario, Kit Lambert’s Venice Palace – 5.59k

7) News of Who UK tour (2014) – 5.17k

8) Launching Dear Boy – 4.15k

9) Keith Moon & The Pythons – 4.1k

10) The Who, My Hidden Gems CD – 3.73k

11) The Who in Hyde Park, 2015 – 3.59k

12) John Entwistle Tribute – 3.22k

13) Keith Moon’s residences – 3.01k

14) The Ox (John Entwistle) book review – 2.91k

15) The North of England Beer Drinking Contest – 2.85k

16) Pretend You’re In A War (Who) book review 2.83k

17) ‘Underture’, Keith’s Great Triumph – 2.82k 

18) Deep Purple in Jakarta – 2.77k

19) Pete Townshend Interview (1974) – 2.75k

20) The Who at Stafford in 1975 – 2.7k

    Quite why the number one post, my review of The Who’s live CD from their show at the Fillmore East in April 1968, has received well over three times more hits than the post at number two is inexplicable really. I know it was shared on The Who’s official site but so have many other Who related posts. Hopefully, it’s a reflection of what a fine recording it is. If it’s sold as many copies as I’ve had hits, Pete’n’Rog will be well pleased. 

    The odd one out in the list, of course, is The North of England Beer Drinking Contest, my account of an event that several friends and I attended in Hull in 1968. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with music and quite why it has attracted as many hits as it has is a mystery. I was delighted when a message was left for me by the winner’s grandson two years after it was originally posted (in 2016). “Lionel Tutt was my grandad!” he wrote. “My mother told me this story as a child.” (Anyone interested can read the post here: https://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-north-of-england-beer-drinking.html) 

    Aside from The Who and Led Zeppelin, other acts that attracted more than 2,000 hits include Abba, The Beach Boys, Jeff Beck, David Cassidy, Rory Gallagher, Jimi Hendrix, Little Feat and Slade, with David Bowie almost there. Oddly, posts about The Beatles, collectively or individually, don’t seem that popular. I guess everyone’s read enough about them elsewhere. Same with Bruce Springsteen whose new album, Letter To You, I'll be reviewing here soon. 

    As to where all my hits come from, the US tops the league with 401k followed by the UK (221k), Russia (71.6k), Canada (30k) and Germany (26.3k). Weirdly, I have had 8.27k hits from Turkmenistan, which I think might be suspect, and 191k from ‘other regions’. 

    Anyway, thanks once again to all who visit Just Backdated and I’ll try to keep it up for as long as I can. 

JUST BACKDATED REACHES 750,000

In the last 24 hours Just Backdated had its 750,000^th hit since I launched this blog of mine at the end of 2013. That works out at just over 400 hits a day but that statistic is deeply flawed as posts about The Who, especially those linked on their own site or FB page, usually outnumber almost everything else by a tenfold margin.

         The last time I conducted one of these surveys was in May 2017 when the number of hits reached 500,000. At that time there were 638 posts. Now there are 710, which indicates I’m slowing down and quite dramatically too. In the first year of its existence I managed 374 posts, in 2018 a mere 29. This is because at the beginning I had a lot of catching up to do, ie a lot of archive stuff on my computer that I wanted to upload. That process continued for the next year or so, gradually slowing down as the well emptied. It’s not quite empty yet and other old writings of mine will almost certainly come to light as I plod onwards.

         Old material of mine regularly turns up on Rock’s Back Pages where, to date, there are 293 articles of mine, almost all of them from Melody Maker between 1970 and 1977. This was the case last week when, to my surprise, there was a review I wrote for MM of Liza Minelli, of all people, at the New York Winter Gardens in January 1974. Now I cannot for the life of me remember seeing her show, nor writing about it. I seem to have enjoyed it but felt it was bad value for money, concluding my review: “The show commenced shortly after eight and finished before ten. With almost half an hour's interval, that made it rather short by my standards. My seats cost 12.50 dollars and whether it was value for money is certainly debatable. But it was short, sweet and simple nevertheless, and what there was I enjoyed.”

         But I digress. The biggest ‘event’ in Just Backdated’s 2018 was a dramatic change in the leadership, by which I mean the most visited post. For years it was the post about the photograph of Keith Moon with John and Paul Beatle, taken by my friend Peter ‘Dougal’ Butler in Santa Monica in April 1974 which I contend was the last ever photo to have been taken of the two senior Beatles together. This had what I considered an unassailable 4,000+ lead over whatever post was at number two. Well, to my surprise that lead was smashed big time by my review of The Who’s Live At Fillmore East album in May of last year which has clocked up an astonishing 49,699 hits to date, so far ahead of the field as to have lapped everything else three or four times.

         The post about John, Paul & Keith (13,904 hits) is now at number two, followed by two about Jimmy Page, one on his houses (8,432) and another on hosting Robert Plant at his Thames-side place in Pangbourne (6,597) in 1968 when he was drawing up the blueprint for Led Zeppelin. In the past Who posts have occupied all ten top places but Zep seem to be encroaching a bit. However, they’ve a long way to go to topple The Who, who occupy five of the next six places, with the one about Kit Lambert’s palace in Venice at number five. The non-Who post amongst them is the extract from my Deep Purple book that tells the tale of their horrific experience on Jakarta in 1975 which, surprisingly, has had 4,286 hits.

         I say surprisingly because as far as I am aware this hasn’t been shared on any Deep Purple fan sites, while the reason The Who and Led Zep have so many hits is because they are shared, most especially with Zep on Dave Lewis’ Tight But Loose site which has become an extension of his long-running TBL running fanzine. Conversely, my posts about The Beatles, either collectively or individually, and also David Bowie, get a relatively small number of hits, doubtless because they haven’t been shared on fan sites. This explains why posts on Abba, shared by Swedish Abba expert Carl Magnus Palm and on their FB fan sites, outdo them, with a surprisingly high 2,998 hits for my review of their Live At Wembley album back in 2014.

As for geographical data, the US still tops the league with 305,882 followed by the UK (66,969), Russia (54,166), Canada (23,933) and Germany (18,172). Weirdly, I have had 14 hits from an ‘unknown region’, so someone is reading Just Backdated from somewhere that hasn’t been discovered yet, hopefully a space station circling the globe.

JUST BACKDATED GETS 500,000th HIT – Shock, Horror!

Someone somewhere who read my Blondie review last week became the music fan who clicked on Just Backdated for the 500,000^th time. Thank you very much whoever you are.

It has been my custom to mark significant milestones with a post about the blog, citing various statistics; things like the most popular posts, the countries from where Just Backdated attracts most hits and any odd anomalies that occur, like all those hits from Russia that arrived suddenly last year and disappeared equally suddenly, a bit sinister that. Us bloggers have access to pages that give us this kind of data, and through them I know precisely how many hits every single one of all my posts, now numbering 638, has received.

Here then is the top 10, with the date of the post in brackets, followed by the number of hits:

1) JOHN, PAUL & KEITH In Santa Monica (June 3, 2014) – 13,874

2) PALAZZO DARIO – The Palace That Tommy Bought (Feb 10, 2016) – 5,400

3) WHO UK TOUR 2014 (June 30, 2014) – 5,165

4) JIMMY PAGE – The Day Jimmy Met Robert (July 28, 2016) – 4,638

5) LAUNCHING DEAR BOY (Feb 13, 2015) – 4,149

6) THE WHO – My Hidden Gems Album (Aug 21, 2014) – 3,697

7) THE WHO – Hyde Park, London (June 27, 2015) – 3,589

8) PRETEND YOU’RE IN A WAR – Who Book Review (Sep 9, 2014) – 2,831

9) UNDERTURE – Keith’s Great Triumph (Oct 7, 2014) – 2,806

10) PETE TOWNSHEND INTERVIEW – June 1974 (May 25, 2014) – 2,747

While it’s not surprising that nine out of the top 10 are Who-related posts, it is perhaps surprising that three out of the nine relate directly to Keith Moon, including the number one which has had more than twice as many hits as the runner-up, thus retaining the unassailable lead it has enjoyed since it was first posted. Obviously a combination of Moonie and John & Paul Beatle is unbeatable.

        I’m still slightly puzzled by how many (presumably) Who fans hit on the second-placed post about Kit Lambert’s palace in Venice, which I would have thought was of marginal interest compared to more primary Who posts like show reviews and interviews from their golden era or reports on the group’s history and personnel. My only explanation is that it was posted last year, after Just Backdated had become reasonably well established, of which more later.

Bubbling under, ie over 2,000 hits, are loads more Who-related posts but looking back over all 638 I noticed that Blogspot’s mathematics is not infallible, and that according to the overall listing (as opposed to most hits) my post about Rory Gallagher’s battered old Fender Stratocaster (Oct 14, 2014) has actually received 3,113 hits which would put it in eighth place in the table above. The only other non-Who post above 2,000 is the one about Deep Purple’s misadventures in Jakarta, an extract from my book about the group, which is on 2,527.

Hovering just below the 2,000 mark are my obituary of Slade’s tour manager Graham ‘Swin’ Swinnerton (1,914) and one or two others (Jim Lea, Adrian Boot, Wilko Johnson, Jimmy Page, Bowie and Beatles). It’s gratifying to see that a few of my book reviews are read by around 1,500 viewers and that the hits are gathering steam the longer Just Backdated continues, the daily rate now rarely below 600. Last week’s Blondie review is just shy of 500 already and as far as I am aware it hasn’t been shared on any fan or Blondie-related sites, unlike many of my Who posts and a few on Abba, Led Zep and The Beatles.

With regard to JB becoming more established, it’s clear to me that regardless of their subject matter more recent posts seem to get more hits than those from a year ago, let alone when JB was launched at the end of 2013. One of my earliest ever posts was the heartfelt and well-received appreciation of John Entwistle that I wrote for Bass Guitar magazine (which has now had 2,543 hits) and I tend to think that if it was posted for the first time tomorrow I’d get double that. It’s right at the bottom of the Who listings now, but it gets a spike whenever the anniversary of John’s death comes around, even if it is a bit hard to find. This steady increase, of course, is reflected in the shorter time spans between landmarks like 400,000 hits to 500,000 etc.

As for geographical data, the US tops the league with 223,765 followed by the UK (103,523), Russia (37,186), Canada (15,595) and Germany (13,127). The bottom half of the top 10 is occupied by France, Japan, Australia, Ukraine and The Netherlands.

If I add up the hits from the top ten countries I get 417,639 which means over 80,000 hits are from the rest of the world, and I’ve noticed that in the past few months I’ve had hits from South Korea and, more recently, China, so Just Backdated is slowly but surely creeping across the Far East. I’d like to welcome my Chinese followers and, in case they missed the post from April 23, 2015, offer you absolute proof that The Beatles were compatriots of yours.

Anyway, thanks again to all who visit Just Backdated and I’ll try to keep up the good work, which more or less means you’re unlikely to find a report on this Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest or, for that matter, any televised music show of a competitive nature that’s a descendant of Carol Levis Discoveries or, for younger readers, Opportunity Knocks. 

JUST BACKDATED HITS 400,000

In the past 24 hours Just Backdated has received its 400,000^th hit and, coincidentally, this is my 600^th post, all since I launched the blog at the beginning of 2014. As regular visitors will know, I’ve slowed down a bit this past year but, conversely, the frequency of hits has accelerated, so it’s taking less and less time to pile them on.

As ever almost all the most-visited posts relate to The Who, number one still the post about Keith being photographed with John and Paul Beatle in 1974, now on an unassailable 13,896 hits, more than twice the post at number two. Surprisingly, leaping in from nowhere, the current runner-up is the post about Who manager Kit Lambert’s palace in Venice that I wrote in February this year, and which has accumulated 5,409 hits in just over six months. Almost all my Who-related posts have exceeded 1,000 hits, most of them between 2 and 3,000, largely because they’ve been linked on The Who’s own Facebook page. As a result of this the average hits per post (666.66666 etc) is skewed, since the vast majority get far less while the heavy hitting Who posts send the average up.

Not surprisingly, nine out of the top ten posts are Who-related, the exception being the one about Robert Plant visiting Jimmy Page for the first time at his house in Pangbourne in 1968, an extract from Omnibus Press’ forthcoming Page biography that I posted in July and which was shared on Dave Lewis’ Tight But Loose Led Zep page. Other non-Who posts with 1,000 or more hits include a couple on Abba (shared by my Stockholm-based Abba expert pal Magnus Palm on his Abba-related website), and one each on Jimmy Page, The Beatles, Rory Gallagher, Deep Purple, Wilko Johnson, Little Feat, Marianne Faithfull, Jeff Beck and David Bowie.

It is also pleasing to note that my obituary of Graham ‘Swin’ Swinnerton, Slade’s tour manager, has clocked up 1,781 hits, more than all my other Slade posts put together, while posts on Peter Rudge (Who/Stones manager) and Chas Chandler (Hendrix/Slade manager) have also registered more than 1,000. This suggests that Just Backdated readers are as interested in those who manage rock careers as those who actually have them. Similarly, posts about Kit Lambert have exceeded 1,000 and last Friday’s post about Bobby Pridden, The Who’s sound engineer, is already on 1,200 and rising.

Bubbling under the 1,000 mark are posts on Ray Davies, George Harrison, Dennis Wilson, Rolling Stone photographer Baron Wollman and, curiously, the one about the book on the Bradford City FC fire in 1985, the only non-music post to attract much attention.

In August I noticed that I was getting a massive number of hits from Russia and to mark this did a post about the Russian rock book Back In the USSR by Artemy Troitsky that I commissioned and edited in 1986. No sooner did I do this than the hits from Russia stopped, virtually overnight. It was as if I had caught someone snooping and when they were found out did a hasty retreat; quite sinister. Nevertheless, they can’t erase the hits, so Russia takes the Bronze in the Page Views By Countries list after the US (170,151) and UK (89,093). Russia is at 19,465, almost all clocked up in July and August this year, and thereafter it’s Canada (13,911) and Germany (11,063) with the next five (France, Japan, Australia, Ukraine and the Netherlands) all in five figures.

        Once again, thanks to all who’ve visited Just Backdated. At the moment I’m a bit tied up on other projects to post with the regularity that I once did. I have vague plans to combine all my Who posts into a book of some kind, with new material that I’m working on as a sort of summary of my long relationship with them. I have two other books in the works, one a novel, the other a co-author job with an industry figure, and I’m also still editing books for Omnibus Press, among them a definitive account of The Monkees and a book on Prog Rock, with more to come next year including, I hope, books on The Damned, Slade and Steve Howe. Never a dull moment - and what an eclectic bunch.

BACK IN THE USSR

For reasons that I am at a loss to explain Just Backdated has seen a surge of hits from Russia in the past month, over 10,000 compared with 2,886 from the USA and 1,302 from the UK. Russia has now leapt into third place after the USA and the UK in terms of all-time national visits, overtaking Canada, Germany, France, Japan and Australia in a matter of weeks, and although it still has some way to go to challenge the US and the UK in all time hits totals, if they keep up this pace it won’t be long before that challenge becomes serious.

           As I say, I haven’t the foggiest idea why music fans in Russia have suddenly cottoned on to Just Backdated in the past few weeks, but I welcome them all the same. If any of them are reading this, maybe some could enlighten me. Has JB been promoted by some Russian music forum that I don’t know about? Has a link to JB been shared by some influential Russian rock critic? Has JB been mentioned on a Moscow radio rock show? Or is it something slightly sinister? Please tell me.

           In keeping with the Russian theme, it may be of interest to these new readers to learn that I have some previous in regard to Russia and rock music. In 1986, on behalf of Omnibus Press, I commissioned the noted Russian music critic Artemy Troitsky to write Back In The USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia, an account of the history and development of rock music over the previous 25 years in what was then the Soviet Union. As I wrote in a brief note at the beginning of the book, I got the idea for this project when I read a Guardian article about Russian rock that was written by Artemy and commissioned by the paper’s then Moscow correspondent Martin Walker.

           This wasn’t as easy it sounds. Back then Soviet chief Mikhail Gorbachev had yet to initiate glasnost and perestroika, so the USSR was effectively still a closed shop. Artemy wasn’t supposed to accept a commission from a western publisher and all manuscripts by Russian authors intended for publication outside its borders were supposed to be delivered via VAAP, the Russian copyright agency, which would translate it from Russian to English and, presumably, censor it while doing so. We got around this by having Artemy write two manuscripts, one for them and one for Omnibus, ours being smuggled out via the Guardian’s diplomatic bag courtesy of Martin Walker. Not having access to an English-alphabet typewriter, Artemy painstakingly wrote it out in his best English in longhand, meaning I had to type it all out for our typesetter, not the easiest editing task I’ve ever undertaken, and he also sent me about 50 pictures to use in the book.

           It was worth the effort. The book was published to excellent reviews the following year, even though I never received the ‘official’ manuscript from VAAP (to whom, incidentally, we had paid an advance). We made arrangements for Artemy to visit the UK to promote it – the first time he’d visited the west – for which all sorts of official red tape had to be resolved. At one point the Russian authorities wanted to send a ‘minder’, presumably to make sure Artemy didn’t defect, but when we balked at paying the minder’s travel costs they let it drop. I was bemused by a seemingly obvious contradiction that the Soviets seemed to have overlooked: if VAAP hadn’t delivered a manuscript, how come Omnibus had published it, thus requiring its author to visit the UK promote it?

           “Ah, ha,” laughed Artemy when I pointed this out to him. “To understand that you have to understand the way Russian bureaucracy works. The government department that deals with manuscripts is a different department to the one that deals with travel visas. They don’t communicate. To do so would create extra work, and no one wants that.”

Artemy's dedication to me at the front of his book. He told me once what it said but I have forgotten.

           Back In The USSR wasn’t a massive seller for Omnibus but it was translated into many non-English language editions and published in the USA by Faber & Faber. Like me, all these other publishers felt it was an important historical document, a history book if you like, and that the story of rock in Russia needed to be documented for future generations. In this regard Artemy did a wonderful job.

           On his visit to London Artemy appeared on TV and radio and, through my efforts, met up with Paul McCartney, Richard Branson and Brian Eno. He visited Bath, where he met Peter Gabriel, and Dublin, where he met U2. All of these famous names were keen to talk to him, to learn from his experience. That aside, I found the whole exercise deeply enlightening, not only learning about how rock permeated the Soviet Union against the wishes of the authorities – like everywhere else, like Canute and the tide, they simply couldn’t hold it back – but dealing with – and outwitting – official procedure.

           Finally, I’m happy to add that Artemy, who now lives in Estonia, has remained a great friend.