On Hiatus Until July 5th. We Miss You.

And thus the dreaded hiatus begins. Everett's at beach week drinking away his sorrows and engaging in all sorts of debauchery, so I'll give you all the lowdown on what happened. After Everett posted those Thom Yorke tracks ezarchive was all "that's not allowed, you must remove the mp3s from your archive" and while we removed the mp3s from the blog, one of us forgot to remove them from the archive. This shouldn't have been a big deal, only the songs were so sought-after that the mp3 links had been posted all over the internet (forums, other blogs, etc.), and as a result they continued to be downloaded. Thus, despite our best efforts to oblige, we did not comply with ezarchive's request, giving them the right to shut down our account, which they proceeded to do. Color us owned.

But hey, the hiatus isn't really all that bad. First of all, there's less than a month until we relaunch, and when we do, Good Weather For Airstrikes will have a whole new look and a veritable cornucopia of new content and features. The hiatus gives us time to prep said new content and also allows us to redesign the site without shaking things up here, which would have been the case if it weren't for this break. Here's a brief look into what you can look forward to on Good Weather For Airstrikes version 2.0:

• a professional redesign, featuring a new header, logo, color scheme and layout
• new features, more frequent updates, and better content (interning at a prominent record label yields all kinds of benefits, the least of which is exposure to all kinds of new, great and unheard of bands)
• full review and summary of the Intonation Music Festival, complete with an inside look at all of the weekends hottest parties (seriously, does anyone throw a better party than VICE?)
• a veritable crapload of show reviews, as my time in NYC has already yielded more incredible concert experiences than you can count on one hand (Regina Spektor playing to fifty people in Manhattan's oldest church? epic)
• M3 Volume 9 (as well as many more volumes to be released throughout the summer)
• one of those best-of-2006-so-far lists that everyone loves to hate and hates to love
• more commentary and witty banter from Everett and I that is guaranteed to be at least 200% more adorable than before

Now before you get all teary-eyed on us, I know some of you are wondering, "Is it something I did? Was it me? Should I have commented more? Am I not pretty enough?", and the answer is no. It's us, not you. But we're only going away for a little while, and yeah, we know you're probably going to fool around with some other blogs here and there, and we understand, we're a little bit hurt, but not mad. It's nothing we can't get past, we'll come back for you and we hope you'll come back to us. We like you a whole lot, really, and we have this feeling that this could really turn into something beautiful if you'd only give it a chance. That said, here are some suggestions as to how to best pass the time while you await our return:

• Visit all the blogs in our blogroll, we like them lots and lots and we think you should to. Also, check out Green Pea-ness, who I'd add to the blogroll now but blogger's all frontin' and shit and won't let me. If you can get past that unfortunate name, you'll see that this is one of the best blogs out there. James is doing an awesome job over there, and his writing is some of the best you'll see on any music website, let alone any music blog, out there. James and I share a similar appreciation for great production and dancy British rock, so if you're into that you've found your new favorite blog.
• Head over to Cable & Tweed where Rich, who was one of the first to champion GWFAS-favorite Heypenny, has posted an awesome live set from those lovable Cold War Kids. I had the priviledge of seeing Cold War Kids a week and a half ago at Bowery Ballroom, and despite the fact that they were the first opening band and were only afforded a 45 minute set, they brought the house down and may have been the best live band I've ever seen (stay tuned for a full review after the hiatus). Seriously, this band is for real. Best new band of 2006? Quite possibly.
• Continue reading All Things Go. Zack and I are basically the same person (NOTE: there is actually a facebook group titled "Zack Friendly Is The New Derek Davies"), so if you miss me too much head over there and he'll be sure to treat you right.

I had a couple more suggestions, but I'm at work and I started this post at 7 PM at the same time people were breaking out the beer (Beck's sent VICE 25 cases as part of their promotional partnership) and at that point I was merely nursing my first Sparks, but after numerous distractions, a couple more Beck's and Sparks, and a binge font-downloading session, it's now 9:30 and I hope you'll forgive me if I just want to get the tearful goodbyes over with.

Finally, if you really like the site and you're really sad we're going away and want to do something to help, it'd be super awesome if you felt like donating to help get things back up and running. The expenses involved with getting a new hosting service and professionally redesigning the site aren't exactly neglible, and if anyone wanted to throw some cash our way it would be more than appreciated. Any person who makes a donation over $5 (this is making the bold assumption that people would actually want to donate in the first place) get an awesome prize pack assembled by yours truly. Each will vary, but they'll probably include a couple mixes (an advance copy of M3 Volume 9 maybe?), some sweet vinyl LPs (I have more Silent Alarm [Bloc Party] and Hind Hind Legs [The Lovely Feathers] LPs than I know what to do with), and a random assortment of other CDs, posters and vinyl 7"s that I'd love to send to loyal readers. If you have a PayPal account and would like to donate, my PayPal account is registered to my UVA screen name, dwd7e@virginia.edu, and you can easily donate simply by pressing the PayPal donate button on the left sidebar beneath the Defunker ad. So yeah, now that I've gotten my shameless begging out of the way, I guess that's pretty much everything. Thanks for reading and we hope to see you soon when we relaunch the site on July 5th.