Greetings folks!

We’ll be down in Austin for South by Southwest this Thurs, March 17th through Sunday the 21st. We’ll be co-hosting a party with Faux Pas Productions on Saturday @5p at Lovejoys. Our very own Caitlin Krisko and The Broadcast will be performing, in addition to a few artists off Faux Pas’s roster.

If you’d like to schedule a meetup, hit us up at info@wanduta.com

Otherwise, keep up with us at twitter.com/wanduta

We are right in the thick of Midem, perhaps the largest music industry summit/conference/trade fair/schomooze fest in the world. Attendance for the event is down 13% from last year, with some companies choosing to send only a few or no delegates at all (Universal Music Group was noted as having no presence whatsoever). No doubt a sign of the times;  international travel and accommodations for a networking opportunity, albeit a very rich one, may be hard to justify at the moment.

But from the looks of it, the climate at Midem does not to be one characterized by downturn- the sheer volume of game-changing launches, partnerships, and ideas coming out of Cannes this week is overwhelming. (BTW, I’m keeping up with everything Midem on their homepage here, through Music Ally, and my industry news stalwart hypebot).

The streaming music subscription service Spotify continues to attract  attention as it closes in on a U.S. launch- understandably so, as its’ captured significant market share in Europe (as of July 2009, they had 2 million registered users in Great Britain and an additional 2 million in Europe)- In Sweden, Spotify appears to be paying out more in licensing fees to Universal Music Group than UMG’s Itunes sales royalties. Check out Bruce Houghton’s write-up of the viability of a U.S. Spotify launch, and some very interesting figures (ratio of paying/non-paying subscribers necessary for sustainability) regarding the company’s targets here. While we aren’t exactly on the precipice of U.S. Spotify launch, its’ viability in Europe is making the case for the paid subscription music pricing model vs. the Itunes pay-per-track system.

Another curious new technology that is abuzz in Cannes is MusicDNA, which is being hailed as the successor to the Mp3 as a digital file format for music- the MusicDNA file format offers a host of other content to music fans, such as videos, tour dates, lyrics, social media engagement, and more- and allegedly, the file format allows for all these features to be updated automatically in real time. For more info on MusicDNA, check this out.

These are two of the more buzzworthy topics at Midem, but are among many influential ideas/announcements/unveilings that have (and are sure to continue to) come out of the conference this week.  So why my thinly-veiled juxtaposition of these two companies?

Because as future-oriented music technology services, they appear to be occupying VERY different head spaces. Spotify is the media darling of paid-subscription streaming music services, but has several conceptual brethren- LaLa, Pandora, Grooveshark, Deezer- all subscription services that placed users libraries in the cloud, offered free streaming, and hoped to convert non-paying casual users to paying subscribed users.

The point is that Spotify is at the vanguard of a perceived industry movement towards streaming music from the cloud, rather than maintaining a library of digital music on one’s hard drive. And this makes an enormous amount of sense- once all consumer electronic devices have internet connections, what’s the functional difference between having the MP3 (or the MP3-DNA, for that matter) and having streaming access anytime, anywhere?

So are the minds behind MP3-DNA woefully ignorant of the movement towards the cloud? Probably not. But it appears that in order to make their new digital music file format effective, they need to be interacting with file-based libraries, not cloud-based. They have the ability to convert current users’ music libraries from mp3 to their rich media format (Mp3-DNA), but they better move quick- soon, it appears, everyone will be in the cloud.

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Martin Rivas, an NYC-based singer-songwriter. He is currently touring in support of his latest album “Sea of Clouds”, which is available now. We talked songwriting, influences, and of course, The Spinners:

1.  You play a lot and you have a fantastic voice.  What tips can you offer vocalists on the art of voice maintenance?

Thanks so much! Playing as often as I get to play, I definitely feel as though there are days that I don’t have as much voice as I’d like… so I pretty much go with what I’m given. Which on many days for me is nearly nothing! (laughs) Sometimes, a bit of rasp can be an advantage in a quiet environment. I love investigating and making use of the bits of squeal and snarl that I can get with varying degrees of raspy-voice-ness as opposed to being at 100%. It varies from day to day, and it’s like plugging your guitar into a different amp just to see what might come of it.

Luckily for me, I’m in the fortunate position of not having to speak much during the day, and rest is the greatest thing for me in terms of preserving my voice. Speak softly during the day, drink as much Yogi Throat Comfort Tea, or anything with some cardamom in it, and if you can, run the bathtub with really hot water, let the bathroom fill with steam, and just go and sit in there and read for 10 minutes at a clip. Those are the sort of things that work best for my voice.

2. When did you write the songs for Sea of Clouds?

The songs were written over a period of a few years. Of the tracks on the album, I think that “A New Word” was the first song that came around, and “I Need a Riff” and “Sorry to See You Go” were among the last. The discipline of taking the sonic and melodic ideas that are always floating around and fashioning them into something resembling a song is the part that seems to escape most easily from me, and it’s the hardest habit to get back into. A lot of these songs were floating around as half-completed sketches for the better part of a year before the discipline came back to complete them, which I don’t mind at all; I think it allows me to really understand the song and make it become what it wants to become. I only have a tiny handful of songs that have shown up at my doorstep completely finished, or that took 20 minutes to write; of those sort of songs, “Hide in Me” is one.

Writing songs is like therapy for me, except it doesn’t cost anything, and the sessions can last as long as I need them to. Taking a year-plus to write a song is comforting to me.

3. Who is the first person you share new songs with?

I’d have to say that my wife is the first to hear everything simply because she’s hearing every step of the process. She’ll always say, “that sounds ok” when I play her a finished demo, even if I’m totally stoked about it. She sure knows how to keep me in check. (laughs) I imagine it must be frustrating to hear the same melody six or seven hundred zillion times before it appears as part of a completed song, unless you’re the one writing it.

4. True or false.  You went through a phase when you listened to The Spinners a lot.

That’s not a phase! I STILL listen to Philippe Wynne and the Spinners all the time. I’ve pretty much spent my entire adult life working backwards with music, finding older and older songs, singers, and melodies that make me melt, and 1940s, 50s and 60s rhythm and blues is the music that I have found most appeals to me. The Spinners are one of my absolute favorites, but I’m even more fond of Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield, Sam & Dave, Jerry Butler, Smokey Robinson, Otis Redding, Louis Jordan, and lesser known folks like Walter Jackson, Billy Butler, Bill Doggett, Bobby Bland, Wynonie Harris, Jimmy Ruffin, … man, I’ll go on for 20 minutes if you let me.

5. Is there a story behind “a name scratched on a desk?”  Can you share it?

There really isn’t much of a story; I was visualizing the feelings of getting on with your life after a period of mourning. You know, after the shock, making arrangements, the wake, the funeral, and then coming back home and expecting, or being expected, to just get on with it. Those are the visuals that came to mind… someone being a memory now, a name scratched on a desk. It’s nothing new to folks who have been through it, and that’s why I wanted to say at the end, “this isn’t some sort of revelation, and it was never meant to be.”

6.  Who taught you how to play music?  Write music?

I remember singing along to 45s, and making the effort to be sure that I was singing in key, and even finding harmonies and counter-melodies, when I was 5 or 6. I think that was always around. My sister’s boyfriend kept a guitar at our house around the time I was 11, so I’d reach for that and goof around and search for things. Then my sister started taking piano lessons, so of course I’d hop on the bench and explore. It was my Uncle Joe who finally said, “enough goofing around, let’s show you some chords,” and he taught me the chorus to “Ride Captain Ride” by Blues Image, I guess because it only had a few, easy chords. I’m thankful that he took me a bit left-of-center from the get-go, rather than showing me “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” or “Kumbaya.” From there, I just started listening to my Police, Clash, and Beatles records and trying to play along.

7. What advice can you give Wanduta members who are just getting started with their music careers?

Play as often as you possibly can, to the point where there is no difference between being on stage or being at, say, a Dunkin’ Donuts. Put yourself in the position to be as comfortable as possible up there, and people will get who you are.

Listen to lots and lots and lots of music; listen to sounds; listen to conversations; listen to engines and squeaks and squeals; listen to short-wave; listen to everything. Find the comfort and melody within sounds.

Be to people the way you’d wish them to be to you, and if they’re not, be that way anyway.

You can catch Martin’s next show on Wednesday, December 16^th 9p at The Bitter End NYC. He will be sharing the bill with Greg Mayo Band. Both Bands will combine with special guests to perform The Beatles “Abbey Road” full album. Martin will have 2010 residences at NYC clubs The Red Lion, Prohibition, and Slane, along with regular appearances at Rockwood Music Hall.

A sample of Martin’s songs from his new album,  “Sea of Clouds”:

You’ve seen a couple examples of how you can use the Wanduta Perkscard to save money. But did you know the savings are so substantial that they can actually finance a healthcare plan?

Take one of our health insurance options. $55 a month. $660 dollars a year.

Here’s just one of the many configurations of savings you can get with the Wanduta Perkscard that will SUBSIDIZE A YEAR OF HEALTH INSURANCE. For argument’s sake, we’ll do this example in quite possibly the most expensive city in the country: New York City.

1. AMC Movie Ticket Discounts. Normally $12.50, Wanduta gets them down to $8. Suppose you buy two movie tickets every month.

Savings: $9/month, $118/year saved

2. Dominos Pizza: Wanduta gets you a 30% discount at all NYC locations. Suppose you place 2 orders each month at $20 each.

Savings: $6/month, $72/year saved

3. Need some storage space? Wanduta Perkscard has a relationship with American Self-Storage, and can get you a full month of storage space free AND can get the initiation fee waived.

Approx monthly cost of a 5X10 space: $119. Initiation fee: $20. Total of $139 saved

4. Ramada Hotels. Wanduta has an exclusive discount for 10% off the best available rate for all Ramada hotels. In total, suppose you spend 5 nights a a year at a hotel, spending a total of $1000. Knock ten percent out of that, and Wanduta has saved you $100

5. A few weeks back, we already showed how you can save $130 on a rental car using Wanduta.

So we are at $559 saved so far, right? And the yearly health insurance charge was $660. Fear not. Hmm. I know what will put us over:

5. Wanduta has 30% discounts with food vendors ALL OVER NEW YORK CITY. Seriously. Sign up, and you’ll see that the network is too vast to even list here. But say you spend $100 a month just within out network of discounted merchants. That’s $1200/year. Knock thirty percent off, that’s $360 saved

Total Savings:
$118 on Movies
$72 on Pizza
$139 Storage
$100 on Hotel
$130 on Rental Car
$360 on Food

= $919 saved yearly. That’s a bigger number than the $660 yearly health insurance fee. Your coming out on top of this one.

As you may have noticed, we look a little different. Well, we certainly feel the same, if not a little better. New site, new functionality, better features for our users.

If you play music, you know what it feels like to be in the pocket. To feel the pulse somewhere deep and internal, from which everything flows and feels natural.

On the eve of the holiday, we’d like to share a groove that characterizes Wanduta pretty damn well at the moment. We hope you can lock into this with us.

Ok,

So you are out there touring- We know, you sometimes don’t get, ahem, much dough from gig to gig.. You GOTTA save anywhere and EVERYWHERE you can? WANDUTA PERKS to the rescue! Here is a case study of three locations around the country that, JUST FOR BEING A WANDUTA MEMBER, you would save money. Actual dollars that you keep in YOUR pockets to continue to your independent musician’s dream- being on the road, touring, making money and living on the road less traveled- except for truckers and madmen. Well, now that I think it, you may be a bit mad too?! Anyway- PROOF that you will SAVE just by being a member of WANDUTA. ?

—————JOIN NOW!—————-

Need to clean your clothes in NY? Save 20% By showing your Wanduta Perks Card!

Just Finish a BIG SHOW at the Honky Tonk in Dallas? Tire went flat? Save 10% Just for having your Card.. Yeehaw!

Show up to the gig with the same Ed Hardy Shirt as another band on the ticket? Show your Wanduta card here and get 10% off your entire order. Radical, Dude.

This is the first in a series of posts about how you can save money with the Wanduta Perkscard program. We are focusing on discounts that musicians can use for both on-the-road expenses and everyday purchases alike.

Today we are taking on the dreaded car rental. Maybe you need an extra set of wheels for a certain leg of a tour. Maybe you need a place to steal away and sob quietly after playing to an empty room in Sioux Falls, SD. You may even just relish the comfort and economy of a Ford Pudding on your next vacation or getaway.

Regardless, you’re going to be floored by how we can help you out.

Here’s the standard rate for a car rental from Avis:

Now check out the DISCOUNTED WANDUTA RATE:

That’s like….$130 saved.

Notice the make, model, and rental duration are both exactly the same.

Again, EVERY Wanduta member gets a Perkscard sent to them immediatly, and for free of charge, upon signing up. This is a no f’n brainer.

We’ve been hard at work these last couple months improving both the look and usability of our website, and are proud to announce the launch of our new and greatly improved website

We worked painstakingly to ensure the best possible experience for our end-user and raison d’etre, the independent musician.

Stay tuned for a full overview of updates and improvements. We are very excited. You should be too.

talented musicians in the world making a lot of good music. We know that can seem like a discouraging fact when you are trying to find your place in the whole music scene, and trying to figure out if and when you will be able to make a living with your music. But, you can be heartened by the fact that there are way way way more fans of music in the world than there are talented musicians. That is an easy fact to forget, but a nice one to remember. Another nice fact is that as you read this there are millions of people with some song stuck in their head. They come from all walks of life and they are at this moment engaged in all sorts of activities. (pause think about it move on) But they all have one thing in common. At some point before the song that is now stuck in their head became stuck in their head, they each had to hear the song somewhere. A club, the internet, a friend’s car, a movie, a street corner, it really doesn’t matter where or how. What matters is that they heard it. They heard the song. It lodged into their brain. They need to hear it again. Do you see where this is going? It is a classic “It’s hard but there’s hope” pep-talk. It’s hard out there. But there’s hope. And there’s Wanduta.

This clip has been around for a while, but it is worth coming back to again and again. What a great reminder of the pure joy of a good song being played well. Can you feel it? Have you been healed?

We recently had the pleasure of catching up with Deena Goodman. A fabulous singer-songwriter in her own right, Deena also heads up Rebel Spirit Music, an NYC-based organization assisting independent musicians. She wears several different hats, all of them quite impressively, and was kind enough to tell us more about both her creative and community endeavors:

Where are you from?
Raised in Teaneck NJ, live in Manhattan

How did you get started in music?

My dad played his favorite records on our road trips, including all artists listed above, plus a little jazz and standards for good measure, I have been singing every since. After graduating NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts I began to pursue a recording career, writing songs with big name songwriters and playing shows nationwide. I eventually realized the need for community involvement amongst independent artists, that the notion of doing this together was more savvy then the notion of doing it yourself, so I started Rebel Spirit Music, an effort to promote all artists music, hand in hand.

Speaking of promoting music, what’s the most creative/shameless way you’ve seen a musician publicize themselves?

Hate to say it, but the Naked Cowboy has it down to a science. I am also a big fan of artists who set up accounts devoted to producing records that fans donate money to, giving fans a hand in the making of their favorite artists’ record is a great way to maintain loyalty and camaraderie amongst musicians and fans alike.

Whats next?

Continued work towards bringing new musics to music lovers, through Rebel Spirit Music, live music at Canal Room and perhaps producing some more of my own.

Where can we catch the next Rebel Spirit showcase?

August 5th: The Rebel Spirit Music Series Presents: Garrison Starr, Abby Payne, Jon Solo and Jerzy Jung @ Rockwood Music Hall/196 Allen St (btwn houston and stanton), 8 pm, FREE.

Check out Deena performing “Follow You Down”:

Pandora remains intensely focused on providing a level playing field. Our aim is to find the best music we can – indie, major or otherwise – and to add as much of that as we can. Given our sole focus on quality, we’re looking for folks who have a demonstrated seriousness about their craft. Just as investing the time and money to create a professional sounding CD is a strong predictor of quality, having invested or being willing to invest in an online distribution mechanism is another signal.

What exactly does it cost to register physical CD’s with Amazon, and therefore be eligible for Pandora? A whopping 29.95 PER YEAR. So Westergren has a point in arguing for a sense of financial proportionality among musicians- why invest countless hours and considerable expenses in the studio, rehearsal room, and on gear, and neglect to spend a nominal fee to complete the final phase to deliver your musical product? In the case of Pandora, and judging by many of the user reactions, many feel some sort of righteous indignation towards the alleged cohoots with Amazon, refusing to pay the fee out of principle. But why doesn’t this same shrewdness apply to my broke guitar player friend, who feels perfectly comfortable buying his 10th effects pedal (~$100), but refuses to foot the modest bill for online distribution of his music?

But that’s not the point. Besides, we are finding the new generation of internet-saavy, DIY industrious musicians to be more than willing to pay a fee to utilize worthwhile services. Look at the success of fantastic artist-enabling digital tools such as Tunecore and Sonic Bids. If us musicians see these services as worthy of our buck, than we will pay for them. So back off.

The curious thing about the whole situation is not the price, it’s the PHYSICAL CD qualifier- you don’t just have your tracks registered with Amazon (again, a service Tunecore can perform), you have to physical distribution set up. Westergren makes a obscure and incomplete attempt to explain this by saying that “not all downloads have a UPC (barcode)- so it will be a lot more hit or miss”. Last time I checked, barcodes track purchase routing and history. Don’t we have analytics for digital transactions that far exceed the days of UPC barcodes?

Additionally, why is Pandora getting behind Amazon’s edict for a physical CD, when it knows that the industry is moving away from the album/CD concept of musical delivery to the CONSTANT STREAM of artists delivering tracks to their fans? Why, oh why, Pandora, keeper of the most robust music discovery technology, once-hailed as the great mediator of the music industry, are you moving backwards rather than forwards?

Because Pandora is a venture-backed enterprise. The same VC cats are behind Topspin Media, an incredibly saavy and promising digital music service (they would disagree with this terminology, but I don’t have time to explain their nuanced services). The goal behind Pandora is to make money. It’s easy to lose sight of this, given the heady musical association and discovery one undergoes listening to Pandora Radio. It really is a fascinating service. To his credit, Westergren in forthcoming in such intentions:

“We believe it’s very important from a user-experience standpoint to have functioning ‘buy’ links… It’s clearly the right choice from the product/user experience perspective.”

Pandora is attempting to monetize something that may be lucrative in the temporary (though I doubt anyone will actually opt to buy the archaic physical CD, when a digital Itunes download is most likely available as well). They are neglecting the way we consume and distribute music in the here and now, which, for a service as preeminent in its technology as Pandora, is upsetting.

To read Westergren’s full letter, click here

Watch Seger’s facial expressions and body language. It almost looks like he is happy. We have a suspicion that there might be a few happy lead singers trapped inside the brooding and tormented frontmen we see wrestling with their inner demons on stage night after night. And we want to free them. So, if you want to be happy on stage and but you are fighting that urge for fear of being accused of having no edge, just tell them that you have been to Fire Lake. And if Bob Seger is too old for you, go find some footage of Josh Ritter. They are proof that being soulful and happy on stage are not mutually exclusive.

Today myself and a musician friend of mine were trading stories of bogus gigs, mostly pretty standard- playing to empty rooms, dickhead sound guys, beautiful women who watch your set but vanish once your gear is packed up and you are ready to talk to them.

It was fun. Swapping shitty gig stories is always fun. Its what I imagine the camaraderie is like when cops get together and talk about raids they’ve made and people they’ve busted-the same basic stories, but wrapped in different locations with different characters. If there’s a common denominator among musicians, it has to be the bad gig.

Anyway, my friend is what you would commonly call a singer-songwriter, by virtue of the fact that he sings and plays guitar, often at the same time. Maybe it was insensitive to have said this outright, but as he was describing a recent discouraging performance, I said something to the effect of, “yeah, well it must be extra hard for you, given the type of music you play”.

I wouldn’t normally make a sweeping statement about an entire genre of music, but I really do think being a singer-songwriter at this point in time is unbelievably difficult. Why? To say simply “because there are so many other singer-songwriters out there” would be remiss, but still the beginnings of truth. It is how this soaring number of singer-songwriters is affecting the way we hear and judge music of this genre.

The Internet changed everything. Ugh. I will never say, “the internet changed everything” again, because it should just be assumed that, in any discussion pertaining to music nowadays, the internet did in fact change everything. The ability to create, distribute, and promote music is within the grasp of just about anyone. What does this mean?

It means we are graduating from the withering model of big-label A&R manufactured talent, but are still lost is the chaotic musical populism of the Internet. Myspace, youtube, and inexpensive home recording setups have given the tools to just about anyone, but we still lack the critical infrastructure to keep up with all this damn music.

Why target singer-songwriters? There’s nothing more basic and accessible musically than guitar and voice. But I’ve heard so much singer-songwriter music, that I honestly have trouble differentiating the good from the bad. By giving a venue to everyone, our collective standards have gone down. Because we are inundated by mediocrity, it has become harder to recognize true talent when we see it. It has caused a widespread degradation of our expectations.

But we are catching up. Music discovery services. Those are the buzz now, right? Sites such as thesixtyone.com are helping us wade through the masses of independent music online right now, and identifying which may be worthy of our time. Pandora is great, but doesn’t help us tackle the indie jungle as well.

As far as the singer-songwriters I’ve offended, the same argument can be used for a lot of the music out there and DIY music culture in general- anybody with a condenser microphone, a Pro-Tools rig, and a desire to objectify women can be a hip-hop artist now. And to further appease the SS people, I’m listening to Bon Iver right now and he makes me want to quit my job and spend the rest of my days on a dirt farm. A few chords and a voice can still do it.

Not too long after the Soviet Union collapsed, I was in this bar in Moscow called The Armadillo (not far from the Kremlin) when two guys from Tiblisi, Georgia (the country not the state) began to play the blues, acoustic.  They were not messing around either, and I instantly became their self proclaimed biggest fan and proceeded to help them get a live spot on a local blues radio show and a number of gigs at bars that catered to Americans. 

Soon after that I became friends with one of the guys, his name is Levan.  One day I was hanging out with Levan and he was working on learning a new song.  I don’t remember the name of the song, but there was a line about “standing on the corner sucking on some Tanqueray.”  Levan spoke English with a heavy accent, but when he sang he managed to lose the accent mostly.  But as he practiced this song, he was singing the line “standing on the corner sucking on some tangerines.”  He didn’t know what Tanqueray was, so the reference was lost on him and the closest word he could think of was tangerines. 

When I explained it to him we had a good laugh and then he was relieved, because he really didn’t understand why the guy in the song was standing on the corner sucking on a tangerine when his life was falling apart.  It just didn’t ring true when you sang it Levan’s way.  That’s just not what people do when the shit hits the fan.  We don’t reach for citrus fruit to calm our nerves or to forget our troubles. 

But, I have lived now for a long time with the line in my head, “standing on the corner sucking on some tangerines,” and I am here to tell you that there is wisdom in that line.  You cannot eat a tangerine in some half-assed manner while your mind wonders over your troubles.  When you are eating a tangerine, there is too much happening not to get caught up in the moment, caught up in the act of eating the wet, messy, sweet fruit.  So for that short time, while you stand on the corner sucking on a tangerine, that is all that you will be doing.  And stopping to do just one thing and really do it, is sometimes all it takes to get away from the rest of the lyrics that fill your day-to-day life long enough to gain a little reprieve and maybe even some perspective. 

Of course, it doesn’t have to be sucking on a tangerine.  You can get the same relief from uncompromising focus on the moment when you practice.  Next time you pick up your instrument, say the line to yourself.  “I’m just standing on a corner sucking on a tangerine,” and then practice like it.  I predict you will play better, and when you are done you will feel much better than the guy in the song.  Even if your rent is still late.

 Here’s Levan playing Sweet Home Chicago:

What is Wanduta? Who are we? Why are we here? Why are you even here? All very pressing questions.

But more importantly, what the hell is a blog?

If you used the word blog before the Internet was invented by Al Gore, it would have conjured up images of swampy marshland in a Dickens opening chapter (because it sounds like “bog”), or you would have figured that the person was describing a symptom of a bad hangover, as in, “it feels like I have a blog in my gut,” or “I can hardly see straight through this blog in my head.”  It may have also come up in scatological conversation, as in “dude, you have to come see the blog I just cranked out in here.” Anyway, today a blog is not that much different.  

There are so many blogs that you can get lost in the thick of them as easily as one could get lost in a bog (although you won’t lose your boot wading through blogs like you might a bog).  People write them hungover.  And they are usually full of a lot of crap.  We have no delusions that our blog will be any different.  If we did we would have used a different word to describe it.  We might have called it a Blo(o2)g (a blog with some extra oxygen), or something totally different like The Word. We didn’t.  Because it is just a blog.

Truthfully, and like all bloggers we think our blog is going to be all cool and refined. Are we tripping into the same pitfall as every other self-indulgent wank with a blog? Perhaps. But we haven’t even told you anything about Wanduta, or what this blog will be.

Couldn’t hurt our chances.