ANNOUNCEMENT 1: OH, THE TIMES, THEY ARE A' CHANGIN'.

Hi there,

I've been away for quite some time. This can be explained by a few things (me throwing myself into my full-time job, me trying to keep a balanced social life and a little dash of that fickle beast known as procrastination) and, in a social media post on Instagram and Facebook (roughly a month ago now), I promised some big changes were afoot for The Blue Parktonian. Now, it is time I explain what exactly those changes will be.

First off, as much as I love all media, from movies and books, to stage plays and video games, I think, for now, I need to focus on reviewing one form of media, and I have chosen to (for now) focus on music reviews. I will eventually return to the realm of movie and TV Series reviews, but, at this very moment, I do not have the time to go out and watch the latest movies or to binge watch the latest series on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video.

I do, however, spend a lot of time listening to music, be it in the car to and from the office, in the office during work or at home, making sure my space is clean and tidy (yes, I have moved out of my parents' houses and have my own place now. So adult of me). Because of this, I have developed a brand new love and appreciation for music, and appreciate good music far more than I used to.

Right now there are currently a few good songs on the radio that I think deserve a review. From Camilla Cabelo and Young Thug to Billie Eilish, these reviews will be coming your way sometime soon. To be perfectly honest, I have the mentality that I will only review a song if it really deserves to be reviewed. This means that the song has to actually catch my attention and be interesting enough for me to actually want to cover. That is my biggest problem with music in 2019 so far. Nothing that gets airplay on the radio (bar a few exceptions) actually interests me anymore.

That brings me to my solution to this. Along with my regular pop song reviews, I will be introducing two new categories of reviews.

The first one is something I like to call Retrospective Reviews. The basic idea of a Retrospective Review is that I take a look at a song that made it big a while ago and determine if it has aged well and is still as good to listen to as the day it came out. This allows me to touch music from anywhere, from novelty one-hit wonders from the 1980s and 1990s to songs from when I was in high school (which, if you know me, I completed not long ago).

The second category I will be introducing will be called Indie Rock Lounge. The reason for introducing this category is because I have become slightly bored with listening to the radio to find good music to listen to, and as such, I began using Spotify to listen to music I had not discovered before, in particular indie rock. I will be choosing fairly recent indie rock songs that I think deserve to be reviewed by me and get some exposure. Who knows? Perhaps these bands become major hits, and those of you that read my reviews of their songs can be smug in the fact that I helped you discover these bands before they became famous.

Now, when will I finally return to reviewing movies and TV Series? At this moment in time, I cannot be certain. Maybe I will only occasionally dip back into the realm of film and TV critique, maybe I will bring it back as a full time thing, alongside my music reviews. I am not sure. The current state of The Blue Parktonian is a precarious one, but I am hoping that, by focusing on one thing that I am passionate about, maybe I can right the ship and finally get this blog off the ground. Maybe I will be able to leave my full time job and do this thing full time, at this point in time, it is a bit of a pipe dream, but I will try my damndest to make that dream a reality.

I hope you all can bear with me, as I try to make things right here, and if I manage to right this ship, perhaps I can begin righting other ships as well (such as Fantasium), and maybe get some of my other projects off the ground (my short web films and series, for example). I am so sorry I have let The Blue Parktonian fall apart, but now, I will pick up the pieces and bring her back to life.

I look forward to picking up where I left off.

Love,

Nicholas Rocher (The Blue Parktonian)

P.S: The first new review should come out sometime this week.