WELCOME to the fanclub! Let me get a few things out of the way before we get down to business. First, THANK YOU EVERYONE! I would like to thank the writers of the first issue as well as everyone who has offered thier help in any way. I think we did a damn good job. Thanks to our webmaster, Jay. Thanks to everyone who helped with graphics and advertising. And thanks to everyone who signed up. Thanks for having some faith in a bunch of Crowes fans you don't know. Without you we wouldn't have two hundred members in just over one week! Thanks alot! Now, down to what we are all about. We are a completely fan run organization. We have no official backing from the band, but my experience has been that you have to proove yourself before anyone will really want to get on board. So, here's what we are going to do. We are going to have a monthly newsletter. We will try to get them out in the middle of the month, but it will probably vary. Also, even though this one was scheduled to come out on a specific time, on a specific day, fuuture issues will not be. After trying it once, we realize its a huge pain in the neck to do that. Future issues will be scheduled for a certain day, no specific time. So with that in mind, I'd like to tell you when our next issue will be: October 13th (Friday the 13th!). Each issue will have articles by fans about the band, reviews of recent shows, a brief summary of the past months news, various monthly columns, and a whole slew of other things too. You may notice that some websites are advertised on the front page of the newsletter. This is because they designed graphics. That's all you have to do to advertise your Crowes website here, just pake a small graphic and it will be put in the next issue for free! Our primary goal is unity. Not every Crowes fan is going to agree with the next Crowes fan about anything, but we can all agree on one thing. We are Crowes fans. That binds us together in a way that really hasn't been shown yet. Messageboards are great places, but often they bring out the worst in fans as they fight about the most inane things and about past events that cannot be changed. I'm not knocking it, I'm just saying there are other ways. The news letter is one way. It allows all of the fans to read what other fans are thinking, without dealing with petty insults or one upping each other. Being a fan isn't a contest. We all like the music and just because some of us happen to know alot about it doesn't really make us any better. At one point in time none of us knew anything about they Crowes, today some people are just farther along the path of being a Black Crowes fan. The other way to get together as fans is to physically get together. I'm talking about scheduling group get togethers. A few times a year we are going to try to get everyone off of their computers and away from thier stereos and get out to meet other fans. We will call these days Tall Days. In each major city, we will choose one location and anyone who can make it, will go there and meet a few people. Its easy, many of us have done that very thing before and I can honestly say that I have made many good friends who are Crowes fans because we have met and sat down for a while to discuss one of our favorite things. These meetings are also ideal places to trade shows and learn info about the band. Everyone knows that Taller had Fanclub tickets. That's great. Everyone also knows that the band used VIP tickets for the Page/Crowes shows. That's not quite as great, but its still good. One of our goals is to try to bring back fanclub tickets. Its nice to belong to something and get perks from it. We're going to do our best to bring back all the perks that Taller had and maybe add a few more. We also want to do a Christmas present. While various suggestions have been floated my way, I think the one that made the most sense was the covers collection. I'm not going to get into any major detail about what it is, but its a 3 or 4 cd set, and its really great. Details of this will be worked out more as Christmas approaches, but for now, we are just going to worry about getting the news letter out and planning the ifrst Tall Day. Right now we have 200 members. That's not bad. In fact its pretty amazing considering we've only been around for a bit over a week. But the truth is 200 people does not consitute much of a dent in the fan base of the Black Crowes. It is everyone's job to try to advertise for this and help it succeed. If you have a website, please spread the word about the fanclub. If you go to a Crowes show, pass out some flyers! Do anything you can think of to spread the word. Without fans, there is no fanclub. If everyone wants this to succeed as much as I do, it would be huge. Finally, if you want to help out, either alot or a little, or if you want to write an article on anything at all, please don't hesitate to email me at chiefkong@aol.com, we need all the help we can get. Thanks, Chief |