Joe Sparrow was once a boy who listened to John Peel under the covers*, marvelling at the mix of obscure Bolivian thrash punk, Taiwanese deep psy-house, et al. 

The mere existence of such a wild churn of odd music contrasted sharply with life in Stoke-On-Trent, where mallet-headed youths would shout “you fucking poof!” at you in the street for tucking your shirt into your trousers – and so these bands and songs became buzzy musical escapism.

He later became a reluctant adult, and started to find these odd bands for himself – which was made easier because men no longer shouted “you fucking poof!” at him in the street.

So, on A New Band A Day you’ll find a new band a day posted for you to investigate and see if you like. That’s how he came up with the title of the blog. He’s not a rocket scientist, you know. 

Joe and ANBAD have since been featured in all sorts of national newspapers – including, oddly, The Guardian, which has a very similar page that – ahem – pre-dates ANBAD; an unexpected half-hour takeover of BBC 6 Music, and miscellaneous loose-lipped appearances on Hype Machine Radio, Tom Robinson’s 6 Music show, Amazing Radio, and others.

But here’s the important bit that defines ANBAD, which is probably nicked from John Peel too: a core belief that there’s no merit in consistency. Joe hopes that you don’t find the same bunch of bands here that you’ll find on a lot of other new music websites.

Some bands on ANBAD will be great. Others might not be. He tries to mostly find the former. He sometimes fails at this. But that’s kind of the point.

The buzz bands do pop up on here sometimes, but on ANBAD you’re more likely to find some brilliant, genuinely new, bedroom-recorded pop from Norway. The bands here might never show up on the front of the NME, but they do make music you won’t want to miss, possibly for the same reason.

Joe has no idea why he has written this blurb in the third person. You can ask him why via joe [at] anewbandaday.com.

Enjoy – and if you do really enjoy, why not subscribe to the most excellent mail-out and receive a new band in your inbox each day? Go on, it’ll be something else to look forward to in the office other than stealing those really nice gel pens.

Joe Sparrow // ANBAD // November 2012

*it’s probably worth noting that it was Joe who was under the covers, not John Peel.

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When not spending time removing the excess superlatives from his daily posts at ANBAD, Joe Sparrow makes his ears throb and eyes boggle in the murky world of Bad Cover Versions, the most self-explanatory awful-music site on the web. 

Joe on: Twitter // Tumblr // Hype Machine