>Agonise over your choice of cheap-but-unusual gift, wonder whether you can think of a good excuse to leave the party early and make awkward conversation with people you barely know, because A New Band A Day is one year old today!

And my, haven’t we grown – from barely literate burbles to quasi-thoughtful “opinion pieces” via drunkenly effervescent enthusiasm. And to think that people said we were crazy before we set out to write about a new band every single (working) day.

Anyway, it’s a day for a reflection – I’d like to say that ANBAD is a little older, a little wiser, and a little more worldly, but that would sound like some dreadful monologue from Dawson’s Bloody Creek. The truth is that all of us people who make ANBAD what it is are just as endearingly* naive as ever – a trait which is probably essential for the happy, grinding task of digging up new bands.

*frustratingly

Some of the bands that were featured on ANBAD pinged onwards and upwards to bigger and better things. It’d be a fib of epic proportions to claim that it was all down to our influence, but… actually that’s it. Anyway, we hope we gave them a bit of a leg-up on the way.

Thanks to everyone who has sent in suggestions for new bands: that’s all the friends, PRs and fans of bands, and bands themselves, of course. We always listen to each one suggested, and have discovered so many that our overwhelmed ears would otherwise have missed this way.

Please keep it up! We’d be nowhere without you. Here’s hoping that the next year of ace new bands will bring as many thrilling bands as this year’s lot did. Oh – and in case you were wondering (you weren’t), the song that has been in my head the most over the last year is The Little Patton by The Seedy Seeds.

AND NOW IT’S TIME FOR PRESENTS!

And, in the spirit of giving, as a gift to you, dear reader, here’s possibly the greatest single use of the English language ever. For once, please believe the hype and have a look, I promise that you’ll either LOL, ROFL, WTF or possibly a combination of all three.

Happy birthday indeed. Here’s to another year!