400th post! My Year in Lists! So Many Animal Call serieseses!

Wwwwoooooooo!!! Congratulations! You're reading the 400th Animal Call! Just wait till you see what you've won! To commemorate this most momentous of occasions I thought I'd do something special. Tying in with January's on-going listing of my favourite things from 2010, here's the first ever complete list of all the different series's I've been doing posts under over the past year. In keeping with Free Music Friday I've also (where relevant) provided links for downloads of the songs that have inspired each different series.

Los Campesinos - My Year in Lists

With a title taken from a song by the same band that inspired the name of this blog, this seems like a good place to start. "Hooray for Humans" posts are focused on good news about my favourite local bands, producers and record labels.

Q and not U - Hooray for Humans

The title I stole from Art Brut is pretty self-explanatory. "Good Weekend" posts are report-backs on what I've been up to over the past weekend. Generally the posts span from Thursday night gigs to Sunday evening chillouts. At their most interesting a Good Weekend could, for example, be an exhibition on Thursday, VJing with a band on Friday, a DJ set on Saturday and trip to Chinatown on a Sunday. At it's geekiest it'll just be about me reading comics and playing video games all weekend.

Art Brut - Good Weekend

A far less self-explanatory series title is "ACSBSATTP". Back in 2009 (frustrated by what a pathetic job I'd been doing of updating this blog) I proclaimed that "Animal Calls should be short and to the point". From there ACSBSATTP became a home for one liners, quotes and one-off photos. A bunch less obscure than ACSBSATTP is "Link Highlight". These are simply posts about the sites list under this blog's "Animal Words" section. At best these post are concise explanations why I think you should visit a specific link, at worst they're two part epics with me fanning out about how awesome some people can be. With a title lifted from a lyric by my 2nd favourite band of the last decade, "Days Like Television" posts are built around video clips. Usually a music video by a local band and bonus clip of cat related cuteness.

Life without Buildings - The Leanover

Titled after the very sorely missed Mae Shi, "We do this all the time" posts are always just photos, generally snapped at gigs I've played or danced at.

The Mae Shi - Do This!

Sometimes, on a Friday, I'm lucky enough to be able to share a mix made by myself or one of the awesome local DJs in our community. It's not the namesake of this series, but let me take this opportunity to again share my favourite mix that fell under "Free Mix Friday" over the past year:

Nathan Scott Phillips - Visible Horizon

The fuel that drives this blog is the sheer amount of awesome little events people put together in Pretoria and Joburg week to week. From intimate Sshhh acoustic shows to out of control KRNGY freak-outs to sold out Griet dance parties, every week there's always at least one awesome show to be featured in "You Are Invited".

The Dismemberment Plan - You Are Invited

One of my first posts on this blog was me saying how I was obsessed with a music video by a UK band called Johnny Foreigner. Little I know that in a month I'd be flown to London, get to see the band live and become friends with the ghosts. And while the experience of befriending one of my favourite bands was one of the most exciting things ever, what grew out of that has been one of the most rewarding thing I've ever been involved in. In February last year I joined the band, playing visuals on a 5 date South African tour which was later documented in pretty ridiculous detail across the 40 part "We Pray for Moments like this" series.

Johnny Foreigner - Salt, Peppa and Spinderella

Later on in the year we were re-united, playing 16 shows across the US in support of one of our favourite acts, Los Campesinos. So far I've done a super-crap job of blogging about our adventures through The States, but I have tons of photos and stories to share in the "Foreigner's in America" series.

And leaving South Africa to undertake the adventures that will become the "Foreigners in America" series resulted directly in the creation of our final installment "Blog Annex". While on a bus from NYC to the fantastic world of Philadelphia, I logged onto the blog and discovered that in my absence Anja had hacked in and taken over. Posting on her own expeditions over here, Anja kept So Many Animal Calls alive and well while I was too busy being a Foreigner to do it myself.

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Well that's it. If you are reading this; thank you for reading this. Here's to another 400 Animal Calls!

RAWR!