Sixth Anniversary - Deram Records: I Woke Up This Morning.

Today is a day of celebration. Six years ago today I began this blog on a rainy Saturday afternoon. It was one of the better decisions I’ve made as I have rekindled friendships and made a number of new ones over the six year period. The last two years (especially last year) with the change in jobs, I’ve not kept up with the blog. In 2015, I’ve had long gaps without new posts. Hopefully, that will change.

Before we get to the stats, our final selection to celebrate the music of Deram Records, we bring you an album cut from Ten Years After fourth album for the label: “Ssssh.” In all, Deram released seven Ten Years After albums – five studio, one live, and a compilation album. “Ssssh” was their second album from 1969 and a number of cuts got some album airplay, no singles were issued from the album to my knowledge.

Until the 1971 hit on Columbia, “I’d Love to Change the World,” singles were just a nuisance that the record company released hoping that mainstream radio would pick up on it. With the exception of “I’d Love to Change the World,” it didn’t work and Deram had no hit records from Ten Years After.

To remedy that, we turned to the final cut on “Ssssh” and an Alvin Lee tune – “I Woke Up this Morning.” It really showcases how great a guitarist Alvin Lee was. Even as great a talent as Lee was, he needed a solid band and Ten Years After fulfilled that need. The band was rounded out by Leo Lyons on bass (always a joy to watch), Chick Churchill on keyboards, and Ric Lee on drums. Great stuff for a Saturday – rainy or otherwise.

RBTG’s Sixth Anniversary Retrospect

Like I had reported with every other anniversary, I took a look backward on how we are doing visitor wise. I began this blog on September 26, 2009, but did not start monitoring the visits until October 16, 2009. Currently, we have 95 declared followers of the blog – the same number as in March 2015 when we had our 1600th post. There are many others who have visited frequently without declaring themselves as followers.

As noted above, we have not been vigilant in maintaining posts, but that hasn’t affected our overall numbers. With over 1600 posts, people have been visiting anyway even without new material that was forthcoming.

The cumulative statistics for the blog are listed below:

Variable	Statistic
Unique Visitors	190,254
Times Visited	213,983
Number of Pages Viewed	298,652
People Visiting 200+ Times	3,188
People Visiting 101-200 Times	1,557
People Visiting 51-100 Times	1,486
People Visiting 26-50 Times	1,418
Number of Visitor Countries Represented	191

The Top Ten Visitor Countries

Since our 1,600th post, three new countries were added to the list: Tajikistan (in Asia), Cuba (in the Caribbean), and Chad in Africa . The Top 10 countries remain the same; however, former tenth position Spain knocked Netherlands out of the ninth position.

Rank	Country	Visits
1	United States	105,359
2	United Kingdom	18,120
3	Canada	11,490
4	Germany	9,847
5	France	7,228
6	Australia	5,213
7	Italy	4,428
8	Brazil	4,224
9	Spain	3,416
10	Netherlands	3,397

As always, I want to take this time to thank all of you for your support of this site and the encouragement to keep going forward. Thanks again for Reading between the Grooves.