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LATEST INFO about GimmeMT.com (Beta)
12 days later
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What does THE BLACK YOUTUBE RECTANGLE OF DEATH mean? Has the video been taken down?
NO! It is still there for you to watch.
Just click the "Watch on YouTube" link in the middle of the black rectangle and you will get another window in your browser for the exact video we linked to at the YouTube site. No additional searching by you required.
This set-up is required by YouTube for its own purposes -- most likely to allow it to show you advertising more easily.
The good news is many of our linked videos do not require this and with those you can watch and listen while you stay on the same page you were viewing and continue to read the reviews and comments etc.
Also, most browsers will let you continue listening on one web page while you tab back to the GimmeMT page to continue reading while you listen.
[GimmeMT does not post anything on YouTube -- all links are pointed to content previously posted by others not affiliated with GimmeMT, which does not make anything from YouTube ads or from any other source -- there is no monetization by GimmeMT.com whatsoever.]
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Status report, the beat goes on.
About 225 shows have one or more streaming media links to audio or video of songs or entire shows.
There are 540 shows with collector information collect.
Over 250 shows have been reviewed so far review by GimmeMTguy.
There are over 1700 shows SHOWS represented with individual pages.
More than 75 Rolling Stones shows with Mick Taylor stones have already been reviewed thus far, more coming every day. The shows completed so far cover the 1969, 2012, 2013 and 2014 tours.
On the technical side, the search engines love our content and are dishing up GimmeMT in search results. AI is already stealing our content and regurgitating it to people in less interesting prose, another sign of success.
Viewership is steadily increasing, and time spent actually reading our pages is substantial and increasing.
The site infrastructure has been rock solid and only a tiny portion of its capacity is being used at this stage. There is plenty of room to keep growing.
We are staying in "beta" and not making any broad announcements of our existence yet. After our forum software can move to version 2.x, probably in the next six months, we will consider making a full launch effort.
Until then, we want to keep filling-out the content. Anyone can promise to do something, very few on the internet actually follow through. We want to do it. Listening to all this Mick Taylor guitar is the most enjoyable work of a lifetime.
Thanks for your continued support! Feel free to register and post with your thoughts, complaints and ideas.
One more thing -- if you or someone you know has a tape that hasn't circulated to the public, consider getting it to someone who can get it out there. There are 714 orphan Mick Taylor-involved shows for which no recording (whole or part) has YET circulated.
Neither fans nor our musical heroes are getting any younger. Don't let your rare music end up in a trash dumpster someday! There are many Rolling Stones fan communities online replete with talented and generous folks who digitize tapes and prepare them for free distribution.
Getting the music out there is the ultimate in cloud storage backup -- it gets decentralized around the globe and in 200 years people will then be listening to your tape because you took steps to preserve a great part of human history.
2 months later
Returning from some summer vacation. Reviewing will now resume with refreshed ears. Enjoy your remaining summer (in the Northern Hemisphere).
a month later
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Since returning from some time resting my MT ears, the pace has picked up on reviewing shows. Over 40 Shane Fontayne-era shows are now done, and the end is close. 87-89 MTB~Fontayne
Some more67-69 Mayall early Bluesbreakers shows have been sourced and reviewed.
We are trying out an auto-scroll feature to eliminate the need to click to see every next batch of 20 listed shows.
orphan shows are down to 700, shows withcollect information for collectors is up to 579 and totalreview 'ed
shows are at 269.
The search engines and AI bots love our unique human-written content and we are getting great play in results, some engines even re-write our content and opinion and present it as authoritative at the top of their results pages. Scary!
The best estimate is that GimmeMT.com now has approximately 300,000 words of written Mick Taylor content -- the equivalent of two or three novels.
Much more to come.
7 days later
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Mick Taylor's live solo career is now covered from its start in July 1986 through July 1989, with the completion of the Shane Fontayne band years. 87-89 MTB~Fontayne
We also filled-in some missing Bluesbreakers reviews from the67-69 Mayall era, with recent StonyRoad offerings.
For fun, here are the top 10 shows visitors have sought to read about thus far in September 2024:
1 
1984-07-03 Grenoble FR {Bob Dylan} GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
2 1987-02-01-1st-show NYC Lone Star Cafe {Mick Taylor Band} GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
3 1986-12-29-1st-show NYC Lone Star Cafe {Mick Taylor Band} GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
4 1990-08-21 Sydney The Bridge Hotel {Mick Taylor Band} GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
5 2013-11-09 NYC The Cutting Room {RW & MT} GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
6 2012-04-12 York UK Fibbers Club {Mick Taylor Band}
7 1969-11-13 Dallas TX Moody Coliseum {Rolling Stones}
8 1969-05-21 Berlin Kongresshalle {John Mayall's Bluesbreakers} GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
9 1969-05-09 Birmingham UK Town Hall {John Mayall's Bluesbreakers} GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
10 1969-11-26 Baltimore MD Civic Center {Rolling Stones} GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
The 5 most popular essays during the same period are:
1 Mick Taylor Re-Examined, a biography by Jim Sheridan GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
2 Mick Taylor as a Rolling Stone 1969-74, by gimmemtguy GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
3 Mick Taylor as a Bluesbreaker 1967-69, by gimmemtguy GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
4 Jack Bruce Band 1975, by gimmemtguy GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
5 Alvin Lee Band 1981, by gimmemtguy GimmeMT . . . Everything about Every Mick Taylor Live Performance Ever, by Fans for Fans
7 days later
We just had a half-day server outage that is now over. Our excellent host just physically moved all their equipment to a new data center in the same region. We knew it was coming someday, but did not get the emails with the actual advance notice so we were caught by surprise.
This should work out to be a small but meaningful service upgrade over the long term. Sorry for any inconvenience, we plan to be rock solid and around for a long time.
We have reached the 1/3rd mark forstones reviews of Mick Taylor shows with the Rolling Stones. This represents all of 1969, part of 1970, and all of 2012, 2013 and 2014.
6 days later
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The march of progress:
review Reviewed Shows 276, up from 269
collect Collectors' Information is posted for 582 shows, up from 579
media Streaming Media (audio or video) links are now posted for 292 shows, up from 232
Reminder -- if you see the YouTube link is blacked-out, just click on the underlined link "Watch on YouTube" to go directly to the show, no additional searching required.
5 days later
Some of the embedded video links now seem to be showing a YouTube ad at the start. GimmeMT has nothing to do with that choice and receives no compensation -- it's entirely a YouTube/Google thing.
I guess it's the price we pay for having YouTube be a legitimate source for the music.
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The search box seems to be glitching at the moment after a recent software update. Sometimes it takes two search attempts for results to be returned, the first being blank, or returning the same results as your prior search.
We are pursuing a fix. In the meantime, to paraphrase Dylan, just search twice, it's alright.
It can help to type in your search term, then wait for the dropdown box to fill-in with some results, before hitting "enter/return". This does not solve all the issues, but hitting return too quickly definitely causes some of the problems.
Our forum software has been updated to fix the prior search issues that had suddenly cropped up. All seems to be well with it now. Search away!
10 days later
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Spent some time upgrading the cover images of the recordings included with the collect tag, also standardizing the display size and using the highest quality sources where available. Over 580 shows now have some recording information posted, and there are over 1500 images of the covers produced for those recordings by others.
Thanks to those who have made those recordings available and provided information and artwork to enjoy (which also help to quickly identify the shows by sight rather than by studying the dates and locations).
We continue to work our way up the technology stack, learning more and obtaining better servers and software to reduce the distance between you and GimmeMT.com to the point where it's not even perceivable. We had a smooth move to our fourth host in less than 18 months, each one stronger and better than the last. I hope you notice it, even though it's just a handful of milliseconds . . . .
7 days later
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Time flies. Another status report:
review Reviewed Shows are at 290, up from 269. It won't be long now before we reach the 1972-73 Rolling Stones tours -- I can't wait. Almost done with 1970 and there are only a few shows to review for 1971.
collect Collectors' Information is posted for 583 shows.
media Streaming Media (audio or video) links are now posted for 313 shows, up from 292.
All in all, excluding theorphan shows, there are about 1000 total shows that exist to cover. As our primary goal for GimmeMT is to review all available recordings, I am pleased to be at the 30% mark and we are ahead of my own schedule as we soon enter 2025 (about 18 months or so after beta launch).
Now that we have moved to a top of the line AMD Ryzen 9950x processor web server, and have relocated much closer to where the primary audience for it appears to be (Europe, sorry my fellow Americans), we will be spending a lot less time on tech and more on listening and writing.
Maybe we will do an official launch soon. Thanks to those of you who have been visiting and for those who have registered despite various technical issues that have cropped up with that process. We've never really announced this broadly to the Stones fan or MT communities, it has been a trickle-effect so far and we wanted to delay until there were enough reviews to justify people visiting.
There's nothing worse on the internet than those ubiquitous and never fulfilled "coming soon . . . " promises.
14 days later
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The Stones' 1971 tour shows are now reviewed, with just a short essay to go for that year.
To cleanse the palette, I have started on the 1984 Bob Dylan European Tour shows. They are always engaging to listen to -- performances of many of the greatest compositions of all time with Dylan's enigmatic live singing of them.
There are a lot of songs and a lot of minutes of music, so it is a bit daunting to think of going through all of them in order in one stretch of time, but I think it makes for better comparative analysis.
Then it will be in to the Rolling Stones shows of 1972 and 1973, many of which I already know by heart (which poses a different problem to overcome in reviewing them).
Lots of behind the scenes technical work has been done to bolster the new server for what I hope will be a long and unchanging run.
One new feature we have turned on is "Bookmarks." If you are logged in, you can bookmark any post you are reading by clicking Bookmark at the top of the post. It will then be preserved in your own archive on GimmeMT.com.
You can access your bookmarks when logged in by selecting the Bookmarks link from the listings on the left margin of all pages (except the homepage), and from the horizontal listings at the top of the homepage next to the black "Start a Discussion" button. You must be logged in to see the link to retrieve/review your bookmarked posts.
You can un-bookmark a post by clicking the Bookmark indicator to deselect it, either from your list of bookmarked items or from the actual post on the site.
15 days later
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Feels like 2 days ago, not 2 weeks ago, I wrote the prior update. Time is flying. Holidays arriving.
Quickly, the addendum essay for the 1971 tour of69-74 Rolling Stones is done, as is the84 Dylan essay as I delve into those 27 shows of about two hours each. I have been slowed down by replaying many songs, sometimes over and over. Really enjoying refreshing my Dylan fandom in a systematic manner.
What is unique about Mick Taylor playing with Bob Dylan is that, unlike most of the other gigs where he supported other artists, the material is not only very well known, it is stellar across the board.
The usual hurdle of getting used to another artist's repertoire and approach doesn't exist with84 Dylan -- it's just plug and play, or here, it's plug and listen.