NYCTaper Updates: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

[image by Songbirdnest]

The past week saw an increase in volume of visits to the site by a mere 500%. In an alignment-of-the-planets-fashion, Animal Collective reached peak popularity, started a tour and played two NYC shows that we captured with two excellent recordings — Bowery is one of our best captures ever. Its rewarding to receive recognition from some of the most established music sites on the web, including Pitchfork, Gorilla vs Bear, largeheartedboy and Stereogum, along with a host of other fine sites.

The problem of course is that the drastic increase in volume crashed the server on Wednesday morning. We allocated more memory (at more cost) on three separate occasions on Wednesday and Thursday and finally just moved the Animal Collective files to archive.org. The high volume of visits continue and more downtime resulted today. Ultimately our host server responded with a virtual shrug of the shoulders. We paid extra for a private server, but apparently this kind of traffic is not even something that upgrade can handle. We continue to search for solutions, but obviously we are hand-tied by the fact that this is an ad-free site and donations cover less than half of the monthly server fees alone. All other operating costs (equipment, media, travel, tickets, bandwidth, etc) we pay out of pocket.

What it boils down to is that nyctaper needs a white knight/site sponsor — something akin to the massive free servers of archive.org but on a single site scale. We do not want to place ads on the site and lose our credibility and compromise our objectivity. If any of our readers have ideas or suggestions, feel free to email them.

Lost in all this new found flavor-of-the-week temporary popularity is the type of recognition that we truly value. Largehearted Boy and Pop Tarts Suck Toasted, two sites who we read regularly and respect greatly have both listed us in their “10 Blogs to Read in 2009” lists. Many thanks to the two classy gentlemen who run both of those superb sites.

We have added some exciting new shows to the schedule listed below.

Upcoming Shows:

The Annuals:
January 28, 2009 Bowery Ballroom NYC

Kittens Ablaze:
January 31, 2009 Mercury Lounge NYC (CD Release)
-and/or-
Rafter:
January 31, 2009 Cake Shop NYC

Blank Dogs / Woods:
February 6, 2009 Market Hotel Brooklyn
February 7, 2009 Less Artists More Condos NYC

These Are Powers:
February 13, 2009 Secret Project Robot Brooklyn NY (CD Release)

Jason Isbell:
February 26, 2009 Bowery Ballroom NYC

Blitzen Trapper:
February 27, 2009 Bowery Ballroom NYC

Grizzly Bear:
February 28, 2009 BAM Brooklyn

The Antlers:
March 5, 2009 Union Hall Brooklyn (CD Release)

Monks of Doom:
March 12 -and- March 13, 2009 Europa Brooklyn

John Darnielle / John Vanderslice:
March 27, 2009 Ethical Culture Concert Hall (Wordless) NYC

Langhorne Slim:
April 3, 2009 Bell House Brooklyn

Animal Collective:
May 13, 2009 Terminal 5 NYC