Has it been two months already? Is it a new year… again? Issue #17 huh? That many? Wow. We have been doing this for a while now. I should be used to this cycle. For some odd reason, this issue has been harder coming than others. Partly, I think it’s Christmas. At least I want to blame Christmas for the rush I feel I am in this time around. That’s not the only issue though.

In total honesty, I may actually be over taxed. Not by much, but just enough that I need to adjust my swing a bit. In fact, that is exactly what I have done. In order to keep the schedule of publishing on the 15th of every other month, I’ve dropped this issues Unity article. I’ll pick that up again next issue and HOPEFULLY, we’ll be done with the series by July, right after Cornerstone 2007.

That brings up a good question. What IS happening with Cornerstone this year. Are we doing the Barn as usual? Who’s behind it this year?  What can we expect? Who do we send our demos to? Is it still the Underground? If you check out the forums, you’ll see that it is that time of year again. Everyone is looking forward to our annual meet and greet in Bushnell, Il. I was hoping that we would be able to make a huge splashy announcement in this Issue regarding Cornerstone. Unfortunately though, the jury regarding the Dance Club at Cornerstone 2007 is still out. I promise to post some news as soon as I hear something about it. Until then, keep the Fest in prayer as they are still in the planning stages for the event.

The other thing that is buzzing around the site right now is the first episode of the Tastyfresh podcast. In case you didn’t know, we teamed up with BTU Live (www.btulive.com) this year to start up a podcast that features Christian DJs and producers… or rather electronic dance bands with at least one member who is a Christian. We will have a new episode each month featuring 2 artists/djs. For the first episode, we had Jeremy Kadinger and myself. Jeremy put in a great deep/progressive house set while I unloaded a mix of my original tunes including some unreleased remixes and originals. In February, we’ll have Philly’s own DJ Dima and Panamanian DJ, Nigel Mack. So expect another nice blend of tribal, progressive and tech house again next month. For those of you into trance, drum and bass and all that other stuff, I promise… that will be coming at some point this year too.

For those of you who were paying attention last time, I’ve made a bit more progress on the redesign of the site. Unfortunately, I may back off of a few decisions I made early on. The redesign is quickly taking real content from the homepage and leaving only lists and links. This won’t solve the problems I want to address either. It will only overwhelm people new to the site. I have another plan in the works that isn’t all that different. I’ll post more on this in the forums later when I have a chance.

Well… I hope everyone finds something useful in this issue. I’ll be back again in two months with more articles and the continuation of the Unity series. Until then though, please check out the podcast and stop by the forums to discuss the articles here.

In Christ,
Dave R.