Become a Friend of Salut! Live and keep this part of folk alive
March 06, 2014
Even lowly Salut! Live has regular readers.
The paltry stats for visits that I see at statcounter.com tell only part of the story since I know of people who subscribe to the feed and therefore see what crops up here without actually having to come to the site.
All the same, one reason the updates are so infrequent is that it seems a waste of effort to post more than I do. Conversely, the less I post, the fewer people come to look.
I would like to rectify that.
Without exactly expecting to be beaten to the ground in the rush, I am offering membership of the Friends of Salut Live - thus dispensing with the very French exclamation mark - to all those who share my interest in what I always called folk music but has come also to be known as roots.
I do not go in for the vaguely allied sub-genres or their hideous titles - technofolk, grunge folk, folk metal, folkadelia, neofolk - but that does not mean none of them produces worthwhile music. And my own tastes are reasonably wide.
This site contains an archive of which I am fairly proud and which I believe would interest many of those who like the same kind of music and its offshoots. I want to build on that archive and post a new piece at least once a week. That is where Friends of Salut Live would come in.
You may become a Friend of Salut Live for a once-and-for-all payment of between £10 and £30.
As you will see on reading further, joining up will entitle you - if you opt for it - to an introductory gift of CDs.
Postage will be paid by me for membership addresses within the UK or the Republic or Ireland but I am asking for a contribution of £3 towards postage to the rest of the EU or £5 for the rest of the world. The payment button - via Paypal, which you can use even if you do not subscribe simply by using a credit or debit card - has a dropdown table to make clear the relevant amount in your case.
For £10, you get membership of the Friends of Salut Live. In return is my commitment to maintain the site more conscientiously.
But I will also send each member who chooses the upgraded membership an introductory gift of four CDs chosen at random from my vast collection of traditional and contemporary folk, country, blues and folk-rock albums. The first 10 who become these upgraded Friends will receive five albums each. The first to go for the simple £10 membership will receive one.
Some of the CDs waiting to be mailed out are old review copies sent to me in professionally more active times. But since I am selling membership of a club, not CDs, this should not present a problem unless I am persuaded otherwise. Some have been played; some remain in their packaging (sorry, but when at the Telegraph, where the day job was pretty demanding, I used to receive far more than I could ever hope to listen to).
I will consider whether it is possible to offer other benefits of membership, such as raffles for concert or festival tickets, but I cannot enter into negotiations on the albums to be sent, beyond stating that every effort will be made to send each joining member a varied selection.
And whether or not you choose to join, please come back here from time to time to see what I am up to do.
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