December 23, 2019 by A.S. Van Dorston

25 years ago, Dr. Fester assigned me the task to curate interesting music with a site named after his vampire squid Mr. Bulbous (a name which inspired a young Don Van Vliet to use in a bit on Trout Mask Replica). Later that year in 1995, Fast ‘n’ Bulbous went live with a tribute to Funkadelic, a History of Punk, and a list of about 2,000 of the best albums from 1965 to 1995. Thanks to the popularity of the articles, Fast ‘n’ Bulbous was hot stuff in the early Wild West days of the internet, organically drawing more traffic than even Pitchfork, which started up just down the street that same year.

Unlike many sites, it did not become a commercial enterprise, and was not purchased by Condé Nast. Enhancements were made, such as a searchable database and a new banner was gifted from a brilliant up-and-coming artist, but essentially it remained a garbage bin of random love notes to music, some rants, and an obsessively curated database of kickass albums. Then the database (now exceeding 21,000 albums) broke earlier this year. More people than expected were sad about that.

Dr. Fester and Krampus took pity on me and dug into the old Bucket O’ Nasties to hire a professional developer to make things work right, and here it is!

There’s a new logo, design, template with more modern features and more easily read in mobile and other goodies, but what I’m most excited about is that the List Search is finally back! There were some sweat, fights with the developer and tears, but it’s here, and working the way I originally intended over 20 years ago — the main search field can now include record label and the country where the artist resides. Two more genre fields have been added so that you can, for example, search albums that are tagged with multiple genres, such as rock, psychedelic and post-punk in the UK. Try your own search! And stay tuned, there will be a chance to win a year Spotify Premium subscription!

One caveat, I do have some server issues that has kept the full 21,000+ record database to load, so I will be migrating to a new host after Xmas. There are a few tweaks to be made here and there over the next week, but for the most part, it’s a pretty sweet ass new ‘n’ shiny upgrade for the Holidaze!

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