Going back a bit here to the heady days of TCUC but the more observant amongst you might have noticed that Beat Lizard has recently gone offline - no technical problems just my retirement from running sites really. Reviews are, whilst I'm loathe to admit it, a dying art and the demands of running a *proper* site are more than I can handle at the moment given the far more pressing demands of rent and bills and the rest of real life. I'm still going though and to keep my hand in with that free music scene that I love so much I'm offering myself up to anyone who needs a hand. I know the scene at least fairly well and I've got the writing experience so if anyone needs something doing for their own site, or if bands need a hand with press releases or promotion, or if someone just wants some grunt work done get in touch @ This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Consider me the CC errand boy.

The Creative UnCommons is dead, long live Beat Lizard! The difference? Well beyond the catchier name Beat Lizard places more of a focus on Hip-Hip and its near infinite number of sub-genres, as well as keeping up with the usual articles and features relating to the scene as a whole. And the name really is far catchier, right?

Any forum accounts should have transferred over to the new site, along with the boards themselves which can now be accessed at http://www.beatlizard.com/forum/. Currently the site is still in the testing stage so neither TCUC's archives nor a lot of other important bits have made it over yet but work is very much underway to get it all sorted. Any bugs reports or technical issues should be posted on the boards at Beat Lizard.

If you're a webmaster or label owner it'd be useful if you could mention the change of name and site through whatever social networks and sites you're involved with, as well as reporting back to the new site with any releases, news or general stuff which you feel would be of interest to its visitors.

Onwards, to the brave new world comrades...

e2a: The Creative UnCommons site, barring the boards which are already closed, will be left in state at least until the archives have been transferred but I will slowly be closing off the e-mail addresses and contact forms which are tied to the site, if you need to get in touch about anything check Beat Lizard for the new details.

It's a decision which has been a while in coming, slowly emerging from the deep dark bog which takes up the corner of my mind devoted to TCUC, but I've finally come to a conclusion on the matter.

When I'm not busy burning money in front of the local peasantry and patrolling the borders of my estate on the watch for trespassers I tend to spend an inordinate amount of time sitting around and writing/thinking/promoting free music. Much of it's down to ingrained habit by now, only half of my drive to keep doing this stuff is built on musical obsession and the other by hobbyist fixation, which means that I've basically sunk myself so far into the concept/movement that it's become a passive activity for the most part, one which I don't seek to re-analyse constantly to try and work out my opinion on it. Natural, I reckon, but still something I sporadically feel inclined to drag my lethargic form away from the more immediate thrills of life to review, avoiding such mistakes as I made during my blindly devoted phases of early obsession with what, in hindsight, was fairly god awful music, where an assumption that something must have had value to get me listening to it in the first place, left me never feeling obliged to decide why.