phlogiston
Bejabbers!
Alrighty then. As the resident old timer around here, I guess I'm a bit qualified.
I joined what was then the Maiden Downunder Unoffical Fan Club in early 1999 (hosted on www.mahke.com!). There was maybe 6 to 12 of us at the time, and one of them was Ironcross. Crossy was also running the Maiden Australia website/webzine. Around the time of the reunion announcement it was decided to leverage the singergies and refocus the branding, and the two sites merged with the Maiden Australia content and the Maiden Downunder Unoffical Fan Club forum under the banner and URL of Maiden Downunder.
Things were peaceful in the kingdom for many months, but slowly tensions arose between the two rulers of the realm (they're still unclear, and for being able to keep them private I have a great deal of respect for both Mark and Crossy. My theory is that Mark wanted to expand into other metal areas, and Crossy wanted to concentrate on Maiden specifically.). Thus Crossy went into exile and started Maiden Clansmen Downunder (I think it was), and Mark, in addition to running Maiden Downunder, gave birth to Ultimate Metal (along with Spiffo). (It didn't happen that quickly, mind you).
After a while, people started dropping off MD and it wasn't really worth having a dedicated forum for the few of us that were still there, not to mention the whole 'zine side of things, so we got embraced by the greater beast of UM, which is where we remain today. It was a good move as it introduced others from neighboring forums, and the traffic and numbers has been pretty stable for the last few years.
It's true that during the days of the peaceful reign we were part of the push to get Maiden down here for BNW. We had petitions and flyers and stuff like that. In fact, pretty much any advertising you saw was put up by us, and a great deal of it was actually paid for by us. I think EMI Australia saw us a their own personal street team, and gave us a handful of "official" flyers to pass around. They were about 3 inches by 5 inches, and I've still got a stack of them if anyone wants to see one. Anything larger than that was advertising for both the album and MD, and paid for by MD members. We had EMI's blessing to use the logo and Eddie and everything. It was also up to us to run around to all of the record stores and ask to put stuff up in their windows.
I think in return the guys in Sydney got an invite to the pre-release listening party, while the rest of us got bupkis.
Once they didn't tour (or even acknowledge us) again, everyone started drifting away, and I think that's where the rot started to set in.
I joined what was then the Maiden Downunder Unoffical Fan Club in early 1999 (hosted on www.mahke.com!). There was maybe 6 to 12 of us at the time, and one of them was Ironcross. Crossy was also running the Maiden Australia website/webzine. Around the time of the reunion announcement it was decided to leverage the singergies and refocus the branding, and the two sites merged with the Maiden Australia content and the Maiden Downunder Unoffical Fan Club forum under the banner and URL of Maiden Downunder.
Things were peaceful in the kingdom for many months, but slowly tensions arose between the two rulers of the realm (they're still unclear, and for being able to keep them private I have a great deal of respect for both Mark and Crossy. My theory is that Mark wanted to expand into other metal areas, and Crossy wanted to concentrate on Maiden specifically.). Thus Crossy went into exile and started Maiden Clansmen Downunder (I think it was), and Mark, in addition to running Maiden Downunder, gave birth to Ultimate Metal (along with Spiffo). (It didn't happen that quickly, mind you).
After a while, people started dropping off MD and it wasn't really worth having a dedicated forum for the few of us that were still there, not to mention the whole 'zine side of things, so we got embraced by the greater beast of UM, which is where we remain today. It was a good move as it introduced others from neighboring forums, and the traffic and numbers has been pretty stable for the last few years.
It's true that during the days of the peaceful reign we were part of the push to get Maiden down here for BNW. We had petitions and flyers and stuff like that. In fact, pretty much any advertising you saw was put up by us, and a great deal of it was actually paid for by us. I think EMI Australia saw us a their own personal street team, and gave us a handful of "official" flyers to pass around. They were about 3 inches by 5 inches, and I've still got a stack of them if anyone wants to see one. Anything larger than that was advertising for both the album and MD, and paid for by MD members. We had EMI's blessing to use the logo and Eddie and everything. It was also up to us to run around to all of the record stores and ask to put stuff up in their windows.
I think in return the guys in Sydney got an invite to the pre-release listening party, while the rest of us got bupkis.
Once they didn't tour (or even acknowledge us) again, everyone started drifting away, and I think that's where the rot started to set in.
