Pistolera Touring Up A Storm & Band 2.0 Tip

– Ani and Sandra at Zanzibar after a show

I love Pistolera. Back in the winter of 2006, I was lucky enough to shoot/direct their first music video that has since aired on several channels and is included on an immigration rights DVD.

~ Currently in the Lair pipeline is a feature on Pistolera for the June/July issue of Urban Latino Magazine. I hope you will check it out and let me know what you think.

Pistolera just finished wrapping up their spring Belgium/Holland tour, and a few days ago finally returned to the states after performing for thousands of people at the Ollin Kan Festival in Mexico City.

!!! Check them out for free at the upcoming Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival on July 5^th !!!

Here is an excerpt from their Belgium/Holland tour diary:

“Our only gig in Brussels! A cool space called DeKriekelaar. It was the best show of the tour! Totally packed, and there were even latinos there that cheered for the lyrics. We did a great merch and Eileen had a stalker…”

After the jump, a clip from that very show and a handy 2.0 tip for bands seeking quick/accurate blog coverage:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Giqyb_ljP0]

Here they are performing in Belgium...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1rHnPjvEK8]

…And finally – Pistolera performing my favorite song on their album Siempre Hay Salida, “No Suspires”.

2.0/Blogger Related Pistolera Whine

Ok I love them, but I can still complain about something; After all, it’s what I’m best at. They currently use Dynamod to host/contain all their site content. Dynamod allows those with little knowledge or time to easily update a cool looking flash/html based website. The problem with Pistolera’s website is that it is not blogger/embed friendly.

Wwwhat?

Ok, example: The photo in this blog posting is from their photo gallery, which contains lots of great sets from tours and their press images. How did I get it? Not that easily. It’s in flash, so I can’t download or link to anything in there without some effort. I had to look at the page source to find the exact image path. Definitely not blogger friendly.

An easy fix would be to consistently upload photos you want used in blogs in easily accessible places like Flickr. That way, it increases the likelihood of fans/bloggers linking from approved sources instead of from random locations.

Having your band photos available in a site like Flickr is also a great/free way to direct them to your official website through keywords. Let’s pretend I’m someone unfamiliar with Pistolera – I could be searching in flickr for “folklorico”, “pistolera”, “guitar”, “brooklyn bands”, “celebrate brooklyn” or any number of tag combinations, and if Pistolera images appeared with website info there’s a high probability I would check them out.

In closing, not everyone is obsessive as me, and if you are a band who wants blogs to cover your activities, a wise thing to do is make all necessary story elements easily accessible (text, images, video, etc.).

-endofwhine

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