Yesterday a terrible accident occured whilst Delirious? performed at the Grapevine Festival. Several people were injuired when a section of seating collapsed [News]. Thankfully nobody received any life-threatening injuires.

Whilst all our thoughts and prayers should be with those who were injuired, we should also spare a thought for Delirious? who were on stage when the accident occured. The band must today be in a state of absolute shock at what happened. As fans we should all gather round to support Delirious? right now. The band probably feel a sense of responsibility, but they have no need to. They must not blame themselves for what happened. Let's pray that the band have the strength to continue doing the good work that they do.

Today is August 30th. On the Delirious? album King Of Fools there is a song titled August 30th. The significance of today's date, and this title, comes from the events of August 30th 1995, when singer Martin Smith and bassist Jon Thatcher were caught up in a near-fatal car accident whilst driving home from a concert late at night. Jon was unhurt, but Martin spent several weeks recovering in hospital. Whilst reflecting on how he had narrowly escaped death, Martin made a decision to go full time as a musician. The rest of the band quickly followed suit, and Delirious? was born.

In the song Martin sings a clear reference to his recovery from the crash, and his decision to dedicate his life to God through the band.

Thank you for the chance to live again
I will run always for you
Clouds had gathered all around my head
But these hands they lifted me
And I'll tell of this love that saved me

From the song, August 30th, Written by Martin Smith/Stuart Garrard ©1997 Curious? Music UK

From time to time I get sent press information from Delirious' record company, Furious? Records. Yesterday I received an envelope in the mail from Furious? which made me laugh. It seems I've been promoted.

The address label on the envelopes of the stuff they send me usually says "Dave Wood, Delirious.org.uk", however this latest envelope says "Dave Wood, Delirious.co.uk". So apparently I now run the official site!

Today I've added a brand new FAQ section to the website. It's something I've been meaning to add for a while now, and I've been working on it for a few weeks. On the D:Forum we often have the same questions turning up time and time again. It's understandable really, it's so much easier to just ask a question than to try and find out the answer yourself. But hopefully by having an FAQ, and advertising it on the forum, people will find it easier to get answers to the type of common questions that get asked all the time. I also get a lot of e-mails to the website asking the same questions all the time, so I've included some of those questions in the FAQ. Obviously it can't include every question, but hopefully it now answers the most asked questions, and I will continue to add further answers in the future.

Things are a little quiet on the d: front lately, due to the band being on their summer vacation. So today's blog entry is a collection of interesting small news snippets, which at first may seem completely unrelated, but are infact all inter-linked, and all related to Delirious? in some way!

I read an interesting article today about how the sale of CD singles has risen for the first time in five years. "In the last two decades, CD single sales have plummeted to around 36 million a year from around 72 million in the early 1980s. But from April to June, sales of CD singles went up for the first time since 1999, to 6.6 million, a 15.4% increase on this time last year. The turnaround is partly due to the decision to introduce a new lower-priced, two-track CD single, in response to flagging sales". I find it interesting that a two-track CD single is being attributed to the increase in single sales. Whenever d: have released singles in the past fans have complained that the CD hasn't contained enough tracks. I can only imagine the complaints if a CD only contained the title track plus a remix, and rightly so, what a waste of money!

The article goes on to say that "A total of 1.5 million legal downloads were sold over the last three months, following the high-profile UK launch of iTunes and Napster". Now that is interesting, definitely the way forward for bands like Delirious? if you ask me.

On the subject of singles (see how I'm keeping the interlinking going?), Natasha Bedingfield has gone straight to the top of the UK singles charts this week with her second single 'These Words'. Good on her. Natasha is of course the sister of Daniel Bedingfield, which brings me to the next story..

Daniel Bedingfield is apparently recording his second album at 'Ocean Way studios' in Los Angeles at the moment. He is working with engineer/producer Jack Joseph Puig. As most people know, Daniel is a friend of Delirious?, and sings guest backing vocals on Every Little Thing. It's interesting then that he should use the same studio (Ocean Way) and engineer (JJP) that Delirious? used when their Mezzamorphis album was mixed!

Still with me on the whole 'linking it together' thing? Good. So, on the subject of Delirious? (which after all, is the whole point of this blog), CrossRhythms reports that In The Name Of Love is to finally get it's UK release on 7th October. The compilation album was released in the US back in January, and features Christian artists covering U2 songs. Delirious? appear on the album with a superb version of Pride. It's well worth getting the album if you haven't already done so, and even better, a portion of the proceeds from the album go to help fighting AIDS/HIV. The UK release of this album will mean even more money going to charity (tens of thousands of dollars have already been raised by the CD) and of course more publicity for Delirious?

So there you go, CD sales to Natasha Bedingfield to Daniel Bedingfield to Pride to Delirious?... all in one post.

After all the misunderstandings about Delirious? at the Olympic Games were finally explained, the band went and did what they do best. They put on a rocking concert. Below are a couple of photos of the band at the Olympics in Athens.


Delirious? on stage in Omonia Square, Athens


Delirious? at the 1km race point


In the latest press release, Martin Smith makes a very profound statement about the band performing all over the world.

"We want to go wherever people resonate with the anthemic worship of their Creator; and that is the world over. Our music and our hope are not indigenous to any one country."

Delirious? now have a two week break, before they head to the UK summer festivals: Greenbelt (28th Aug) and Grapevine (29th Aug).

Last week I talked about Web Site Statistics (yes I know, it was a bit technical and boring) but following on from that, the statistics for Delirious.org.uk also give an interesting perspective on the most popular Delirious? songs.

By analysing how many times each page in the lyrics section of the website has been viewed, I can create a monthly chart of the the most viewed Delirious? lyrics. So here it is, the Delirious.org.uk Lyrics Chart for the month of July 2004:

1. I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever
2. Majesty
3. My Glorious
4. Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble?
5. Inside Outside
6. Shout To The North
7. The Happy Song
8. History Maker
9. Deeper
10. Jesus Blood

Right, let's get this Olympics business cleared up once and for all. Tonight in Athens, Greece, the Olympic Games begin with the opening ceremony. It is predicted that 4 billion people around the world will watch the Olympics on TV. So, when word got out that Delirious? would be performing at the Olympics this summer, we all get very excited.

The problem is, there is a huge amount of misunderstanding about exactly what Delirious? are doing at the Olympics. It all started with a slightly cryptic message on Delirious.co.uk, which didn't give away many details:
-Date: Saturday 14th August
-Event: Cultural Committee of Athens - Opening Night Olympic Celebrations.
-Venue: Omonia Square, Athens, Greece

Ever since that announcement, I have been swamped with e-mails from fans asking one question: will the gig be televised? On the discussion forum and groups people have been asking the same thing, and even assuming that Delirious? will be playing at tonight's opening ceremony on TV.

The confusion seems to be caused by the wording "Opening Night Olympic Celebrations". What they are actually referring to is the "Opening Night of the Celebrations organised by the Cultural Committee of Athens taking place during the Olympics" - NOT the Opening Night Ceremony of the Olympics themselves.

The 'Cultural Committee of Athens' are putting on a series of Arts events in the city of Athens during August, to coincide with the Olympics. This makes perfect sense, because for the next few weeks Athens is going to be swarming with tourists, so why not put on some entertainment for them - after all, they're not going to be watching Olympic events 24/7 for the entire period. So, one of the events that is being put on is a music concert in a public square in the center of the city - and Delirious? are performing at that. It's not being televised, it's not in the Olympic Stadium, it's just a normal concert in Athens city center tomorrow (14th August). I hope that answers a few people's questions.

News in brief:
There are unconfirmed reports today that Every Little Thing, the second single in Germany from World Service, is to be released on 13th September. In addition, the word is that World Service will be re-released in Germany on 4th October, with a slightly modified tracklisting and some added videos (presumably of Inside Outside and Every Little Thing). As soon as I get confirmation and more details about these releases I'll update the site with the news.

The more observant amongst you may have noticed a small change on the frontpage recently. Since D.org.uk moved to it's current domain back in January 2002 I have been using a 'Tracker' to collect visitor statistics. A small icon used to appear in the bottom left corner of the site's frontpage which allowed the tracker to gather stats about the number of people who visit the site, plus a whole host of other interesting things. I say 'used' to, because I've decided to use a different method for stats now.

Working out how many people visit a website is something that is fraught with difficulties. Some people count 'hits', which means every time a page is loaded they count that as a 'hit'. The tracker I used was a bit more clever than that, and counted unique visitors in a specified time period. Basically, if the same computer visited the same page 3 times in the space of say, 30minutes, that only counts as 1 'visitor', but would have counted as 3 'hits'. Anyway, the problem with the tracker is that it only counted stats for the frontpage of the site. Many people who visit the site arrive from a search enginge, and that means that they navigate straight to the page that has the piece of information that interests them, not necessarily the frontpage. So the figures produced by the tracker are not really all that accurate.

I'm now relying on stats captured in the server logs which are then automatically analysed by the excellent Webalizer software. This gives a complete picture of the number of people who visit delirious.org.uk. It also shows which pages are viewed the most. Interestingly it seems that most people who visit the site just want the lyrics to a d: song, with I Could Sing being the most popular (fairly predictable). According to the stats, the d:forum is another of the most visited parts of the site.

The server log stats show that on average Delirious.org.uk gets about 1000 'visits' per day (around 30,000 per month), where a 'Visit' is defined as an individual computer (IP address) viewing the website in one 30 minute session. For example, if the person views 10 different pages within 30minutes, that still counts as one visit. If they come back an hour later, that counts as a second visit. Each month the pages are viewed 115,000 times (on average), or to put it another way, 115,000 'page hits' per month. The biggest month to date was March 2004, where the site received nearly 150,000 page views, and in general the number of page views is up by about 40% from this time last year.

So it's good to know that people visit the site, it makes it worthwhile. To be honest I'd still run this website even if nobody viewed it, just because it's my hobby and I enjoy doing it. But there's certainly added motivation knowing that somebody somewhere is going to read what I write.

People are often asking where they can get Delirious? ringtones for their mobile (cell) phone. A website titled Ring For The King was mentioned on the d:forum today. It currently has 26 Delirious? ringtones available to order for your phone (both polytone and monotone), including popular tracks like Deeper and History Maker.

The website's owner says that the ringtones cost £3, of which 45 pence goes to the artist in royalties. So, every time you download a Delirious? ringtone from 'Ring For The King', the band get 45p. Doesn't sound much, but that is 15% of the total price which is pretty good, and at least it's legitimate. (Unfortunately the ringtones aren't available for customers in the USA, but apparently they will be soon)

Just a quick post to say that I've changed the commenting system from the standard Blogger comments, to HaloScan comments. The Blogger system wasn't working terribly well (often said there were no comments even when there were some), and HaloScan seems a little more reliable and usable. Anyway - it means that all the comments that have been made up until now have been lost, sorry about that. But thank you for all your comments, much appreciated and keep them coming!

Delirious? have spent the past few days performing at various festivals around the UK (see today's news item). You might be surprised to know that on trips like these, the band actually drive themselves from gig to gig. You'd think that they'd have someone to do the driving for them, but not those d: boys - they're an impressive bunch of lads. They have a nice little VW Transporter (not quite as old as the ones in the Pursuit or InsideOutside videos!) and take it in turns to do the driving. Even after an exhausting gig in London (like last night), one of the band will still get behind the wheel for the two hour drive home to Littlehampton.

If you keep a regular eye on the official site you'll have seen a few photos this week of Stew and Stu driving the band to the next venue. Being the nice guy that he is, Jon decided to send me an 'exclusive photo' (in his words) of Tim driving the band home from last night's gig. There's something rather eerie about the pic if you ask me, like one of those ghost photos, or a shot from a soldier's night-vision goggles.



Talking of the gig in London last night, unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the 'Soul In The City' gig at the Alexandra Palace. But RichB has written an excellent review of the gig on the d:forum if you're interested.

The d:boys were due to have three weeks off for a holiday now. That was until they were invited to perform in Athens, right slap-bang in the middle of their vacation. So they'll have a week off now to enjoy the summer sun, then another week or so after the Olympics gig.

Every day I get quite a few e-mails from people who have visited Delirious.org.uk. These e-mails usually fall into one of three categories. To demonstrate this, I'll show you a few e-mails I received on one typical day recently.

1. Mistaken Identity
Despite the fact that at the bottom of every single page on D.org.uk is a disclaimer stating that this is an 'unofficial fan site', I get many e-mails from people who mistakenly believe that it is the official site for the band. I take this as a compliment of course, but it does result in some e-mails that I can't really help with. Take the following e-mail for example. (I have removed certain details to maintain the privacy of the sender)
"This is [person] from [radio station], a full time praise & worship FM station out of [place in the US]. I noticed a new cd on your website that we are interested in playing on our station. Could we receive a complimentary copy...". I get e-mails everyday from someone asking something like this, or wanting to book the band for a concert. As tempting as it is to have some fun and write back saying something like "Hi, this is Martin Smith, sure I'll send you 100 CDs right away", I usually just point the person in the direction of Furious? Records who must spend their entire day answering similar questions.

2. Question about Delirious?
Many of the e-mails are genuine fans asking a genuine question that they think I might be able to answer. Often its just something like "when will Delirious? being playing in my city?" or "where can I buy the DVD?". Fair enough, I'm happy to answer questions like those and I always try to respond with something helpful. But sometimes I get some very curious questions, like this one:
"Hi, we are planning a trip to Germany and would like to see Delirious in concert. Do you know when they will be at Wembley?".
Hmm, how do you respond to an e-mail like that? I replied politely (I hope!) that: a) Wembley Stadium is actually in London, England - not Germany!, b) Wembley no longer exists as it's been knocked down, c) Delirious? only ever played at Wembley once, back in 1997 so it's not like they regularly play there. Funny how people can get completely the wrong end of the stick isn't it?

3. Junk
Yes, we all get it. Bucket loads of it. Spam. Junk. Unsolicited e-mails. Call it what you like. Just like everyone else, I get a ton of it, not helped by the fact that the website's e-mail address is included on every page of the site. But sometimes I get a 'junk e-mail' that is quite bizzare. I don't know if this really counts as junk, or just some kind of weird mistake, but on this occasion I got an e-mail from Arnie. Yep, "I'll Be Back", The Terminator, Mr Schwarzenegger himself. Well, ok, maybe not the man himself, but his office anyway. Now, before I share the contents of this e-mail, let me just point out that I have never actually written to this guy, or any American politican for that matter. Here are some extracts from what I assume is an automated response e-mail:
"Thank you for your email to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Governor appreciates hearing from concerned and involved Californians, as well as from individuals all over the world who have an interest in California." Ok, nice to be thanked, even if I didn't send the guy an e-mail in the first place. But fair enough, I have some remote kind of interest in California. After all, Delirious? play concerts there several times a year and I have a few friends who live there. "Governor Schwarzenegger is committed to restoring your confidence in state government. As the Governor has said, with hard work and your help, California will once again be the 'Golden Dream by the Sea'" How reassuring!
"Please know that the Governor's office is making every effort to respond to your inquiry and will ensure that your voice is heard by the Governor. Again, thank you for your email. Governor Schwarzenegger is proud to serve you and all Californians." So there you go, Governor Arnie is grateful for the e-mail I didn't send him and he's proud to serve me. I guess even the The Terminator is a d: fan.

The Editor of Soteria Magazine e-mailed me yesterday to let me know about a Delirious? interview in their current issue. It's an interesting read but whilst it is fairly standard with nothing all that new or exciting, one thing did stick in my mind. In the interview, Tim Jupp says the following:

"We are not under the same commercial pressure as other bands. We are not selling songs through a major label, which means we retain control of our music. Also, we don't have targets for the number of records we have to sell, or face being dropped. As a Christian band our values and goals are different."

Most d:fans already knew this of course, but there's also something incredibly important in those last two sentences that many people forget about. Over the years I've seen many people criticise Delirious? and say that certain CDs, DVDs etc were only released to make money. But what those people forget is that most bands have a record contract where they are expected to sell x million copies of their latest CD. If they fail to sell enough, the record label drops the artist and moves on to the next big thing.

With Delirious?, it's different. They are their own boss. Therefore, whilst they still need to sell enough CDs to pay their bills and make a living, they are not under the same pressure to 'sell sell sell'. They don't have that same money-oriented approach that is forced on a lot of artists by the hunger of their record company. That gives them the freedom to follow their own morals and goals, and that is something that is very unique in the music industry.

The Delirious.org.uk Blog has been found out! People have started visiting. It took a little over a day for anyone to notice the icon that linked to here, but now the first few visitors have been and commented. Thanks guys.

So the official results of 'First person to visit the D.org.uk Blog' are as follows:

In third place, with a time of 6:27AM 4th August is... Ali (aka db)
In second place, with a time of 4:10AM 4th August is... Josh
And the winner is... Isaac who arrived at 11:43PM 3rd August.*

Well done Isaac, your prize is in the post! Isaac also spotted the slight error with the template where the Blog was centered on the page instead of being aligned with the nav-bar. My apologies for that - I keep loosing the blog's template when I publish for some reason, so ended up with an older version of it.

Anyway, it's good to have some visitors to the blog. Feel free to comment. More updates soon.

* All times are BST. Times are not according to Accurist, but are the times the winners comments arrived in my inbox.

As of 3:40pm [BST] today (2nd August 2004), the Delirious.org.uk Blog is officially launched!

If you're reading this, well done for finding your way here!

There was no big announcement about the launch of this Blog. Infact, I haven't told anyone about it. A few minutes ago, I added a small discrete icon to the bottom right corner of the site's frontpage. That is currently the only way I have publicised this Blog. So now I sit back and wait to see how long it takes someone to discover the Blog. The first person to get here and add a comment might get a prize (well, probably not, but they'll get a mention in the next post anyway!). So if you're here and there are no comments yet... now's your chance!

Somehow nearly an entire week has passed since I last wrote an entry. The blog is just about ready to 'go live'. Having tinkered with the template, the blog finally looks roughly like the rest of Delirious.org.uk The code behind the scenes isn't pretty, and isn't particularly good on the 'web standards' side of things, but it'll do for now. There are still a few annoying little bugs, but mostly it's ok.

When I last posted here I mentioned d:'s faithful sound man, Colin. He's now on the mend, and resting up at home for a few weeks. He tells me he'll have to miss the festival gigs this week, so he won't be able to meet all his adoring UK fans. But not to worry, he and I are working on a little something... more on that another time.

In terms of the site, I've got several things in the pipeline that will be coming along soon. A few additions, improvements and cool little surprises. I won't say anymore now, but all will become clear in good time.