Happy birthday to us!
There are surprisingly few “We Are 5” badges out there. Does no one cater to gestalt entities?
Five years ago today, we released the first episode of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias.
We had gathered in Paul’s garden shed a few days earlier to discuss our thoughts on pre-generated characters. Our main audience then was the spiders that lived in the shadows and the tenacious patch of mould growing under our makeshift microphone stand. The technical challenge of using a single condenser microphone defeated us, so we recorded using the built-in mic of Paul’s iMac. We had a single page of handwritten notes, no clue about microphone technique and the vague hope that a few people we knew might listen to our ramblings.
So many spiders…
A week later, we had around 40 downloads and some positive feedback, so we decided to stick with the podcast. It took around a year before we started hearing from listeners we’d never met in person. The idea that people beyond our small circle of friends listen to the podcast still amazes us to this day.
Our first script
The past five years have been amazing. We’ve met lots of wonderful people, made some live appearances and even travelled over to the US to appear at Necronomicon. Thank you to everyone who has joined us for this long, strange trip!
And thank YOU! These last five (or maybe I just discovered you around three years ago) years have been all the more fantastic thanks to you. Congrats to all the merry friends of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias!
Thank you, Henrik!
Congratulations and thank you for all the hard work! Your podcast has become one of the cornerstones around which my life ticks: Ken & Robin on Friday, Good Friends every other monday, then all the other trappings of existence.
Here’s to another 5 years, cheers!
Thank you, Mikko!
Happy anniversary, and birthday. You all deserve the praise you get–may we remain not dead but dreaming of five more.
Traditionally the appropriate gift for a fifth anniversary is wood. This is perfect, then:
They cut it down, and where the pitch-black aisles
Of forest night had hid eternal things,
They scal’d the sky with tow’rs and marble piles
To make a city for their revellings.
White and amazing to the lands around
That wondrous wealth of domes and turrets rose;
Crystal and ivory, sublimely crown’d
With pinnacles that bore unmelting snows.
And through its halls the pipe and sistrum rang,
While wine and riot brought their scarlet stains;
Never a voice of elder marvels sang,
Nor any eye call’d up the hills and plains.
Thus down the years, till on one purple night
A drunken minstrel in his careless verse
Spoke the vile words that should not see the light,
And stirr’d the shadows of an ancient curse.
Forests may fall, but not the dusk they shield;
So on the spot where that proud city stood,
The shuddering dawn no single stone reveal’d,
But fled the blackness of a primal wood.
‘The Wood’, H. P. Lovecraft
Perfect. Thank you! 🙂