In the beginning there was a local radio show called The Doghouse on Derby Sound Community Radio. Chris and Neil played banging rock and metal tunes that virtually nobody heard — but they had a bloody great time doing it all the same.
After a while, Chris and Neil decided they wanted to branch out a little and so created a new show on Spotify called The Monster Shop. This didn't have any of the constraints of local radio: they could play what they liked, the shows could be as long or short as they liked, and they didn't need a music license because of Spotify's music+talk concept. Happy days…
Just as the boys were settling into their new home on Spotify, the suits in charge decided they needed to make more money and music+talk was too expensive, so they were going to close it down. Bad times…
Undeterred, the boys ventured into the world of podcasting and set up the Hopeland podcast, which had nothing to do with music and was meant to be a clean break. They got bored of that quite quickly and realised they could do a podcast about the rock albums they loved. So, that's what they did, and The Monster Shop was born again as a podcast. Happy days…
Until Meta and Google's algorithms got confused about what The Monster Shop actually was. Meta routinely limited the accounts for going against community standards by trying to sell people things by deception (we've never had a store) and Google never really understood, so it didn't send any traffic — which meant nobody could find the show. Then, one frosty morning, the boys had the idea of Riffology: exactly the same show, hopefully without the algorithmic identity crisis. Happy days!
Why are there hundreds of blog posts here?
The story behind those is simpler. Neil loves facts and has a tiny memory, so way back in the Doghouse days he used to write a sheet about the artists and albums being played on each show, so he could entertain listeners with interesting facts. This obsession with the sheet grew throughout the history of the show until Neil decided it would be easier to just dump them in a blog rather than write them up and delete them every week.
This site is basically that — a brain-dump of information about albums we've either covered on the podcast or have talked about covering. Long-read, deep-dive companions to the show.