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| A great honour: The Spice Shack owes this to everyone who voted for the Shack. Those endless nights in front of HotMetal and Photoshop seem even more worth it! |
First
of all, I must say a huge THANK YOU to all of the Spice Girl's fans who voted
for the Spice Shack in the dotmusic
Reader's Choice Award for the Best Music Web Site. The Shack was never
intentionally created to win so many awards, but to act as a central resource
for Spice Girls information and media. I dedicate it to everyone around the
world who enjoys the Spice Girls!
The Creative and Design Awards are
run by Music Week, the UK's top music industry magazine, and their on-line
sister publication, dotmusic.
On 14th April 1997, six hundred people from the music business gathered in
London for the presentations. Awards included those for best music videos, best
TV adverts and posters, best album and single designs, and the new media awards.
It was in this final category that people outside of the judging panel could
have their say and vote for the best music Web site.
I was invited to the awards as a nominee and didn't expect to win a thing - it
was just great to be invited. You can imagine my surprise when after the
directors and editors responsible for such great videos from The Prodigy and
Radiohead won handfuls of awards, the Spice Shack was announced winner of the
Reader's Choice Award! BBC Radio One's Rachel Reynard presented this award to me
and the host of the evening, Melvyn Bragg (famous British arts personality)
asked me to make a speech. Not having prepared for this moment, unlike the other
winners who are so fluent in award receiving speeches, I said these few words: "I
would like to thank all of the Spice Girls fans for voting for the Shack and
making this award possible. It's now getting 7 million hits a month! It's been
phenomenal!"
Thanks also has to go to my Web space
providers, UK Online, and Martijn from
The Netherlands. UK Online are one of the best ISPs in the UK who have been very
tolerant with me because of the shear volume of data their server has to handle
every day due to the demand made by Spice Girls fans! And Martijn, who runs the
Dutch mirror site, has also been generous with his server and for keeping the
Guest Book up and running - thank you! Nathan Savage has provided RealAudio
support on his server for the Shack, and thanks to him too. Of course, many
other people have contributed with MIDI files, pictures, news, stories, and
encouragement!
If you're a Spice Girls fans then I hope you enjoy
surfing through the Spice Shack. There are some people who really hate the Spice
Girls and send out nasty emails (they just sound like Beavis and Butthead to
me!), so ignore them and do what you wanna do! Thanks, now go SPICE IT
UP! :-)