It's not. I don't see DIRTY ceasing for a very long time. It won't. There's no reason for it to. I've often wondered, and this will sound ridiculous, what would happen to DIRTY when I die? Would Darren pass on the FTP details to Adam or Alistair (DIRTY's most prolific writers)? Would they continue to update the site? Would they continue to push DIRTY in the direction I see it going? Who knows! I'd hope this thing wouldn't die with me... But... Jesus, let's move away from this! I thought what would be appropriate for this fifth year anniversary would be to talk about DIRTY's top five moments. Through the eyes of myself, Craig Sharp.

1. (Briefly) interviewing Bradford Cox

I did a brief internship at Southern Records at the beginning of 2007, one of the reasons why I wanted to do the internship was to get exposed to new music. I did. I saw the album cover for Deerhunter's 'Cryptograms' and I was instantly intrigued. It was so bold and the music had it's own unique mystique (I get extra points for rhyming, fyi). Eventually it became the most played thing on my iPod, even overtaking Fugazi. When I saw Deerhunter at Rough Trade East, I made sure I could quickly interview Bradford Cox. The whole thing was incredible. I didn't even approach him; he approached me. This guy who was the core of the music that I kept playing on my headphones over and over again was standing before me and asking me about my CAN t-shirt... Anyway you can read it all here.

2. Making the DIRTY badges

This might seem petty but when the DIRTY badges were made, it made a big difference in how I felt about DIRTY. My friends at school started wearing the badges, wearing them at work, etc. Friends have told me that they've had the badges used by others as chances to make advances on them, people have apparently offered money for a badge, I once had a very pervy french man ask me how DIRTY I was whilst I was working. Kind of distracting but these slightly 'sloganish' badges have made an interesting change to people's lives. Oh and when I offered one to John from Health, he stuck one on his shirt. Loads of photos were taken at the gig and one was used by the Old Blue Last for a flyer campaign for gigs in July/August where the DIRTY badge is clearly visible. I liked this very subtle form of exposure, I only found out a few weeks back (in early October) when I saw about a hundred of the flyers lying idle in Rough Trade East...

3. Getting into a 'legal' fight with an ex-X Factor loser, Tabby...

This was pretty amazing. There was a time in Upper School where I felt quite confident with my arguing abilities, they were utilised and tested when I was informed by some weak management company called 'Red Sun' that the jokey comments I made about Tabby were slanderous. I responded saying that it was impossible, and that it was common for celebrities to be jokingly insulted... Even though it was a bit of a stretch of the imagination to consider Tabby a celebrity. Also slander is about spoken word, libel is for writing. They were bullshitting and trying to scare me out of writing something that was defamatory about some shit Bon Jovi wannabe. I published every e-mail online in the now-defunct 'News' section of the site. One day I'll dig up the e-mails and republish them.

4. Releasing shit. And stuff

Putting out our compilation CDs with unsigned bands was really great fun. I lost a lot of money and that but that, cliché or not, wasn't the point. I remember my mum, my sister and I sitting in my lounge assembling the Pedestrian 02 CDs and me anally asking them to wear rubber gloves "so people wouldn't see fingerprints on the 'new' CD they just bought". Thinking about it, I'd probably still ask them to wear gloves even now... ! But I really loved working on the design of the records, receiving a massive box from Australia or Czechoslovakia via Fed Ex and opening it to see mass reproductions of something that previously only existed as an idea on my screen with music that was being made by some of the most exciting unsigned bands in England at the time.

5. The past few months

This is the thing that's ridiculous, despite the 5 years preceding this missive, DIRTY hasn't really been THAT active. Which makes a retrospective like this slightly void. Plus I already had one in July. I'll put rose-tinted spectacles down because really, I still think the best is still to come. We've only just woken up and the website's really benefitting from the surge of effort and interest from that effort that's happened over the past 2/3 months. I've got some big ideas for DIRTY and soon, very soon, they'll become apparent to everyone who's bothered to read this huge blog entry.

Craig x