Website - The Leyland Band
7-Jul-2001Webmaster: Paul Warder
www.leylandband.co.uk
There has been something of a resurgence with the Leyland Band over the past six months or more, and judging by the quality of the hard work put into their website, it’s well deserved.
For many years the band had the comfort of good and plentiful sponsorship on tap to them from companies such as Leyland DAF, British Nuclear Fuels and JJB Sports, and many people thought they wouldn't and couldn't survive when that money dried up. The past year however has seen the band revert not only to its original name, but also regain much of their reputation for quality performances on both the contest and concert stage. As their well-produced newsletter, "Leyland News" suggests, it's been a question of hard work and plenty of commitment. Being non sponsored is hard graft.
The overall impression you get from the site is that it is clear, simple and easy to follow with no pretensions to try and wow you with techno gadgets, graphics and the type of pointless wizardry that takes an age to download and is of interest only to those of an anorak disposition. This is straightforward stuff.
It starts on a simple homepage with a superimposed shot of the current band in front of the Royal Albert Hall and a useful reminder of when the site was last updated, and there are eight "Click On" buttons to take you to each section of the site. These include a well- written (and very honest!) news section which is up to date and interesting, personnel section, conductors page, engagements list, recordings page and contact section.
Each is well presented, but we thought the news items were made a little unclear to access (a variety of date boxes in odd order) and it would have been so much better if there were individual picture portraits to go with the excellent compact pen portraits of each of the players. The photo work isn't brilliant of the sections as a whole, although it's welcome to see details of the backroom staff (and strangely they get individual mug shots!).
There is also some neat work and very well written items on the bands history, latest commissioned works for the band and of their star trombone player, Andrew King and it is a pleasure to read and see links to rival bands. The Personnel Section also gives details of the latest vacancies and how to get in contact if interested and the Engagements Section has a list of the bands jobs from June 2001 to May 2002 and has contact details of the venues where the band will be performing. There are some photos of the band from the past ten years or more, but each could do with some sort of written explanation to go with them. If you have won the Open then you should really tell the public about it more!
The Recordings page has a neat display of the 14 CD's of the band and details of what's on each release and contact details to buy them, whilst the Contacts page gives full details of how to book the band, how to become a Patron and how to contact the Webmaster himself!
Overall then we give the Leyland site a good thumbs up. It's a solid, no frills, clean and tidy effort that benefits greatly from good quality written content. A few improvements here and there (especially with the photos) and this will be an excellent advertisement for a band returning back to top form. Well worth a visit.
