Gorillaz-Unofficial



Gorillaz-Unofficial is an online community focused on the virtual band Gorillaz and its collaborators.

Originally created in 2004, the site featured news, history, interviews with people related to the project, a detailed discography, and biographies of the band, its members, creators and collaborators.

The site was also known by people from Zombie Flesh Eaters, Passion Pictures and EMI. It was also mentioned on Rise of the Ogre, with a page dedicated to the website mentioning that Noodle was a frequent visitor of G-U, and that 2D found out about his father's original surname through the site. They have done multiple interviews with both Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, as well as Cass Browne, Gorillaz' former dummer and scriptwriter. At one point, Jamie Hewlett even had the website as his homepage and had the webmaster's number on his cell phone. The website was once officially shouted out by 2D in a phone call on June 2009. Their Twitter account is also followed by Murdoc's official Twitter page. It was created by 2-J, who was a staff member for Gorillaz' former official message board (OMB) until it became inactive. 2-J was also the owner of Gorillaz' official Myspace page, which became the most friended band page on Myspace in 2008, as well as being the owner of the original official website for Damon Albarn's other supergroup The Good The Bad and The Queen.

The website was unintentionally disabled in April 2014 as a result of the Heartbleed security bug, and the site itself no longer existed as of September 2014. However, on December 30, 2015, the website was officially reactivated, but was disabled again in late 2017.

Much of the community currently still keeps in contact through the Gorillaz-Unofficial chat on Discord, created by NicoleR, a member of the Gorillaz-Unofficial forums and the creator of the Gorillaz-art blog on Tumblr. Although the Discord was originally made as an extension of G-U, many new members also join the chat to this day. In 2018, the Gorillaz-Unofficial Discord group started the #freethesea campaign, which was a campaign revolving around an effort to make Albarn and Hewlett aware of the amount of fans who would like to see unreleased Plastic Beach material resurface.

#FreeTheSea
On October 11th  2018 at Gorillaz' performance at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, and October 20th 2018 at Demon Dayz Festival in LA, Gorillaz-Unofficial conducted full interviews with Gorillaz' creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett individually. In the Wells Fargo Center interview with Albarn, the topic of unreleased Plastic Beach material was one of the subjects discussed, and when asked about the possiblity of the material resurfacing, Albarn responded with "I don't know", but acknowledged the fact that there were fans who would like to see the material released. Since the interview, Gorillaz-Unofficial started a campaign for #Freethesea, an effort to make Albarn and Hewlett aware of the amount of fans who would like to see scrapped Plastic Beach material to resurface. In an interview with Jamie Hewlett at Gorillaz' Demon Dayz Festival in LA, Hewlett acknowledged the campaign when it was brought up and mentioned that he and Albarn were both aware of it. At the end of the interview, Hewlett was given the official Gorillaz-Unofficial fanzine as a gift to which Hewlett responded very positively to. The campaign came with a petition that has thousands of signatures, and both Albarn and Hewlett are aware of this campaign. On October 27th 2018, the campaign was acknowledged by Murdoc in the final #FreeMurdoc chats.

History


According to site's creator, 2-J:

2-J and Jur, both huge Gorillaz fans had the idea of making a website for Phase Two. 2-J, had the idea of making a site since early spring 2004, mostly inspired by his work on the song list topic on the official message boards, and annoyance at the fact that The Official Fan Site never updated its news. He planned G-U on paper over the summer of 2004, and tried to learn Dreamweaver.

For his part, Jur had http://thesounder.nl/ for a long time, as a fairly basic site with some lyrics and a few other bits of info. He intended to step this up for phase two.

At one point, 2-J was going to work on lobotomypop.com doing the news and discography, and at other times they were both going to make their own sites, 2-J concentrating on news, and Jur on everything else.

Inspired by the Noodleblast, 2-J decided to lock himself away for a Friday and a weekend, learning enough html to be able to customize a livejournal, registering a domain, and bringing together the basic pages of Gorillaz-Unofficial.

When it launched, Jur was impressed with what he'd done, so 2-J suggested that since he had made that start, why didn't he come work on the website with him, as an equal partner. Jur had already registered http://lobotomypop.com/ with a company offering a good bandwidth deal, so they decided to use that place for downloads. Jur ended up completely re-designing the website, and, along with 2-J, keeping it running for the first seven months of 2005.

Forum History
The G-U forums are the largest unofficial Gorillaz fan forums/community on the internet. Many of the frequent members of this forum made their way to it from the official Gorillaz forum at forums.gorillaz.com. During phase 1.5 and beginning of phase 2 in the Gorillaz story the official forum began to deteriorate, due to lack of moderation, prompting the creation of the G-U forums.

The forums had an additional IM chat interface which was used for several years as the primary socialization area between G-U's frequent members, although due to dissatisfaction with the IM software, the community completely moved over to Skype around the end of Phase 3.

Following is the list of subforums that existed on the site:

==== Want To Join The Forums? Post Here ==== The forums used a manual account activation system to thwart bots, and this subforum hosted the entryway for activation.

Announcements
Subforum for official forum announcements. This subforum also contained the current list of banned users, as well as any discussion pertaining to the state of the forums.

- Moderator: 2-J

This Week's Poll
Weekly polls used to be an active feature of the forums, although they ceased around Phase 3.

This Week's Editorial
Like polls, weekly editorials ceased around Phase 3.

Gorillaz-Unofficial Wiki
A short-lived project to attempt to create a comprehensive and well-maintained Gorillaz wiki maintained by well-known figures in the Gorillaz fan community (you know, unlike this wiki.)

VIP Area
Essentially a downloads/requests forum containing downloads to all sorts of Gorillaz, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett projects, both common and rare. In order to access this forum it was required for to have a minimum of 100 "non-spam" posts as determined by a moderator.

- Moderator: Mig

Gorillaz Music
General discussion for Gorillaz music.

- Moderator: German Shake

Gorillaz Art
General discussion for Gorillaz art, story, universe etc.

- Moderator: LuckyLungs

Gorillaz-related
This forum was used for discussing Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's other projects - such as 'Tank Girl', Blur, 'Monkey: Journey To The West', The Good The Bad & The Queen, and more...

- Moderator: onion70

The Sounder (2005 - 2012) / DoYaThing (2012 - 2014)
This was G-U's forum for sharing user creation such as music, art, writing and any other creative endeavours, Gorillaz-related or not. This forum's music scene was particularly strong and still continues today even beyond the forum's demise.

- Moderator: AC

Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah
General discussion forum. This subforum was designed to be more "sensible" discussion as opposed to The Landfill.

Moderator: Chaz

We Are Happy Landfill (2005 - 2010) / Styrofoam Deepsea Landfill (2010 - 2012) / The Landfill (2012 - 2014)
This subforum was the equivalent of a "Random" subforum. Anything went in this forum as long as it abided by forum rules.

Moderator: TheBritishSushi

G-U Legends
In no particular order:

2-J
2-J, James, J or 2-Gay is still single, and has owned the gorillaz-unofficial site for around a year now. 2-J has built, through the years, the full Gorillaz-Unofficial.com site as it is today, to provide fans with the very best gorillaz news 'unofficially', and therefore should receive all the credit for that. He also runs the official The Good, The Bad And The Queen fan site.

Chia
Raised on a diet of secondhand books and Tippex thinners, Chia's the Forum Admin at G-U, which is sometimes a tough job considering what you lot can get up to armed with nothing more than a keyboard and a box to type in. A quasi-permanent figure in the Gorillaz community since 'Tomorrow Comes Today', it's Gorillaz Chia blames for making her get up off her arse and start writing for a living. By day a humble journalist, by night a comics superhero; Chia's unusual in her profession as she doesn't have a beard. She is kind to dead people and cats.

agent-_-
True to his username, Erik spends half his time tormenting others with his eclectic musical tastes and the other half working in espionage as a secret operative for the Canadian government. He'd always enjoyed Gorillaz music in the background, but that all changed in 2004 when he was given the debut album as a "gift". One listen and he realized this music was the key to Canada's plan for world domination. Erik has since spent part of his time maintaining the G-U discography, using the opportunity to insert encoded messages to other spies in hopes of bringing destruction to dangerous political parties in his home country of the Netherlands.

By day a mild-mannered and thoughtful "16-year-old", by night he searches for more weapons amongst Alternative, Indie, Britpop, and Folk bands often overlooked by others.

Bassman only wishes he was this cool.



subgirl/Resa
The current editorial writer. Works in a bookstore and sometimes compares Damon Albarn with Jesus (most people agree).



Bassman
The regular forum ladies man. His most noted attributes are a slick tongue and a smooth talker, especially with the ladies. Bassman is highly recommended for hilarious YTMNDs, most of which come highly praised. He is a moderator of the Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah forum. And his legendary Mighty Boosh avatar dances to every kind of music you can imagine.



DiesOutHere
The Divine Goddess of Everlasting Patience, Strawberries, and Chocolate, is the rumored Moderator of the elusive Forum 18. She turned the hell into a heaven, spending endless time and money on making it an exciting pleasure for each and every fan to be part of such a nice place. Rumor has it if there was a "Thanksforbeingamod" forum she'd be moderator of it. She always brightens up the forum and welcomes everyone with a warm smile (With the exception of a glare every once in a while). She's a total MILF with a fearsome number of nicknames.



Ho Musabi
What a lovely little fella. Most of his lifetime he spends in the chat. He is like the police officer of Gorillaz-Unofficial. Troublemakers fear him and that is just the way it is supposed to be. Ho Musabi is known for having a weakness for shemales.

Ho recently became a cyborg, bridging the gap between robot and man (well, teenager), guaranteeing the G-U's place the New World Order after the coming robotic uprising.

Moderator Ho Musabi's stamp of approval ;D



Gremlin
This German girl with endlessly long legs is well known for having several affairs with G-U men, it is rumored that she only became a moderator because she took a closer look at 2-J's stamp collection. Being one of the OMB oldbies, she enjoys bashing on newbies and weaker ones. Has an uniform fetish. What a woman. She is currently having an affair with bassman and 2-J. Though, to be honest, she leans towards bassman, if you know what I mean.



MSKo09
Dave walks in and suddenly the chat room is your favorite sitcom. The one you wait for all week with new jokes alongside cozy old favorites. The chat's resident comedian, Dave has plenty of wooing to go around so no one feels slighted. Nobody has ever seen his face, but artistic interpretations portray him as tall, dark, and mustachioed. Some might say that he tries. And try he does. But man, what is his problem?

Also remember that one time he made that poo mustache joke?

Classic.



G_MON
A Mod who has felt left out on his lack of Wiki Mod page displayage, And all around awesome guy with some awful habits, like having dial-up and watching Jerry Jackson. DANGER, also pedolicious ;D. Has a thing for calling Cannibal Massakren "Phillip".