So I recorded this Remora demo today. Maybe it’ll be the next single that I need to play at every show from here on out.
Remora – sing with me
I spent most of the day working on button stuff. Nothing super adventurous. Below are some videos I think you might like. Hope everyone is doing well.
The big news for today is I got up another release in the 5 in 5 series. It’s a collaboration between Shaun Sandor & his four year old daughter Zlata called “Band on the Moon” & it’s free to stream or a dollar to download or show your support.
So the button listings on Ebay are expiring today & tomorrow. Basically a third of the buttons I listed sold, which is fine. I’d hoped for more obviously. Maybe I had some of the “Buy It Now” prices too high. At any rate, it is going to get me to go ahead & try to list fifty items for sale per month on Ebay as long as they are offering fifty free listings each month. Going to try to clear out things a bit more as I realize I own a lot of things that I don’t really need to. I mean, I lived in Pittsburgh the month of November only with what I could fit in my car & I really didn’t miss anything that I didn’t have with me. So it might be a slower process than I hope for, but eventually I want to get to the point where I’m only owning things I want & need instead of having all these legacy items just taking up space. I guess part of the inspiration is my buddy Jesse is moving to a one room cabin he’s building himself out in Washington state. I went to have a couple of beers with him & help him load his car & give him my camping stove that I haven’t used in twenty years. Basically all he owns right now is a suitcase of clothes, tools for building the cabin, a guitar & amp & pedal board, two surfboards, a laptop, & a dog. His car isn’t even half full. It is at least a little inspiring.
So I went ahead & I suspended the ads on Facebook & Google for Silber in preparation for the hiatus. It’s starting to feel close to happening. Trying to get people to get me the stuff for finishing up the current batch of work. We’ll see what all happens.
I sent in some artwork for this weird card game project. We’ll see what happens with it if anything.
Sent out soliciting for the last set of interviews for the next two QRDs. We’ll see what happens on that. It feels good to be winding things down. Still gotta get a bunch of work done finishing up the 5 in 5 series, but it feels good.
So maybe some of you have noticed that I never put up the monthly charts for April, it’s because something weird is going on with my server’s stats. The April stats when ran through the analyzer only give me info on the last two days of the month. I just downloaded the one for May & it only gave me info on the last five days. So I guess I’m not going to know what’s up from here on out, which is fine. I won’t have to be as depressed by the numbers.
Last Night’s Dream:
I’m a teenager, but I still have all my current memories which confuses me a bit as far as thinking my girlfriend is way too young for me. Her folks are out of town & I’m staying at her house. It’s 1am & we’re drunk, high on pills, & tripping on acid & are sitting naked on the lawn in the suburban neighborhood. No one is up in the whole neighborhood & it feels like we have the world to ourselves. We here the jangle of a dog’s leash & collar & rush to hide behind some bushes & then go back in the house & get dressed. Time passes & I’m walking with the girl into the family room & her mother is there. I can’t tell if I’m still intoxicated or just intoxicated again. From the overhead light there are small model ships & military medals hanging from it with fishing line. In one corner of the room is the bottom half of an artificial Christmas tree & in another corner is the top half. In an attempt to make small talk I ask the mother if she keeps the Christmas tree up year round & I mention that my ex-girlfriend used to do that because she felt her time was better spent on other things than putting up & taking down decorations & then I realize the ex-girlfriend I’m referring to I won’t even meet for twenty years.
So I’ve noticed that lately a big way I discover new projects on Kickstarter is that I follow my friends on the Kickstarter site & it tells me what they backed when I go to the website & that probably works a lot better than someone posting about it on Facebook or Twitter as far as getting lost in the feed. So, one of the things I’m thinking lately is that to help with that in my next project I really need to do something to encourage people to donate just a dollar instead of posting about it on Facebook & Twitter. Haven’t quite figured out how to do that yet, but it’s what is going on in my mind.
Anyone who’s interested & has a CBZ reader (or wants to unzip & thumb through a couple hundred pages of text), I made a CBZ collecting the zine I did that pretty much directly led to my making comics. It was an ultra-personal zine called “Brian Hearts Katherine” & was made from 2001-2008. Looking for reviews & blurbs for making a little webpage for it. It’s the story that has been told from a somewhat negative light in Lost Kisses #6-#8 & Lost Kisses Daily Volume I & here is presented in a fairly different light. The download is about 150 megs. http://www.silbermedia.com/comics/brian-hearts-katherine.CBZ
So I was talking to my buddy Don about this, but basically since I decided to do the Silber hiatus I am much happier about how things are with Silber. Previously I would work on something & be like, “Only four people even care,” & now I feel like, “Oh, wow! Four people actually care!” Which is interesting. I guess it’s the difference between looking at something as a business or as a hobby.
So while trying to clean up the house a bit I found a half dozen bottles of comics that I had made to potentially sell at conventions & such, but never really bother to take anywhere. So I walked down & set them all free in the creek. I keep hoping to hear back from more bottles as I only know about two of them (one found by a girl in Wilmington & another found by a park ranger who said I was littering.
So Peter Aldrich turned me on to this series of short sci-fi films called Futurestates. Below are two of the good episodes I’ve seen so far. The one about the plastic bag is narrated by Werner Herzog.
So Plumerai has teamed up with this company Unraveled Artists that designs t-shirts based on song lyrics. It has a little interview about the song as well. The price point may seem a little high, but when you think about how many people are needing to get paid (band, shirt designer, shirt printer, shipping, etc) it’s reasonable.
I’ve started some work lately on getting rid of some trash around the house. Basically the admission that their will not ever be a Silber museum. Is there a reason to keep the laptop that broke down that I did all the Silber work on for ten years? Is there a reason to keep 15 year old magazines that reviewed a Silber release? Is there a reason to keep stuff recorded in formats I no longer have a player for? Of course not. I mean, it would all have value in the museum I guess, but not in anything approaching real life. It’s all just trash. It’s kind of sad to admit that things that in a way are important to you are just ephemera that you should have thrown out ten years ago instead of holding on to. In a certain way it makes me feel like my whole life is just a waste & trash, but in another way it’s super liberating. I’m trying to focus on the idea that it’s super liberating. I just got a letter from Dave Sim that talked a bit about my taking a break from my stuff (for those of you who haven’t seen the couple of blog entries or the intro to the last QRD, I’m trying to wrap up a few things & then take a break for a while to figure out what the goals of me as an actual 38 year old are instead of continuing to be a 19 year old with 19 years of experience) & his view of me worrying about life without doing the work that’s been so important to me for so long is that most people don’t really have work that’s important to them at any point in their life. So I’m just in the boat with everyone else. It’s good to have someone else to give me perspective some times. It’s easy to forget the blessings in life.
So part of the reason I am trying to clean up some things & clear space is so that I can set up to record on a regular basis & have it stay set up. I might try to do something where I record a ton of little albums for netlabels or something. You know, records that are just one day to record & one day to mix or whatever. It’s also worth noting I do still have the sales where you can get five discs for $30 or twelve discs for $50 if any of you want to help me cleaning up the basement.
I laid out & printed out some copies of the Insomniac sketchbook/comic thing that I’d posted last week. I guess eventually I’ll add it to be on sale on the website. I don’t know. I’ve been a little frustrated with sales lately & it seems like there’s not much reason to bother. I have been thinking about doing a Kickstarter where the thing that people pay for is for me to send a bunch of comics to random coffee shops & comic shops & art galleries in hope of making new fans as the internet really doesn’t seem to be cutting it & the Bottle Comics didn’t really work out either!
I got in the art from Arabella Proffer for doing my proposed artist button series. I’m pretty excited about it. Going to be five button sets from five different artists for 25 buttons total. I like the idea of doing a project that helps spread the word about something someone else is doing instead of just pushing my own agenda. I want my friends that are great artists to be more widely known & make more money than they do. We’ll see what happens in the end.
Interview with the mighty Rllrbll in SuccoAcido. Check it out!
So I designed another 15 buttons today, so there’s a total of 30 more to set up on the button sales page. I also listed the buttons for sale on Ebay & basically made $60 in an hour, which is pretty incredible. If I could relatively passively make an extra $50 a day for an hour of work, I think I’d be pretty satisfied with my financial situation.
I read an article today that explained some of the reason why Silber has been not getting as much press/radio attention lately. It talked about how blogs & webzines have shifted from indie to mainstream music as mainstream has embraced letting them embed music & started to offer more to them. I can’t say I blame them. I mean, certainly it drives more traffic to do your story about an artist with a million fans than one with ten fans & I know that most people are more curious about the next David Bowie record than the next Small Life Form record even if they are a Small Life Form fan. It’s essentially gotten to the point where the way for an indie to get decent coverage is simple, pay a publicist $2500 or more. Which to be honest is what the time of a decent publicist is worth, but all their work will probably only generate $500 in income… so it might not be worth it. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. If the button end of Silber takes off, then maybe I’ll take some of that money & actually invest in a publicist to just see what happens.
GoddakkAttack says: checking out your ebay and how fitting that the only buttons with bids currently are cat buttons. Is that your biggest seller? in that case you should probably just make cat themed everything and cash in. CD’s, comics, novels (imagine an entire novel of just variations on meow, rowr, prrr)
ps have you heard this band the beatles? you should def. include them in the next qrd.
There were some other buttons that sold with the “buy it now” option that I re-listed.
I can’t keep track of new music, who’s this band called “The Beatles”?
Nick says: So it’s still true that the Internet is basically a series of tubes filled with porn and cats…
So I found out about Chemistry years ago because Dave Sim talked about it in an interview I saw on YouTube & that it won the Day Prize. I kept meaning to pick it up for the past five years when I would go to SPACE, but to be honest I really hate talking to other vendors at conventions even if I know I want to buy something from them. I finally picked it up this year mainly because Steve Peters was sitting right behind me at the convention. One of this comic’s claims to fame is it’s 365 panels drawn a panel a day over the course of a year. Which is a great concept & discipline that could help a ton of people having trouble getting their comics out, but to be honest the novelty of that concept really doesn’t impact the book at all. There are no drastic style changes or leveling up as the comic progressive & the story is cohesive even when there’s 24 panels (so almost a month of drawing time) on the same page. So the comic is an auto-bio book about a romantic relationship & I think the hope was to document the story of the love of his life to give as a proposal gift (I say that because it’s the kind of hopelessly romantic/semi-retarded thing I might do), but instead the relationship ends about three months into the comic & the next nine months of the comic tell the story of the month of the relationship before the comic started. I’m a bigger glutton for punishment than the average guy, but I feel even for me that might be too much dwelling on things; though if I wasn’t someone who made his own cathartic relationship comics (see Lost Kisses #6-#8) I probably would be kinder to the whole genre I lovingly refer to as “sad bastard.” Anyway, if you like the Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) or Adrian Tomine (Optic Nerve) comics (which I do), this is definitely worth seeking out & reading.
So I got up the new issue of QRD. Another dozen interviews with comic book creators. It’s funny because it really kinda just hit me as another confirmation of me needing to take a break from things because when I sent out to the dozen folks saying the interviews were up & to let me know if anything needed to be fixed, I got one response saying thanks. Nothing from the other 11. Whatever.
Starting to make some plans for my crazy roadtrip that I’m doing this summer instead of doing a tour. We’ll see what all happens. Right now I’m supposed to be going to Ohio, Kentucky, & Texas. I may end up throwing in Wisconsin & Tennessee. I don’t really know. Like all of my life lately, plans are subject to change.
Last Night’s Dream:
I’m driving my car home from the grocery store & I guess I take it too fast because my car rolls & I’m about to go down a hundred foot drop & I’m trying to get my phone out of my pocket so I can call someone to tell them I didn’t do it on purpose.
Another entry in our EP series, 5 songs in 5 minutes from Baptizer of guitar noise. Free to stream a dollar to support.
And yet another five minute EP, Electric Bird Noise side project Feel No Other doing cinematic & epic one minute songs.
I tried to work on recording the Silber podcast thing today. I don’t think I can make it happen. It seemed boring & self-indulgent. I think most of the things I have to say, I’ve probably said before at times where my memories of them were stronger in various interviews. I probably really would need a co-host to prod me on about what was going on & for comic relief. As it is, I just don’t see it as anything people would have an interest in. So the good news is, that’s one thing off my to do list before trying to take a hiatus.
Peter says: Comic relief? Yeeeeaaaaahhh Booooyyy!
Try to save the old magazines at least…