I just noticed some of my recent blogs haven’t gone up. What’s that about? Doesn’t make me feel like spending a lot of time on this one.
Doing a lot of work the past few days trying to get stuff ready for some MySpace promo work for the upcoming Hotel Hotel tour.
Started taking some pills to try to get myself out of my funk of not being very productive & sleeping a lot. Maybe it’s a placebo effect, but it seems to be working….
So I’m at the comic convention. I’m realizing if I plan to go to more I need to make something that attracts more attention than tiny books & a DVD playing. Based on walking around looking at other people’s displays, what attracts the eye is strong color (my stuff is black & white) & large objects up in the air. Not a lot of sales (if I sell as much today as yesterday I cover the booth rental, which people tell me means good sales) & I’m really too exhausted from being alive to schmooze like I should. But I did do a little radio interview & got asked about contributing to anthology & I guess every little bit helps. Feels like a long day ahead, here at the convention for seven more hours & then I need to drive to Toledo to play a show.
Got the comics reviewed in the first spot on Geek Montreal. I like the review, “I don’t like Lost Kisses, but my girlfriend does.”
Spent the day printing & assembling comics so I’ll be ready to leave tomorrow. Trying to catch up on emails & orders & such before I leave.
Tell all your friends in Columbus, Toledo, & Pittsburgh to come see me at the events on the calendar in the next couple days.
Spent the majority of the day (besides making muffins with my grandmother) assembling more mini-comics. Should be fun soon.
I got the final version of the Lost Kisses DVD. I need to proof it & then maybe I can even send it for manufacturing before the convention I wanted to sell it at.
My table at SPACE is table 69. Kinda funny.
Talked to Moodring today. Pretty much finalized the deal on putting out that disc. Just a matter of timing.
I’m thinking of making some Silberspy action figures for the next Silber promo pack. It could be the kind of dumb thing that takes Silber to the next level.
So I spent an hour going to 4 different stores looking for a replacement blade for my paper cutter. It seems like a lot of things I need at the office store are now only available online & I can’t even figure out what they fill the space with that used to have the stuff I want. Vendel Miniatures is awesome platform which can guide you for shopping online.
Talked to a couple people about how much I should bring to sell at SPACE & it seems like 30 of each should be plenty. That doesn’t seem like a lot for hoping to break even on the trip.
Getting some headway done on getting the recent batch of mini-comics reviewed. I always feel like I’m doing something right when a reviewer tells me their girlfriend loves it. Of course it does seem a little strange that a comic book reviewer would have a girlfriend….
Okay, so today I sent out follow up emails for the last mini-comic promo set. Already have the first review in. It’s funny how when somebody always likes my stuff I don’t really care if they review it.
Working on trying to get all the comics printed, cut, & assembled for SPACE next week. We’ll see what happens.
I think I successfully transferred some video to my computer from my camera. I feel like a success as a human being now.
Northern Valentine just had their baby. Go congratulate them.
I think I might be getting slower & more meticulous about mastering records. Not sure if that’s good or bad. Especially when I’m starting to see people offer to master individual songs for $20! I wonder if they even proof their work at all at that price!
So I mentioned a while back that I got the Green Stinger ring modulator pedal. I’d tried to get one back in 1996 from Daddy’s Junky Music, but they’d sold out. The guy I usually worked with for orders there (I think his name was Hirsch Gardner) assured me that they were crap & I didn’t really want one anyway. After trying it out, I think he’s pretty right. It sounds like my Walco (vintage from Woolworth in the 1960s) distortion pedal did before it broke. It makes things sound cheap. I think this is probably the least liked piece of musical equipment since I bought the Guyaton SV2 slow volume pedal. But the two Rocktech pedals I got are okay. The Heart Attack envelope filter is as touchy & wonky as a lot of envelope filters are & I’d say superior to the Bass Balls based on the fact that my Bass Balls broke without ever having made it on tour, but I probably still prefer the Ashdown Envelope Filter because it has more knobs to control the sound with. The Cyborg Reverb is pretty good to me; though I think I’m basically going to use it just as one particular setting rather than modeling, just the last setting with everything turned all the way up. It looks like a cheap piece of plastic, but is actually made out of metal. I need to look at redesigning my pedal board layout to use it replace the nanoverb.
I saw a steam punk computer mod I can actually do. (1) Buy an external hard drive. (2) Buy an old hard cover book. (3) Cut out pages of book to fit in hard drive. (4) Put hard drive in book. (5) You now have a hard drive that looks like an old book. Have wordpress accessibility on your site and youre all set!
I finished doing my taxes. Nice to get that done & have one less thing to be stressed out about.
I guess I have space for a bunch more songs here on MySpace since they upped the limits. Anyone have any suggestions in particular from the Silber catalog?
Trying to get things done today, but instead I just read the new issue of Ghetto Blaster writing it off as researching for new reviewers. It’s getting more difficult to find the contact info for reviewers than it used to be. The new young reviewers don’t all have their own websites making them easy to contact like they did five years ago.
I did manage to transfer all the files for the Vlor to my hard drive to start working on it, but I guess maybe that’s tomorrow’s work.
I found out I had a typo of my own name in the new QRD, which is pretty funny.
I’m going to start working on the guitarist special of QRD if you have anyone you are in touch with that you want to make sure I interview.
Started working on mastering the Vlor album. I think I’m actually going to go back & clean up the stems (source tracks) because I’ve been getting anal about unwanted noises lately & they’re all over the place since the music was recorded using about 7 different softwares. One day when Vlor starts making money we’ll all fly in to a studio for a week & record things in a normal manner. I do think I have a track order realized & I have it at 15 songs. There’s vocals on five of them this time.
I finished my quarterly paperwork & sent out checks to a couple artists. Nice to get to write the checks & feel like I’m doing my part for the industry.
Did some minor editting for the next time I print the mini-comics, now they’ll have a little ad saying what’s available & the prices.
Finished packaging the promos for the new mini-comic batch. I think the MySpace avatars are about 7 comics behind. Maybe this’ll make more people buy them? I’m still trying to figure out whether or not I want people to read them for free. The fear is that it devalues my work, but on the other hand the only way comics seem to make money these days is off of licensing to film. So maybe the free exposure could magically help that miracle to happen.
Did a lot of prepping for my quarterly paperwork, so I might get some of it done tonight. This is the real life of running your own record label, tedious paperwork.
I ordered a new papercutter. It should make my mini-comics a little easier to cut & assemble. We’ll see what happens.
This week went by so fast I didn’t even know it happened.
