An interview & other bits

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Brian John Mitchell

So the interview I did yesterday is already up here.

I had a dream last night where I was playing a house show & there were teenage girls drinking Bud Light & flirting with me.  Basically a nightmare.

Finally typed in some of the questions for the upcoming QRD.  So maybe I’ll get things done on that soon.  If you have suggestions for question for slicnaton, northern valentine, or Hotel Hotel let me know.

Drew a few panels for the new Lost Kisses, if I get 160 more panels done by last week I’ll be on track.

Booked my display table for SPACE.  We’ll see what happens.

So for those of you curious about how effective ads are, I looked at my stats & the only site that generated over 25 referrals to my site that I bought an ad on was The Silent Ballet.  Maybe it’s that my ads don’t look good enough if you want to blame it on me.

Been watching Elvis stuff today.

I assume everyone already heard that Ron Ashton died.

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Checks & Blocks

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Brian John Mitchell

So I finished up adjusting my book keeping paperwork to roll for 2009 & did the paperwork for artists owed royalties (no real surprises that the two owed enough to send out are Sparhawk & Lycia, but Goddakk just made it in the black for $1.63!).  I also filled the quarterly paperwork for the state.  Fourth quarter 2008 was better than the third quarter, but with the new releases there was a lot more overhead as well.

I got a note from the bank saying they were going to stop giving me interest on my savings account because I have too many transactions in it a month (which is funny because it seems like one transfer & a dozen deposits is what they’d like).

I’m really running into blocks on drawing the new Lost Kisses stuff.  I’m not sure what to do about it.  Do I put out total hack issues?  Really aren’t they all total hack issues except #2 & #6?  I guess it means I should start working on my music for a while & hope it recharges me.  I know the real problem is caused by some drama in my real life, but who wants to deal with that crap?

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Long Days

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Brian John Mitchell

The show last night went better than expected.  The young touring acts realized they didn’t need to play all night.  4 bands playing from 9:15-12:15 including tear down & set-up sounds pretty ideal for a week night to me.

I was planning on working on drawing pictures for Lost Kisses today, but I got asked to do an interview for JazmaOnline about my comics & I spent the day answering that instead.

It’s looking like things might finally be falling together for Remora’s Mecha finally coming out.  I’ll let you know more when I know more.

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Gonna be a Big Year

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Brian John Mitchell

So things are looking pretty positive today.

Got a couple little reviews in on things I had given up on.

The local weekly asked me about doing a feature article on the label later this spring, nice to be appreciated in the home town.

Got asked to do some special mini-comic things for The Daily Crosshatch which seems to be the main comic blog that actually generates sales.

The Lycia show in Phoenix went well & I’m supposed to be working on scheduling a tour based on doing a little Silber showcase with them.  Should be fun.

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The Mind Was a Terrible Thing to Taste

Posted on January 5, 2009 by Brian John Mitchell

So like a lot of people I’d been debating getting that “new” Ministry album where they cover classic rock songs for months.  Today I bought it for full retail in somewhere between a hangover stupor & drunken whim.  It is awful.  If you read the liner notes you can see the problem.  Al only plays guitar on one song or so.  I guess since I ride around in my car listening to In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up, I was not aware of what Ministry was like these days.  This would have been better if it was a collection of the originals than the covers.

Did some follow up on the mini-comic promos & half the reviewers have responded enthusiastically.  It’s nice when reviewers say their wives/girlfriends love them, it means I’m doing something right.

Still getting over my cold, which gives me an excuse to do a drone set for Remora rather than a song set.

MySpace somehow deleted my top friends & I tried to put up accurate current ones, so if you are no longer up I’m sorry.  If you feel you’ve now arrived by being listed, welcome aboard.

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& Today’s Information

Posted on January 4, 2009 by Brian John Mitchell

Did a little more research on the MP3 store thing.  I had no idea how good of a deal Amazon had.  256 encoding & releases on Silber seem to go between $7-$9 (I don’t set the prices myself, it’s done by third parties).  So maybe I’d set it up at $7 & 256 bits. We’ll see.

So I’ve been working on getting some music stuff in film & it’s been pointed out to me that if I really want to make money as a label I need to stop taking a 10% cut & increase that to 25% & then just never pay the bands.  Ha-ha-ha.  Though I am thinking about re-structuring things a bit where if something goes through a music library I get 10% & if I personally negotiate it I get 25%.  I feel like I am ripping myself off a bit on things because dealing direct can be ten hours of work & my 10% would only be $50.

Got a check from Carrot Top today for distribution.  They are the absolute best & most honest & on time distributor in the United States.  I have only even had to send them an invoice to get paid once in ten years.  So if you run a label or record store I suggest working with them.  If you’re a distributor, follow their business model & I can write about you like this one day….

So for those of you following my personal narrative (is there a difference between my personal narrative & artistic one anymore?), it looks like I’m going to be doing some part time cyber work doing medical billing.  Trying to get a lot of various things going on to be able to continue staying at the house taking care of my grandmother after the unemployment runs out.  We’ll see what happens.

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Happy New Year

Posted on January 2, 2009 by Brian John Mitchell

So the funniest bit of conversation of last night was by phone when I heard, “I’m at a party & they’re playing Dungeons & Dragons & there’s no alcohol!”

Did a little bit of editing for the website for ordering the mini-comics.  I need to do a little more of course.

As I’ve mentioned before I’m thinking about hosting my own download store.  I’m curious what quality you think MP3s should be (is 192 high enough for everyone?) & what you think the price should be for albums (I was thinking $8?) & if I should distro digital sales of items I don’t have in the catalog that I either like or are somehow associated with Silber (like maybe Rollerball’s entire catalog).  For those of you that are artists, what do you think would be a fair payment for providing digital distro on the Silber site?  I know most lables currently end up with around $6.37 for a download on iTunes, but being on iTunes of course doesn’t mean the same driving of downloads of being associated with an incredibly small & specific catalog that Silber’s would be; do you think $4 (splitting the $8 50-50) would be fair?

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Bleak & Upbeat

Posted on December 31, 2008 by Brian John Mitchell

Spent the day getting things ready for doing my taxes so I could judge if I should try to put a few things on this side of the end of the year or wait until next year.  I knew the money hadn’t been so great the past nine months or so, but they’re a little worse than even I thought when I added in a lot of the expenses that I only put in at the end of the year (Google Adwords fees, domain registration, web hosting).  I feel it’s strange to be at the point where two of the worst quarters of the past five years are in the same year, but at least I can blame it on the economy instead of my incompetence.  So at least that makes me feel like things are going to better next year than this year.  Also I have come to the realization I need to do a bit more with diversifying sources of income.  So next year I want to do a bit more with supporting the label through my own work doing promotions & mastering for bands not on the label.  Also I’m thinking about opening a digital store that I host & possibly having non-Silber content that I like on it.  & people keep saying I should make some Lost Kisses t-shirts & such via Cafe Press or whatever & maybe they’re right.  We’ll see what happens.  I just feel bad that the few royalty checks for this quarter going out to artists are so tiny.  I guess if the $13,000 I’m owed from various distributors came in I’d have nothing to complain about & I’d be ecstatic with a third of that.

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The Whole Day Goes Missing

Posted on December 30, 2008 by Brian John Mitchell

So I don’t know what happened to my day after getting out the mini-comic promos.  The day just disappeared.

Spent the day daydreaming about changing Remora’s live show pretty drastically.  Maybe having a line-up of drums, bass, & guitar going more towards my slow sludgy noise guitar roots occasionally going into a bit of a droning tribal groove.  Seems like it can’t be less popular than the songs….  Of course then I would have to find people excited about being in that type of band & hopefully they’d be good enough to not really need to practice, because I’m pretty lazy about practicing.

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Finishing Up

Posted on December 29, 2008 by Brian John Mitchell

So I just finished writing the letters for the promos of the comics to reviewers.  Going to have to update the website to have them for sale I suppose.

Going to do another bout of promo follow up for Northern Valentine & Hotel Hotel.

Going to do a little promotion of the Lycia & Hotel Hotel show for next week as the promoter suggested I do or no one would be there when HH plays.  We’ll see what happens on that….

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