Old footage

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Brian John Mitchell

So I wrote this in my notepad on February 7, 2012, but at the time I thought it was too close to me to put up.  So I’m having it automaticaly go up a year later.

When I was a teenager I felt lost & scared & alone, but I had this underlying hope that things could change to go my way at any moment.  That I was destined to be somebody.  Now it’s twenty years later & I find myself taking shelter under a bridge.  The hope/delusion is pretty much gone.  I don’t know that I was ever really functioning properly, but now I feel pretty much completely broken.  It’s taken a lot for me to finally admit my place.  It’s taken a lot for me to realize how blessed I am.  Now I just feel ready.  I don’t even know what it is I’m ready for.  Ready to die or ready to be happy or ready to just drudge on through life as I am.  But I’m not waiting anymore.  I’m comfortable & accepting.  I don’t want to manipulate the future.  I just want to accept the present & be satisfied in my place.  My place sitting under a bridge writing my thoughts in a memo pad.

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Straw Man, Star, Small Life Form, Remora, 1984, Clang Quartet, Dream

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Brian John Mitchell

So I knocked out another draft for the Straw Man mini & got it out to David Branstetter per his request yesterday for some mild script changes.  So I think I’m done with that project & can cross it off my to do list.  Which is always a good feeling.

In other comic book news I got an email from Kurt Dinse saying he’s starting work on Star #3.  So hopefully that will be out before the end of the spring & it’s a two parter so maybe issue #4 will be out right behind it.

I’ve been working on the potential big Remora Kickstarter project that I have been kicking the idea around for four months. I think I finally have the narrative for it to tell the idea in a way that sounds more interesting than pretentious.  So hopefully I’ll launch that in a few days.

Unbeknownst to me, Karla shot a couple videos at some of my shows the past couple of month’s.  Here’s the Remora one where while I’m building a feedback wall the promoter comes & tells me if I don’t know how to play my song to get off the stage.

& here’s a Small Life Form one from the Experimental Xmas show in Greensboro.

So some of you may remember a year or two ago I was pretty fascinated by the movie of 1984 from 1954 with Peter Cushing.  Anyway, I randomly stumbled across this version from 1953 starring Eddy Albert (Green Acres) & Lorne Greene (Bonanza, Battlestar Galactica).  It’s not as good to me as the Peter Cushing one or the one made in 1984, but way better than the one from 1956 (though maybe I should give that one another chance).

Clang Quartet did an interview with Miami New Times that is pretty good.  Go check it out.

Last Night’s Dream:
They moved the post office with my PO box & now it’s next to an underage nightclub, so there are always kids milling around after hours.  This one kid starts hassling me, getting in front of me saying, “Who’s the new kid?  Who’s the new kid?” over & over again.  I tell him I’m over thirty-five years old & he says, “Oh, yeah!  Prove it! Swear like a grown up!”  So I say to him, “You are a piece of shit & your mother should have flushed you down the fucking toilet the day you were born.”  His jaw drops & he looks like he’s about to cry & I walk around him.

Posted in comics, daily news, dreams, music, video | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

4 Responses to Straw Man, Star, Small Life Form, Remora, 1984, Clang Quartet, Dream

  1. the girl says:
    February 7, 2013 at 7:27 am

    i like that you didn’t know i took the vids.
    also that you are so much more badass in your dreams than i have ever see you be in real life.
    also i like you.

  2. GoddakkAttack says:
    February 8, 2013 at 8:58 am

    i wish the dialogue between you and the promoter was audible.

  3. Nick says:
    February 10, 2013 at 8:15 am

    so basically promoters hire musicians for small venues without knowing their music?

    • Brian John Mitchell says:
      February 10, 2013 at 11:31 am

      Yeah, a lot of promoters don’t know what the fuck they are doing. I do think going into a bar & expecting people to be into feedback is a stretch & while I have had two or three shows that I knew would be awful that were well received at standard rock or hippie bars, those incidents are few & far between. My music is only fun time music to a very select group of people.

Straw Man, QRD, International Shipping, Dreams

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Brian John Mitchell

So I finally got done with the script for the Straw Man mini I’m doing with David Branstetter & sent it over to him.  It’s a backing story that is a single comic page cut up into one of my minis.  Anyway, he said the story I gave him echoes his plot to an upcoming issue really closely & sent me the script to his issue to re-work my issue to echo it a little more clearly.  It’s kind of nice to do a project that is so close to dead on that it predicts a future issue.

So the new QRD is finally out.  It continues the guitarist interview series.  It’s number 57 & to me that’s pretty insane.  & I have all the interviews for 58 & 59 already on my computer ready to go after I edit them.  I really do still like doing QRD & doing these series interviews.  Just wish I knew a way to get more people to read them.  So anyone that can spread the word, I appreciate it or if you have ideas for me to promote it (without spending money!) let me know.

I went through & adjusted the prices on the whole website increasing the international CD prices to go along with how much shipping now is.  I wanted it to stay as low as I could without screwing the bands out of future royalties & my price point ended up $18, which basically means the amount that comes into Silber for a CD international is the same amount as for the $5 download on the Silber site.  So I like to think I’m still at a rate people will find fair.  Where I think I might hit a snag is international distro.  I think that I’m just not going to be able to sell CDs for a reasonable wholesale price & that kinda sucks.  Also I don’t know if I’m going to continue shipping physical promos out.  Though I guess on the one hand since presumably everyone is going to stop shipping out international promos, being the one company doing it might make sending them out more effective.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m in an episode of Law & Order: SVU & I’m a beat cop guarding a girl who’s parents were both kidnapped.  Mariska’s partner is Ricky from My So-Called Life.

I’m Quinn on Sliders.  Me & Wade have lost The Professor & Rembrandt & the timer; we slid to another world without them.  I tell Wade that if they come to her that she should leave without me & she agrees to it before I finish my sentence, which is a bit of a let down to my ego romance wise.  I take a paper clip & break it in half.  I go out on the balcony of the hotel room & scrapes some paint off the railing to expose bare metal.  I shove the paper clips in my palms to electrify them with my blood & touch the railing to complete the circuit.  A portal opens & I jump off the balcony into it with only the power of my brain to guide me through.

I’m listening to a mash up of “Lift High the Cross” & “Laugh Clown Laugh”.  Are they literally the same tune?

Posted in comics, daily news, dreams, music | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

One Response to Straw Man, QRD, International Shipping, Dreams

  1. noozeroo says:
    February 6, 2013 at 2:05 am

    memba when you could go to most major retailers and CD’s were 18$ off a cd rack?

QRD, Feminism, Remora, Dreams

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Brian John Mitchell

So the new QRD is 95% done.  Sent out links to the interviewees to proof & then it will go live in a day or two.  Then I’ll get to work on the next two issues since the interviews are already on my computer.

So the show I did at the feminist event was a lot less crazy than I anticipated.  I was used to the feminazi-man-hating brand of feminism that was big in the early 1990s when I was in college, but I guess that’s 20 years ago & the movement has calmed down a lot.  To be honest I’m kinda let down by how pacifistic it’s become.  It kind of reminds me of how let down I am by punk becoming more about fashion than rebellion.  It also reminds me that I’ve become this bitter neanderthal out of touch with current reality, which I often like to pretend isn’t true.  Anyway, here’s a little video of me practicing for the ambient guitar stuff I was doing between speakers while young people drank 7 Up mixed with lime sherbert & I drank Newcastle.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m at someone’s house that either does promotion or booking work & in a pile of crap they don’t care about on a table is a double CD re-issue of Warrior Soul’s Salutations from the Ghetto Nation & they let me have it.

An Old Testament angel (a column of fire) wakes me at my bedside to tell me I’ll have twins that will be great soldiers in heaven, but that they will both die in the womb never having seen this world.

I’m eating seafood for the first time in maybe 30 years & I keep throwing up, but shoveling more of it in only to vomit again.

I have two shows booked to play the same night across town from each other & in trying to juggle them I manage to miss performing at either of them.

I’ve been admitted with Karla to a hospital for something (maybe a car accident) & we’re on separate gurneys & each of us get rolled out of the emergency room & pushed down a hill & I’m trying to figure out how to navigate the thing through a neighborhood & it reminds me of going sledding when their are cars on the road.

I’m having a conversation with Karla about how in the Old Testament adoption meant so much more to people & that to say someone was adopted instead of actually related was an insult that was grounds to pull out a sword & lay down a man’s life.

Posted in daily news, dreams, music | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

8 Responses to QRD, Feminism, Remora, Dreams

  1. Nick says:
    February 4, 2013 at 8:10 am

    The feminazi-man-hating brand of feminism of the early 1990s reminded me of this recent Cyanide & Happiness webcomic: http://www.explosm.net/comics/3069/

  2. GoddakkAttack says:
    February 4, 2013 at 8:44 am

    The first actress I was talking to when we were making the Luxuries movie turned down that script cuz she thought it was too sexist.

  3. Peter says:
    February 4, 2013 at 10:25 am

    Looking around the internets, feminism or something that functions in a similar manner seems more relevant/necessary than ever.

Buttons & Dreams

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Brian John Mitchell

So I suddenly have some button orders that I need to get done in the next couple days.  Going to make myself a little crazy now because I really am overbooked as far as work goes because of everything else going on.  We’ll see what happens.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m out for a walk near a golf course & I see two men come out from behind one of the hills dressed as gorillas.  I pound on my chest & they pound on their chests in return.  I see some smaller apes, too thin to be people in suits, carrying little tote bags.  I guess they’re the women & they’re all real apes.  I wish Willy B was here to see this.

I’m in a public restroom & I start levitating against my will.  I’m grabbing on to a urinal trying to force my feet back on to the ground, but the best I can do is hold myself only a couple of inches off the floor.  I guide myself over to the sinks hoping some water will knock me out of it, but the water tastes like rancid ocean water.

I open my cell phone & it’s broken.  I just lost the 200 song ideas I had on it.

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Macedonia, QRD, 5 in 5, Dreams

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Brian John Mitchell

So I have a DJ who supports Silber stuff in Macedonia.  He spins the stuff on the radio & despite never having gotten a direct order from someone in Macedonia I’ve always sent stuff there to build the following & even helped Promute get an on air radio session over there once.  Anyway, on Facebook you can advertise by region & I’ve been advertising in Macedonia & now I have like a third of the Facebook likes coming from there.  So I guess I’m going to go ahead & cut the ads in that region as it seems kind of ridiculous.

I just finished up proofreading the interviews for the new QRD guitarist special.  I’ll be trying to get them all set up as webpages & all that in the next few days & the issue will come out.  Then on to the next two issues (label owners & comic creators) before working on the new interview series (drummers & touring musicians).

Worked up some rough drafts for the press releases for the next couple of releases in the 5 in 5 EP series, which should get me back on schedule with that soonish.

Tonight is the 919 Noise showcase, then doing a Remora thing tomorrow doing the backing music for a feminist open mic, then Friday night is a metal fest with Irata, then Saturday in the day a rock & roll craft fair with my comics & buttons, & Saturday night is the second night of the metal festival, & Sunday there’s an instore show I kinda want to go to.  So it’ll be a full few days that may mean no blog updates.

Last Night’s Dreams:
We’re in an attic of a mansion trying to escape from a cosmic horror.  The man behinds me gets stung by a two foot long scorpion & the venom causes his flesh to fall off his bones before his body even has a chance to fall to the ground.

I’m driving a fuel truck & none of the other people filling up at the load island look familiar to me.  Do I even actually work here?

I’m in a plane going to Hawaii for a series of Silber concerts in the Pacific Rim.  Hotel Hotel & Plumerai are also on the plain & I’m not sure who else.  We’re going over the Rocky Mountains & the plane can’t keep altitude & occasionally there’s a tree scraping the bottom of the plane.  I’m glad my girl isn’t here because she’d be freaking out.  I get on my phone & send a text message to post to Twitter saying the shows might not happen. I hope my equipment doesn’t get damaged in the cargo hold.  The pilot lands the plane on a stretch of highway crashing into some cars & making the nose landing gear collapse.  I just want to play my freaking shows.

There’s a hole in the wall in the bedroom & I see a light coming through.  It should just lead to the living room, but instead hidden in the wall is a whole other room, bigger than the entire apartment.  I put my finger in the hole trying to scratch out the plaster & make it big enough to climb through, but the wood behind the plaster I would need tools to break through.

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One Response to Macedonia, QRD, 5 in 5, Dreams

  1. the girl says:
    January 31, 2013 at 7:44 am

    hey! there really *IS* a hole in the bedroom closet!!!

    i don’t know why, but the dream about the fuel truck made me giggle.

Buttons, Comments, Headaches, Dreams

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Brian John Mitchell

So I’ve been spending a lot of time lately trying to get some buttons ready for my couple of live events this week.  No idea how it will work out.  But I’m hoping to sell 100 buttons over the events I’m at the next three or four days as well as picking up some orders.

I’ve been getting a lot of spam blog comments lately.  In a way it’s a compliment I suppose, but it’s pretty frustrating.  I have some kind of anti-spam thing installed here, but maybe the robots got smarter because it’s gone from four or five comments a day to around 100.  So I’m thinking about adding a captcha thing, which I always hate to see on blogs personally.  I’m hoping for some kind of captcha thing that lets me make custom words & such so I can have it Silber themed, but I’m not sure such a thing exists.

So this week Paypal is doing some minor alterations that most people will never notice, but I had to update my digital download shop software because of.  Yesterday I got an order that didn’t process correctly & supposedly it’s because there was an hour or so yesterday as Paypal switched the process around that no one with a digital shop using Paypal had things work properly.  That’s what the software creator says.  So I’m hoping things are going to work fine now.  I guess I’ll know in a day or two if things have straightened out or if I get more customers not getting their downloads.

I don’t know if you’ve heard (or why you would have), but international shipping just went up dramatically.  It now costs $9.45 to mail a CD to Europe.  So that means my international prices are also going to have to go up dramatically, which sucks.  I love that my prices have been so reasonable for years.  I guess that it’s just one more reason to drift away from physical media (another thing that I hate doing).

Last Night’s Dreams:
I wake up sleeping in a beach house, one of those ones on stilts.  I don’t know who it belongs to or why I’m there, but I get out without being seen & go to the beach wearing my blue work pants.  The wind is cold & it’s hard not to shiver so I walk into the ocean to avoid the wind.  The cold of the water feels good & the waves pulling on me feel like an embrace.  This is home.

My sister got me this plaster caster kit that has two molds, one of a mummy & one of Chewbacca.  After waiting a couple days for the plaster to dry I crack it open & instead ofChewbacca it’s a delicate figure of a woman wearing a dress flowing in the wind & holding an umbrella.

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Buttons, Irata, Plumerai, Vlor, Dreams, ebook, printer, QRD

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Brian John Mitchell

So I’ve been working the past couple of days trying to figure out some things for the button manufacturing stuff.  After my first couple hundred buttons I am already starting to feel myself getting a little faster & better at it.  I did have a problem that I have previously had a complaint about my color laser printer not looking as sharp as it should.  I ended up getting it to look right by doing a print file command instead of printing from Photoshop, which makes no sense to me.  But it will improve some things from here on out with everything I work on in color, so that’s good.

All week I’ve been working on a song placement for Vlor on a TV show.  I’m not really allowed to say what it’s for as of yet, but I got some money upfront & will be getting some backend as well.  So I’m pretty excited.  It’s a new up & coming music supervisor so hopefully some more music will be getting used in the future as things go on & Silber will be making enough money off of music to stay afloat again (last year Silber stayed alive off of the mini-comic Kickstarters).

So the other day I mentioned my Cyberpunk Apocalypse: Artistic Evidence ebook.  Now I’ve got it up on Amazon.  I hope to eventually sell some there (even though it’s a higher price for a lower resolution copy than what I’m selling on Silber) from people just stumbling on it.  If you can click the link & click the “like button” to increase visibility I’d appreciate it.  We’ll see how it works out as ebooks are theoretically one of the things I want to do to generate a passive revenue stream for Silber this year.

Got some work done proof reading the interviews for the new QRD.  Should have it up by next week.  We’ll see what happens.

Last week Irata played a show.  Here’s some crappy video I shot of it.

Here’s a recording of Plumerai covering the Cure song “Cold.”

Last Night’s Dream:
I am in some abandoned building at a party with a bunch of my former co-workers.  Everybody’s getting high off of Robitussin & I’m trying to figure out if it’s really getting me intoxicated or just reminding me of being intoxicated because it’s so nauseating.  I go to a bathroom & there’s a girl passed out on the floor & another passed out in the bathtub.  I start throwing up & I throw up so hard that literal shit is coming out my mouth & I’m afraid I’m going to choke on it & the taste of it is making me throw up even harder.

Posted in buttons, daily news, dreams, music, video | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

2 Responses to Buttons, Irata, Plumerai, Vlor, Dreams, ebook, printer, QRD

  1. Nick says:
    January 26, 2013 at 8:08 am

    Write a song on Robitussin…

Aarktica, Remora, ebooks, 5 in 5 series, Electric Bird Noise, Buttons, Dreams

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Brian John Mitchell

Been a few days since I posted, but I’ve actually been doing some stuff.

So I can’t remember how much I talked about it on here, but I bought a semi-industrial button maker.  So if you need some one inch buttons I can make them for you.  Here’s more information on getting buttons.

I got a nice big review in A Closer Listen of the Silber 5 in 5 EP series.  I need to get on the ball with getting some more releases prepped for the series.  Writing the press releases sometimes feels like I’m pulling my own teeth.

I got out all of the pre-ordered stuff from my Pittsburgh residency.  So now if you’ve been pining after one of the sketchcards or mini-paintings you can purchase one.  Also you can get the 284 page ebook about the residency for $1.  I’m planning on trying to get the ebook to the typical ebook vendors soon.  But I’m not really sure exactly what that entails.

I have in the new Electric Bird Noise CD.  It’ll be a few days until everything is done & it’s available.  But soon as I like to say.

Aarktica has a track featured on a documentary that is touring around after premiering at Sundance called The Crash Reel.  You can find out more about that right here.

I decided to get some business cards made after 15 years.  Here’s what they look like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So the other day I had a Remora show down in Myrtle Beach at a biker bar.  Kind of an inappropriate venue & people were yelling for Skynyrd & not being ironic.  Eventually the booker asked me to stop playing because of the people leaving, which is fine.  At least I cleared out some of the hecklers for the next bands.  Anyway, here are a couple of things of me practicing to get ready for the show if you are interested.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m going through some dollar bin comics & I find a weird split comic of Anarchy Comics & DC’s New Talent Showcase which I don’t buy.  But I do buy some weird split comic that is half a pirate comic & half a space comic.

I’m staying at an overbooked hotel with my girlfriend.  Staying in the same room as us are two migrant workers & two drunken crust punks.  I go to the bathroom & cut my beard short with my box cutter so I’ll be ready to fight.  I hold my girlfriend tight against me as we sleep laying on our left sides with my right hand clenched in a fist & my arm flexed ready to start swinging.

I’m working in an industrial kitchen.  We’re taking almonds on a cookie sheet out of an oven & pouring them in a big bin of what looks like flour & my job is raking them in the flour to make sure they are fully covered.

Posted in art, buttons, daily news, dreams, movies & television, music, video | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

2 Responses to Aarktica, Remora, ebooks, 5 in 5 series, Electric Bird Noise, Buttons, Dreams

  1. the girl says:
    January 23, 2013 at 2:34 pm

    busy, busy, busy!!!

    i have video of last song of the SC show set i can upload if you’d like?

Silber Charts for all of 2012

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Brian John Mitchell

Here’s the charts for all of 2012 on Silber.  The most interesting thing to me might be that three of the most read articles on QRD this year were all from issue #43 back in 2010.  It seems odd to me that the issue of Lost Kisses with the most downloads is #4.  It’s also a surprise to me that Remora’s Scars Bring Hope from 2011 was the second most read about release & that only half of the most downloaded releases came out this year.  I am going to try to look at things positively & say it means more people are still discovering Silber instead of that the new stuff isn’t doing as well.  Anyway, thank you all for your interest & support.

Top Five Most Read Silber Digital Comics in 2012
1. REH #1
2. Just A Man #1
3. Mecha
4. Lost Kisses #4
5. Extreme Lost Kisses #1

Top Five Most Read About Silber Releases in 2012
1. Northern Valentine – Fin de Siecle
2. Remora – Scars Bring Hope
3. mwvm – Had Yr Pash
4. Brian John Mitchell & Andrew Weathers – Drone is in the Blood
5. Sarah June – In Black Robes

Top Ten Silber Album Downloads in 2012
1. mwvm – Had Yr Pash
2. Plumerai – Marco Polo
3. Brian John Mitchell & Andrew Weathers – Drone is in the Blood
4. Promute – Drone of the Norns
5. Northern Valentine – Fin de Siecle
6. Various Artists – Six Feet Below the Snow
7. Electric Bird Noise – Live At The Basement
8. Rllrbll – Murwa Mbwa
9. Magi – December
10. Thorn1 – Oblivion

Top Five Most Read QRD Interviews in 2012
1. Erin O’Brien (issue 29 (2005))
2. Brian Elyo (issue 43 – Guitarist Interviews III (2010))
3. Alan Sparhawk (issue 46 – Guitarist Interviews IV (2010))
4. Nick Reinhart (issue 43 – Guitarist Interviews III (2010))
5. Agata of Melt-Banana (issue 43 – Guitarist Interviews III (2010))

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