Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m back at my job at the airport & my one co-worker that I could never stand keeps hugging me. I’d hoped she would’ve left in the time I was gone.
I wake up with somebody yelling outside & I get up & go outside (which means I must not be conscious enough to just ignore the shit & go back to sleep) & the neighbor across the street is the one yelling & for some reason instead of a shirt he’s wearing one of the plastic sacks like oranges come in.
Feels like a big day for things getting done though I have nothing to show for it as yet.
I got the confirmation for me going out with The Independents as their merch guy in January & then a couple of Remora shows tacked in to the end after we get back to South Carolina.
For a while now I’ve been wanting to do something where I have a page on the Silber site where all the content is aggregated from other sites, but I didn’t know how to do it at all. Thanks to Silber intern Bill Pernell it is going to come to fruition pretty soon. Trying to figure it all out, but I’m pretty excited about it right now. Curious of your opinion on if I should have a separate page for comic news than music news or if I should go with two columns on one page.
GoddakkAttack says: mix it up in one column. Music folk will learn about Comics and vice versa.
Yesterday I spent the majority of the day taking my niece & nephew to go Christmas shopping for their family. I did it two years ago when my brother & his wife first split up & I got some bad mouthing about that it wasn’t my place & I shouldn’t have done it (& I wouldn’t have if either of the parents had). Last year the kids didn’t get gifts for folks. So I took them out again this year. It’s funny because I really don’t get people Christmas gifts on my own because I just don’t like the idea of buying somebody something that they will just throw away later & that seems like 90% of gifts (it’s also worth noting that I don’t like getting gifts myself for the reason that it’s pretty rare for someone to get me something I want as I don’t even know what I want), but I do want to pass along to my niece & nephew that Christmas is about them giving gifts instead of receiving them.
I also made these little wooden puzzle boxes I’m postulating trying to sell at shows. People are suggesting $5 as a price point. This batch cost me $3 a piece to make, so I’d need to find a way to lower that if I want $5 to be worth my time. Of course I guess part of it is hopefully they come to buy the puzzle box & then I can up-sell some CDs & comics.
Last Night’s Dream:
I’m an old man walking with a cane. One of those metal canes with four feet on the bottom. My left hip feels like it could break at any time.
I went through today on the Alphabetical Archive Page on QRD & added the 200+ interviews since the last time I updated it (a year & a half ago). Hard to believe I’ve gotten that many interviews in the past year & a half (there was a one year hiatus before that). I’ll try to get some more soon. I am going to try to get QRD set up for a push for requesting paying ads & adswaps & doing a couple of new issues early next year. We’ll see what happens.
I found out that Remora‘s Scars Bring Hope was listed in the weekly here as a local album of note for 2011. Funny to see that on the list & it makes me sad that it doesn’t lead to a single sale.
I found this free guitar tuner software for PCs that seems to work okay. I tried a couple others & this one clearly seems the best. I feel like I’m moving into 1999 when everyone else is moving into 2012!
So the Butterfly Corpse practice was interesting. For one thing Darin wants to change the name to Butterfly Apocalypse. For another thing I wanted it to be a little jammy & Darin wants things planned out pretty meticulously. The first couple of hours were some headaches, but the last hour we maybe got it solid. Instead of the super simple drum stuff, we ended up going with keyboard drones as the backbone & Darin played a bass with a wah & I played my guitar pretty high up the neck & did some looping stuff. So maybe next week I’ll record something rough.
I did a post on Finally Checking It Out about this tv show Total Recall 2070 that I watched over the past couple of weeks.
Last Night’s Dream:
I’m at some theater on tour & Porter Wagoner is playing & he’s asked to borrow my guitar. Somehow as he’s playing the strap comes unhooked on the butt of the guitar & I’m scared he’s going to smash it, but instead he stops playing & makes a joke about them not making guitars like they used to. Later we’re drinking screwdrivers (delivered in pitchers) in the basement of the theater that serves as the backstage & he’s telling me that when it comes to getting married you have to be careful because a lot of women assume that when you have an affair that it’s intentional & they don’t understand that it’s just something that happens & doesn’t mean you want to leave her.
N. says: Scars Bring Hope is such a beautiful album. What they wrote on Foxy Digitalis might be true: “You get the feeling that with a little exposure, if the right people hear the right songs, and if the artist himself is that way inclined, Remora could be huge”.
I got an email from Martin Newman (Plumerai/Goddaakk) about if I was still doing Nostalgia Equals Distortion & Finally Checking It Out as there haven’t been posts on either of them in quite a while. The answer is yes & I hope to start putting more content on them again soon. I just made it so that new entries will automatically post into Twitter in hopes of it getting back on track with people other than me (& Martin) posting things there. It’s pretty hard to keep a blog going when you can’t tell if anyone cares about you doing it or not.
I’ve been breaking guitar strings a lot lately. Four in the past six weeks & probably about six in the past three years since I switched to teflon saddles. On inspection I think it might be from my guitar pick which is kinda worn down & gnarled (I’ve managed to use this one for a few years without losing it). So if anyone wants the guitar pick that was used on Remora recordings like Derivative, Ensoulment, Anti-Guitar Hero, & Scars Bring Hope let me know & I’ll mail it to you.
Spent a bunch of time yesterday trying to get paperwork done for Silber so I can get royalty checks out before the end of the year (I ended up missing getting the third quarter checks out because of thing with my grandmother) instead of at the beginning of next year. This year is in the red for the first time in a long time so if I get the artist royalties out this year at least next year doesn’t start out with a deficit.
Tonight is the first practice for my new project Butterfly Corpse. We’ll see how it ends up. Hoping that it doesn’t end up in my long list of project ideas where things just never quite came to fruition (My Glass Beside Yours, Muscle Mass, Panthan, Jazzus Priest, The Call Of…). I think in the end some of my projects I would like to revive & make happen even if I’m the only member & others I should just bring in their elements under the Remora banner.
Been thinking a bit about my plan for an even smaller than my standard sized mini-comics that will tentatively be called The Saddest Bastard (take off on the genre of semi-auto-biographical works where people are mainly complaining). Thinking about having nearly identical images on each page that would more or less be talking head shots to emphasize the narcissistic aspect of that kind of book.
I came up with the idea of making some mini puzzle boxes to sell at art & comic shows as I think they might be better objects for people to buy as gifts than the comics as it seems like novel gifts are what people want to buy at events.
Here’s a mini-doc (16 minutes) about Rllrbll from The Instigators. I really wish there were more people doing things like this about those in their local community.
& here’s another little doc from the same folks about experimental music in Portland.
Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m with my buddy Don driving home from the mountains & there’s flooding everywhere & I’m just trying to get home. Constantly hydroplaning & occasionally bouncing off of guard rails, but always going forward. It’s just a matter of time until the water’s too deep to even try to drive….
I’m hanging out with this girl & I notice she has something written on her hand. I’m trying to figure out what it says without asking & I realize it’s one of my ex-girlfriend’s address & phone number. What the fuck is that about? Is she her property or something?
I have to call & cancel some plans with a friend because of taking care of my grandmother. Then someone else calls & needs a ride from the airport & I’m their last resort emergency call so I get my grandmother & put her in the car & drive out to the airport.
There’s a comic I’ve been supposed to write for a collaborator for about six months & today I plowed through a couple drafts of it & sent it over. We’ll see if he digs the script &/or still wants to collaborate after my delay in getting the thing done. The tentative title is Astronaut Jane.
Mixed up a batch of mead today. Somehow it’s not as exciting to do now as it was the first few times.
Me & Peter Aldrich finished up the video for Remora‘s “Teddy Bear” song tonight. It is absolutely ridiculous, but I’m pretty happy with it.
I went through & made the all the webmail contacts for the recent releases. Which means I’m 99% done on what I know to do to promote them. I still have a few forums that I need to check if they are still active & then I’ll just wait & see if anything happens.
For some reason a bunch of people contacted me today about doing various things. Supposed to work on the “Teddy Bear” video with Peter Aldrich tomorrow. Then on Thursday is the first band practice or whatever for Butterfly Corpse (& potentially continuing to meet weekly). My one brother is taking off work the week between Christmas & New Years & asked about me coming down to visit. Martin & James from Plumerai are going to be in NC the weekend around January 8. I might go out with Brian McKenzie in mid-January doing merch for The Independents & then Melissa Garnder asked about me going up to Madison & hanging out & working on stuff.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how there seems to be a lot of things going on using computer technology that is really putting the ability to work on decent sounding (if not terribly innovative & original) music in the hands of the masses. Which as someone who loves working with music I think is awesome. However as someone who grew up thinking they could make money off of music I think it’s the end of an era. Which is fine I guess. Somewhere along the way music in a certain way has been commandeered from the masses. It’s not like before the invention of radio when most families had a decent musician & a decent story teller living in the house & the idea of professionally doing such a thing was about as valid as planning to win the lottery today. I really can’t say it going back to music being a fun & entertaining thing that 25% of the populace takes part in is a bad thing even if it means the end of the working class musician. It’s always interesting to look at things with a future historian perspective & see the anomalies & fluxes of things. Anyway, this reminds me of a story. I know a guy that is a lawyer & makes a lot of money & on the side he’s in a band with other folks from his social circle (I know that one is a dentist & can’t remember the other professions) & they occasionally take time out & go on tour for a few weeks. Someone else I vaguely know is in a band they take with them when they go on tour. The unwealthy band books the gigs & the wealthy band pays most of the expenses. Which I think sounds pretty awesome of them & I like the rich guys are supporting the arts, but the other band makes fun of their music not being that awesome. I don’t really know my point of this story, but I thought I’d tell it. Thanks for letting me share.
Here’s today’s big news, a new video from Jon DeRosa for his song “Anchored”:
So I spent a lot of the day trying to figure out how to edit some of the video footage from my show & it’s too big of a pain for me to do it, so I’m going to see about getting a couple other people to. Basically the camera I bought is designed to work with Apple stuff & so I can’t edit without converting the files first & because it’s HD it converts at a rate of something like 30 minutes to process a minute of video (which I guess would probably speed up a bit if I wasn’t multi-tasking on the machine, but would still suck). I don’t even know if the super simple editing software I have can handle HD video even after it is converted.
Anyway, here’s the first few minutes of the Remora show from yesterday.
& here’s something you’ll hopefully find funny.
GoddakkAttack says: do you recall what kind of file it imports as? James’s camera imports MTS and even with all my fancy schmancy gear…unless i upgrade my actual machine i can’t do anything with it.
It’s *.mov. I have a couple of folks that are going to try to work on it for me. But I suppose eventually I’ll need to get a camera that outputs to something I can work with or a computer that can work with what the cameras put out….
is your neighbor from jersey?