Monthly (new comic), Music Supervisors, Pandora, Jango, Gajoob.

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

I wrote the script (drafts one thru three) for a new mini-comic tentatively called Monthly (don’t worry, it won’t come out that often, might be a one-shot).  Contacted my first pick for an artist for it.  We’ll see if he bites or if it’ll sit around for a year or two without anything happening.  Or maybe both!

Got some work done for getting some music in with more music supervisors.  We’ll see what happens on that.  Always a wait & see prospect.

I finally submitted Vlor for Pandora.  I should hear about that sometime in 2011.

I had a credit for 100 free plays on Jango & used a Remora song off of Mecha.  We’ll see if anything happens.  I probably should’ve gone with something more commercial, but I kinda feel the real test of a service is it’s ability to push non-commercial material.

I also submitted a Remora track for the upcoming comp for Gajoob.

Hoping to get more done on actual music tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.

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30 Seconds, Blogging Failure, Dreams (Dr Who content)

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Made the pdf booklet for 30 Seconds of Time (official title).  Talked to Ben & he’s going to be working on the press release.  This time more than ever I’m really pushing him in the “my internship program is about getting you ready to run your own label” territory.  It’s actually kind of hard for me let go of control enough to let it happen, so it’s a big plus for my growth as well.

I got denied from joining this paying blogging content community saying my writing isn’t good enough.  Wow.  I didn’t see that coming.  Biggest insult to my writing in seventeen years (the comment back then was “after very careful consideration we have found no use for your writing” from New Directions).

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m having an argument with my father about the thermostat settings.
Me: “It gets cold at night & seventy is reasonable.  We have a 95 year old woman living in the house.”
Him: “You’re always exaggerating! She’s only 94!  It’s not your money paying for the heat.”
Me: “I need to stop talking to you before I say something that I don’t want you to hear.”
I walk away & the thing I wanted to say is “Wait & see if I’ll take care of you in 30 years” & the more I think about it, the more I remember that my father always wished I’d never been born.

I’m watching an episode of Dr. Who.  It’s some sort of Halloween episode & they are in a basement that has blood smeared on walls.  It’s also one of those episodes where all the little puzzle pieces from the whole season are revealed to fit together.  There’s a portion of the basement that is unfinished & in it the doctor finds a massive piece of cast plaster that is an image of a mechanical man & is signed Stravinsky.  The Doctor calls it “the original Iron Man” & makes the joke “You can’t believe Iron Man was originated by Stan Lee or Ozzy Osborne.”  & as he is wiping the dirt out of the image he finds the face is his & he says, “All this time.  Time.  I’m a clockwork….” He pulls off a hand revealing that he is in fact a machine.  I’m not sure if it is exclusively this incarnation of the Doctor that is a machine or if they always have been & if the all Time Lords are mechanical (which would make their rivalry with the Daleks & Cybermen all the more appropriate).

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30 Seconds, Demo Stream, Teen Socialization, Nephew’s Dream

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Okay, the 30 second comp is finished for mastering.  Still have to do all the uploading & MP3 conversions & artwork adjustments & such.  But it’s close to becoming available.

I’ve been thinking about making a demo page on the Silber site with demos of a release streaming.  I don’t know if anyone would really care, but it sounds like something that six or seven people might find fun.

Talked with Ben Collins & he had a couple questions to add to the label owners series.

Talked with Kirk Adam a bit about maybe doing some more helping with the Ava Gardner Independent Film Festival next year.  We’ll see what happens.

I spent the majority of the day working on an article about changes in music as a center for socialization in youth.  I’m not sure who if anyone will be interested in it.  I’ll probably have a link up for you tomorrow.  I’m planning on trying out that Suite101 site that is supposed to pay you for articles with it.  We’ll see if I make it to earn five dollars on that site.

My Nephew’s Dream from Last Night:
“I’m in a dark room with a lot of doors.  Each door leads into someone’s house.  Somebody is coming to close & lock all the doors.”
Wow, this one totally could’ve been my dream.  The clear feeling of being trapped & the general paranoia & lack of control doesn’t seem like it is something for a ten year old.

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Label Interview Series

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Got my mastering before sleep done last night.  Sent Nic Slaton a boosted up version of his track for the 30 second comp & he’s going to try to get me a replacement for it.  So then I’ll have that up & running.

Okay, so the big event for the day is that I got the label owner interview series questions typed up for submitting to labels.  I figured I’d let you look over them & see if there are any questions I’m having glaring omissions of & stuff like that.  Too many questions probably as I imagine this will be a minimum of a three hour long to answer interview, but like the other series, I want this to be the definitive interview on the subject for anyone who takes part in it.

1. When & why did you start your label?
2. Where did you get the money to finance your first few releases?
3. How many releases have you put out?
4. How many releases would you like to do a year?
5. How many hours a week do you work on the label & how many would you like to?
6. What are the fun &/or rewarding parts about running a label?
7. What do you feel is the biggest waste of your time running the label?
8. What are some labels you admire or feel a kinship to?
9. What other work experiences prepared you to have a label?
10. What makes you label special & unique?
11. How has your physical location effected your label?
12. What’s your demos policy?
13. How do you find out about new artists for your label?
14. How do most fans find out about your label?
15. What’s been your biggest selling release & why do you think it was?
16. What are some things that make you want to work with a band?
17. What are some things that would make you stop working with a band?
18. What is the thing all releases on your label have in common?
19. How involved are you with a band for acting as a producer as far as hearing demo ideas or selecting tracks to be on a release or mixing & mastering?
20. How involved do you like to be in the artwork design for a release?
21. How long is it from when an artist delivers an album to you until release date & why?
22. If a band breaks up between the recording of a release & the release date, how does that effect what you do?
23. What do you wish bands on your label would do?
24. What’s a record you’d like to put out that you’ll never be able to?
25. If you really like a band, but aren’t sure you could sell many copies of their record; what do you do?
26. How is financing of a release split between artists & the label?
27. How do you split profits from a release between artists & your label?
28. Do you have written contracts with your bands or handshake deals?
29. Do you take a cut of a band’s publishing?
30. How important is it to you to have touring acts on your roster & what do you do to encourage it?
31. Do you handle promotions in house or hire out & why?
32. How do you maintain contact with your fanbase?
33. Do you have intern & street team programs & if so, how do they operate?
34. How big of a staff do you have & how big of one do you need?
35. What do you do to build relationships with record stores?
36. What do you do to build relationships with radio stations?
37. What do you do to build relationships with magazines & websites?
38. What do you do to build relationships with bloggers?
39. Do you view advertisements as a way to generate interest & revenue or more as a way to financially support magazines & websites you like?
40. What is the job of your distributors?
41. How do you decide how big the initial pressing of a release should be?
42. What percentage of a pressing do you use for promotions?
43. Do you sell merchandise other than the music (t-shirts, etc.)?
44. Do you sell music that is not on your label?
45. How has running a label effected your own artistic career?
46. Ideally, would you release your own material?
47. What do you do to try to build a sense of community within your roster?
48. What’s your most common conversation with bands as far as balancing artistic integrity & financial viability?
49. How often do you look at your “return on investment” & adjust your business model?
50. Do you worry about search engine optimization & website traffic?
51. What have you done to cut costs over the years?
52. Do you think the album format is dead?
53. Do you think the return of vinyl & cassettes is a fad?
54. Is it important to have physical releases over digital ones or does it not matter?
55. What do you think of ultra-limited runs of releases (less than 100 discs)?
56. What do you think of “print on demand” discs?
57. How much content do you feel should be available free to fans?
58. What do you do about people distributing your music without financial compensation (piracy & file trading)?
59. What’s something you see other labels do that you think of as borderline unethical?
60. What changes in things would cause you to stop your label?
61. What would you suggest to someone starting a label today?
62. Where do you think money is currently most available to labels/musicians & where in the future?
63. Why do you think labels are still important to artists?
64. Music has had different hotspots on the internet over the years (newsgroups, MP3.com, MySpace, LastFM), but with MySpace’s decline, what do you see as the place where “normal” people go to find out about & get excited by new music?
65. In 20 years what do you think/hope your label will be known/remembered for?

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Hong Kong, Homemade Fantasies, Long Drone

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Rough day with trying to get work done, so to cheer myself up I bought ten dollars worth of cheap little gadgets from Hong Kong (little lasers & solar toys).  Don’t know what I’ll really do with them if they ever actually arrive.

I’ve been thinking about trying to do some stuff with building my own instruments.  You know like the thing where you get a 12 foot long 2×4 & put a couple piano wires on it.  Except, that thing won’t be able to leave my house….  But also maybe a super primitive guitar or something using springs screwed in to different depths in a piece of wood so they are pitched.  Anybody with a bunch of defective push button pens that wants to mail me the old springs, that would be awesome….

There was a site distributing Aarktica: In Sea without permission that I had to contact about taking it down & it tried to give my computer a virus.  Not too kosher.

Decided I’m going to build some more layers on my long drone piece.  I think maybe six or seven more tracks to it.  Four of room mic manipulation & feedback generation & then one or two of standard guitar & one of copper pipe.  Who knows, maybe I’ll add one of percussion in the end.  Who knows if my computer will be able to mix it….

Going to try to do a little bit of mastering on a couple tracks before falling asleep.

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QRD Updates, Glamourkisses, The Hagstone Demon, Dreams

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

I finished the editing/reformatting/whatever for the back issues of QRD.  There are some other things to do fixing up all the interviews with an individual to link together (so you can easily hop from on Lycia interview to the next), but I’m pretty satisfied at the moment.  I can’t remember if I mentioned it already or not, but I did add average cost per impression prices on the QRD advertisers page.  Hopefully the numbers will become incorrect (meaning same prices, more viewers, better deals) & I’ll be getting more visitors.  We’ll see how things go.

Wrote two rough drafts for Glamourkisses stories.  Pretty stoked about it.  Though we’ll see if they pass as interesting & appropriate to Dave Sim.  A couple months ago when I tried to work on them I couldn’t figure out any tales that didn’t involve substance abuse & moral decay & that was something I did not want to dwell on or think about, so it was nice to write stories about killing people & escaping small towns.  Much more pleasant fair….

I went down to the Ava Gardner Independent Film Festival & got to see The Hagstone Demon which stars Mark from American Movie.  Not great, but a lot of fun.  I also met up with a few people who wanted to discuss the Vlor “Watch Me Bleed” video & Small Life Form “Optical 1″ video.  So it made me feel like I’m doing something right.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m Dustin Hoffman & I’m in college.  I have a girlfriend & she is hot.  She totally outclasses me & should have nothing to do with me.  Before I can have sex with her I need her to perform a religious ceremony where we’re both fully submerged baptised together, but the only place to do it in this small town is in a condemned church.  The stonewalls are crumbling & there are holes in the roof, but somehow a beam of light comes down on the shimmering pools brighter than there should be at night & the water is clean & pure if slightly cold.  While in the water I realize that the water might be the source of the light & at the same time I realize I want this woman to be my wife & that we have just performed some ancient wedding ceremony.

I’m out on the town with Nick Marino.  I couldn’t even tell you which town it is, but since it’s Nick Marino I’m guessing Pittsburgh (though it feels more like a city not associated with a river or water).  It’s for some festival where half the downtown streets are closed to traffic & all the art galleries are open & everyone seems to be giving away free beer & I’m way past my “if I drink more than three or four beers I’m not going to feel good tomorrow” limit.  I go into a coffee shop & realize I’ve lost Nick.  I sit down at an empty chair at a table where two young women are working on a crossword puzzle (something I would never do sober).  I take off my book bag & it is filled with weekly papers with blurbs about me playing each market.  I don’t even know why I have these things?  Am I keeping them for nostalgia, to use to impress someone, or to have as a blanket if I sleep outside?  I throw them all into the trash & close my eyes.  I can feel the room spinning as I pass out & it feels like home.

I’m on tour & I’m at a rest area.  The leaves are changing & I just sit in my car staring at them.  This is a better way to spend my time than almost anything I can think of.  I never should’ve become a musician.  I should’ve become something that allowed me to sit still & enjoy nature.

Plumerai is on tour & they are playing as a three piece of James, Martin, & Todd without a singer.  They’re playing at The Nightlight & Jennifer Coleman (burMonter) is there so we decide to do a little burMonter reunion of “Thirteen Layers of Heaven.” Todd goes into the audience, James gets on the drums, & Martin gets on the bass, & I get on the guitar.  The guitar is a blue Ibanez that I think at one time belonged to Jennifer, she played it at a show in 1995 & I don’t remember ever seeing her play a guitar again after that.  I’m looking at the pedals trying to get settings that will be close to what I need & the only pedal I recognize is an ElectroHarmonix tremolo (which I don’t need), all of the other pedals are some weird tube based pedals that have a standby stomp as well as an on stomp.  I just twist them all to ten & hope for the best.  The sound is close enough but it isn’t loud enough & the amp looks like it is just two tweeters & no regular speakers & it sounds like they might rip apart & I wish I had my Jazz Chorus, but the song is already starting & I realize I can’t remember the fingerings.  I let my left hand go on instinct & my right hand starts pounding out the notes harder than usual because I’m nervous & I’m just waiting for the string to break at the bridge.  The string does break, but it breaks at the nut & rather than shifiting to play the riff on a different string I’m pulling the string at different tensions to get the pitches & it’s cutting my left hand open.  At least it adds some theatrics to everything.

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Media, QRD, Mecha

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

So I’ve been making a concerted effort the past few days to take in media.  Today I listened to Willie Nelson’s The Red Headed Stranger which actually wan’t quite as good as I’d remembered it being.  I also finally watched The Man Who Laughs & while I always new I would watch it one day & I suppose I enjoyed it, I’m not sure I’ll ever watch it again or read the book.  I probably never would’ve heard of it & be settled with the idea that Hunchback is Hugo’s only major work if it weren’t for the whole connection to The Joker (from Batman) to the movie.  It’s typical to most of the surviving silent films in it’s level of weirdness of plot & strange mix of comedy & drama & beautiful cinematography.  Probably soon I’ll watch Birth of a Nation as it has been on my list of movies I know I should eventually see for about 20 years now.

Did a bunch of work on back issues of QRD again today.  The issues with 20 interviews take a while to do.  I think I have around five issues left to do….

I’m vaguely thinking about doing a sequel to Mecha.  Part of the reason why is that my phone screen is broken, so I can’t use my phone to record demo ideas & so today I ended up using the Little Drummer Boy software to record a song idea.  Another part is I do like the idea of making this primitive future music that has no real simulation to what I do with a guitar or even a keyboard for that matter.  We’ll see what happens.  Just another one of the 20 albums I’m always working on in my mind.

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XLK, Bob Dylan, Remora, NIN, Remixery

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

I got in the final artwork for Extreme Lost Kisses by Nick Marino.  It’s a stick figure comic of a Rambo story basically.  We’ll see how well received it end up after it comes out.  I like that it kind of makes fun of me & is entertaining in roughly equal amounts.

I was listening to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan today because I wanted to hear the song “Masters of War.”  I typically walk around saying Bob Dylan doesn’t have an album that’s solid from start to finish, but this one has grown on me a bit over the past couple years.  Just like on Neil Young’s Harvest I started out laughing at “A Man Needs a Maid” & it has somehow become my favorite track on the album, maybe some of the clunkers here will shine for me eventually.  I guess I need to track down my copy of Blonde on Blonde again & give it another chance as well.

Hung out with Peter Aldrich tonight so he could listen to the working copy of the Remora record (is it being a jerk to not give people a copy of a rough version of a record & making them listen to it beside you or just the way you need to do things if you don’t want it distributed before release?)& see what his ideas were.  A lot of his ideas were the same as mine.  Two or three edits on two or three songs.  Mild switching of track order.  He did say that I shouldn’t call the album by the working title because there is a song on the album that three or four people have told me, “Oh, this is like that Nine Inch Nails song,” & the album title also sounded like it could be a NIN reference.  Funny since I never have really listened to him.  I own a copy of Pretty Hate Machine & a disc of demos from PHM & at one point I owned Broken but have no idea what happened to it.  I have yet to hear The Downward Spiral, but rumor has it that it is good.  So I guess I need a new album title.  Most importantly Pete asked if the song “We Come from the Sea” (the only song remaining from my Lovecraftian band The Call of…) was about “The Shadow over Innsmouth” & while I’m not sure if that is the exact story it was referencing, it was nice to find it came across that clearly.  He didn’t pick up on me ripping off Kreator (nor has anyone else), so I think I’m going to be in the clear on that one.

For those of you interested, the 919noise folks are working on a new kinda remixy comp – http://www.blondenamusic.com/919noise.html  All are invited.

There’ve been a bunch of reviews coming in this week for some reason.  It’s nice to feel like there’s a buzz & things are on the upswing.

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QRD, Paperwork, Remora

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Did some work towards the next QRD tonight.  I have six interviews in for the bass series so far (three for guitar that were too late for the last issue), so I’m about to send out some reminders.  Not sure exactly when the issue will happen, but hopefully fairly soon.

Got some more paperwork done for Silber.  I had a stack of about 20 receipts I needed to get placed in.  I’m running a little higher on income for the year than anticipated thanks to the recent royalty & distro checks.  So I need to look out for some things.

Talked to Brian McKenzie a bit today about the new Remora record.  He’s going to be out of town for a month so I have that long to sit around figuring what I like & don’t like about it currently.  I’m pretty stoked on its potential.

Not a lot else done today unfortunately.  The care of my grandmother seems to be getting to the point where multi-tasking while she is awake isn’t too possible.  Kinda sucks.

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Positivity & a Bunch of Dreams

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Got another distro order today.  Starting to feel like things are looking up despite the fact that the word on the street is digital download earnings for music across the board were down for the third quarter from the second quarter of this year.  I’m looking at my paperwork & the way I’ve restructured the label to have lower costs & I really feel good about things.

Melissa Gardner (xo) asked me about publishing her next solo mini-comic.  I suppose it is about time that I started doing this kind of thing.  Haven’t gotten into the details of format & sizes yet.  We’ll see what happens.  I’m willing to help my friends not lose money as long as I’m not losing money.

Finally started a little work on my “glamour kisses” mini-comic project.  Not sure exactly where it’s headed.  The first story is just really pretty assassin type fair.  But I’m hoping if I just pound them out I will get some actually really interesting stories out.

Watched Starship Troopers 3 on YouTube in ten minute chunks.  I personally enjoyed it.  I liked that you finally get to see the main technology of the novel in the third installment of the franchise & even then for just ten minutes.  I can’t say it was good, but it was better than part two.  It’s maybe a good movie in the same way Return of the Living Dead Part 3 is a good movie.  There’s a good movie hiding in their that didn’t quite make it out….

Last Night’s Dreams (I think I have a higher than average amount of hotel dreams):
My brother is playing tennis.  His ex-wife (recently divorced from her second husband) shows up at the courts yelling at my brother that he still has a nice ass.  She has a box cutter in her hand as she is doing this.  He says to her through the fence, “Look you crazy bitch.  Leave me the fuck alone or I will take a knife & cut your throat open.”

I’m with this girl that I’m not quite sure how I’m associated with her (it is clearly not romantic from my side) & she’s trying to check into this hotel & get the special $25 rate.  The clerk (who looks like Nicholas Cage) says he wants to show her the room before he does the paperwork because she might not like it.  We go up the stairs to the third floor & there’s a little gate he opens with a keycard so we can get to the fourth floor.  There is only one room on the fourth floor & the ceiling of it is around 5’2″, but the girl is probably about 4’10″.  I tell her, “Your short, you should love this room.”

I’m on tour with PD Wilder.  Both of us have our cell phones broken in such a way that we can’t get in touch with each other & we’re separated at a hotel & I’m the only one with the room key.  I don’t know what to do so I go to the room.  The room is like one of those really weird to me euro hotels where their is no wall separating the bathroom from the rest of the room.  Where the fuck are we touring?

I’m running late getting ready for a show opening for Rollerball.  The town is defnitely a town that I live in, but not Raleigh.  Maybe Seattle?  I don’t want to fuck things up, because it is a good money gig that I lined up for them, but I literally smell bad & need to take a shower & that will make me even later.

I’m sitting at home & I look on top of my TV & there are two copies of the Criterion Collection Lon Cheney Box Set that includes Laugh Clown Laugh.  Where did the second copy come from?  Who the hell am I living with?

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