To Brandon Soderberg: my bad. I was kinda flippant and dismissive in my last post, when I wrote: “I’d rag on the punctuation and pacing shortcomings but the thing is a blog, after all.” As a proofreader and a writer, I’m overly sensitive to authorial flows, structures, and breaks; also, I don’t visit enough blogs to be totally comfortable with that loose, informal style so many bloggers adopt. It would have been more accurate to say that your writing comes across as conversationally oriented, as if you were hanging out at somebody’s house talking about Devin the Dude’s ouvere, Kanye West’s new single, or what have you. This can be distracting and frustrating for me, because you obviously are a really knowledgable and insightful guy with wide-open ears, and I look forward to seeing what you’re addressing on any given day – but I get tripped up what I’d characterize as a slightly crimped narrative flow. This is my hang-up, not yours, and hopefully this whole apology – which is genuine – hasn’t come off sneering or mean or anything, as it wasn’t intended as such. Incidentally, the piece on the post-mortem mix CD for your late friend Mike was fascinating; the whole idea of putting together something like that in memorium, but also as a means of capturing the emotions emerging from the focal-point event and its aftermath. This is a whole different level of arrangement from what I’ve done, personally, with my compilations, where I’m seeking to capture a mood (or a series of them) while simulaneously sharing music that’s caught my ear; what you did there was to re-tell a tragic story. So I’m wondering if for my next mix I want to go that route - to comb through the shelves and assemble a sort of ode to my son, an ode to friendship, or a breakdown of the last nine difficult months of my life – instead of going with my present tracklist, which will blow minds but doesn’t necessarily say anything.
To Alecia, for downloading a file-sharing program several weeks ago, downloading scads of music files, and in the process inadventantly spyware-infecting the living fuck out of our laptop. The bug-purging pro’s fee is very reasonable, but having to pay it is still an inconvenience; I didn’t know what I was getting into, but if I’d bothered to do a little research we might have avoided this disaster. (Side note: Instead of filing suit against grandmas and college students and toddlers for downloading and dramatizing illegally-obtained mp3 busts in ads, why doesn’t the RIAA simply play up the fact that downloading with mass-user sharing programs is a lot like having as much unprotected sex as one can with as many partners as possible? Imagine the possible metaphorical devices that could be deployed: downloading as Russian Roulette, as drag racing, as drug consumption.)
To the readers of this blog: I don’t update anywhere near as often as I actually intend to. Life’s exhausting, and there’s so much to tackle on any given day (weekday or weekend) that when my lunch hour rolls around I often find myself eating and mindlessly web surfing instead of sharing what’s happening with me or fleshing out my non-publication ideas/opinions and posting ‘em here. Naturally, I can’t promise that the situation will improve in the immediate future; these messages will probably dwindle as complications arise, and ironically, when things improve. I’m getting more and more job interview opportunities (score!) so it seems likely that before long someone will hire me away from SAIC, and I’ll move up to Selinsgrove, PA for good! I’ll be able to spend way more time with Alecia and Nodin and break out of the “living in two states without really living anywhere” rut I’ve been stuck in since last autumn; that will mean, though, that these posts will be a bit scarcer as I adjust to the life I’ve wanted to live and scale down my level of writing/email communication accordingly. As always, thank you all for your ongoing support and advice – you’re awesome!
TOTALLY UNRELATED RANT, ADDRESSED TO A POWERFUL, CHI-TOWN BASED MINOR LABEL THAT WILL REMAIN NAMELESS: It’s all fine and dandy not to send out promos for the long, long, loooooooong awaited fourth album from one of your marquee acts. (Seven years is an eternity, no matter how you slice it.) The singer/guitarist is something of a rapscallion, an iconoclast, an indie-rock hero who led two prior 80s “punk” bands and who has amassed a list of production (sorry, “recording”) credits as long as my arm – both aboveground and below. Album number one was dope; album number two was less so; album number three was a bad joke. Promotion is expensive, yes; so much of what’s shipped out winds up leaked to the internet or in second-hand CD bins that major labels are loathe to play the newspaper/magazine/website hook-up game, and who can blame them? Big-time minors are wising up and sending stuff only to people they know will write it up; small-time minors haven’t followed suit yet because they’re establishing themselves. Despite the fact that any number of great albums randomly arrived in my mailbox without me knowing they were coming – musicians I never would have heard otherwise – I applaud this paradigm shift because it means that musicians and labels and PR people are wasting less money in the long run. It means that there’s a greater likelyhood that employees can keep their jobs, bands can get paid on time, and killer albums can keep dropping. But I’m getting away from this one label and this one band, who are the focus of this rant. Why didn’t you guys just say “we aren’t doing promo for this record” instead of teasing reviewers with a “lower industry discount rate” before turning around and informing us that said rate was almost a slap in the face - $9.79 – and then mentioning that we’re also expected to pay like $5.00 in priority shipping fees? (for a total of almost $15.00) What was the purpose of that, other than to be outright dickish to the people who continue to believe in a band that’s been squandering its potential and faithfully attend its sporadic shows? Why not just say “buy it in the store, morons”? This whole fiasco was likely the aforemention iconoclast’s brainchild, and while the younger, “punk rock” me is amused, the present-day me? Not so much.
An interesting Stay Free-related interview, full of background.
To Alecia, for downloading a file-sharing program several weeks ago, downloading scads of music files, and in the process inadventantly spyware-infecting the living fuck out of our laptop. The bug-purging pro’s fee is very reasonable, but having to pay it is still an inconvenience; I didn’t know what I was getting into, but if I’d bothered to do a little research we might have avoided this disaster. (Side note: Instead of filing suit against grandmas and college students and toddlers for downloading and dramatizing illegally-obtained mp3 busts in ads, why doesn’t the RIAA simply play up the fact that downloading with mass-user sharing programs is a lot like having as much unprotected sex as one can with as many partners as possible? Imagine the possible metaphorical devices that could be deployed: downloading as Russian Roulette, as drag racing, as drug consumption.)
To the readers of this blog: I don’t update anywhere near as often as I actually intend to. Life’s exhausting, and there’s so much to tackle on any given day (weekday or weekend) that when my lunch hour rolls around I often find myself eating and mindlessly web surfing instead of sharing what’s happening with me or fleshing out my non-publication ideas/opinions and posting ‘em here. Naturally, I can’t promise that the situation will improve in the immediate future; these messages will probably dwindle as complications arise, and ironically, when things improve. I’m getting more and more job interview opportunities (score!) so it seems likely that before long someone will hire me away from SAIC, and I’ll move up to Selinsgrove, PA for good! I’ll be able to spend way more time with Alecia and Nodin and break out of the “living in two states without really living anywhere” rut I’ve been stuck in since last autumn; that will mean, though, that these posts will be a bit scarcer as I adjust to the life I’ve wanted to live and scale down my level of writing/email communication accordingly. As always, thank you all for your ongoing support and advice – you’re awesome!
TOTALLY UNRELATED RANT, ADDRESSED TO A POWERFUL, CHI-TOWN BASED MINOR LABEL THAT WILL REMAIN NAMELESS: It’s all fine and dandy not to send out promos for the long, long, loooooooong awaited fourth album from one of your marquee acts. (Seven years is an eternity, no matter how you slice it.) The singer/guitarist is something of a rapscallion, an iconoclast, an indie-rock hero who led two prior 80s “punk” bands and who has amassed a list of production (sorry, “recording”) credits as long as my arm – both aboveground and below. Album number one was dope; album number two was less so; album number three was a bad joke. Promotion is expensive, yes; so much of what’s shipped out winds up leaked to the internet or in second-hand CD bins that major labels are loathe to play the newspaper/magazine/website hook-up game, and who can blame them? Big-time minors are wising up and sending stuff only to people they know will write it up; small-time minors haven’t followed suit yet because they’re establishing themselves. Despite the fact that any number of great albums randomly arrived in my mailbox without me knowing they were coming – musicians I never would have heard otherwise – I applaud this paradigm shift because it means that musicians and labels and PR people are wasting less money in the long run. It means that there’s a greater likelyhood that employees can keep their jobs, bands can get paid on time, and killer albums can keep dropping. But I’m getting away from this one label and this one band, who are the focus of this rant. Why didn’t you guys just say “we aren’t doing promo for this record” instead of teasing reviewers with a “lower industry discount rate” before turning around and informing us that said rate was almost a slap in the face - $9.79 – and then mentioning that we’re also expected to pay like $5.00 in priority shipping fees? (for a total of almost $15.00) What was the purpose of that, other than to be outright dickish to the people who continue to believe in a band that’s been squandering its potential and faithfully attend its sporadic shows? Why not just say “buy it in the store, morons”? This whole fiasco was likely the aforemention iconoclast’s brainchild, and while the younger, “punk rock” me is amused, the present-day me? Not so much.
An interesting Stay Free-related interview, full of background.
