Friday, January 31, 2003 The image for the Unwed Sailor hardbound book has been completed. I should have the image up and the book/cd ready for pre-order tomorrow. The hardbound book version will be $22ppd and $20 at live shows and will be limited edition, only available through the website/mailorder and at shows. I've updated the btv on-line store with a few new titles, so be sure to check them out. I'm jetting out tomorrow night to Amsterdam to visit my good friends there before spending a week in France for work. Then, I'll return to Amsterdam and go on to Singapore for two weeks or so. Matthew will be taking care of mail orders and with the G4, I'll be able to keep btv going from afar. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 01:21 AM CST Monday, January 27, 2003 Lots of progress being made. The artwork to All American Radio : Fragments Of is complete and will be at the factory tomorrow. Arrangements are being made to get the hardbound book version of Unwed Sailor : The Marionette and The Music Box in time for their March tour dates. I will start taking pre-orders in a week or so for these and the LP version. There will also be a digipak version, as well. Brother Danielson one-sided LP plans are progressing and tentative plans have it as a gatefold LP with the original 24 illustrations from A Prayer for Every Hour accompanying the vinyl. It will be a special and unique release. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 12:15 PM CST Sunday, January 26, 2003 All American Radio are coming to visit today. They're planning some touring in March and later in the summer. We're going to talk about promotion and finish the artwork to Fragments Of so we can actually get the cd released. The Friday night show was an excellent time in support of Matt Ralph and tangzine. The singer for Kimone played acoustic as the headliner. Reels of White also played with Denison joining. Our good friend Sarah also played and some other folks. Matt's mom made cake. What more can you want? I helped my friends Scott and Jane moved into their new house in west Philadelphia yesterday. They seem to be enjoying the new place. I'm going to be leaving on Thursday to go to France for a week and Southeast Asia for a couple of weeks again. I'll be stopping in Amsterdam to see my good friends there, so I'm excited. There are tentative plans for a short trip to Laos with my friends Justin and Sanna. Matthew is going to be in charge of the mailorder. Willis is voting to get some Segways for the btv warehouse. It just shows he doesn't have to pay the bills. I did get him interested in the Lung discography. Slowly, the numbers of the converted will increase. I received copies of the Gentlemen Records edition of Ester Drang : Goldenwest. This is now out and available in Europe. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 02:12 PM CST Friday, January 24, 2003 my top ten list for 2002: 1. múm : finally we are no one (fat cat) 2. destroyer : this night (merge) 3. the polyphonic spree : beginning stages of (good records) 4. low : trust (kranky) 5. gybe : yanqui U.X.O. (constellation) 6. early day miners : let us garlands bring (secretly canadian) 7. yume bitsu : the golden vessyl of sound (k records) 8. gloria record : start here (arena rock) 9. flaming lips : yoshimi battles the pink robots (warner brothers) 10. sigur ros : ( ) (fat cat) records I discovered that changed my music perspective in 2002: microphones : the glow pt. II (and really the entire catalog) (mostly on k records) destroyer : streethawk: a seduction (misra) the new pornographers : mass romantic (mint) langley schools project (bar/none) I purposely leave off btv bands from these lists for obvious conflicts of interest. I'm getting ready for the reels of white show tonight. Hope to see you there. Congratulations to my high school pal John who just got engaged. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 05:23 PM CST Wednesday, January 22, 2003 Tonight is Rock and Roll Night on my DVD player. I just watched 24 Hour Party People about the history of Factory Records and have just put in the Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter movie. I wanted to see 24 Hour Party People in the theater, but never quite made it; JD always tells me to see Gimme Shelter, but I guess tonight is the night. I can appreciate a good rock flick. I'm making the booklet design for a btv compilation cd that will showcase our 2003 releases to retail stores. I'm almost done, but have to pass things off to a few friends to get their opinions. I basically tried to colorize some ads that Jamie Hunt made for the label. Josh from Fanatic and I were talking over some strategy for The Trouble with Sweeney and Unwed Sailor. Fanatic will be servicing both records to CMJ radio and to press really soon. Ethan did up a couple of cover designs for The Trouble with Sweeney : I Know You Destroy! and they're looking good. Ethan did the artwork for Denison's Of Joy and Sorrow and The '80s EP. He also did the artwork for the Drang's Goldenwest album with me giving some input and tweaking and concepts. Basically, the fun of that was he and I going through the airport taking super weird photos. He's also the pretty regular drummer for Reels of White Softly Flow, as regular as any of us are members. Incidentally, Reels will be playing on Friday in Woodbury, NJ for the tangzine anniversary concert. It should be a blast, at least for Reels. I'm going to post some of the confirmed dates for the Unwed Sailor tour sometime later tonight, so be sure to check them out. Matt Johnson and I got into a bit of a discussion about one of our favorite topics, the New Zealand post-punkish band, Lung. Does anyone out there know anything about this band or the whereabouts of any of the members? They released two albums, Cactii and Three Heads on a Plate, which were just amazing. Dave White was also the singer for The Clear who released one album, Live Stomach. I bought a Lung 7" recently for Matt and that's what started it off, I guess. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 10:20 PM CST Tuesday, January 21, 2003 Circle of Birds : s/t is #175 on the Top 200 CMJ charts this week. It was serviced to a select set of CMJ stations, so hopefully the CMJ station near you is playing the album. Also, Happy Birthday to Colin. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 05:40 PM CST Monday, January 20, 2003 "We are challenged to rid our nation and the world of poverty....We must find an alternative to war and bloodshed....It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or non existence...and the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation...." --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at the Washington National Cathedral, March 31, 1968. Posted by Scott @ 04:03 PM CST Saturday, January 18, 2003 The Trouble with Sweeney : I Know You Destroy! due 11 April 2003 oon cd/LP 1. The Break Up 2. Surrey Is A Word I Hardly Ever Use 3. Arm In Arm 4. The Snitch 5. Karen 6. Why Can't Anything Be Easy, Baby? 7. Fake Moustache 8. The Biggest Mary In The Entire School 9. At Noon 10. High Tide & Green Grass 11. The Counterfeiters Click on the link above to hear the special preview mp3. It's super hott. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 02:50 PM CST Friday, January 17, 2003 I'm adding a new entry through the Safari browser for the Mac. I'm enjoying it, especially the no pop ups selection. But if everyone had it, you would never see the e-mail list window. Andy keeps promising to help me fix it, but he's so art/rock star out in LA. I'm rocking to The Trouble with Sweeney : I Know You Destroy! album. The songs are really swimming in my head, especially the finely crafted lyrics from Mr. Sweeney. I was at La Tazza in Philadelphia braving the harsh 1/4" of snow flurries to see them rock. My friend Devon was playing after, but I left in the middle of his set as Local Honey. Big plans for 14 February? Yeah, right...you acoustic/indie rockers can come out to the North Star to see The Trouble with Sweeney play with Bitter Bitter Weeks (Brian McTear), Adam Arcaraggi, and Audible. May be a special Denison Witmer appearance. Who knows... 7 February is on for Reels of White to play at The Bathhouse Contemporary Art on their First Friday show. The post-party will get started after 9ish. Mr. Sweeney and Co. may stop in for a little session, as well. Matthew is being assimilated into btv land. He'll be talking to you more directly if you place orders and treating you nice and special. Sunday, I'll be over at Dave and Nicole's watching the Eagles play some football, pretending I was a fan all along, instead of watching the World Series and secretly longing for college basketball to go full tilt. It's okay. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 11:00 PM CST Wednesday, January 15, 2003 Congratulations to my friends Alex and April who just got engaged while April was visiting in London. The Trouble with Sweeney will be playing a show this Thursday at La Tazza, 108 Chestnut St in Philadelphia, at 10pm or so. Reels of White Softly Flow will be playing 7 February at Reset Art on Camac Street in Philadelphia, after their First Friday gallery show. Starflyer59 will be playing a special acoustic matinee show at Reset Art on 22 February, somewhere in the noon to 3pm timeframe. Unwed Sailor and Ester Drang will be in Philadelphia on 19 March. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 04:41 PM CST Tuesday, January 14, 2003 Matt and I worked on getting the state of mail order improved and all Unwed Sailor 7" orders should have gone out by the end of the day today. We received enough 7" so that everyone could get them that placed an order. We also stopped into the studio to sit in on The Trouble with Sweeney's mastering session. The audio for their second full-length, tentatively entitled I Know You Destroy!, is now complete. The album was recorded and produced by Brian McTear (Burning Brides, Mazarin, Swearing at Motorists) at Miner St. and is a bit more energetic than their Dear Life debut. We're all really excited about how the album turned out. It's slated for an April 2003 release and the artwork should begin sometime this week. In one-sided LP news, the etching for Early Day Miners gets sent off for plating later today. The AM/FM one-sided LP is no more...instead, it will be a cdep with some cd-rom videos. I'm excited about that. Also, in on-line store news, we still have about 20 copies of the out-of-print Pedro the Lion 7" for purchase with select btv releases. Still cheaper with a release then they will be on e-bay in a month... :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 09:57 AM CST Monday, January 13, 2003 I'm going to meet up with The Trouble with Sweeney today while they master their record. My good friend Ethan is going to be doing the artwork for the album. For everyone awaiting Unwed Sailor : The Magic Hedge and Unwed Sailor/Toboggan Split 7", a shipment arrived from Switzerland and the orders will begin to ship out later today and tomorrow. Hopefully it will be worth the wait. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 01:29 PM CST Sunday, January 12, 2003 Willis and I just got back from seeing Adaptation, which proved to be as strange as we expected. The movie pretty much derails at the ending, which somehow is the odd twist that works. Last night, my friend Nicole and I saw 25th Hour, the new Spike Lee movie, in NYC. It actually turned out to be the proper location for the movie, since we were only able to get tickets at the theatre across from the WTC site. That area/scenery factors into the movie, but is only a minor part of the plot. Edward Norton is definitely one of my favorite actors and does not disappoint. I'm also quite a fan of Spike Lee and he also delivers. It's rare that I would see 2 movies in a row, let alone two movies this good. In music news, Daniel Smith does have plans to make his one-sided LP recording very soon. He is intending to do it live, in just one take. We are also planning to feature the illustrations that were done for the Danielson Famile debut, A Prayer for Every Hour, and they will be an actual sized booklet to accompany the record. The Trouble with Sweeney will master their record on Monday and I will stop by to pay the bill, say hello, and see how things are turning out. The artwork for All American Radio's Fragments Of is nearly complete, but I have to make some minor adjustments and corrections in Illustrator before everything is sent out. Always a perfectionist... I've also been e-mailing Al from The Six Parts Seven about their one-sided LP. The material has been recorded for a few months and their artist friend just finished the cover artwork. She'll be working on the etching very soon, as soon as she gets a blank lacquer. We're hoping this will be able to be available from the band and website in early March. Tentatively, there will be a Burnt Toast Vinyl/Candy Gram Booking showcase in Austin, TX for SXSW on 12 March. I'll get to see my good friends Brian and Carolyn and taste some of the chili at the Texas Chili Parlor. Plus, I'll get to see lots of great bands. Official details will be made soon. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 01:03 AM CST Wednesday, January 8, 2003 Things are now going pretty full swing for 2003. There is lots of activity with one-sided LPs. The artwork for The Six Parts Seven LP is completed and we're going to start the printing soon. Kind of Like Spitting are still working on their Phil Ochs covers. Ben says that he and David are going to record with Ari from the All Girl Summer Fun Band on her 8-track. Dan Smith and Starflyer 59 are both itching to begin the recording of their LPs. I visited The Trouble with Sweeney at Miner St. studios with Producer Brian McTear. They were in the throws of mixing and tweaking when I arrived. Brian was working some serious magic on the recording of "Snitch." The plans are to have everything completed and mastered on 13 January. Ester Drang have finished their recording. I haven't heard Infinite Keys, yet, but plans are for Burnt Toast Vinyl to release the vinyl version on 1 April. The cd version will be on Jade Tree. Plans are underway to release Honey for Petzi's soundtrack to Angel's Camp in the US this May. Honey for Petzi are from Switzerland and their first full-length, Heal All Monsters, was recorded with Steve Albini and released in Europe on Gentlemen Records. It's available in the on-line store from us. More news on that once it is ready. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 03:25 PM CST Thursday, January 2, 2003 I'm finally back from my travels. I was home for about a day, then went to my parents' house in Indiana. There was snow on Christmas Eve, about 9", so it was a nice and white for that week. I finally visited the James Dean Museum and gravesite in Fairmount, IN, a few miles from my hometown. It wasn't as inspirational for me as it was for, say, Morissey, but it was a worthwhile experience. The Trouble with Sweeney are mixing their sophomore full-length at the moment. I'm going to visit tomorrow and will give a full report. The artwork for the Unwed Sailor album is nearly complete. Jamie Hunt showed us some mock layouts that he created with handmade characters. He's really into it. The audio is ready for the cd and hopefully ready for the vinyl. Johnathon is setting up a tour for Unwed Sailor and Ester Drang in the US this March. Denison is back from much touring. I finally saw him on New Year's Eve for the first time in almost 4 months. Time really does fly. He's going to be going to the UK in February for some dates. Once they are finalized, I'll put them on the site. AM/FM has resumed work on their one-sided LP, with their audio nearing completion. More details when they're available. The cover art has been done for many months, as well as the drawing for the sketch. Matthew Stone is now the mailorder person, so when you get an order, it's most likely been sent by his hands, rather than mine. Also, for 2003, I'm hoping to have some other folks do some posts on the btv site. We'll see how that pans out. By the way, I've been told that the Unwed Sailor 7" are on their way from Switzerland. So, hopefully, those of you who have placed many orders for the Magic Hedge and the split with Toboggan will be receiving your 7". Happy New Year, :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 08:50 PM CST [ Archives ]