Wednesday, November 27, 2002 Sorry for the lack of news. Things were incredibly hectic while I was getting ready to go to Europe and I have been away from the internet for a few days. I was in Amsterdam for a few days visiting Lucas, Diana, Sarah, Lodevijk, Dorein, Jan-Erik, and others. It was a surprise to run into Jan-Erik who was in town from Copenhagen to play some shows with the spirit that guides us. I am in France for a couple of days and have been enjoying some nice food. I'll post more details about my trip soon. In the meantime, Will and Matthew are doing great work taking over mail order, so don't worry about your orders arriving. The Unwed Sailor : Magic Hedge 7" is available for order, though copies are going quickly until more arrive from Switzerland. The Unwed Sailor/Toboggan split 7" is also available on-line, but won't ship until they arrive from Switzerland. I've added a few more titles to the btv store. There are a few items ready for Christmastime, including a White Stripes Christmas 7", the Pedro the Lion Christmas 7", and the Low Christmas cd. Go see Denison play in December. Full dates and information should now be up (I think). :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 08:49 AM CST Monday, November 18, 2002 This has been a busy weekend. Johnathon from Unwed Sailor flew back from London via Philadelphia and managed to stay here for a few days before resuming the flight to Seattle. So, Friday night, we met up with our friends in Me Without You who played at the Northstar Bar. I skipped out during part of the show to go see Appleseed Cast, who were thoroughly impressive as they faithfully rendered the lush beauty from their Low Level Owl records. Definite worth seeing. The evening ended with a crowd of us in South Philly getting cheesesteaks/cheese fries and us getting home at about 4am or so. Saturday, Johnathon and I met up with a book printer to discuss a limited edition version of The Marionette and The Music Box. It's too early to unveil any definitive plans, yet. Later in the evening, we met up with Tom/Steph/Joel/Sarah and some other of their friends for a quick dinner and ventured into the city to see more people in South Philly. On Sunday, we made it to see Harry Potter later in the very rainy day before hanging out with more people in the city. I haven't seen the first Harry Potter movie, but was thoroughly impressed with this second movie. I love the imagination found in children's books and this is no exception. I got a PowerBook today to take with me to Europe and Asia to have for tweaking magazine ads and record cover graphics in the next few weeks. I leave on Friday and am leaving mail order duties with a couple of very good friends, Willie and Matthew. All will be well. By the way, several Pedro the Lion Christmas 7" are expected early in the week, so pre-orders will be going out very soon. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 12:36 AM CST Friday, November 15, 2002 I am listening to some old cassettes that a friend leant me because I couldn't find my copies. I mean who listens to cassettes anyways. Anyhow, the cassettes in question are bits and pieces of old material from the early Casa Recordings, where Damien Jurado and his friend Eben Haase would make cassette recordings over old tapes and sell them for a few bucks. I'm listening to Lo-Life #1, material from Damien himself. Go look over the old discography at the Damien Jurado website and bask in your failure at being a true fan, myself included. I also just found the Maremont Upstairs master that is Damien with a female singer, three songs that were going to be a 7" like four years ago [It's also not on the discography, but it exists, I swear.], but never happened. This all will be remedied to some extent. At some point, in the next three months/three years, there will be a limited vinyl only re-issue of the greatest/interesting hits of this material on btv. This is an unofficial statement that I can withdraw at any point due to failure for the actual release to materialize. Why is this happening? Because Damien wants to, I/we can, and it will make I/we/you smile, hopefully. Why do we have so many vinyl only releases? After weathering the flack of "Why are you called Burnt Toast Vinyl and only have a couple of vinyl releases?" question for quite a while, the tide changes, eh? Vinyl's cool. You're dumb if you don't think so. It's an objective fact. Get yourself a turntable. It will allow you to derive hours of pleasure, even if all you did was pillage your parents' record collection(s). It's late, I apologize for the harshness... Johnathon from Unwed Sailor arrives tomorrow. He'll stay for about a day before going back to Seattle after his many weeks in Europe. He was going to stay longer, but I got some bad ticketing information from the airline originally and wasn't able to change the ticket as much as I thought. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 12:17 AM CST Tuesday, November 12, 2002 My installation of OS X is up and running. Nearly all of my applications are upgraded with a few things to fix up tonight. I've been casually looking through the website for the new Godspeed You! Black Emperor album whose insert links major record labels with weapons manufacturing. It's something to ponder a bit. Finishing up a few details for the Ester Drang recording. My part is to arrange for Chris Colbert to fly to Dallas and meet up with the Drang who will be recording in Denton, TX. Then, I am trying to figure out how to get everyone to Chicago to do overdubs and mix. It's an exciting little puzzle. But, it's nice to know that things are working out. The Trouble with Sweeney are planning their recording for December with Brian McTear who recorded their last record. They have a new rhythm section that has been working out the new songs in practice sessions. They will play on 15 November in NYC at the Living Room and on 7 December at the Fire with the new members. Denison continues to make his way around the country. He's making his way towards the Northwest at a steady pace. Be sure to see him. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 03:40 PM CST Monday, November 11, 2002 I'll have some new titles to put up in the btv on-line store today. The new Godspeed You! Black Emperor is due in on Tuesday, so orders for that will ship immediately. I'll also be putting the Denison Witmer Live cd into the store and start taking orders for the Pedro the Lion Christmas 7" which should be arriving by the end of the week. I've tried to order a lot of the 7", but I'm not sure how many I'll get. So, the first pre-orders will only be for those who order btv releases along with the 7". It was a busy weekend. Friday, Reels of White Softly Flow played with White Trash Inc. (Orchestra), Sopras, and Saxon Shore. Andy did play by cellphone during the Reels set, so that was something fun on the technological front. Lots of good friends were at the show, so it was a great time. On Saturday, my friend Joshua and Martha got married in the morning. It was a bit early to get up after Friday night, but I was glad I made it out of bed. Congratulations to them! Afterwards, a bunch of us hung out in the city and then drove out to the middle of nowhere, PA to hang out with the Garsons visiting from California and our crazy friend Dave Seyfried. Dave brought DVDs of some of his short films to play which was an entertaining moment. The Garsons also told of that thing of theirs which provided quite a bit of interesting conversation. On Sunday, I ended up raking leaves for a few hours to try and not look so shameful in the neighborhood. Then, I upgraded my mac to OS X. I still have some more work to install some new graphic software, but it's running smoothly at the moment. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 12:21 PM CST Thursday, November 7, 2002 Yesterday's mail brought some heightened excitement to the week. I finally heard Unwed Sailor's The Marionette and the Music Box on my stereo in its entirety. It will go off to be mastered to cd and vinyl today. I also came closer to completed my collection of Microphones releases, getting Window on Yoyo/Know-Your-Own, along with a new LP release from the Mountain Goats and an older LP release from Mirah, both on Yoyo. I met up with my friends Michael and Andre last night for a bit to shoot the breeze and reminisce about old times at work since we all used to work together, but now don't. Thanks to J. Edward, the technology for Friday's cellphone performance is underway. If all goes well, Andy will be playing with Reels of White from his apartment in Los Angeles. Maybe a future show will involve us all staying home while we play at a club remotely. Of course, maybe everyone in attendance could dial in to some central phone number and just listen to the show over the phone. I changed the splash page last night, so hopefully that shakes things up a little. I have Dreamweaver for my Mac now, so that will help me maintain the site and spruce it up a little, until Willie decides the time is right for the sit update he once started. He is busy being an architect and student. I was doing computer things last night while watching the movie Pumpkin where Christina Ricci falls in love with a handicapped guy and her pristine sorority world falls to pieces. I was definitely into it and this was the second viewing for me. I am making final arrangements for a trip for work to Singapore. I'll be stopping to visit friends for a few days in Amsterdam and maybe get to Copenhagen, as well. I'll be leaving in a couple of weeks, but mail order will still continue. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 10:47 AM CST Wednesday, November 6, 2002 I upgraded my mac to OS 9.2.2 last night, in preparation for going to Jaguar once the cd arrives. I was a bit behind on updates, so it took a few jumps, but everything seemed to work out. I probably haven't ranted too much publicly about my love for macs, but it's true. Every btv release and ad has had its final graphics generated on a mac. I had a beta version of OS X, but never upgraded since the graphics programs I use weren't ready at the time. Not much newsworthy happening in btv land. Denison was in Phoenix this weekend, staying with Greg Markov (Fine China), and I talked to him and Markov on the phone. He was on his way to LA to rock and stay with our good friend Andy Bruntel (who designed this website and a few btv cds). Andy is also a member of Reels of White Softly Flow and we've been trying to figure out how to have him play live via cellphone. This could be a project for tonight or tomorrow night. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 01:31 PM CST Monday, November 4, 2002 I made it to the Scientific/Seldom/Pedro the Lion show on Friday at the Trocadero in Philadelphia. The sound was a little more big and rock than I was used to experiencing, not often going to the Troc to see shows. It was great to see Scientific live for the first time in more than a year. Christian and Janie added the guys from Seldom (KC, Casey, and Yuuki) and Dave Bazaan to fill out the new songs. The recordings I'd heard have been very technical and angular, but live, the sounds had a warmer, more floating feel, recalling their debut s/t cd at times, but also continuing to progress in a new direction. Seldom was as good as I'd seen in the past, but didn't seem to play any new songs, really. It's always fun to see Pedro and with Christian playing some super noisy guitar, the songs sounded quite a bit different than previous shows. It was great being able to see everyone again, especially Christian and Janie. After the show, a few of us went to our friend Courtney's house for a Halloween party. Courtney was dressed up as a dead Laura Palmer and Ethan was Joey Ramone. We were all lame, having not dressed up prior to the show. Oh well. Saturday, I met up with my friends Rich, Matt, and Emily. Matt is the singer/guitarist for Ply and he and Emily now live about 6 blocks away from me. Anyhow, we met for a late breakfast and spent most of the day hanging out, eating, drinking, chatting. Sunday, I said good-bye to my Mississippi house guests (who were in NYC on Saturday, but were back Sat night) after visiting Pat's Steaks for the third time in 2 weeks. We also went to Termini Brothers to send them off with bellies filled with Canoli, too. This Friday, at the Mill in Lititz, PA, Reels of White Softly Flow will be playing with Saxon Shore (instrumental band from upstate NY). White Trash Inc. (Orchestra) will also play and the show will be a 7" release party for their Norwegian 7", Pet Cats Get 2000 Credits, on Milk & Honey records. Be there. I added several new releases to the on-line store today. Be sure to check them out. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 10:48 AM CST [ Archives ]