Now, if you would like to, you can mark down your location on the Brad Sucks Live page so I can hassle you if I happen to be playing in your area (scroll down to the map).

It’s something I’ve been wanting to build for a while — a replacement/alternative for Eventful.com and it was pretty easy with Google Maps.

Eventful’s nice and I’ll continue to use it, but since it doesn’t give the artists access to their subscriber’s email addresses it’s a lock-in bullshit proposition and I can’t fully trust it.

I’m now also asking new mailing list subscribers to mark down their location and will be doing so for new BFF members as soon as I get around to it. It’s all optional of course — I know giving out locations creeps some people out, but think about how traveling to another city and nobody coming to my show creeps me out.

I’m not sure there’s a greater music video than this one of the Edgar Winter Group playing “Frankenstein”:

The description is: “Feel ROCK’s majesty condensed into 10 short minutes.” Here’s the play by play:

ryan: we’re playing music… in the 70s!
ryan: keytar and sax. and that hair
brad: you can’t play BOTH lame instruments! that’s MADNESS!
ryan: oh, and he plays the drums too!
ryan: edgar winter is my new chuck norris.

I think Edgar should have worn a wizard hat.

The show last night went just fine, thanks to everyone who came out and to everyone who was just there.

Doing live shows these days is strange. I’m not sure what to expect anymore. Some highlights:

• There was a really drunk guy yelling that we were “the next April Wine”. I think he was yelling that at all the bands.
• There was another guy who just yelled “YOU LOOK LIKE JIMMY FALLON” at me which is a new one.
• Tom from Furnaceface did the sound and he was awesome.
• I believe my fly was open for the entire show. My first time (as far as I know).
• My car got stuck in the snowy parking lot at 1am but luckily two homeless dudes helped me out for two dollars each. God bless them.

So who knows.

The Berkman Center at Harvard has posted the deets about my Web of Ideas deal there:

Web of Ideas with David Weinberger and Special Guest Musician Brad Sucks
Monday, February 11, 7:00 PM
Griswold Hall Room 110
Harvard Law School

RSVP is required if you’re going as I think there’s limited space.

Web of Ideas is an evening night discussion series at the Berkman Center, lead by Berkman Fellow David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and Everything is Miscellaneous. Each session will begin with a 20 minute discussion-opener, followed by open conversation. Food will be provided.

Be sure to say hi if you attend. I’m really looking forward to it, it should be pretty interesting and I like everyone I know down there already. Also one of my main passions is talking about myself so it seems like a perfect fit.

Bunch of things coming up:

• February 11th - Harvard University [Cambridge, MA] - Q&A and a few songs.
• February 12th - The Middle East [Cambridge, MA] - Full show
• March 7th - Canadian Music Week [Toronto, ON] - Speaking.

Hope to see you there.

Just an FYI: through some mix-up which was not at all my fault, the Brad Sucks gig on December 17th has been cancelled. Total drag.

Waterloo solo show went pretty good I think. Compared to Ottawa bars it was pretty surreal playing for people who were already pretty into my songs. All the laptop stuff went ok. Some show notes:

• I needed to run 6 1/4" outs into the soundboard. The soundboard was unfortunately at the back of the giant room and the sound fellow only had two DI boxes on stage and was running an XLR snake to the back. Luckily I brought along my Behringer UB1204 mixing board (just in case) that I was using for practice. So I wound up doing the sound from the stage, which was an interesting challenge when you’re playing guitar. The word is it sounded OK so I guess like… I’m a sound genius.
• It is weird to mess up your own lyrics in front of people who know them and are singing along.
• In rehearsals my song switching method (via a Nostromo n50 I found in a box) worked flawlessly. On stage however as soon as I finished a song I completely forgot what song I had just played and where I was and what was happening. So there were some false starts which nearly blew my whole ruse.
• I need to edit the songs so they cut the vocal delay effect off when they’re over. Too many times I was like "thank you! thank you! thank you! .. thank you! … thank you! what the- thank you! what the- .. what the- thank you! … what the-"

Those are all pretty minor things it seems judging by the people who came up to get CDs signed or whatever afterwards. So I feel pretty good about it. Waterloo U. students are very smart, friendly and attractive and I was given a Waterloo hoodie by the residence council so now I can pretend that I’m one of them.

And as for travel notes:

• The Super 8 should legally be forbidden from using the word "super" to describe their hotel services.

Thanks to the folks at Waterloo for having me out, everyone in the audience and anyone I met that I of course have immediately forgotten the name of. Fun!

Welp, I’m off to the Waterloo show tonight. I have shown due diligence in making sure there are limited glitches in my laptop live show so now it’s all up to my lord and saviour Jesus Christ who I have always believed in without wavering, amen, am I right guys.

And I guess maybe I’ll visit City 7 on the way.

Been getting some confused emails from Waterloo University students. But I’ve double-checked: the show is still on: 10pm this Friday at the Student Life Centre. See you there!

Bought a 37" LCD TV to make my Xbox 360 feel better, it’s pretty sweet. Also had my first Xbox Live Halo experience tonight and it lived up to my expectations: I got brutally destroyed by some kid yelling racist stuff at everyone. Ah, the future.