Best Friend Forever Login

Over the weekend I broke up with my band. It wasn’t them, it was me. Thanks to Bruce and Matt for the awesome support and good times. I’m trying to figure out what’s next and I’ll probably be looking for ideas on here.

How does a “one man band” do a rocking live show that isn’t boring as all hell?

This past Friday was the occasion of my birth. I am now old enough that I wasn’t sure what age I’d be turning. Thanks for all the kind wishes.

I am in “crunch mode” for the Denver show on Thursday. I am also “nervous”. This’ll be only my third solo show but it’ll also be the first one where I’m not doing my own sound.  So maybe that will be good? Maybe I have nothing to worry about?

There are some upcoming Brad Sucks shows:

November 7th & 8th: Playing two nights at Kelly’s Welcome in Manotick, ON. Full band.

November 20th: The Bluebird Theater in Denver, Colorado. Solo.

There’s a pretty good possibility I’ll be doing some touring in the new year, so be sure to put yourself down on the map on my live page.

Welp, I had a good time at the CD release party last night. Thanks to everyone who showed up and anyone who jumped on stage at the end there during the crowd-participation part of “Out of It”.

Besides the talented Dave Norris and the Harvey Cartel who played, musicians in attendance were Jesse Dangerously, Claude from The Peptides, TheHipCola, Meredith Luce and MC Frontalot was on a phone in IM capacity.

Various Songfighters and REAPER users came out of the woodwork, which was awesome.

Out of It goes on sale for everybody out there tomorrow night at midnight (EST). Woooooooo.

The CD Release Party for Out of It is booked and officially on September 5^th at Cafe Dekcuf in the city of Ottawa. Times and bands are still TBD, though I am practically guaranteed to be there and drinking heavily. But you are super invited and hey, you could pick up a copy of the CD three days before the release date! What a coincidence that is!

This will also likely be the last show as a regular old three piece rock band. It’s been super fun, but I can’t resist putting a computer in the live show and electronifying things and making us prone to tech problems. Anyway, I hope to see you there.

The borrowed PA in the practice garage went away so I reached into the vast (vast!) Brad Sucks war chest and bought two 270 watt Peavey PR10PN Powered Loudspeakers. Despite forgetting my mixer at home they did a nice job at rehearsal last night. Very clear and full sound, plus I have them up on stands now which I think helps them stand out from the murky low frequencies.

I knew nothing about monitors or live sound before. I did a lot of reading and here uh are some… knowledge:

• People on live sound forums are kind of annoying, possibly worse than recording forums. God forbid you not want to outfit your garage with multiple $1500 JBL’s.
• Powered speakers are now a viable alternative to a powered mixer + passive speakers and offer more flexibility. But they’re newer so they’re hard to find used.
• The Peaveys have optional brackets to position them as floor-wedge monitors.
• The Peaveys actually have three inputs on each speaker. Two quarter inch and one 1/4″/XLR combo. All have level control, which is impressive.
• With powered monitors you can use a regular passive/unpowered mixer, which are cheap and plentiful.

The other point of this was to make it easier to integrate the laptop into the full band, which so far has been a huge struggle technology-wise.

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.