Things I learned from the show last night:
Anyway it was an all right show for a Monday night. Thanks to Dave Norris, De'Mos and Jacquie in the Kitchen for keeping it real and also thanks to everyone who came out to have confusing yelly bar conversations with me. Those are the conversations I treasure the most.
Hey, we're at Zaphod Beeblebrox's tomorrow night. Dave Norris, De'Mos and Jacquie in the Kitchen are playing and then we're on at 10:30pm. Hopefully no amps will be destroyed.
Our next gig is at The Rainbow on Wednesday, August 30th. Sojourn are opening for us. Feel like plastering Ottawa in posters this weekend?
Here's a PDF for easy printing. And here's one without the falling guy in case you need it.
We'll be playing Riverpalooza next Saturday (August 12th). I'm not sure what time we'll actually be going on yet so you'll just have to chill and white water raft or something until the magic happens.
Our show at Pier 21 went well, the sound was probably the best we've had thanks to our friend and sound tech Jamie. Words such as "tight" and "hardly drunk" were used to describe us. If only there had been more witnesses. We've got another show this Saturday night at Marshy's in Nepean (117 Centrepoint Drive), going on around 10:15-10:30. It's a charity thing for "Team Diabetes" so I'll try not to eat ice cream on the stage as I'm fond of doing.
Looks like we're playing Pier 21 this Tuesday (July 11th). We go on around 9:30-10pm and will deliver 40 consecutive minutes of rock (with a break in there somewhere). Unfortunately my blue guitar will not be ready by then.
If you're one of those people who are always asking me "Brad, why is your music not in more documentaries about pot?" You need wait no longer. (via Ryan)
Apparently if you buy a new Renault Megane car it comes with a built-in mp3 player. And included on that mp3 player you will find the song Making Me Nervous by yours truly. I believe that's the most expensive way I've ever seen to get a copy of my song. Sweet! [via]
I Don't Know What I'm Doing is now available for ordering in over 2400 records stores worldwide thanks to CD Baby's new In-Store Distribution. If you need any info on what stores near you will order my album, drop me a line with your location and I'll look it up.
A billion months after I put I Don't Know What I'm Doing Remixed online for download you can now buy a $5 homemade CD-R of it in the little Brad Sucks Store. That's the kind of organized businessman I am -- ruthlessly capitalizing on every opportunity at my own lazy pace. I actually was toying with the idea of pressing it up or digitally distributing it, but in the end the task of getting permission from everyone, signing agreements and making sure everyone wasn't angry with me seemed like hell on earth. Oh yeah: and if you're a remixer on the CD, drop me a line and I'll send you out a copy. Thanks again everyone.
The other week I did an interview with Mike from GarageSpin. You can check it out here and here.
That interview I did with the ladies at on10.net is online here. I did an interview with the Lodebearing podcast where we talked about some things. I got Skype working for this interview but then they couldn't record it. So now I have a Skype account with like three people in it who are never online. Welcome to the future.
I'm doing an interview on on10.net tomorrow talking with Laura Foy and Tina Wood about music, remixing and uh how I'm not totally boring. It'll be my first combination webcam + voip interview so I'm sure it'll go great and not be completely awkward. Anyway I'll update here when it's online, I have no idea how quick the turnaround is on these things or if it's live or whatever the hell. Update: interview's done, it went all right I think. Laura and Tina were real nice and didn't ask me to take my top off on cam so I'm relieved I wasn't sexually exploited. I'm told the segment should be up in a week or so.
I like being in press releases. Podcast Network Releases Indie Album by Brad Sucks:
TAMPA, Fla., April 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Release of the indie album, "I Don't Know What I'm Doing" by Brad Sucks, marks the debut of Slo-Monkey, the music label behind the Emergency Podcast System (http://www.emergencypodcastsystem.com). The quirky, witty album's release is backed by a TV campaign on Former Vice President Al Gore's cable network, Current TV. Current TV serves over 20 million households nationwide and has an energetic youth audience.Smart lyrics and danceable tunes made indie band Brad Sucks an obvious choice for the Slo-Monkey label. Says music contract guy Lil' Dawgg, "If we find ourselves singing the tunes around the office, we know we have a winner."
Here's the ad that'll be running: (.MOV) Looks like they paid that girl to dance to my music. Right on.
Anyway it's a non-exclusive deal and they seem like nice dudes over there. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
Oh yeah I quietly put some forums back online a month or so ago. Then I didn't realize I had to check back and approve all the people who applied for membership. Anyway, it's all fixed now and there are upwards of ten posts in there. I'm using Vanilla as it has Atom feeds so I don't have to remember to keep looking every day but yet can keep a hawk-like eye on all the activity. I think I'm going to start posting demos in there, probably in a super secret private section like Scott Andrew's Demo Club or something rather than clutter the main site with my unfinished crap.
As a follow-up to the logo contest results I've got t-shirts for sale with the winning logo on it in my new Spreadshirt store:
Brad Sucks is opening for Just this Saturday night at Greenfields Pub. I think we go on at 9pm. We've practiced a lot but we may all have colds. Rocking will be attempted nonetheless.
Zach wrote in to tell me that he heard a version of my song Dirtbag in a Fark.com trailer mashup contest. The entry is by Mike Hindes and called Toy Story 2 Requiem. It's a hilarious mash-up trailer of the movies Toy Story 2 and Requiem for a Dream.
(15mb WMV) (Warning: there's some R-rated language.) Very awesome. It almost makes me glad I sat through 90% of Requiem for a Dream so I could find this extra funny. Almost. I'll never forgive that movie.
I also like how absurd the level of mashup-ness is getting on my music. "Hey, an Israeli remix of your song was used in a movie trailer mashup!" Say what now?
TheHipCola and I did an ABBA cover. Grab it here. (6mb mp3) This is for the ABBA Sidefight going on over at Songfight where everyone was called upon to cover ABBA songs. I've been real into ABBA lately so I wanted to do something for it. I think ours turned out well. Hard to live up to the awesome original though.
I'll be on the "Blog-Rolling" panel at Canadian Music Week in Toronto on Saturday, March 4th. So if you happen to be there, feel free to throw something at me. I've never been to one of these fancy music conferences so it'll be interesting. I have so much great, great advice for other independent musicians I don't know if an hour will be long enough. I also hope I can go the entire hour without saying the phrase "whore yourself out". We'll see how I do!