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.

I guess my song Making Me Nervous is being used in this Stop the Spying video put together by People For the American Way and the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

That's super cool. Good luck, Americans! (Thanks, Justin!)

In hanging around Cambridge and Harvard this week I spoke to a lot of people. Here are some of the links I remember referring to:

• Kevin Kelly's Better Than Free article. A great, great article breaking down what artists can still charge for when the art itself is given away for free.
• Scott Adams' How To Become A Cartoonist. I read this years and years ago and the idea of the "copy test" was hugely influential -- though I applied it to music.
• thesixtyone - community voted music site.
• Magnatune - "We're not evil", creative-commons based record label. Doing variable pricing long before Radiohead's In Rainbows.
• RCRDLBL - Advertising supported record label.
• Eminem sues Apple for using song - when talking about what would happen if Apple used one of my songs in their ads without permission. (I believe I said it would be "hilarious" and great for me.)
• The Superficial. When talking about the escalating trend of dismantling celebrities who "artificially" elevate themselves.
• Daft Punk's Live Show - I described their (awesome) masked, pyramided largely pre-recorded performances as blurring the lines of what people expect or want from live shows and what people will pay for.
• ccMixter.org - Creative commons based remix site.

Self-links:

• Brad Sucks Digital Download Store - the open source digital download store I wrote. Referenced when defending myself that I don't care about "the money" enough.
• Gimme Some Money - the open source icon donation thing on the right side of this page. Also reference when defending myself that I don't care about "the money" enough.
• Source - where to get all the source files for my album.
• Out of It community backup vocals - call for vocals for the title track on my next album (results soon, it's sounding good!)
• Toy Story 2: Requiem - the Toy Story 2 / Requiem for a Dream mashup featuring an Israeli remix of my song Dirtbag which led William Gibson to my music, later inspiring a character in his novel Spook Country.

I'll add more if I can remember any.

Sound was pretty rotten at the Harvard thing which was sad. Pretty much no PA which was like whoah. Gonna have to burn out the brain cells with those memories in them. The talk was fun though, a really engaged and smart crowd. Tomorrow I'm doing an in-class thing which should be super fascinating and then the show at the Middle East which hopefully will be much, much louder.

Boston is pretty nice from what I've seen which isn't much. I've seen a lot of car accidents though and now I'm going to go see a bar about some drinks for my belly.

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.

Crunch time. Here's what I've been up to:

Mixing the album. Did a mixing meeting with Rob and am back on track with the album. Actually excited about getting it out, which is strange for me. It's really taking an embarrassing amount of time. You would think this would result in exponential improvements and new material and awesomeness and you would be wrong. Just a lot of coordination and logistic delays.

I've been reading a lot about the album being dead and all I can think is: THANK GOD. I'm not sure I ever want to do this again. But what to do instead?

Getting ready for Harvard + the show in Cambridge. Looks like there'll be a Metafilter meet before and during (and after?) the show on the 12th. I think I've got my show pretty much down, new Firewire card = improved stability, blah nerd blah.

The big thing lately has been packing all my gear to get down there. Do you know what a custom guitar flight case costs? I will tell you: around $500. That's five HUNDRED dollars. It would be cheaper for me to fly to Boston, buy a $250 guitar and throw it in the garbage on my way home. I honestly haven't ruled that out but for now I've ordered an SKB Freedom case which apparently "smells" (read the reviews) but works good.

If my guitar is shattered on the way there, I'll buy a cheap one for the shows and give it to a homeless person before I leave.

Getting the website ready for the new album. I've been re-jiggering all my store stuff for the new album and beyond and that should go live in the next week I hope. Due to lack of sales I've decided to drop the OGG format and limit it to MP3 and FLAC. Simpler for everyone. OGG fans can always get the FLAC and convert it as it's lossless after all. I want to support open formats but I'd rather it not feel like a waste of time, energy and resources.

Finally swapped out the default items from Gimme Some Money to something more Brad Sucks-y:

You got your beer ($5), you got your pills ($10) and you got your twenty dollars ($20).

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.

There's a new button available if you care to donate:

Info (and previous button) here. As people have pointed out this button looks good at any angle.

Since finishing all the recording for my next record it's been exciting to work on new music again.

Thanks for the Add (demo) (5.2MB MP3)

One of my resolutions is to be more fast and loose with the creative output. Obsessing all alone was not helpful or fun.

Update: here are the lyrics for those that asked:

Thanks for the Add (demo)

gimme the mic cause i'm taking my life
in an unexpected new direction
i could care less about your breasts
or that your daddy never gave you very much attention
i'm the same as i used to be but i'm
doing my best to make a good impression
i don't wanna go on but i don't wanna belong
in this condition

did you know that i'm your biggest fan
i just wanna thank you for the add
can i introduce you to my dad

i'm feeling like a
dead man or the way i seem
cause i'm living underground with a fake id
i'm feeling like a
dead man or the way i seem
cause i'm twitching and i'm learning slowly

i'm turning my cell phone on in the middle of the interview
i'm digging a shallow grave to eliminate my point of view
gotta get suggestions how best to get your attention tell you i'm cool
i don't wanna go on but i don't wanna be long
in this condition

did you know that i'm your biggest fan
i just wanna thank you for the add
can i introduce you to my dad

i'm feeling like a
dead man or the way i seem
cause i'm living underground with a fake id
i'm feeling like a
dead man or the way i seem
cause i'm twitching and i'm learning slowly

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!

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!

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine last night about whether the song Phantom by Justice could be played on the electric guitar. I thought it could be (but it would sound stupid) and he wasn't sure (but thought it would sound stupid). So here it is, me playing along with Justice's song Phantom:

Justice - Phantom (Brad Sucks at Guitar mix)

Yep. Stupid.

It's been confirmed: Friday November 23rd I'll be doing my first solo show at the University of Waterloo. That's nearly a seven hour drive from my home and will be my first time playing outside of the Ottawa area.

It'll also be my first hardcore test of the laptop + guitar + vocals setup. I'm hoping it goes totally awesome as that would mean I could travel with this sucker when there's no budget to lug a full band around and I could start fulfilling some of those Eventful demands.

The only two huge issues I'm really worried about are:

The laptop could flake out - I'll have the backing tracks on MP3 and CD as well as the laptop which would mean only my realtime vocal effects would be killed if something terrible were to happen to the laptop.

It could be totally lame - A dude singing and playing guitar to some laptop backing tracks -- is that cool? My favorite rappers generally just have backing track -- or a DJ going through the motions if they're rich and want to be super cool. Doing an acoustic show seems like a cop-out, but maybe having backing tracks is too phony.

Of course I'm sure something unexpected will happen instead. Who knows!

Thanks to everyone who submitted vocals for Out of It. We got 54 entries and that's pretty awesome. Quite a weird sensation to hear so many people singing my song.

Now comes trying to mix the track, woo woo! While I'll only be using a handful of the vocals on the record (I think) I'll definitely put together some other mixes with more/all of the vocals.

Facebook finally has band pages. I made a Brad Sucks one here. These days I'm really despising Facebook, it seems so anti-Internet, full of lock-in and crappiness. Also: we got photos, events and videos for bands -- but no music? What in the--

Anyway I'm sure it's great! Check it out here.

Update: thanks to Justin for showing me what I did wrong. Adblock removed the pulldown menu that included the selection for the musician pages.

Facebook tells me they can't change the page, so I've had to make a new one here. Hooray I'm dumb!

Just a reminder: you have until this Sunday November 11th to get your vocals in for Out of It. Details here.

So far there are 22 vocal recordings on ccMixter which is a decent haul. I was hoping there would be so many it would crash the Internet so here's hoping business picks up this week!

I've been working with David Huyck on some new Brad Sucks t-shirt designs. The first one is up in my shirt store:

Here are some of the shirt variations:

The crow on the left would rather be elsewhere.

I was warned my Out of It backup vocals deadline was too short and either that's true or not many people want to participate. Regardless, you've now got until November 11th instead. Read the original request and get the song MP3 here.

I've also clarified that I need a recording of your vocals alone (not mixed with the original track) in order to mix you in. Thanks!