Today I did interviews for CKCU FM in Ottawa, WMAY FM in Springfield Illinois (I think) and 610 CKTB radio in St. Catherines. The WMAY guys were pretty cool and fun to talk to. They seemed to be digging the actual music and were real nice and encouraging. If memory serves they played MC Frontalot's track before I went on, so that's pretty cool. Tomorrow I'm supposed to be on CJOB in Winnipeg at 12:05pm on the "Adler On Line" show for 5-10 minutes and then I'm doing an interview for the Shredd and Regan show on WEDG in Buffalo. I'm not sure if that's going to be live or not.

Then Thursday morning I'm being a trooper and getting up early to do an interview with Joe Thomas for the morning show on WLAN-FM in Lancaster, PA.

For people who want to catch the BBC interview, someone named Ben posted a comment to one of these entries saying this:

If you're quick (by tomorrow) then you can catch the Radio 5 Live interview at [link]

Click listen again. Don't recall if his interview would be in the 1-2 am slot or the 2-3 am one...

I haven't tried listening (I think I sound like a dink), but I'm pretty sure the interview was early into the 2-3am slot.

Thanks to everyone who's been writing in, ordering CDs and leaving comments. This has been a pretty crazy ride and I really appreciate all the awesome support.

I think the BBC Radio 5 interview went all right last night as well. It was pretty quick and there was quite the delay on the phone line so I kind of had to talk all kamikaze style and just barrel through rather than go back and forth with the DJ much. Hope it sounded OK, there were awkward silences and I couldn't tell if that was due to the delay or if the DJ was shocked and horrified by the things I was saying. The pre-interview guy said something about not saying "bradsucks dot net" on the air because that would be too racy for the BBC, but then the host asked me for the URL and I wound up spelling S-U-C-K-S out on the radio which was kinda fun.

Before I forget: on the CBC they played Add's "Do You Measure Up" and a clip of my song "Look and Feel Years Younger". On the BBC they played about 10-20 seconds of "Erik, Someone Wants To Date You".

If you have sent me email, I will reply to it, things are just a bit nuts right now.

The CBC interview went OK, I think. At least that's what my mom says. I managed to fit in plugs to Songfight and Jeff at Actdead.com (they played his song). I don't remember much of the interview but I don't remember actually choking at any point so it couldn't have been that bad. The girl I met in the green room was there for this NaNoWriMo novel-in-a-month thing which is like the writing version of Songfight. That's pretty cool. I wonder if they fight all the time and diss each other's novels when they come out. I'm going to be interviewed by Rhod Sharp on BBC Radio 5 at 9:20pm EST or something. It's interesting having all this stuff happen because there's no time to be neurotic about just one thing.

I'm being interviewed about Outside the Inbox on CBC Radio today at 4 EST on the show All In A Day by Alan Neal.

Apparently the Toronto Star article is on the front page of the arts section. Yikes!

Just as I start mouthing off about digital distribution being crud, CD Baby announces they've dropped the $40 fee to get your album digitally distributed. I have sold exactly zero copies of my album on CD Baby (though a few people who have bought it from me direct have told me they found out about it there), but getting included in the digital distribution junk is making me glad I ponied up the $35 + 5 copies of the album.

I'm real curious to see how this works out.

For some reason I was discussing Truck Driver's Gear Changes with people tonight and wandered over to the #1 Truck Driver's Gear Change resource: gearchange.org. There's a pretty fascinating article called The truck driver's gear change: a muso's introduction up there which elaborately defends each of The Beatles' gear change offenses. Very cool and also: silly.

Your 99c belong to the RIAA - Steve Jobs. This article in The Register is a little cynical sounding but it opens with a quote I like:

Wasn't the Internet, this weightless kingdom of bits and bytes, supposed to make distribution costs just vanish?

The author of this article seems really deeply angry at major record labels and possibly just angry in general. He also seems totally bewildered at some basic ideas in business. But I think I sympathize in that I find this whole iTunes universe totally bizarre and unnatural. To me it seems too much like the old decidedly F'd up model dressed up to look like something new. Maybe it'll stick, but right now it just feels like a step backwards to me and that technology + progress is going to lay the smack down on it any day now.

Did a phone interview with Murray Whyte from the Toronto Star today, he's a real nice guy and it was the least interview-like interview I've had yet. Hopefully I didn't ramble too much. It looks like the story on Outside the Inbox and I is going to run on Monday. Pretty exciting and also maybe totally terrifying! In case it doesn't make it into the article, in the interview I talked about home-recording being the new new-wave and the Internet being the next Seattle. I don't know if either of those things are true, but I would like a record of myself having said them before anyone else beats me to it. Ding.

Apparently I'm getting interviewed next week about Outside the Inbox for CKCU-FM, a local college radio station. I've been told that it'll be airing Wednesday sometime. They have a live audio stream so you guys can listen to it on the net if you want to hear me be a stumbly ass. I'll post the approximate time here when I find that out, I'm not sure yet what show it'll be on.

I've hastily put together a gallery finally. It has some art and things that nice folks have sent in. If anyone has anything to add, it would be awesome of you to send it in.

I just installed Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist plugin to see if maybe that will fight back some of the comment spam I've been getting here on Brad Sucks. If anyone has any problems posting legit comments, please email me and let me know.

A year or two ago for some reason I read Dilbert-creator Scott Adams' How To Become a Cartoonist. Recently as people have been writing in asking if it's okay to give out copies of my music (the answer is always yes), I've realized how influential one part of this article was on me. The copy test comes to mind at least a couple times a week:

3. Don't listen to your friends who tell you your comics are hilarious. They're lying. Don't listen to your friends who tell you your comics suck. They're idiots. The only reliable feedback is the copy test, i.e. does someone want to copy your comic and show it to someone else who you don't know. If someone says he likes your comic but he doesn't ask to copy it for someone else, he doesn't really like your comic.

Pretend it's talking about music. Far from being annoyed when people copy my stuff, I think it's one of the biggest complements an artist can get.

Today my CD-R drive fails on every CD I try to burn. Looks like a new drive must be purchased this weekend. Let's hope the next drive isn't a SISSY LITTLE BABY like this one. (Maybe shame will make it work.) Update: Shame had no effect.

Dropping Out Of SchoolGenre: Rock Length: 2:45 Date: 10/30/03

These song notes are so much fun to write. I should make a generic "NOT TOO SURE ABOUT THIS ONE, RELEASING IT ANYWAY" template and use that from now on.

Today I had pictures taken possibly for the Toronto Star. That was a really weird experience and now I am drinking heavily to help get the weird out. (Also I just like drinking heavily.) I also got a $35 ticket on the way home for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. It could have been $120, so I am thankful to the Ontario police, who are my lords and masters.

A week ago I was interviewed for an Outside the Inbox article for the Montreal daily La Presse and it ran today. Here it is:

«Les paroles à l'intérieur des chansons n'utilisent pas des mots pris aux pourriels, mais elles s'inspirent de leurs titres», explique Brad qui a réuni des collaborateurs de toute l'Amérique du Nord pour produire les 14 titres de Outside the Inbox.

I have no idea what I said there but I sure hope it's awesome.

Outside the Inbox is the site of the week on Maxim Online it seems:

Unless it's the easy-to-prepare, mechanically extracted meat counterpart, nobody likes to see spam first thing every morning. Now you can share your disdain for these time-wasting, bulk-addressed e-mails through time-wasting, poorly produced pop songs at Brad Sucks. Visiting will increase your penis size by three to six inches in under a month!

Did Maxim just diss us/me? First they make me feel ugly and now this.

I've been told the article on Outside the Inbox should show up tomorrow in La Presse. Some songs from Outside the Inbox are apparently being played on WMBC thanks to Wes Weber.

Outside the Inbox was mentioned (on air?) on 5FM, a South African (i think) radio station.

Thanks to everyone who has been linking to it and mentioning it!

Here I sit waiting for any one of my two bulk orders of padded mailers to show up so I can mail off more CDs. I also have learned that my CD burner overheats or something after doing 10-15 CDs in a row and starts burning coasters.