Letter Circle Jerk
I meant to post this semi coherent thing below last week but didnt cos I hadnt spellchecked it or owt. Couldnt sleep so I thought Ill just do it now. and now its 7am and Im hella tired and I havent even written the post I was supposed to writeMYLIFESUXXXXURGH. ps thanks to everyone whose bought this; I dunno if I ever told you but making money from music is kinda my dream, so, flattered, thank you. The stuff I was going to write will for sure come tomorrow. Probably. I have to rehearse and go to That London and play a show and get my OHLIMPICK ACCESS PASS and really, staying up was the worst idea ever.
oh quickly, bad news / good news
the first 100 records are going to probably ship a week late. DO NOT SHOUT AT JACK FOR THIS! IT IS OUR FAULT! who knew that making a sticker book and stickers would be so much art work.
BUT
softening this blow is this fact: each one will ship with 20 stickers, not 5 like we said before, thus saving you from buying more from us should you wish to keep indulging our vanity. Theyll be blindpacked tho, were not going to make it too easy.
i hope this is an acceptable state of affairs to you all.
xlex
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Bandwagon jumping, but yknow, every old male musician should write a letter to Emily White.Dear Emily White
Youre not saying anything that like, 99% of your generation hasnt thought or said before. seriously. My mate Alans music collection eclipsed yours in 2002 and the only musician hed ever buy cds from was Sam Zurich. You just got noticed and picked on cos you work in The Biz and not the real world, and, obviously youre new here, but its bad form to be so open about it. The old ones get stroppy.
It would be nice to think that the people who actively pursue careers in the music industry would also be the people who have bought more than 15 physical releases in their life, but whatevs. Its sort of like when I used to have 15 different games consoles and related carts and controllers littering my front room, then one day I got an xbox and the big ass emulator discs and stuck pretty much everything else in the loft*. At least yr not pretending to care..
I like to take pride and boast about those consoles tho**, and thats the difference between us.
Its that big split that Im always boring people about; how music will look in 50 years time; therell be commercial mass market tesco bands and therell be grass roots working bands. were clearly gonna be on opposite sides of this darkest timeline, but thats no reason we cant coexist. Well make our money from small runs of novelty media, tour reputation, and sheer human kindness, and you guys can make yours from the all format song/royalty distribution machine you wish for in your letter***. Every now and then we can do a trade, you give us an ironically fashionable girl band / dangerous black guy*** and in return well give you the bloodied corpses of kurt cobain, elliot smith and mark linkous **** to apply some of that hologram magic to.
2) Letter to David Lowery
I agree with pretty much everything you say, but its so patronising it kinda verges on creepy. I didnt feel that she was positioning herself on a particular side so much as saying the truth as it was to her. Not saying thats better or worse, just that it seems silly to try "recruit" her cos she isnt the one with the battle to fight. Youre right to say that its wrong for people to accept illegal free music, but that battle, that human impulse, was lost the first time one caveman said something funny and another caveman passed it on as his own*****. and, since the time of cheap recordable media in the 70s, your ideology has had to be legally enforced. If this was (insert name of whichever ---ball sport you follow) then the internet is the team made of robots from the future who also have guns and are more attractive to the opposite sex. dude, Im so sorry, the war is over and we lost.
Its ok tho. necessity is the mother of frisbee singles and sticker books and dozens more fun ideas artistic people can create. Thats if you sign up for my new war. Its set 50 years from now and I think well be fighting holograms. The pay is shit, but thats not why were here, right?
Also, the public blackmail charity thing would be a shitty thing to do even if it wasnt a Teenage Girl on the Internet. I would have suggested Emily started an Oatmeal style campaign and backlashed you up, but then you explained how she was an accomplice in the murder of poor Sparklehorse.. WAIT NO YOU REALLY DID JUST GO THERE. "if only Emilys generation hadnt used the internet, then EMI would have been all like, - hey mark, have loads of money and stop sulking. Unfortunately, her and all the other kids ripped the albums off napster, so EMI had to let him kill himself" is not a direct quote.
3) Letter to Travis Morrison
Omg you bastard. I was in Glasgow once with �8 to my name. and I found ! for �8, and guilted myself into buying it cos the only copy I had was a cdr stolen from an (undeserving) dj. and Id heard that you guys didnt make much $$ so I brought it, then we went to some fancy pub and everyone else had an awesome massive roast dinner and i had a cold sausage roll that I found in my pocket from the morning. and the waitress noticed and everything. and I played it in the car on the way back and everyone was like, this is shit, did you not bring Is Terrified? So right now Im filestube-ing the tits off your career, I hope your last album is better than Is Terrified.******
Its also sort of like when Dan told Lewes that he printed all his artwork of his blog and papered his room with it. Only less funny.
**coleco-vision, 2600, nes, snes, master system, mega drive, 32x, mega-cd, saturn, jaguar, cd32, cd-i, (ltd edition pikachu) N64, dreamcast, gamecube, ps2. and now i exclusively play grabbatron or pocket planes on ipod touch. urgh.
***I couldnt stay awake fully thru Davids lecture, but at one point I think my eyes wandered over a paragraph relating to this. anyway guys, the exact system youre describing actually exists right now at least once, in the hands of a South African start up media company whose name I forget. The trouble is, whod voluntarily switch over to this model whilst Clear Channel and the majors control so much of the industry? The kind of bands you guys probably wouldnt care about, is who. 50 years, youll see.
****I have been exclusively listening to Azealia Banks for two months solid now so clearly Im happy with a mix of both.
*****All major label suicides with looming financial problems and lifestyle related drug issues, and unique genius song-magicians. especially sparklehorse*.
****** People talk about how home taping was the original file sharing, but Im genuinely intrigued as to what happened before that. Like, in the middle ages, did people secretly copy musical scores and sell them off in the next village? What about before notation, in actual caveman time? Was there ever a caveman who came up with a particular melody, and then one day he was whistling it and another caveman who could whistle started copying him? and everyone heard the other caveman and praised him, and the first one was all FUCK THATS MY WHISTLE MELODY HE STOLE IT. I bet that happened. I would like to take a time machine back to that point, and Id say, hey its fine, this is how humanity is supposed to work.
*******Its not.
* oh man, i really miss sparkleyhoss.