Happy Valentine’s Day — Free MP3

Today is the 6th birth­day of Arousal Dis­as­ters (2003) and as a Valentine’s Day gift to you I’m offer­ing a remixed/remastered and slightly doctored/enhanced ver­sion (from 2005) of the song The Dead Bal­let in all its full 320kbps MP3 glory:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here’s a lit­tle story: in case you’re curi­ous why Arousal Dis­as­ters is unavail­able in phys­i­cal CD form (aside from the used record ped­dler stores) only a thou­sand were ever man­u­fac­tured.  It was in a gor­geous Digi-pak for­mat which was designed by my friend and drum­mer, Rob Green­wayApo­ria Records agreed to man­u­fac­ture them at quite a cost.  Many were sent out for pro­mo­tional pur­poses (and prob­a­bly ulti­mately ended up in the afore­men­tioned used record stores), many were sold off-stage at shows and the remain­der were given to Maple Nation­wide, who was dis­trib­uted by Uni­ver­sal Music in Canada.  Since nobody was really buy­ing it in the stores due to lack of any real pro­mo­tion, after about 6 months Uni­ver­sal even­tu­ally pulled it from the shelves and kept the remain­ing copies in their ware­house.  Even­tu­ally, some­body decided it was tak­ing up unnec­es­sary space should be removed from the ware­house .  But instead of ship­ping it back to Maple Nation­wide and Apo­ria (and me), Uni­ver­sal Music Canada had them sum­mar­ily destroyed.  In fact, Maple Nation­wide had no idea until after months of pes­ter­ing they fig­ured it out and sheep­ishly said, “this has never hap­pened before.”

Now, frankly, there prob­a­bly weren’t that many left.  Maybe 100 or so.  How­ever, that would have been 100 more copies out in the world than there are right now.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • email
  • Tumblr

Flashpoint in the UK

For those of you in Eng­land or with a really good satel­lite provider: Flash­point was picked up by ITV in the UK last year and has started broad­cast­ing on ITV3 on Thursdays.

Update: also, Chan­nel 9 in Aus­tralia. Although, they’ve decided to air them out of order based on the belief that “the first episodes are usu­ally the weakest.”

Share and Enjoy:
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • email
  • Tumblr

Solo Show

What: Solo Opener Show
Where: The Bee Hive (55 Prospect Hill, Swin­don, UK)
When: Wednes­day, April 22, 2009 (Doors @ 8pm)

Share and Enjoy:
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • email
  • Tumblr

Solo Show

What: Solo Opener Show
Where: Jeri­cho Tav­ern (56 Wal­ton St., Oxford, UK)
When: Fri­day, April 17, 2009 (Doors @ 8pm)
Cover: £5

Share and Enjoy:
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • email
  • Tumblr

Thanks To Science Pulp-Art Mockups

As an exer­cise in com­bat­ing the Sun­day blahs, I thought it would be fun to show these mock­ups.  I orig­i­nally had the idea that an album called Thanks To Sci­ence, We’ve Got Love should have pulp sci-fi art­work.  A designer friend of mine took a few runs at it but ulti­mately the time and effort (and money) involved would have eclipsed all prac­ti­cal­ity.  Also, the orig­i­nal mas­ters of that genre (or their pub­lish­ers) would never have given me per­mis­sion and the copy­right issues would have been a nightmare.

When I came across this excel­lent post­ing a few months ago, I was intrigued again.  So I’ve bor­rowed a few pics and in 15 min­utes, slapped a con­cept together that is both hilar­i­ous and hor­rific.  Here’s hop­ing I don’t get C&D’d or, worse, get sued.

Above: Orig­i­nal Art by Nor­man Saunders

Above: Orig­i­nal Art by Vir­gil Finlay

Share and Enjoy:
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • email
  • Tumblr