HRC, Hot Items at the Archive, and Full-On Sally Ride

Thanks to everyone who has voted for 5*C to open the Buzz’s Beach Ball 3 – if you haven’t yet, do!

Joel, Matt, and I are in the studio again this week, working on a new version of “Aasta.” We’re at HRC in KCK for the first time. They’re still building and ironing out kinks, which is partly why we’re there (to give their gear a workout), and it is clearly going to be a classy facility when it’s complete.

Our most-downloaded-items page at archive.org is getting interesting. The Archive changed the way they calculate “downloads” a couple months ago to include hits on files linked from remote servers (such as those of mrfuriousrecords.com). That means that only since then have your downloads actually counted towards our total. I’m pretty excited about the albums over 1,000 downloads, and I’m even more pumped on the steady growth of our whole catalog.

I’m considering re-mastering Sally Ride’s It’s A Trap, because the trick that Duane showed me while mastering 5*C’s “Silver Yellow Girl v2” the other week would really help that record out a lot. Despite my best efforts at the time, it also seems overfull in the low-mids (mostly due to all the organ buried in there) and I wouldn’t mind having another go at reining those in.

In terms of my post-howie&scott output I’ve loosely called Sally Ride my “rock” music and Tape/echoes my “pop,” with the former emphasizing guitar riffs and… rocking… while the latter was about melodies and catchiness in any form. This distinction is probably silly and definitely confusing for nearly everyone. Given that SR is working on our third major project, and Tape/echoes has only two EPs and an acoustic thing to its name, I thought the other day that it might be a good idea to just go with “Sally Ride” for every-damn-thing. It has a ring to it, it’s feminist, I think it’s kind of punk and subversive, and it’s where I’ve done/am doing what’s clearly superior work (in the relative sense).

I invite your comments.

It does feel slightly weird to imagine Ventura by Sally Ride… but I think I can make the mental switch, no one else will notice, and everything will become beautiful.

I’ve been listening to hip-hop, which is my comfort music: Common, A Tribe Called Quest, Combine.