It’s been a super long time since I wrote one of these bad boys, and whenever that happens I have a million little things that I want to write about, but I’ll see how cohesive I can make this nasty little elf-of-a-blog-post.

The first thing I wanted to briefly comment on was the Echoes mention on Pitchfork.  At first, I was the most stoked because “HOLY SH*T THAT’S HOWIE THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT ON PITCHFORK I BET WE GET GOOGLED!”  And then, I felt the most stoked because of a pride I collectively had for Mr Furious and its mission, because, “Hey! Someone else cares besides us!”  But then, I became finally stoked (and the most stoked) on a part of it I didn’t really see at first, but Howie’s mention of “ripples” in the news update reminded me of it: this mention affirms our interconnectedness quite a bit.  To me, Pitchfork is such a staple in the realm if indie-stardom that seeing a Mr. Furious artist’s name in it just seems unreal; My senior-high class photo might as well be painted on the moon.  But if I can see a mention of Echoes in something on Pitchfork, it’s super-cool proof that the things we think are really far away are actually very close to us, and in fact, we are one in the same. 

TRIPPY, BRO!

This weekend is going to be sickalicious, because I’m heading off to the Bay-Area for sister’s graduation and also garlic appreciation weekend with some friends who live there MIKE AND SHANNON w00t!  Because of that, I am forced to miss out on a HUGE AWESOME CONCERT this weekend in Omaha.  At first it might seem like I’m talking about the FREE Bright Eyes Concert this Saturday, the 17th at Memorial Park, but I’m actually talking about Ladyfinger (new Saddle Creek band, they are metal, they rule) and Ideal Cleaners (That’s not the fact of the matter) at the 49er in Omaha on the same night. 

I can’t see this show, but Matt Wisecarver is doing sound for this show, so eff him for being so attractive and talented!

I just realize that Wisecarver is almost like a weird celebrity ghost on this website, since he was in the Remnants, he recorded some stuff on MFR, and he has an album named after him.

Anyway, the level of connectedness within the MFR community and the level of connectedness (I could use “connection” but guess what? no!) between MFR and the outside world is really showing itself these days.  Just so cool to know that we’re not in a bubble!

Speaking of weird connectedness, one final thing:

Robot, Creep Closer!, Honorable Mention, and 10 O’Clock Scholars at Knickerbocker’s tonight at 9:30!  BE THERE OR BE SOMEWHERE ELSE! 

Oooooh, and R,CC!/5*C in NE on August 12th at the C-Box!  Early show!  More later!

San Francisco, Here I Come!

Love,

CoryAlan                                                                                          

From this morning’s Puritan Blister column at Pitchfork ( www.pitchforkmedia.com )

Any metacompilation from the 2000s would also have to include Brakes’ “Heard About Your Band”, any of the (early) Stills’ cleverly-titled metatunes, the Cribs’ “Hey Scenesters”, the Format’s “First Single”, the Echoes’ “God Bless the Strokes”, and Desaparecidos’ “Hole In One”, during which Conor Oberst informs you that “You can buy my records down at the corporate chain.”

Link: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/columns/puritan-blister/06-06-09.shtml

This is pretty wild, it sort of gave me a little head rush. One thought; it seemed after “howie&scott”* that I should choose a band name that wasn’t confusing at all. How we got from echoes to “the Echoes” escapes me, but no worries at this point. Somebody heard the song. Ripples.

It’s true that the next sentence is “Have you noticed that such a metacompilation would not be, um, very good?”  I can’t speak for any of the other tunes, but I like “…Strokes” for what it’s worth, and in terms of Bowers’ conclusion that we need to write more original, honest songs, I’m doing my best.  Hang in there until Ventura. 

-h

* Known variously to reporters and promoters as “Howie and Scott,” “Scott + Howard,” “Howie & scott,” “howie with scott,” and “howieandscott.”

Cory, Jaimie, John, and Gina were interviewed by StarCityScene.com for their June feature; check out the story here.

In other news, their full-length record is all recorded, and mixing is scheduled!  It will be out later this year on Lone Prairie Records.

The two really interesting things about Saturday’s show with 5*C didn’t happen during our set.

I rolled down all three blocks of downtown W-burg early and popped in to the used CD store.  Purchased The Lemonheads It’s A Shame About Ray and Dead Prez Revolutionary But Gangsta.  But something in the “H” section shocked me; a copy of near and far.  I don’t know anyone in Warrensburg or who might have gone to Central Missouri State; it’s a mystery.  An ego boost mystery that made me feel like a rock star!

Freaky occurance # 2 was that I had actually played at the Setlist before, three years ago or more, with Shacker.  James had booked the gig and rented a minivan for it (why Warrensburg?!  We forget!) and we listened to Speakerboxxx/The Love Below on the way down.  We got there super early and ate across the street, James changed clothes in the van.  After a weird shoegaze band, we played a short set because the owner/sound guy told us we had one song left after only 20 minutes.  Nobody was there.  And we drove all the way back home that night, rocking out to The Colour and The Shape to feel better.

Funny thing; nobody was there for our set this time either.  We played OK, and introduced a rad new song we wrote just Friday at practice.

But if you need a used copy of one of my old records, I can tell you where to find it.  -h

I’m going to sneak this in under the wire before midnight.  You guys probably don’t realize how much motivation it provides to have a weekly update or thought or MUSIC, but it’s a good bit.

It’s no secret that Robot, Creep Closer! is talking with Lone Prairie Records about putting out an album (way to go, robots!).  However, it was news to me last week when talking with Cory that Eric at LPR is also compiling a disc (or maybe double-disc) of murder ballads.  After hearing about it, and hearing Cory play the killer tune he wrote for it, I thought… “Hey… I wrote a murder ballad once…”  A song called “Set You Ablaze” that is at least a couple years old (older… from college sometime…) that I’ve never really played except for myself and definitely not recorded.

“Killer” tune!

So Cory talked to Eric, and we all talked, and now my tune will also be on the comp., and I get to do the mastering for the whole thing.  That’s what I’ve been working on for a week now.  “Set You Ablaze” is a slow, sparse waltz about a cowboy whose woman betrays him in love, and when he finds out she leaves town and he takes off after her.  Somebody is not going to make it.  It’s basically acoustic guitar and voice, and I’m playing with other sounds to blend with it.  I’m recording in my one tiny closet in my apartment, so the clothes are all over everywhere else and if anyone is hearing anything I’m sure they’re confused.

Over the weekend Cory and I also worked out the final details on Ventura demos, so I will be fixing those up and begging one friend after another (haven’t decided on the order yet) to let me invade their space for a couple weeks and bang on a ton of drums.  When I’m not doing murder ballads.  -h

…is not a boy band!

You may or may not have heard that I joined a rock band in… February… or so. Now that we’ve established a bit of a groove, and things are bopping, here’s a bit of the story.

Starting to feel at home in KC and managing the wave-surfing that is work, I started looking at classifieds and Craigslist for drummer jobs. I wanted something Shacker-ish, where I could play along and contribute to someone else’s artistic vision. I fired off some emails, and on a whim answered a call for a keyboard player (!). Starting with BP’s Creepy Eepy, and then with Be A Ska Rat, I’d been playing some keys and enjoying that. I didn’t own a synth though; I had to borrow, first from Katy, then from Missy/Jody.

I learned a couple songs from the band’s myspace, auditioned, and joined what was then The Farewell. Several gigs and a name-change later, we are a fully functioning band unit; Five Star Crush. Details for the time being are at http://myspace.com/thefarewell and http://www.mrfuriousrecords.com/fivestarcrush/intro.html We’re playing often in KC, and in the area too. The sound is something like a crash between other-side-of-the-pond stuff (U2, Radiohead), New York bands (French Kicks, Longwave, Interpol) and surprisingly, some classic American rock (Tom Petty). At least, that’s what I hear.

My instrument is an Alesis Micron, which is tiny but has a ton of powerful sounds and programmable “setups” with patches/rhythms/effects/layers. I’m digging it. It’s my third one though; the first two were broken out of the box, so if you are interested in one make SURE you test it thoroughly at the store! Don’t order it online.

5*C is not connected to Mr. Furious Records. Also, I am not slowing down on MFR stuff (in case you haven’t noticed all the new music last month, plus upcoming Bike, Ventura, and 27 other echoes projects).

Peep our pages and catch up with us soon! -h

Visit the Museum of Bad Album Covers.  Click around.  Enjoy!

While I was there, I picked out some covers that I thought would be appropriate for Mr. Furious bands to pay homage to on future releases:

Sally Ride – Sing Out For Motorcycles

D-Rockets – By Request Only

Benjamin Axeface – Los Indios Taba-Jaras

Gilmo – What’s Next?

echoes – God’s Power

Bike – Reborn

Robot, Creep Closer! – Stuffparty!

 

Below are several emails I’ve exchanged in the past month with Nate in Portland.  It’s a pretty cool story; make sure you read Nate’s articles linked at the end!  -howie 

Subject: Re: Re: This is a fan, with a question about sharing Mr. Furious records Music
From: “Nate”
To: “Mr Furious”
Priority: Normal

Dear all you people at Mr. Furious, I know this the answer is probably a definite “yes”, but I feel I should ask anyway. Is it okay for me to distribute the music you’re releasing on the internet? Or in otherwords, what license are you releasing your music under, traditional copyright, creative commons, public domain, or something else?

See, the reason I ask is that there’s a big difference to me between something being “Free as in beer” (doesn’t cost anything), and something being “Free as in speech”. An example in which this is illustrated: just because the author of a book gives you a free copy of his book, it doesn’t mean you can copy that and give the copies to friends.

Just to clear things up, cause I don’t know, could you clarify what license you’re releasing your music under? If you’ve never thought of that before, I’d suggest a creative commons license which allows for derivatives.If you’ve released the songs under a specific license and I just missed it on your site, could you please tell me what it is? Thanks. I mean, I know you probably don’t give a fuck if I burn a few CDs of your music and give it to my friends, but what I’m talking about here is giving away about 500 CDs of free music at a fair, while making it clear that people are free to copy and redistribute the music on there. If I’m going to include some of Echoes music on there, even if it is free and freely available on the internet, I’d like to know that the band members are okay with the redistribution of their music.

Thanks,
Nate.

 

Subject: Re: This is a fan, with a question about sharing Mr. Furious records Music
From: “Mr Furious”
To: “Nate”
Priority: Normal

Nate; you are a rockstar for checking up on this. And you are absolutely correct that the answer is “YES! Please include whatever you like from MFR for your friends AND your fair.”

It would be rad if you included the URL www.mrfuriousrecords.com somewhere too. The Creative Commons lisence is; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed-music It’s displayed on the left sidebar of the site – you do have to scroll down a bit to get it though. AND – we’d love to know more about what you’re doing, the event, etc. Perhaps we could blog about it and put up a link – it’s always good to let people know about creative things going on. Even a copy of the disc, if you’re doing artwork and the whole thing – we would probably be introduced to other artists we’d want to be listening to!

Again, thanks for double-checking.
> >> > >> -howie (echoes)

 

Subject: Re: Re: This is a fan, with a question about sharing Mr. Furious records Music
From: “Nate”
To: “Mr Furious”
Priority: Normal

Hey, sorry for taking so very, very, very long to respond. I’ve been in bed for the last few weeks with mono. Anyway, here’s what’s what.

Basically, what was supposed to happen was we were going to give away the music at a Freeganism fair near the local college/community radio station. But anyway, it got rained out the day of the fair, sucked, and nobody came. So I just gave them away at high school during lunch, just walked around “hey, you want free music! Here you go, man, take a flyer” . We didn’t get them all given out, even though there are 1400 people at our school, there are only 400-700 people in the halls during lunch, and not everyone wanted the CDs. But the point was, it was a success.

We brought home-written flyers on Creative Commons, free music, and the evils of the “Big Five” record labels. It was pretty cool. We’re trying to get the Creativecommons.org website to use some of it right now. I think we really got the message across. Along with a lot of free music.

Now, let’s see, what did we put on that baby: I hope you can read this correctly:
1. Josh Petty, A Diagram To The Stars. 2005, Blues, USA
2. Lake Holiday, American Summer (EP). 2003, Light Rock, USA
3. Niconoclaste, Les Stances Sibyllines. 2006, Hip-Hop, France
4. Shacker, Knowing Her Best. 2004, Folk/Acoustic rock, USA
5. Tryad, Public Domain. 2005, Trippy, USA
6. M.A.Z.C.A., First Hour. 2005, Instrumental Rock, Italy
7. Lonah, Pièces. 2005, Europop, France
8. Carlos Saura, Un Viaje a lo Infinito (EP). 2006, Instrumental Rock, Spain
9. Margins of Safety, Gonzo Jazz. 2006, Jazz, Finland
10. SxYnZ, Con la Luz del Sol. 2003, Classic Rock, Spain
11. Lake Holiday, Send Off the Summer (EP). 2002, Light Rock, USA
12. Triole, Triole. 2006, Pop Rock, Argentina
13. Josh Petty, Copy Me! 2004, Blues, USA
14. Various Artists, Canciones Pegajosas. 2006, Varied, Argentina

Along with a few singles from Forgetting Luna, Tiger Heart, and the Tribute to John Peel project (a project that releases compilations of singles by up and coming indie bands, by the bands’ permission, under CDs under a Creative Commons license). We ended up deciding that Shacker worked with the rest of the CD best. We shortened the name cause we didn’t have space on the printouts.

All of this stuff is available on the internet for download – most of it from jamendo.com – a site that hosts creative commons music for LEGAL P2P SHARING via bittorrent and edonkey. And you can get it in the lossy format of your choice: 192k MP3, 200K OGG, or 300K OGG. A lot of this stuff you can also find on archive.org under their ‘netlabels’ audio section – but you probably already knew that. Oh yeah, and anything else?

Umm… oh yeah – CD art – because we didn’t have any fancy labels, and we were short of budget (500 CD-Rs aren’t cheap… :/) we just got some CD sharpies, went outside on a clear day, and marked every CD up with the same insignia – in our case an eighth note with a circle around it – occasionally also writing on kooky little messages like (“100% free music”, “Take me, I’m yours” and “You can’t get more free than this”)

Sorry for writing so late, and thanks for the response you gave, my little conspiracy to get tons of Portland listening to free music worked anyway,
> > Nate

 

Subject: Re: Re: Re: This is a fan, with a question about sharing Mr. Furious records Music
From: “Mr Furious”
To: “Nate”
Priority: Normal

Nate – no worries, we’re just stoked that you’re sharing Mr. Furious music. I’m going to check out some of the stuff from your comp. when I get a chance.

Is it cool if I post our email conversation as a blog entry? I want people to know what you’ve done, and maybe get inspired.

We love your conspiracy.
-howie, MFR

 

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: This is a fan, with a question about sharing Mr. Furious records Music
From: “Nate”
To: “Mr Furious”
Priority: Normal

Haha, yah, that’d be awesome! Thanks! This is exactly the kind of indie project where a ton of people could spread all their favorite music easily to everyone else, while spreading netlabel and free music popularity.

Also, as a bonus for coolness, I’ve included in this e-mail two attachments. One, an infogram about what Creative Commons is, why it’s great, how it equates to great free music. I handed this out with the CDs I gave out. I’ve just called it Print-out Propaganda: Legal AND Free. People can give this away with the CDs they give out if they want. It’ll certainly help convince any nearby authorities that they’re not committing in “illegal piracy”.

I was going to originally submit a modified version of that article attached to to creativecommons.org so they could have an “About” page. I probably will still do this. But I haven’t found the time to modify it for such a purpose, so until then, I think the infogram about Creative Commons and free music will be of more use in the hands of the people who are really into this stuff and are actually going to use it.

Of course, just so I can submit the Article to CreativeCommons.org and if they do post it, perhaps get credit, my one condition in releasing these articles is that I just want there to be no confusion as to who wrote this article – me. (It took me a long time to write it ^_^) My name is in the articles already, and I’ve released them under a CC attribution license (see below) so you pretty much don’t have to worry about it. But that was just my only trifle which held me back from publishing this stuff before.

The second attachment on this e-mail is a paper which has some hints on giving away free CDs and some questions one might encounter while handing the CDs out (ex. “how do I know there’s not a virus on this?”), and some easy answers to them, along with some basic good practice when it comes to giving out CDs (ex. bring a friend to help);  A Short Guide To Giving Away CDs With Free Music.

I’m releasing both of these documents under a *Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. *

Anyway, trust me, read the Creative Commons propaganda article, it’s interesting, and holds a lot of valuable information about the nature Creative Commons (for the newb, you probably already know most of this stuff), and some dirt on the big record labels. I’m glad to help out, and I hope these documents make the spread of free music easier, cooler, and more fun! Use and spread these documents, and enjoy please! And copy these e-mail conversations and the idea all you want, and encourage others to do. We’re all fighting for the same thing here – a great free music scene! Man, only through the internet could a freedom-fighting, anti-corporate, yet completely fun scheme like this succeed. Thanks for the communiques, and for the limited internet exposure. It’s definitely enough for me. :D

Nate.