Future History

(my tuesday blog on wednesday)

The previous post was merely me making a Tuesday post on a Tuesday, to keep in
consistency with the past several months of regularity and to not break my posting flow
and to keep building the record.  This is the follow-up.  The previous post was an
expression of antipathy regarding time constraint, deadlines, schedules, actually, the
general fleeting and rushing nature of time.  Also, the pressure of keeping a record
open for the public (or a few friends) as opposed to the more natural private tendency
of writing.  Just a backlash of blogging and a spontaneous rebellion against bloggers
(and myself), as if everyone has something almighty important to say all the time,
anyway.  As if everything needs to be documented or photographed.  One of these days
perhaps the documents will crumble or the photographs will wither away.  Or if they're
stored on a digital device perhaps they'll just zap, be gone.  And some things in some
formats will last through the ages.  Or, maybe a lot more will last in the vaults than I
anticipate.  That would be great for future history.  I hope so.  We'll just keep snapping
this on our phone, saving this, and we'll just store the whole gargantuan pile in another
dimension of sorts.

      It's just that I know so many people who have lost all their pictures, files, etc. when their computer crashed, so be sure to go print some of your favorite pictures now and then.  All that being said, I like the blog, it's just a small percentage of the writing I do.  Though some weeks, it's the only writing I do.

      The label is releasing a new album by Sad Sad Bicycle on New Year's Eve, entitled
Broken Wing.  This will be followed by several more releases by others.

Tuesdays Come Round Fast

Blauuuughhhhhh

bloooog

blah     guh

bloooooooooooooog

thanks for reading!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Holidaze!

Holidaze

Really excited about the next album we're putting out- it's getting closer

and closer to being done.  Not sure when it will be done, but I'll be continuing

to work on it through the holidays, and it should be very soon.  Been tracking

and mixing today and yesterday.

Also, happy about the ongoing developments with Willie Cry Records.  We'll

be putting out an album by American Darlings, from Brooklyn, NY, that is scheduled

for release on Valentine's Day, 2012.  

Sad Sad Bicycle has just finished a new album to be released very soon, possibly

in the next 2 weeks.  

Olina, as well, almost has a new album finished, and there is other stuff on the way

as well.

We have a merch store burgeoning- check out Willie's Store at www.williecryrecords.com

Willie Cry Records buttons, keychains, mouse pads, ties, caps, shirts, tote bags, etc.

The Thunder and Mavericks are playing in OKC tonight.  The NBA season started after all.

Happy Xmas and Holidaze!

OKC riverwalk

by Andrew Clayton

Roundhouse Kick

Moving along- got back from Portland on Sunday night.  We had a 14-hour recording session at Jackpot Studio on Friday where we laid down tracks for the next Gardes album.  Classic studio, owned by Larry Crane, who produced Elliot Smith's Miss Misery, etc.

      Played his Strat, the piano, the theremin, Aaron played his bass and guitar,  Adam Miller joined in on the tubs.  Josh Smith played bass on one.

      Picked up Andrew Clayton yesterday at the Will Rogers World Airport in OKC, and we've been working on renovating the label website, www.williecryrecords.com and developing it all further.

     Tomorrow night we're playing at Saint's on 16th and the Plaza District.

     A lot is coming on the way.  Mundo releases!

     Willie Cry just brought on Kansas City's Hot Dog Skeletons.  Told 'em we'd dress up the dogs (ketchup and mustard).  Kansas City-style dogs.

Darn My Socks

In a hurry to leave for Portland 2morrow morning, I've been running errands, including doing laundry.  For the past couple of years, I've had a couple of favorite pairs of socks, at least a select few I prize above the others.  Now, they were getting tattered around the edges, loose threads.  I have a pair of navy blue socks that had white threads jutting out.  I guess the washer and dryer have been tumbling too hard?  They're just getting worn.  So I didn't have to quite darn my own socks, but I took a pair of scissors and began cutting away all the loose ends and so now they're pretty close back to good-as-new.  But even socks have a life-span.  I don't have a lot of socks with me right now.  They've been dwindling.  They're disappearing.  Some were left in another town.  I saw my sister-in-law over Thanksgiving weekend, and she was wearing a pair.
        I've never actually came to Christmastime where I am actually wishing for new pairs of socks, but this is the case.  Never once have I wished for a pair of socks for a present, but now I'll be grateful.
        Recording session on Friday in Portland at classic Jackpot Studio.  Looking forward to it!   Next week I'll be looking backward to it.

The Shelf Life Of An Indy Album

Looks like I never continued on my diatribe last week, but where does this diatribe even point?  My friend, David Wittmer, helped me with the layout of one of the print runs of one of our earliest albums.  He had an office/studio setup with high-tech computer programs and printers, and I had none such stuff.  In the middle of working on a design, I got a call from a friend who was stranded in Tulsa, and she begged me to come pick her up.  So I spoke to the head honcho at the Borders there about selling some of our albums there, and she said certainly, be there by this time.  Why not? We'd sold in some record stores, anyway.
        Now, I was pressed for time, and two round CD labels were born through his printer.  However, they were not printed on sticker paper, so we decided to cut these out and glue them on by hand.  Unfortunately, there was no glue stick around!  Now it was past time to go!  I hurried to Tulsa, stopped by the Borders, but the manager had already left.  Will you take a message?  OK, I left the two albums with them.  Is there a glue stick I can borrow?  Not sure.  Well, the manager would probably just glue them on for us, I was informed.  Really?  This seems like such a backwoods operation, I'm loving it.  I left her a note.  They paid me for them and it probably added up to gas money for my trip, and then they'd just mark it up some.
        Months down the road, shopping for some birthday or Christmas present while visiting my brother, I checked the local shelf upstairs.  There they were sitting there.  Sure enough, they were shrink wrapped with a bar code sticker and everything.  Muy professional.  I was impressed.  There was a pretty decent review written about the album later.  Some months later, I checked again.  They were still there.
        Some years went down the road, and I decided to check and see if this Borders would now sell our new album.  I went in there.  At that point, I didn't even have a copy of the previous album, and I wanted one for a keepsake.  I went to look for it and didn't see it.  Pushing back several locally produced records, there it was, in the very back, completely concealed.
        I asked if I could just swap them out for a couple of new ones.  Due to some technicality, I had to purchase them back.  So I went to the counter and bought a couple of my albums for a discount.  Opened it up, and the CD label slid right off the CD, sans glue.  Ha.
       Now our new ones were sitting there.  Maybe they'd have a better fate.  Time passed again until I heard that Borders was closing and going out of business.  When I was in Tulsa, I though maybe I'd go see if the store was still open and maybe have a look and see about their fate.  The store was already closed and empty.

Your Digital Watch Doesn't Display The Time, It Just Says Now

Once upon a piddly time, we decided we'd make our own records (albums) (CD's, more likely) from scratch and sell them in stores that would carry them.  Be our own makeshift production company/record label.  We started branching out from our hometown, securing the region, whoever would have us.  We sold several CD's as the music industry was slowly but fo' sho'ly making its massive transition from CD to the world of digital.  When we first started making them, they were really easy to sell.  They'd be gone really fast, even though they were printed, hand-made, in minuscule runs.  As people became more and more inundated with listening and finding anything they wanted at the spontaneous click of a button, they exponentially became harder to move. 
         When you first start doing things, if you're doing alright, you think, okay, I'm new to this, all I have to do is keep up the practice and work and I can only do better, but in places as fickle and ever-changing as marketplaces, you have to constantly adapt to not be side-swiped by bloodthirsty competitors, and I, for one, have never been too keen on competition, anyway, not of the serious blood-lusting kind.  Well, maybe a little.  Eventually, everything was expected to be free because everything was exposed online for free and was available right now, then another click of a button, and attention spans became even shorter than they ever were.  We found out it was hard to even sell stuff online, because it's just a piece of air or code that (magically) carries a sound.  Oh well.  At first, musicians and businessmen had to rush to set up their online store and had to pay a whopping 30-some dollars for a website domain name and perhaps 200 dollars a month for a hosting fee just to have the website storage.  Which you still do, but for not as much.  Several people were interested in checking out others' websites. 
           The advent of social media made it possible for everyone to have their own website, for free, and more and more storage space became possible.  Then, everyone in the world had their own website and became addicted to looking at themselves online and all of their friends.  Soon, you could even access all of this from anywhere on your cell phone, and people everywhere constantly reached for their phones as a reflex to check out anything that was happening except what was right in front of their face.  Cafes were full of people staring at screens and very few people were actually having conversations.  People were consumed with absorbing information until they started talking like robots.  Musicians stopped getting paid to play in public places because people could just listen online to music being made by robots.  When musicians did play for free and maybe (if they were lucky) a meal, no one listened because they were on their computers typing about how they were typing on their computer right now.  What did it matter? The musicians were boring, anyway, and so was Hollywood.  Everyone was making up their own stuff now. 
             I'll tell you about when we sold our albums at Borders, what happened, maybe tonight if I have time, but I have to run to band practice real fast...