Posted by MC Lars on Tue, September 29, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Consumer: I don’t buy CDs anymore.
MC Socrates: Really? Not even at shows?
Consumer: Well, maybe at shows if someone I go with is friends with the band or opening band, and they’re sitting at their merch booth looking sad and tell me they need money for gas or something. And if the CD comes with a free shirt. Otherwise, that form of media is pretty dead.
MC Socrates: What about iTunes? We recoup faster through digital retail than physical retail because there’s no overhead.
Posted by MC Lars on Mon, September 28, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Happy Yom Kippur.
I saw my Australian friend Jai Al-Attas yesterday. He used to run a labeled called Below Par, they put out my “Laptop EP” in Australia in 2005 and hooked me up with the Matches. He just made a movie about punk rock in the 90s that Tony Hawk narrates:
Posted by MC Lars on Wed, September 16, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I’ve been touring and putting out albums commercially for over five years now. Here is a list of twelve helpful things that I’ve learned in the past half decade that have helped keep me from needing a day job:
Trust your instincts
A golden rule in the music industry is that if someone is trying to offer you a contract (record deal, publishing, managing agreement etc.) and it seems shady, it probably is. We now have this luxury as independent artists to follow in the footsteps of the punk legends like Jello Biafra and Ian MacKaye who set up their own distribution and touring networks. When you let the people into your team, the goal is to build a community and network that will allow you to create music and tour to promote it. It’s not rocket science, and the more you learn to trust your instincts on people in your career’s orbit, the stronger that crew of business and artistic collaborators will be. Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” is a great study on how trust initial gut reactions – I highly recommend it.
Posted by MC Lars on Fri, September 11, 2009 at 12:53 am
If any of you live near Philadelphia, I’m playing a dope convention Saturday afternoon. It’s called Game Core and you can learn more about it and get tickets here.
I honestly can’t wait! YTCracker and Devo Spice will be there too, two of my homies I’ve done lots of stuff with in the past.
Music schedule for the day:
11:00 – 11: 30 Devo Spice
11:40 – 12: 10 Ultraball
12:25 – 12:55 Cryptorchid Chipmunk
1:10 – 1:40 Gonna Get Got
1:55 – 2:45 Super 8 Bit Brothers
3:00 – 3:45 YTCracker
4:00 – 5:00 MC Lars
5:15 – 5:45 Mr. Unstable
6:00 – 6:30 Armadillo Tank
6:45 – 7:15 TV Death Squad
