Posted on - December 22, 2016 [at] 12:53 pm by Brad
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Happy holidays everyone, I hope 2016 didn’t do any damage to your face or hands. Everyone says this year was bad, but Iāve been hating years for years over here. Most are wildly overrated.
Anyway, in celebration of the end of this garbage-ass timespan, hereās a 2016 mix of Fuck You, Motherfucker (Itās Christmas):
Originally written and released by John Benjamin on December 22, 2002, I recorded my version on December 23, 2009. My intention was for it to grow to become an Instant Holiday Classic (IHC), an irritating radio staple that once a year would make me wealthy beyond my wildest Christmas imaginings. This plan has not yet come to fruition.
JB has a band called Ménage à Garage.
I continue on as Brad Sucks.
Good luck in 2017.
What a big Record Store Day Iāve got coming up this Saturday. My friend Dan at Backbeat Music suggested we press some Making Me Nervous postcard flexidiscs. And now they exist:
POSTCARD FLEXIS
See, itās a postcard? But if you put it on a turntable itāll play a very scratchy, low-fidelity version of my song Making Me Nervous? Disclaimer: Iāve tested them a bit and some auto-return type turntables havenāt been able to play them so uh: no guarantees theyāll work on your system. But theyāre neat!
If you want me to mail you one, just Paypal me $10 USD and send me your mailing address and Iāll get it out to you asap.
SHOWS
Iāll be doing an in-store (duo) performance at 3pm at Backbeat on Saturday. Everybody who buys a record gets a free flexidisc! Details here.
After that, Iām heading to Kingston to play a full-band Brad Sucks set at The Mansion in Kingston. Details here.
I think thatās it. After that, Iām gonna lay down for a while.
I did an interview for The Setup, where creative folk go into nerdy detail about the gear they use to get stuff done.
Status update: Iām still doing music full time in 2016! Iāve got some things Iām excited for you to hear/see but they aināt ready yet. So hereās other stuff:
Iāve got a live show coming up on April 16. Details over on Facebook.Ā If youāre near the place where itās happening on the date and at the time that it happens, you should come inside the place and see a music show.Ā
I was on a couple podcasts recently if you wanna hear me talk with my dumb mouth. One of āemās short and serious and the otherās long and wacky:
The Passionative Podcast [iTunes]
In this episode, I interviewed Brad Sucks, the OG of crowdfunding your album and one of the first people to give away his music for free online. Brad and I talk about how to trust yourself and your art, stop worrying about things being perfect and focusing on building a fan base instead.
Weāre thrilled to welcome Brad back to the show for a deep dive on Stardew Valley. On the way, we also touch on Moshow the Cat Rapper, Stovokor, Axl Rose, Bee and Puppycat, Kickstarter entitlement syndrome, Undertale disruption, Joshās impending spin-off podcast Quarter Quorner, John Campbell, blind-fire delivering psychology services, a series of tweets that Jesse never got over, veterinary rackets, Andre Agassi, getting involved in an ass tattoo, signatures versus Signature signatures, living in the formative and evolutionary age of video games, and what kind of murderer you would be.
Also I have a note here reminding myself that Iām way, way overdue on sending out my mailing list, so sign up for that if you want to get in on that.
I think thatās all for now. Thanks for reading. I enjoyed 10 Cloverfield Lane.Ā
Happy New Year to you all. I’m gonna do music full time in 2016, so that’ll be weird.
Posted on - December 31, 2015 [at] 8:19 pm by Brad
Tagged in - news
My pal Allen Henderson, who made the famous Which Way Game and Steamshovel Harry (that I did the music for) has a new website of his animation up. Itās full of secrets (hint: click the balloon on the first page.)
Also hereās some old test animation Allen did for a project called Frank and His Exposed Brain. I recorded three theme song ideas that you can hear there.
I believe the idea was that Frank would be having a normal day but then run into problems (birds, soccer balls, weather) because his brain was completely exposed.
Iāve been horsing around with Markov chains with the idea of developing some songwriting tools. One of my experiments seemed funny enough to make into its own Twitter bot. It mashes up VICE headlines into strange new ones. Some examples:
If this is something you need in your life, you can follow it here.
Iāve been winding down the ārealā work (aka hourly, billable, profitable, stable) in favor of doing music full time (aka unlimited hours, not billable, unprofitable & very unstable) which has been slower and harder than I thought. But Iāve been finishing up a few projects and songs and getting ready to crank out new Brad Sucks material all over the place. Hereās what Iāve been up to in the first bit of 2015:
Bee & PuppyCat
Iāve written a few things for the awesome Bee & PuppyCat show that Iām excited about. The song Iām finishing this week is sung Felicia Day. I got to direct her via Skype which was a new and cool and frightening experience for me. It was pretty awesome to hear her singing words and a melody I wrote.
Natasha (B&P creator) posted this shot of me on the monitor in the studio while I was handsomely directing Felicia Day from my desk here in Canada:
Itās been really fun working on this, Iād love to do more. If anyone reading this runs like an uh, awesome, successful project that needs⦠bad music⦠you know, get in touch.
I Donāt Know What Iām Doing on Vinyl
A while back I asked on Facebook if anyone’s interested in a vinyl pressing of I Donāt Know What Iām Doing, which was first manufactured as a real packaged CD in 2005. People seemed enthusiastic so Iāve been moving forward with it.
Honestly, Iām not a person who cares much about vinyl records. I own two: Micheal Jackson’s Thriller and Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry and theyāre hanging on my wall. I donāt own a turntable. Iāve got more nostalgia for cassette tapes and 128k MP3s downloaded from Audiogalaxy. Pressing (and shipping) vinyl is ‘spensive and a big commitment and Iād like to avoid having hundreds of my own old-ass record in my basement, so Iām hesitant (aka scared).
But I have a bunch of vinyl quotes and Iāll figure out the next steps soon and probably re-ask that everyoneās suuuure they want my 100% digitally recorded album in an old, giant, fragile, heavy, noisy, expensive to manufacture and also expensive to ship format.
My friend Bruceās album
Over the past year Iāve been helping my Texan chef friend Bruce Enloe out with bass playing and some recording and mixing on his new record Unseasonably Cool (soundcloud link). (Tracks 2, 3 and 7 are my faves.) I also played bass at the CD release show last week, which had this cool poster (designed by Mark Ettinger, drummer of the band):
Also there was an article in the big local city paper about Bruce and the record.
Thatās it, thanks for reading. More stuff soon. “Always be social media-ing,” they told us in Internet school. I update my Twitter and Facebook regularly.
Sad news. I learned yesterday that ANSI artist Fredrik Olsson aka Big Yellow Man, who did the rad artwork for my 2008 album Out of It, passed away in October.
I really wanted to use ANSI artwork for Out of It because BBSās and ANSI were a huge part of my teenage life. (I was in iCE and ACiD at various points.) I also thought it might be the first time it was done? I found Fredrikās work on Deviant Art. Pieces of his like ātelevisionā and snowy street really stood out to me from other ANSI artwork, which tends to be a bit juvenile and cleavage-heavy. ātelevisionā is the back cover of the Out of It CD and I still love looking at it.
Fredrik was a loved and respected member of the Blocktronics ANSI art community. Theyāve paid tribute to him with their latest Artpack. (I used PabloDraw to view it.)
I didnāt know Fredrik well, but he was great to work with. Not only did he design the artwork for the package but he handled all the fiddly print stuff to make sure all the colors and pixels came out perfect. He seemed proud of how it turned out.
Check out some of Fredrikās artwork. You can also watch a captured session of him drawing an ANSI piece if you want to see what it was like to paint with your keyboard and ANSI text characters in the old MS-DOS days.
Thanks and so long, Fredrik. Youāll be missed.