did you even try?

here i am at the coffee shop once again.
i have been rereading a few of the entries here and i must admit that i am pretty pleased with some of the things i've written here. i had pretty much thought that this page was a graveyard of incoherent rambling- something i'm really exceptional at, especially on the internet- but here not so much. not that it really matters- so few people follow this thing.
the recording from the record bar show is finished. i posted it on cllct and all of the sound files on our website as well. i'll post that stuff at the top once i'm done with this current dense chunk o stuff.
the newest hurdle in the ongoing drama of shalloboi- where am i going to get the 'dandelions' ep pressed? disk makers and cdman both offer only a minimum of 1000 bulk cds. the price is good, but fuck man- i don't need 1000 copies of it. 500 i can stomach sitting around unbought for ages and ages, but not 1000. i am beginning to wonder if i should just press the ep on vinyl. i've been having some problems with the hidden tracks anyway, so i figured i might as well look into pressing 500 or so and using the screen i have burned to make promo cds. i even checked superdigital and they do a minimum run on bulk cds with no artwork of 1000. i'm just not so sure what i should do with this stuff... i'm even considering not bothering with an official cd release. cds are so useless as it is these days. i know i only pop them into the computer once to rip the audio and put it on the ipod and then they tend to languish on the floor in piles by the computer. this is the whole point of switching to lp only releases. that and i think it will force me to shape up and make things a more bearable length. i also think that people will actually buy lps.
i am feeling a bit distracted right now- the people across from me are talking about some really heavy stuff. i suspect that it's a man and his lawyer going through divorce papers. the man does not seem happy at all. i haven't really been eavesdropping- i'm listening to music on my ipod.
some recording- i just did some guitar tracks on monday night. back to the old way- i asked stefanie if she would rather play along with guide guitar tracks or those drum presets in the keyboard. she said she liked the guitars better to play along with. this is probably not much of a surprise and probably will sound a bit more organic since the guitar tracks for these songs required the real dense treatment- it's the two amps facing each other, excessive volume and five microphones placed. not very conducive to live recording. not even enough mics left over to mic the drums properly. plus a nightmare in terms of bleed. so it ended up taking me an excessively long time to get these two parts recorded- a while to get everything set up and then it took me a few takes to play the whole thing through without something going wrong- mostly forgetting to step on the switch for boost at the right time, a problem with the sound, a few careless errors, some sloppy playing. once i finally got them both finished i listened to the playback and they just sounded dreadful and i couldn't figure out why for a spell until i happened to notice that i hadn't plugged the guitar chord into the second amp. dep. i had been playing and wondering why it wasn't as loud as normal- normally things shake and quake- i can feel the force on my chest. then i had to do them a few more times to get it down, but then i got them both and they sounded pretty nice. i'm not sure what to do today- i would like to get some work done, but i also have a nice helping of errands to run, so it might have to wait until tomorrow. i only have a few things i'm working on at the moment. what i can currently do is a touch limited. i am still holding out for a few more mics. unfortunately they are of the rather expensive variety.
i think i might have to ban yelp.com from our computer. something i do now is i tend to type in my favourite places in town and read the reviews and get very offended at the very negative ones. i really should probably ignore them because the negative ones are usually more telling of the people giving them. one thing i have picked up from the negative ones- don't order chinese food delivery. it never seems to work. pick up and take out seems fairly reliable. but not delivery- that seems to be something that doesn't quite work.
i only have four more months until i turn 30. i guess that my life isn't really what i thought it would be by the time i reached that age. when i say that i'd like to clarify that i don't mean that in a bad way at all. i think that i'm doing what i love and obviously i'd be much more unhappy if that weren't the case. there are costs of course- i'd say the bulk of the costs is the whole 'being ignored' thing. i feel like i'm putting it all out there and not getting much back and just hitting the requisite road-blocks. on tuesday i had to go to permanent records and pick up all of my consignment cds that i had there that hadn't moved. i think i sold one cd out of 10. i guess that means i'm a glass-half-empty person. it's not a bad thing though- at least i sold one. i am aware that my self-promotion skills are nil and given that it's a miracle that i even sell anything at all. what was kind of funny was that will was talking to a customer while i was cooking and somehow he'd told her that i was a musician and she was asking me 'what kind of a musician are you?' and i didn't answer immediately because i wasn't sure if she was talking to me. i'd also just picked up all of my stuff, so i said 'me?' and will was like 'of course, who else?' and i think i said 'i play a lot of slow, sad bastard stuff that no one buys.' i try to say those things in a joking way- but when you see it written out it does seem a bit negative. i dunno. i guess that what's going to happen is these next two releases are going to come out and then i'm going to be 30 and working at a coffee shop (which i discovered via yelp is a refuge of young and un-employable) for who knows how much longer and playing in a band that is garnering zero recognition or attention. i guess i'll worry about that more towards the end of the year. no sense in getting all worked up about it now. stefanie wants to take a trip for her birthday. somewhere where we don't know anyone at all- she doesn't even care where. my little change peanut butter jar is basically for that trip. i'm in a place right now where i'm having trouble picturing how i'm going to be able to save anymore money for such a thing, but i'm sure we'll get there. we always do. plus 2010 is going to be somewhat of a reflective year. a release-free year. i am going to stick to this assertion. i'm looking forward to going a full year without doing another release. i don't even know what i'm after anymore. i don't even think i want to be signed to a record label- ideally i'd like to just be able to keep control of how my music is released. it'd be nice to have someone else to handle all of the promotional mumbo-jumbo because i'm just not a fan of that stuff at all. it's just not something i'm terribly good at.