Thursday, August 07, 2003
Monday, August 04, 2003
So has anyone but me noticed the recent glut of cover songs on the radio these days? I mean, what's happening? Our beloved popular musicians have been body-snatched by a bunch of bar-band aliens.
I mean ... "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" by Sugar Ray. "Big Yellow Yaxi" by Counting Crows. "Don't Dream It's Over" by Sixpence the mothertrucking Richer. "Boys of Summer" by one of the multitude of soundalike vaguely grunge crap-bands. Oh, yeah, and "Shout" by one of those faceless industrioheavymetal mutant soundalike bands.
What a load. If I were conspiracy-minded (and I indeed am, when it comes to major record labels. There's a special circle of hell reserved for them, in my opinion), I'd say that the big labels told these guys to do it because cover tunes are more instantly memorable, in an effort to revive flagging record sales at the expense of creativity.
The sooner online trading breaks the back of the music oligarchy and puts it back into the hands of small, laboring-in-the-back-room artists, the better. Keep the face, brothers and sisters! Solidarity! Our day will come!
*The Internationale plays*
(wait, is that the Dave Matthews Band playing The Internationale?! *scream of terror*)
I mean ... "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" by Sugar Ray. "Big Yellow Yaxi" by Counting Crows. "Don't Dream It's Over" by Sixpence the mothertrucking Richer. "Boys of Summer" by one of the multitude of soundalike vaguely grunge crap-bands. Oh, yeah, and "Shout" by one of those faceless industrioheavymetal mutant soundalike bands.
What a load. If I were conspiracy-minded (and I indeed am, when it comes to major record labels. There's a special circle of hell reserved for them, in my opinion), I'd say that the big labels told these guys to do it because cover tunes are more instantly memorable, in an effort to revive flagging record sales at the expense of creativity.
The sooner online trading breaks the back of the music oligarchy and puts it back into the hands of small, laboring-in-the-back-room artists, the better. Keep the face, brothers and sisters! Solidarity! Our day will come!
*The Internationale plays*
(wait, is that the Dave Matthews Band playing The Internationale?! *scream of terror*)
Well, it certainly has been awhile. And there are many things to update, so this may be a long one. Funny how life moves along whether or not you're keeping tabs on it.
San Diego wasn't a bust, at least. Actually, it went surprisingly well. It was cloudy, cold and threatening rain all weekend. In a normal city, this would scare everyone away but in San Diego it seems to bring everyone out of their houses. Someone should do a study.
Neither was it a rousing success, either, though I did make enough money to go back home. It was about average. On the up side, I stumbled across the grand opening of San Diego's newest and coolest-looking Fry's Electronics, with a sort of Atlantis theme -- big tanks of exotic tropic fish, gigantic Tesla coil, runes, big marble ball floating on a fountain. All very wild.
But the weekend wasn't enough to salvage the Salt Lake City disaster, so I came to a difficult decision aided in no small part by the festival failures, partly by an item further down in this update and also partly by weariness and practicality.
I'm getting out of the retail music business. I'm going to liquidate it all, pay the debt I owe my mom from buying the business in the first place, then take what remains and start promoting concerts jointly with my mom and my sister.
I'm actually quite excited by the possibilities, and once I let go of the idea of DCS, I felt very liberated. I've enjoyed having it and doing it, but it really has been a tremendous money- and time-sink. I did manage to bring it back to life somewhat after my mom, but it really was akin to jolting a corpse with defibrillators. Reviving it would've taken great reserves of time, promotion and advertising and I couldn't really afford to time OR the money. So now we move on. It may take some time to clear everything out, and a lot of cassette tapes are dumpster-bound. Even a few CDs. That part does make me sad.
Cars hate me. It's that simple. I mean, even when I drive Mason's car it starts making strange noises it never made before and little things start falling off.
A radiator hose in my truck popped like a zit. I knew something like that was coming. Parked the car for awhile, pulled the radiator and checked the water pump. It seemed to be rotating OK, the bearings seemed to be fine, so I got the radiator rebuilt and put it back in. Truck still overheats. So OK, it must be either the water pump or the thermostat. Too tired to pull everything out again myself. Plus, I'm worried that there's major engine damage from all the times in the months prior when it was running hot and possibly routinely overheating unbeknownst to me. So it's sitting right now waiting for a nice bundle of cash to land in my lap so I can afford whatever contingencies may present themselves.
So for awhile I was driving the Bug, which of course spewed oil like an unclamped firehose owing to the small crack in its block. Some things JB Weld can't fix.
Eventually the clutch went all wonky, slipping all over the place. So it was parked for a couple of weeks and I was carless, trying to gather together the cash to get it fixed.
Fast forward to the end of last week. Now it has a (nearly brand spanking) new engine and new transmission mounts. The transmission's still crap and hard to shift, and will certainly only last for a while, but for the time being I have (reasonably) dependable transportation for the first time in a long time! No A/C, of course, but I'll live for now.
Why everybody's not doing this I have no idea. Mason and I hit on a home-based business idea that's doing very well for us. In fact, my sister and her husband have started doing it as well.
We're picking up used (and occasionally new) books reselling them on Amazon. True, sometimes we run into books that sell for less on Amazon than we pay, but occasionally we pick up books for $.35 that are listing for $35 or more. Can't beat that kind of profit margin with a stick.
True, it is a lot of work, which I suppose chases off the get-rich-quick crowd. Also true that most of the books sell for less than $10, usually even less than $6, so this is not just a gusher of cash. But over the past month and a half, we've built up to an inventory of 660+ books, CDs, videos and DVDs (the office is in chaos with all the piles, shelves, etc.), and the business supports itself. New inventory gets bought out of the money we get selling stuff. Last week, we sold an average of about $100 a day. Probably half or so of that is profit.
It paid for the Bug's new engine. It's taking us to Hawaii in October. It's actually kind of fun treasure-hunting on weekends, trying to guess which ones will sell the best. It's a good bonding experience for me and Mason, but also for the two of us and Kerry and Joe. I got to spend the entire day with my niece Saturday and I really enjoyed it. She's pretty cute.
I always feel bad going to the post office because I always have a big tub full of packages. And I have to chuckle at the two-foot-long receipts I get back. But the whole experience has been, in a word, awesome. I'm moving the DCS inventory off GEMM and onto Amazon (I was terminally pissed off with GEMM anyway, and they can't offer me a tenth the exposure I get from Amazon). I'm just hoping I can keep up with the sales.
There are so many concerts coming up I really can't recall most of the them, but those are the ones I'm most excited about. It's a big music summer here in the southwest. Now if only Poi Dog Pondering would come. Their new album is wonderful.
OK, that's surely enough for now. Signing off. Be excellent to each other.
DCS
San Diego wasn't a bust, at least. Actually, it went surprisingly well. It was cloudy, cold and threatening rain all weekend. In a normal city, this would scare everyone away but in San Diego it seems to bring everyone out of their houses. Someone should do a study.
Neither was it a rousing success, either, though I did make enough money to go back home. It was about average. On the up side, I stumbled across the grand opening of San Diego's newest and coolest-looking Fry's Electronics, with a sort of Atlantis theme -- big tanks of exotic tropic fish, gigantic Tesla coil, runes, big marble ball floating on a fountain. All very wild.
But the weekend wasn't enough to salvage the Salt Lake City disaster, so I came to a difficult decision aided in no small part by the festival failures, partly by an item further down in this update and also partly by weariness and practicality.
I'm getting out of the retail music business. I'm going to liquidate it all, pay the debt I owe my mom from buying the business in the first place, then take what remains and start promoting concerts jointly with my mom and my sister.
I'm actually quite excited by the possibilities, and once I let go of the idea of DCS, I felt very liberated. I've enjoyed having it and doing it, but it really has been a tremendous money- and time-sink. I did manage to bring it back to life somewhat after my mom, but it really was akin to jolting a corpse with defibrillators. Reviving it would've taken great reserves of time, promotion and advertising and I couldn't really afford to time OR the money. So now we move on. It may take some time to clear everything out, and a lot of cassette tapes are dumpster-bound. Even a few CDs. That part does make me sad.
Car troubles
Cars hate me. It's that simple. I mean, even when I drive Mason's car it starts making strange noises it never made before and little things start falling off.
A radiator hose in my truck popped like a zit. I knew something like that was coming. Parked the car for awhile, pulled the radiator and checked the water pump. It seemed to be rotating OK, the bearings seemed to be fine, so I got the radiator rebuilt and put it back in. Truck still overheats. So OK, it must be either the water pump or the thermostat. Too tired to pull everything out again myself. Plus, I'm worried that there's major engine damage from all the times in the months prior when it was running hot and possibly routinely overheating unbeknownst to me. So it's sitting right now waiting for a nice bundle of cash to land in my lap so I can afford whatever contingencies may present themselves.
So for awhile I was driving the Bug, which of course spewed oil like an unclamped firehose owing to the small crack in its block. Some things JB Weld can't fix.
Eventually the clutch went all wonky, slipping all over the place. So it was parked for a couple of weeks and I was carless, trying to gather together the cash to get it fixed.
Fast forward to the end of last week. Now it has a (nearly brand spanking) new engine and new transmission mounts. The transmission's still crap and hard to shift, and will certainly only last for a while, but for the time being I have (reasonably) dependable transportation for the first time in a long time! No A/C, of course, but I'll live for now.
Books, Glorious Books
Why everybody's not doing this I have no idea. Mason and I hit on a home-based business idea that's doing very well for us. In fact, my sister and her husband have started doing it as well.
We're picking up used (and occasionally new) books reselling them on Amazon. True, sometimes we run into books that sell for less on Amazon than we pay, but occasionally we pick up books for $.35 that are listing for $35 or more. Can't beat that kind of profit margin with a stick.
True, it is a lot of work, which I suppose chases off the get-rich-quick crowd. Also true that most of the books sell for less than $10, usually even less than $6, so this is not just a gusher of cash. But over the past month and a half, we've built up to an inventory of 660+ books, CDs, videos and DVDs (the office is in chaos with all the piles, shelves, etc.), and the business supports itself. New inventory gets bought out of the money we get selling stuff. Last week, we sold an average of about $100 a day. Probably half or so of that is profit.
It paid for the Bug's new engine. It's taking us to Hawaii in October. It's actually kind of fun treasure-hunting on weekends, trying to guess which ones will sell the best. It's a good bonding experience for me and Mason, but also for the two of us and Kerry and Joe. I got to spend the entire day with my niece Saturday and I really enjoyed it. She's pretty cute.
I always feel bad going to the post office because I always have a big tub full of packages. And I have to chuckle at the two-foot-long receipts I get back. But the whole experience has been, in a word, awesome. I'm moving the DCS inventory off GEMM and onto Amazon (I was terminally pissed off with GEMM anyway, and they can't offer me a tenth the exposure I get from Amazon). I'm just hoping I can keep up with the sales.
Concerts I'm Looking Forward To
- David Gray this Thursday. May not make it, but I hope I do.
- Human League in Tucson August 28
- Fischerspooner in September!
There are so many concerts coming up I really can't recall most of the them, but those are the ones I'm most excited about. It's a big music summer here in the southwest. Now if only Poi Dog Pondering would come. Their new album is wonderful.
OK, that's surely enough for now. Signing off. Be excellent to each other.
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