Writing vs. Music: Back Catalog

None of my records are available legally as downloads. Currently, the only Gruntsplatter track on iTunes, AmazonMp3, etc., is a remix I did for Aidan Baker back in 2005 for a limited CDR he sold on tour. You can check it out here. It was obscure 6-7 years ago, and yet it lives on. It probably has a mustache and gambling habit by now, who knows. Thus, I spent the better part of the past weekend researching digital distribution.

This is really the only part of this post that has anything to do with writing. Back catalog, it has renewed value in the eBook era. The work is suddenly infinite and offers another road into a writers world. The more GOOD roads you have available the more likely someone is to pull in, get their mustache trimmed and yank the lever on your slot machines.

With this new collection I am putting together, I’ve been thinking about that. Truth be known, I have no idea which of my releases are or aren’t available anymore. Everything I did was on a virtual handshake. I never signed anything, payment was a % of the pressing, there wasn’t no business related need for follow up from either side. They were the relationships of comrades rather than business partners.

I’ve paid only passing attention to “the scene” for years, once it became a “scene” really is when my attention started to drift. It’s been six years since I’ve released anything significant. How many of the old guard are even still around? How hard would it be to track any of  my stuff down now? Relatively hard. A big thanks to Cold Spring out of the UK, Justin seems to stock about everything that is still available.

So, when this new release comes out I’m hoping to have some previous material available from places that are easy enough to find. I’ve started looking at Bandcamp, and CDBaby, as a way to make legit digital copies available.  Bandcamp I find particularly interesting because you can put up odds and ends as well. It never occurred to me to do this until I started reading about authors taking control of their back catalog and making it available as eBooks. It may be the first instance where the way things work in small press publishing actually makes more sense than the way they work in underground music.

I’ll keep you posted…

Dragging The Rivers Of Sleep

Cripes, I didn’t realize how long it had been… Back in May I announced that Fall Of Nature Records had approached me about doing a collection of out of print tracks for them.

That collection will be called “Dragging The Rivers Of Sleep.” Now that I have sorted out the title a mere 7 months later, I have a real fire in my belly to get the remaining tracks nailed down. I have to work from an idea, I always have.  While it may be absurd it took me this long, I couldn’t slop some tracks together and call it good, there had to be something else there.

Next month will be 6 years since “The Aberrant Laboratory” came out, the only thing since then was a compilation track in 2008, but that was actually recorded in 2002. If Karl from FoN hadn’t approached me Gruntsplatter may well have stayed asleep.

I have about 2/3rd’s of it figured out. What to do with the remainder,  I keep going back and forth on that. The material here is by and large from 1999 forward, where as “The Organ Harvest” (Audio Savant 2004) CDR of rarities was 1994-1999.

More details as I have them. This is as good a time as any to say I will be doing a little new Gruntsplatter material this year for something I can’t talk about yet.