Stormcellar Band Home Page

M.S. and D.G. say 'Go Vinyl! cos it's AWESOME and Hip and cool and stuff!'

I say 'I like digital cos it's easy! I like Easy!'

Some Cellar Dwellers have said 'make us CD's!'

I was 'No!'

They were like 'yes!'

I was like 'But CD's themselves, once the high water mark of technology, are now redundant'

They said 'get stuffed!'

I said 'Good argument!'

So I made some CD's. Not many. 

We will probably wind up making some for Promo, but I am serious about it being the end of the CD era.

Having $ invested in Physical Merchandise is a business issue. CD's have been a really useful tool but I think Bluetooth, Mobile Phones and the fact the cars are now being made with NO CD PLAYER means it's time to consider that Digital is here to stay.

I thought this was the case for our last album and wound up having to press a bunch of them, but mostly cos the Old Blues Dudes DO have CD players :-)

Still there is something nice about seeing the thing in physical form, and the artwork turned out a treat in print. Thanks to our mates at the Fall of Troy Horse for doing a short run.

How would you be, when making a CD is a Nostalgia Trip. What a time eh?

Google prefers sites with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connectors, it's part of trying to keep you safe. 

You may note that our domain is now httpS: not http:

This means we're using a safety feature to make sure it's really us at this address and not a naughty person. There's a big tech explanation but I'll break it down. HTTPS good!

In a side effect, this also reduces the ease of State surveillance, but we don't care about that (Hi guys!) as we're pretty much harmless and most of our crimes are against Music and Good Taste/Common Sense. 

Most of them.

Cultivating a bad boy image sometimes includes overstaying a parking meter.

This may break some links and/or have unintended side effects.

Adding SSL, not the parking meter thing.

Although come to think of it...

There are a few more 'enhancements' to try. Not all of these will work. The smart people in IT have a 'test' site where they do that.

Nuh-uh. We just add'em in, go live and see if it works.

So if you turn up and the site has lost all formatting and is now just a picture of a cat, Don't Worry, it's Probably fine.

Probably.

Sunday arvo loungeroom rehearsal.

The theory goes that with the new album out you focus on...bah. Boring. That's so last century.

What these guys need is to get the new stuff into the set. It's hard. There's discussion, disagreement, back and forth.

This is great.

We've thrived on being chaotic, it suits the times. Also driving new stuff into the set. It's risky. Really. 

D. explained it to me this week. Doing new stuff is all about creating new neural connectors.

That's far out.

It's hard to do because you haven't done this thing quite the same before.

That makes the Gig a risk. Yep that's right. At the rate of material turn out, you're asking your brain to learn new stuff all time.

What if you get it wrong. In Public.

YAY!

Brother Bill is afeared of nothing, Mr Wizard is too busy creating to worry about consistency, Rosie demands Precision and Theo demands timing.

I'd like to stay in tune.

So here we are, with a bunch of solid, well practiced songs and instead, let's go do brand new stuff and build some new neural networks!

I'm doing Album Release housekeeping. I shall not rant about marketing. I shall not rant about marketing.

Cellar Dweller and Friend Of The Band Mr Pete got me thinking about how much stuff we're linked to.

If you stop to consider that 2020 is only 3 years away, you get a sense that the 20th century has finally, unwillingly, started to relinquish its hold on us.

Songs, written now, that contain Genetic Elements are no longer copies. They're descendants. 

And none more descended than us? Thieves in the temple, there are thieves in the temple, liberating the past and adding Mr Potato Head.

Actually, if you wan to see the future, well, here ya go.

Warning - man was not meant to know certain things.

Like Male Rompers.

I warned you.

But seriously though (non sequitur of the year?) - by the time it's just OK for Dudes to wear Pastel Jammies in groups in public, I'm telling ya Bub, the future is now.

So it made me think.

In one of the songs we just worked on, I swear there are four notes that only make sense to me as part of Golden Brown by the stranglers.

One way of looking at it is 'hmm, lots of people use similar chord patterns' and 'Everything's been done before' or for those unfamiliar with the Stranglers 'huh'?.

Yeah.

That's when I wondered it Chords are like Words - if you don't use'em they fall out of the vocabulary.

Right, guv'nor?

I think Steal Early and Often. I also think, MINE MINE MINE!!!!

Once you have appropriated (liberated? been inspired by? Nicked?) an idea, just go nuts. It's Mine now I stole it fair and square

until it makes any money and then sue.

I mean. Um.

Ah.

So maybe there are limits.

But also maybe there are just a set of pleasing to the ear sounds, like the words of a language, approaching infinite in combination. Ok not maybe infinite exactly cos that is really big. But a lot.

As time passes, the commonality of radio disappears, we emerge into a world of separate parallel experiences, channels, choices. We don't get the same signals we once did from historical items because...history moved on. Ye gods.

It's a fascinating time to be in it.

By Bye 1980. Hello 2020. 

Also - I'm itching to do another videoclip for something. Something quick, cheap and quick. Also cheap.

To celebrate the release of album 9, here's a video for a song from Album 6.