uglyredhonda

Blogging. I think he's just taking a step back. The post that was replaced by that one made it clear that things were starting to get to him. I can't blame him - the last week of shows have seen more of their fair share of inappropriate behavior, including the attempted break-in of the bus. He deleted an earlier post how he was thinking about ceasing his tradition of signing autographs at the tour bus after the show, given how it was tiring him out and how some people didn't seem grateful for the time. (He also noted becoming upset by drunken idiots and their retarded behavior during and after concerts.) There were a lot of positive comments thanking him for the opportunity to meet him, but he apparently received some negative emails from anonymous folks, blasting him for apparently not being more gracious to his fans. He then posted today that he was definitely ceasing the signings in light of those emails and that last night's session (in Saint Catherines) "was 50/50". I think he's doing the right thing by stepping back. Every now and again, he goes through a phase where things really start to get to him. In the past, he went through one of those phases and deleted his blog entirely. I think he's more grounded now (and surrounded by good people), and is more aware that the first reaction might not be the best one. Best to step back and take a few moments to let things settle a little. Whether or not he actually stops the signings, I think we'll only know from the people who go to upcoming shows. But I think if I were going to an upcoming show and tried to meet him, I'd tread lightly. I can definitely identify with some of what he wrote in those deleted posts. I have always been mystified by people who pay good money to see a concert and get absolutely hammered at the show. If you go to a show and want to have two or three beers to loosen up, no worries. But if you want to have a night out getting hammered, don't go to a concert. Half of the retarded bullshit that happens at concerts happens because people are too plowed to control themselves, and then somehow use their drunkenness to justify it later. And I'm still amazed that Matt has ever been willing to meet so many people after a show. At the Saint Catherines show last fall, there might have been fifteen to twenty people. But, the next night at Massey, there had to have been a couple hundred surrounding the bus. And there was a pretty sizeable crowd (I assume fifty to a hundred) last week in Kitchener. I could hardly blame him for not doing it anymore - that's an awful lot to work through, particularly given how tired he looked after the shows I saw last week.

Late in saying so - but that was kind of what I was afraid of. The Kitchener and Hamilton shows were so good - beautiful venues and fantastic sound - that I think anything less than perfect would have annoyed me. And I was so exhausted from trying to do everything during my trip that I was glad to have taken Saturday night off. Having said that, I would have liked to have seen "Alert Status Red". And usually I'm all about the club shows. I'd have to say I'm with you on Milos (the bass player). During one of the shows, he looked so out of it that I wondered if he'd toked up before the show. By comparison, the drummer looked like he was having an absolute blast during both shows.

Holy crap. The peak of my taping days was with a $55 (new) Aiwa recorder with a supplied mic that made some pretty good tapes. I could justify sneaking it into shows on the grounds that if security confiscated it, it only cost me $55. I don't tape with it anymore because I hate dealing with tapes. (I also reached a point that I realized I wasn't really listening to the tapes I made, with a couple of exceptions.) But I guess in hindsight I probably should have taken it - I had a perfect taping vantage point in Hamilton (right in front of the left stacks). Speaking of which, here's the Hamilton setlist, just so this thread has it:

Was I the only one who caught the MGB this tour? /not a Photoshop //original batches were printed that way ///ha

He started out with a short-sleeve collared shirt over it for the first three songs. Before "Odette", he set down his guitar, took off the collared shirt and dropped it off-stage, then stepped up to the mic. (The way they're playing "Odette" this tour, Matt isn't playing guitar on it.) If no pictures turn up, I've got about fifteen seconds of dodgy video I can throw online of an early piece from "Odette".

Again, courtesy the guy who scored it (not me). Unlike last night (see the megathread), the hand here was optional. (I stuck it to the stage before snapping the pic.) I think the guy thought I was going to grab it and take off. Of the two shows (vs last night in Kitchener), I think I give the edge to this one. Completely different vibes (which matched the varying setlists), but I think the crowd sold me on this show. The enthusiasm was fantastic (though part of me wished people weren't so enthusiastic during the quiet songs). Plus, the one-two start of "Giant" and "Time Bomb" was amazing. It really got the crowd into it early. Not that it matters, but I ended up driving. I knew I couldn't get away early enough to take the train, and, in hindsight, it'd have taken longer - when I checked the traffic cams about 5:30pm, the QEW was pretty much open. I got there with only one minor delay (where 427 meets the QEW). I was originally thinking about going to Saturday's show in Oshawa, but something about that venue (read: their website) makes it seem sketchy. It sounds like it might end up being a spectacle, but I doubt that would be more enjoyable than the last two nights. I wish I'd had the courage to snap more pics / take more video early in the show in Hamilton. I was spooked by the "no cameras" signs around the venue (and that I had a burly security dude five feet to my left). I did take some shots - if they end up any good, I'll upload a few next week.

Kitchener: (The woman who got it from Lance let me snap a pic. Yep, those are Lance's notes about who to bring what during the show.) The actual setlist (Matt switched up the encore on stage): Avalanche Weapon A Single Explosion Odette Born Losers The Devil's in Your Details Load Me Up Put Out Your Lights I'm a Window 99% of Us Is Failure Blue Skies Over Bad Lands Black Helicopter Champions of Nothing ---- Giant Apparitions It's Been a While Since I Was Your Man Matt was sporting the "No Rico" shirt. The smattering of "Rico" requests were then expected (but sounded like they were in on the joke). Not a half-bad way to deflate those requests. Really nice venue - sort of an old-school theatre with nice plush seats. The audience was seated for the entire show, then gave Matt a standing ovation after the first set, and stood for the encores. Matt was much quieter than either of the shows I saw last fall. There was a little bit of joking around before "Born Losers" (and a slight jazz vamp from the band) and some comments about a Vancouver author and William S. Bourroughs before "I'm a Window", but that was about it. I was a little surprised by how many people lined up at the tour bus - way more than I expected. (I finally summoned the nerve to get a pic with Matt - thanks, Dale!)

Yeah, I'm waffling a little on it - I have a feeling I won't be able to leave Toronto until 4pm at the earliest (5pm is more realistic), which would put me smack in the middle of that disaster on the QEW. I'm toying with doing what I sometimes do on Fridays in Atlanta - leaving at 7pm and just expecting to be late. (And/or watching the webcams and leave as early as traffic starts to lighten up.) Might be too late, but if you've got the means, I highly recommend the "fly to Buffalo and rent a car" trip.

Anyone else making it? Open question to Torontonians: has anyone made the trip to Hamilton via GO train, and is it worth doing that instead of driving? I couldn't help but notice that the venue is like two blocks from the Hamilton GO Centre, and it seems like taking the train might be preferable to sitting on the QEW on a Friday afternoon. (The one big downside being having to take the bus back to Toronto afterward.) And does anyone know how easy/hard it is to get a camera into Hamilton Place Theatre?

If it were being filmed for a DVD, you'd have seen a couple of cameras on the first balcony, at least two camera guys on stage, one camera guy right in front of the stage, and almost certainly a crane over the crowd. (You could do it without the crane, but it's been a near-requirement of live videos for years. Just watch any MTV or MuchMusic concert.) You'd have been constantly distracted by people running around to get shots. (I went to a few years ago at a venue similar to Massey, and it was actually unnerving to see the crane dive down over my head - especially considering how unstable its base seemed on the first balcony.) I saw that floor camera at the Massey show last fall. Matt blogged about watching the video on the bus in the days after the show.

I'll do everything I can. PM sent.

He posted a Flickr video of merch ideas for this tour on his website a few weeks ago. (I don't see it on his Flickr video page, so I'm assuming he nuked it.) So I assume that's a yes. I could be wrong, but I doubt "and his Band" will be on the merch. I think they're just using that as promotional verbiage to let people know that the shows aren't solo acoustic.

I've got one ticket for the 5/29 show at Massey Hall in Toronto. RCF (floor) row M, seat 42. Rather than sell the thing, here's what I'm hoping for. I bought a Virgin Mobile Canada cellphone the last time I was up there (my US cell doesn't work in Canada). I'll be up there in June for a couple of shows, so I'll need to re-activate it. The offer: I'll send you this ticket ($56 value) if you'll buy me a Virgin Mobile Canada top-up card. It has to be a Canada card - the US ones don't work on VM Canada phones. (If you're curious - I'd buy it myself, but the online stores don't sell them, and VM Canada's website won't take a US credit card.) The cool part: you won't have to actually mail me the card - you can just email/PM me the pin number on the card. I'm actually open to any value of top-up card - the amount isn't so important to me, since it's unlikely I'll be able to use it up during the days I'm there. (A bigger card would certainly be nice, but it's optional and not a determining factor in who gets the ticket.) I should note this: I would very much prefer for this ticket to end up in the hands of someone who will actually use it. If you're at all interested, drop me a PM or reply here. This isn't really intended as a first-come, first-served offer - anybody interested can put their name in. Hard luck stories could help. A solid NF posting history would be even better. I might even go for the random draw - depends on the interest.

I'm not sure it's possible to aptly pay "tribute" to an artist by doing something that will certainly piss him off. If you're intent on recording it, ask him for permission. If he says yes, go for it. But I strongly suspect he'll say no - and might not be so happy about the request. (I can already imagine the rant that might follow this one.) But that should be the minimum requirement: if you don't get his permission, you shouldn't do it. And if you decide not to ask on the grounds that he might say no, that's even more reason not to do it.

Reactions: 1) Separating the album into eras sounds good on paper, but will only discourage participation. BM is MG's most succesful album - limiting it to three tracks (then including Loser Anthems as BM-era) seems horribly misbalanced, particularly when Astronauts is given the same three spaces by itself. Quick fix: give one of Astronauts' slots to BM. Better fix: kill the "eras". I'd rather hear five unique songs from the MG catalog than cut two of those simply because someone didn't want to record a song from a less popular era. 2) The new demo songs should be excluded, PERIOD. I'm specifically referring to "Fought to Fight It". Matt's version of those songs should be the first to be readily available: it's grossly unfair for him to have to compete against someone else's recording when his recording isn't actually available yet - particularly since he's made his feelings about these demos crystal clear. Remember: these demos are not publicly available. You can justify having them and listening to them - but offering them in the form of a cover is just as bad (if not worse) than sharing the original demo itself. I don't have quite as strong a feeling about "Silent Army in the Trees", given how often he's played it live and that it's technically not a demo. But neither "Fought to Fight It" nor any of the other unreleased demos should be covered until after Matt has the opportunity to offer his finished version.

Just playing Devil's Advocate: It really wouldn't be that difficult to set it up to make it available for sale. All you'd have to do is obtain mechanical licenses from CMRRA. It costs about $40.50 per song to obtain a license to release 500 copies, paid up front. You wouldn't need Matt's permission or Universal's - CMRRA is already arranged to handle mechanical licensing for the MG/B catalog. I didn't see anything on the CMRRA's website about digital distribution, though. The Harry Fox Agency (a similar US organization) offers a digital distribution license for songs, but that only applies to US releases. Having said that, I think you can do the math on what it would cost to put together an entire album of cover songs. Reality: not worth it. Regardless - once this gets rolling, somebody should still give Matt the head's up to make sure he doesn't mind. Technically, you're supposed to pay the licenses even if you don't sell the songs. (I really doubt he'd mind - I organized one of these some years ago for another band, and they had no objection so long as no money changed hands.)

Actually, the rules are a little different for live performances of covers. You can play any cover you want live, so long as the venue has a license with the requisite publishing organization (BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, etc). If not, you're supposed to obtain a performance license and pay a royalty. But, literally speaking, if you picked up a guitar, sat down on the street, and started playing cover songs, you're technically breaking civil law. Whoever controls those songs could sue you. However, that's pretty unlikely. About the only time you hear of someone suing for a cover performance is when it's a "tribute band" focusing on one artist. (The bigger cover bands often have special arrangements with the artists they're covering.) As far as Matt is concerned - the other guys should technically earn a royalty each time Matt performs a song they co-wrote (assuming he hasn't already made other arrangements). But he wouldn't really need their permission. You can't include a cover on a CD unless you have a license from whoever controls the songwriting for that song. In the US, those licenses are compulsory - they have to give you one if you ask (unless you record and release the song first without asking). The rate on a compulsory license is pricey, so labels will usually negotiate separately. When you hear of a band being unable to release a cover "because they couldn't get permission", it actually means that the songwriter refused to negotiate and the label didn't want to pay full-fare. Along the same lines, recording a cover of your favorite song and uploading it onto your website is technically illegal. You're supposed to pay a royalty for each time that the song is downloaded in its entirety. But, again, it's unlikely that they'll bother to sue you (unless you're selling it and it's selling, ie, there's money to be made from suing you). But all of that is kind of neither-here-nor-there in this instance. Greatest Hits are generally included in major label contracts - labels are free to use whatever tracks are under their control. (Hence why EMI is releasing a Radiohead greatest hits without the band's involvement.) And, as far as I understand - the MGB contract and MG's solo contract are the same contract - from Universal's (legal) point of view, it's the same band. Honestly, kudos go to Universal for letting Matt put together such an awesome GH package. They actually didn't have to. I assume that the other guys get mechanical royalties for album sales - they should also get a cut for the In a Coma tracks they play on. Normally, the only reason they wouldn't would be because the label hadn't recovered the band's advance for each album, but I assume MGB is well past that. There was some controversy a few years ago because Sharon Osborne had Ozzy's live band re-record the bass and drum parts on Blizzard of Ozz and Bark at the Moon because she'd had a falling out with the guys who performed them originally and didn't want to continue paying them the mechanicals for album sales. (Any new copy of those albums you buy - in the US, anyway - is remixed with the new performances. Good thing I'm not an Ozzy fan.) I don't know what Canada's radio rules are, but in the US, radio only pays songwriting royalties for airplay. (They're exempt from paying mechanicals.) So the other guys would only get those royalties for the songs they co-wrote (eg, Geoff for "Rico"). And so ends an absurdly long (and boring) post about music law. (I toyed with the idea of doing music full-time a few years ago, then realized the fuck-mess that came with it, and realized that a day job was a far better way to go.)

The guidelines are labyrinthine. (ahh, silver dollar word.) I'm glad I'll never be well-known enough to have a Wiki article; it would drive me nuts if my article had total crap written about me (but was properly "sourced") and I could do nothing about it. The Wikipedia comments reference this stuff: I think the only reason that the demo articles have survived this long is that they've flown under the radar. Now, not so much. (I saw that +jackpillowhead was added to Matt's article, but it's gone now.) I just meant: rather than try to put this stuff into Wikipedia, they/we should put the efforts into helping Anton with the update here. By the way, is there any evidence that the +jackpillowhead "project" lasted more than a week? I always thought that it was Ryan's demos that Matt briefly helped him out on rather than something that they were truly writing together over the span of months. (I also figured "Devil's" was something they worked on while working on the In a Coma tracks rather than during +jackpillowhead.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(music) "All articles on albums or songs must meet the basic criteria at the notability guidelines. In general, if the musician or ensemble that recorded an album is considered notable, then officially released albums may have sufficient notability to have individual articles on Wikipedia. Individual articles on albums should include independent coverage. Demos, mixtapes, bootlegs, promo-only, and unreleased albums are in general not notable; however, they may be notable if they have significant independent coverage in reliable sources." I don't think any of Matt's demos have ever been covered by independent coverage (fansites don't count). But it just doesn't belong there anyway. Wikipedia doesn't cover minutiae; they don't accept articles about just any band or album (or actor or business, etc). Details about obscure releases belong on fansites, where we can go into more detail than is allowed there.

Please, please don't use Wikipedia for this. Everything's going to get wiped out. They have specific guidelines that forbid the inclusion of content like this.

"Agoraphobe" was December of 2004. The video file of them working on it was dated 12/19, but that wasn't the full song. He put the other two +jackpillowhead songs online first - there were a few days where people were clamoring for the whole song after seeing the footage in the video. (My copy of the song itself is dated 12/31.) Without looking, I'm going to assume it was flagged because of notability. Wikipedia doesn't accept articles on just any band or project; there has to be something specifically notable about it. While interesting (and of note to MG fans), +jackpillowhead was not a real project and never officially released anything. Wikipedia also requires that articles be based on coverage by published sources, and I don't think +jackpillowhead was ever covered by the music press. It's the same reason that the Rodchester Kings don't have an article. The only notable thing about the band was that Matt was in it, and that's not really enough.

8th row. Sounds pretty good. :angry:

That might just be me. :angry: I always figure if I'm going a long way for something, I try to do as much as I can while there - try to make it all worthwhile. And two consecutive nights in nearby cities would be too good to pass up if I'd already put in all of that driving. (I've definitely driven a long way for one show, but I think the longest was six hours, and I knew I had a free place to crash when I got there.) Admittedly, by the time I did my Canada trip, I had a little bit of money to play with. (Last October, I went to shows in Saint Catherines and Toronto, and scheduled in an extra night at Niagara Falls and an extra night in Toronto just to check it all out.) I think my college self would have decided it was too far to go. :angry:

If you can afford it, I'd go with both Kitchener and Hamilton. They're on consecutive nights, and are probably easiest to reach from VA. (I think driving through Buffalo would be a little shorter than going through Detroit.) Plus, they're really close to each other. (London's about an hour farther, Sarnia's about two.) Both of those shows are already on sale, so it might not be as easy to get really good seats. Having said that, if you're only buying one ticket - as of five minutes ago, Hamilton's at 13th row, but Kitchener has fifth row. Admittedly, I've never been to any of those four venues, so I can't really speak as to which venue might be better.

Not sure. Strangely, I never had a problem with hotel rooms when I was in college - though we typically stayed in dives in college towns. I think the 21+ thing is with certain chains and certain areas - probably places that have minibars in their rooms. I'm assuming that hotels don't want the liability of someone underage diving through the minibar and having it charged to them. Canada's drinking age is 19, so maybe if they have restrictions, it'd be 19 instead of 21. Probably the best move: scout around sites like hotels.com and tripadvisor.com (especially if you have a general idea where you'd like to stay) for hotels to stay in. Once you have a few to choose from, give them a call and see if there are any issues with age (etc).