uglyredhonda

The thing with the LOTGA release is that it really should have been a double 10-inch - it's too short to be a full double album. (But a double 10-inch would probably have seemed confusing, especially from a marketing standpoint - it would have looked visually like a lesser release.) If they'd released LOTGA on vinyl in 1995, it would have been one platter - "Omissions" would have been cut off as a bonus track and at least one of the album tracks would have gotten the axe as well. Vinyl was a weird beast once albums were being recorded with CD lengths in mind - one of the many reasons that labels tried to kill vinyl in the 90s. (It's not uncommon on early 90s releases to see "* CD-only bonus track" on the track listing.) I would actually argue that there might not have that many staff working on these releases. Lately, the typical re-release/remaster is an expanded re-issue. (Example: The Hip's recent re-issue of Fully Completely.) That stuff takes a lot of extra work, especially since they often come with expanded booklets/artwork as well. LOTGA is also a bit of an oddball in that it's not clear who actually owns the masters and where they are. It's not out of the question that the tapes would have been transferred to digital in one location and delivered in digital form to whoever did the mastering. (Having said that, I'm assuming Universal would have still had the master reels in their possession as part of the distribution deal covering Darktown releases.)

That is actually entirely possible. It wasn't an uncommon problem in the 90s with the advent of hidden CD tracks, especially when the sequenced master was on analog tape. Whenever there was extended silence after the "last track", some mastering engineers would just honestly assume that the album was over. For example, Nirvana's Nevermind has a hidden bonus track after "Something in the Way" called "Endless, Nameless". (If you're over 35, you probably have a traumatic memory of the day you discovered that bonus track - when you left the room, the album "ended", and ten minutes later, this cacophony came blaring out of your speakers.) When their label first pressed the CDs, they didn't realize the track was there, and left it off. The band caught it, and their label fixed it in the next pressing. However, after Kurt died, they did another pressing of Nevermind, and again forgot it was there. Out of the ten million or so copies of Nevermind that were pressed in the US, only like two million have "Endless, Nameless", and all of them were supposed to. (I can't speak for Universal Canada's pressings - hopefully, they got it right.) Whoever handled the LOTGA master together may have hit the same problem - especially since "Omissions" isn't listed on the actual artwork. Oh - earlier there was a mention about "compression". There's actually two different types of compression - there's "file" compression, like converting a CD to an MP3, and sound compression, where the volume is lowered on loud parts so that the volume is more consistent throughout the song. The latter is the key here. Vinyl actually creates its own compression - when they press the music into the vinyl, the peak volume points get rounded off a little. Generally, they try to use less sound compression on vinyl masters, as they know the pressing will create its own. The problem when CDs first came out - and why they generally sounded bland compared to vinyl - was that CDs had no natural compression, so it was an exact match for what was on the master reel. Vinyl's compression tended to round off the highs and midranges, so the CD had more highs and midranges and sounded dead. They had to invent ways to process the music so that it sounded like the vinyl. Unfortunately, once they invented those tools, they realized they could (ab)use them to make CDs as loud as physically possible. Btw - is it ironic that "Omissions" was omitted?

There was a postcard set that came out after Hospital Music - that's some of the artwork that MG drew while he was in the hospital and posted on his blog. Just now realizing: A) I love that artwork. B) I bought that postcard set on that tour. C) I have no idea what I did with it.

Reminder to Americans: DO NOT BUY THEM FROM AMAZON USA. (They always jack up the prices on imports.) If any of have done so already, cancel the order. If you order from Amazon, do it directly from Amazon.ca. The exchange rate is currently really good for US buyers, and the shipping should be close to reasonable. (Should be roughly US$28 each plus shipping. I didn't log in to check shipping prices, but they've usually not been crazy for me.)

If anyone hadn't seen it - all of the shows at that venue are in the $100 range, including a bunch of relatively no-name acts. http://www.petersplayers.com/ Compared to some of those, MG seems like a bit of a bargain. Not that it matters, but my ticket for MG's solo show at Massey Hall last year was $65.

You have to reach a certain post level to get access. (I can't remember now - maybe 30 posts?)

Peterborough tonight was amazing. Having seen Alvvays last night at the Danforth, I think I made the right call. Showplace is a really great venue - good lights, good sound. Crowd was solid, if maybe a bit rowdy at times. THIS BAND. This was as much of a rock show as I've ever seen out of Matt, and maybe the first where the MGB era felt comfortable. I have a soft spot for the 2011 lineup (loved that tour), but this might be Matt's best band. (Man, I miss Tony, though.) They sounded absolutely fantastic. Pretty similar setlist to the last few shows. Bonus: NO TIME BOMB. (I kinda wish Matt would retire it, honestly.) The one weird moment: Matt came out into the crowd during Girls in Black (the last song). While he was singing, people came up to him and were kind of all over him. He was close to screaming the last part of the song. I couldn't tell if it was just his usual emotion, or if he was bothered by it. When he stepped back on stage, he went straight for backstage - no crowd wave or thank you's - he left the band to finish. Maybe it was fine, but I couldn't help but wonder if he was okay. (At times during the show, he seemed a little distant.) But huge thumbs up from me on the whole.

Haven't looked at prices or whatnot, but you can't go wrong with ordering from Amazon.ca directly from the US. You won't get free shipping, but they're reliable (and the vinyl would be cheaper than it'd be if they showed up on Amazon.com as imports). Archambault.ca also ships to the US, but they're usually more expensive.

Periscope is competing with SnapChat - it's more like that. They're not trying to be YouTube. You broadcast, and it stays online for 24 hours.

MG needs a hashtag.

It's just something that's used for internal record keeping / inventory. Ticketmaster sells their General Admission tickets in blocks, so GA2 is just the second block of tickets. (One venue in my town goes up to like GA6.) But, inside the venue, GA is GA.

That may be my favourite gif of all time. It's the singer of a Dutch hardcore band called John Coffey. (Singer's name is David. Yeah, I dunno.) That happened at the Pinkpop festival this summer. Maybe the luckiest throw ever. (VPRO, who broadcast the festival, tracked down the guy who threw it. He made a mess on the second try.) Here's the video source for the gif: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTlFk-chSh4 The reverse angle is just as good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43rQEZHIPH0 #threadjack

HOW DO YOU THROW PANTS. If all else fails, throw a beer:

Just for old times' sake (and because I love this picture), the wrench in question (via the MBlog): MG (original post): "Wondering what was thrown at various members of the band during this evening’s performance at the University Of British Columbia’s Arts County Drunk-a-thon? Well, Ryan was almost hit with a good old-fashioned wrench. That’s right – an actual wrench. There were other interesting items as well, such as broken umbrella handles, twenty or thirty shoes, a cell phone, a watch, little ball bearings, you name it. My favorite part of the evening was when something would land on my pedal board and switch something on, such as a delay. That's always fun. What happened to live music kids? You did." MG (pic followup): "Brent, famed drummer of Limblifter, was standing side stage at Arts County Fair and just so happened to grab the wrench thrown at Ryan’s head. So, for Ryan’s birthday, he had it framed."

The thing with Helman is that he's on Matt's label, and Matt's willing to help out a label mate. At the Massey show last year, Helman walked out on stage (I knew nothing about him) and I immediately wanted to leave. Just sorta looked like pretentious fashionable teenage acoustic-guitar singer-songwriter. (The show was just him and a percussion guy.) A couple of songs in, though, it was hard not to realize that the kid was geniunely talented. I'm not going to say that it's something I'd listen to all the time, but I legitmately enjoyed the performance. Having said that, after the show, I ended up walking past him and his entourage while heading back to Yonge, and I wanted to hate him all over again. (So much pretentious fashionable teenage.... balh.)

Nope - you heard correctly. :) MG: "Mark Hollis of Talk Talk is actually, like, my fifth cousin by marriage. I didn't find that out until the late '90s. My mom went to England and stayed with relatives. And she called one day and said, 'You're a real big fan of that band Talk Talk, right?' I'm like, 'Well yeah, Mom.' I mean, I've got the gold record of their album The Colour of Spring on my wall. And she says, 'One of the guys is married to your cousin.' I'm like, 'What!?' Those last two Talk Talk records, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, had a huge impact on everybody. They're considered the first two post-rock albums. You read interviews with Thom Yorke and he cites that as an influence." http://www.torontosun.com/2011/10/07/matthew-good-reveals-love-of-jazz-ponies

CDs can go to about 80 minutes. For a little while, bands tried to see what they could do to max it out (albums like RHCP's Blood Sugar Sex Magik) before they started to realize that people didn't really need that much music in one release. Vinyl tops out at about 45 minutes (both sides combined) before the sound quality starts to diminish. (For those who remember blank cassettes - the most popular length was 90 minutes - you could usually get one entire album on each side.) In the 60s and 70s, it was really common for albums to only be 35-40 minutes long - and you'd get about one album a year at that length. Even through the 90s - a lot of Top 40 and Country albums were only that long, even on CD. It was really Alternative that was pushing for longer length. (Arrows of Desire is about 42, which is pretty much perfect for one vinyl.) (The famous double albums, like the The Beatles white album, max out at about 90 minutes. A lot of them actually fit on one CD. In the CD era, Billy Corgan went way past that with Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness - it runs over two hours. And it probably would have been better as one CD. I think it was a triple album on vinyl.) Back before vinyl was mostly phased out in the 90s, it was relatively common for songs to be flat-out cut from the album on the vinyl release to keep it to one disc. (I've got a few CDs that actually say "* CD-only bonus track" on the tracklist.) When vinyl was more readily reasonable to produce, some bands released longer albums (ie 60 minutes) by issuing them as two 45rpm albums. The sound quality is actually a fair bit better that way. But, again, now it's a double album. And that's the thing - when you produce double albums, you're doing the work of two albums. The mastering and pressing of each record in a double album is exactly the same. (You might save a smidge on the artwork design costs.) But you can't really charge double for a double album (especially since they're already charging $20-$30 for a single one). Also, I cannot tell you how much I wish Universal could just do another pressing of that exact Avalanche vinyl release from 2003.

Without trying to speak for Matt - the real problem for him as far as crowdfunding goes is that he's still in the major label system. (I assume Warner Bros funded the recording.) And I feel like Matt has acknowleged a little bit of discomfort in doing things via crowdfunding. Truthfully, Matt's bigger than a lot of the bands being mentioned here - he's still a festival headliner in a lot of places. But I think the finer point is that he's basically focusing on income, less on trying to spend money to grow the audience. It's not that he necessarily needs crowdfunding to go to Saskatchewan - more that if he can't be profitable there after twenty years of playing, it's probably not going to happen. The 90s band Failure probably had the best crowdfunded anything I've ever seen. Last year on their reunion tour, they were having trouble selling *signed* merch on their website. I bought a bunch of signed stuff for basically nothing. Then they crowdfunded their album, and used the exact same items as "bonuses", and "charged" at least twice as much for the same items. And people bought. It was to the point that they used their PledgeMusic project page as a de-facto web store for most of this year. http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/failure But doing music that way really is a completely different model. It's hard to even explain it, and maybe even wrap my head around it. It's basically where the band and their management are working as artist and label. That can't work for everybody. As far as Matt's stuff goes, my biggest suggestion for him would be to basically do what a lot of bands are doing now: focus on the die-hards. The die-hards will always spend stupid money for the artists they love. (We just do.) For example, I feel like a bunch of us have already bought two copies of the album. If sharing the demos during the writing process is undesirable, it'd be great to have a digital expanded edition of the album that has all of the demos (maybe including the rejected songs) for like $5 more. If it's digital, the production cost would be minimal. And there are a lot of other crazy ideas that might work without a massive amount of effort. I'd be bummed if the demos stopped happening, with one minor reason: that making the "All You Sons and Daughters" demo available may have made it possible for the final version to exist at all. (Always possible that Matt would have finished it another way, but I thought it was cool that The Bored had a little piece of a hand in helping make a song happen.) The album is dead as a popular music medium, but it's still surviving in some respects through the (somewhat bizarre) popularity of vinyl. If you buy something on vinyl, it'd better be something good front-to-back. There's nothing worse than trying to skip songs on vinyl. All of those kids who are buying into vinyl as a music medium have to also buy into the idea of the album. Plus, people are somehow willing to spend $20-$30 for an album. (This is probably the biggest concern about the Chaotic Neutral vinyl delays.) We have had single eras before. Most music bought pre-mid-1960s were singles. It wasn't until the mid-60s Beatles, Pet Sounds, etc., that the album became the album. And, honestly, CD singles were the predominant format in the UK in the 90s - people weren't necessarily buying albums. (The weird up-side of that era - you could buy Oasis' Morning Glory, then buy each single as they came out, and basically get an entire other album out of the b-sides.) But, admittedly, most twentysomethings today don't even enjoy music through singles. Most of my twentysomething friends listen to Spotify or Pandora 24/7, and it ends up being a random mix of everything. (As an anecdote, I was surprised when one of my most music-knowledgable twentysomething friends had no idea who Tame Impala was - they never came up on his channel/playlist.) Having said that, I'm guilty of being iPod-on-shuffle. I rarely listen to full albums start-to-finish, even stuff that I've listened to for years. I miss it sometimes, but I know that before the iPod, I was stuck listening to a single CD or a mixtape - there was no way to have all of my favourite songs at my fingertips. Now, my main playlist has 5000 songs. I essentially work new songs in one-at-a-time. I still buy a lot of albums, but I usually don't spin and album front-to-back, over-and-over like I did in high school. It's still a bit mind-blowing to me how popular vinyl is now. I never thought that would happen. In the late 90s, vinyl was huge among indie bands because it was so unbelievably cheap - way cheaper than making a CD of any length. Split 7-inch's were the indie-band format of choice. Btw - we live in an era where someone will spend $20-$30 on a single-show poster, but might not spend more than $10 for album. (I can't imagine how much money bands like Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters make off of merch, and it has to be multiple times what they sell in music.) As an aside - the weirdest demo-itis story I can remember. A friend's band was working on their major label debut. The lead singer had self-produced a solo album a couple of years before, and the band thought that one of the songs on it would be good for the album - and the label agreed. Weeks later, when the band finished the new recording, they took the finished song to the label, and the label rejected it. They didn't like the new vocal take. They were so used to the solo version that they actually made him bring in the master reel(s) from it, transferred the vocal to digital, and used Pro-Tools to edit it into the new band recording. And that's how it was released. I only heard that story because, when I first heard the album, I hadn't heard the solo recording, and I told the lead singer that the vocals on that song sounded strange - completely different from the rest of the album. It stuck out like a sore thumb. Truth be told, he no longer sang like that. (I thought his current voice sounded better.) That, and the solo take had some obvious flaws. He explained the whole thing - he was actually pretty upset about it. And it really was one of their best songs. (I could literally write a book about all of the label nonsense that I heard from those guys.)

Probably just logistics. I didn't get the signed CD of Chaotic Neutral from MM, but, in past years, he just signed 200 booklets. If I'm not mistaken, for at least one album, MM sent a sealed (unsigned) copy of the album plus a signed booklet - they didn't assemble a "signed" copy. Doing it that way is a negligable cost for him and/or MM. Vinyl would be way more of an effort, especially with the existing delays - pressing plants are maxed out right now. (Pearl Jam has apparently had some of their live vinyl releases made in eastern Europe, since there were some plants available. Who knows where Matt's are being pressed.) I think the best we could hope for would be a signed insert.

I feel like this thread would be a good study on what musicians and songwriters refer to as Demo-itis. :D It's really common among songwriters and musicians - you listen to a demo recording too much, then go into the studio to record the final version, and dislike the final version because it doesn't feel "right". When The National recorded High Violet, they recorded a version of "Terrible Love", but they didn't think it worked as well as the demo they'd recorded. They ended up putting the demo on the album. However, their live version was more in line with what they'd recorded for the album, and fans seemed to be clamoring for that version, so they included it on the expanded edition of the album. (I think general fan reaction is that the second version is better.) For me, I think people generally prefer the version they've heard the most, with exceptions of where the original version has a notable/fixable flaw. Sometimes I'll go back to a demo or live take that I've loved (but haven't heard in a long time) and realize that I'm no longer attached to it. (Years ago, I saw Jimmy Eat World do a really early version of "Sweetness" that was like a 2:30 pop punk song, and I loved it. Shortly thereafter, they doubled the length of the verses and extended the break to almost double the length of the song, and I hated it. But that live take is on a cassette - not on my iPod, which only has the album version. I heard that short version again recently, and thought it was just okay.) I actually doubt that Matt listens to the demos anywhere nearly as much as we do. :) Myself, I usually download them all, listen to them once, then go back to check them out after the album's out. I love checking out the differences.

If it were me, I'd pick up one of those seats in the front row balcony. If first rows downstairs aren't available, that's always an excellent second choice. (Some venues I actually prefer first row balcony - a clear view of everything and usually really good sound.) After that, I'd keep poking around for a close seat, and sell the balcony ticket if something better came up. I laughed when I saw where the show was on Thursday. By total coincidence, as it was happening, I was at Sonic Boom (just around the corner). (I think I may have walked by the venue as it was going on.) Not seeing Midnight Oil is one of my few regrets in my concert-going history. I'd been thinking about coming up for the Danforth shows, but I'm probably coming up the next weekend and going to Peterborough. (Has anyone been to the Danforth before? I'm probably going to see Alvvays the night before the Peterborough show.) Btw - I think Milos was tied with Ian for longest tenure in Matt's band.

Also did not. I'm imagining it'll be something super-small, like that thing he did with Indie 88 a couple of years ago.

$99 + tax. They added a link to a page on TicketBreak: http://www.ticketbreak.com/mattgoodvip

Side note: I'm betting there will be. The Dec 12th Peterborough show was on sale for a bit (it isn't now - I'm assuming it wasn't supposed to be), but you couldn't buy any seats in the first few rows. (On the same note, I'm betting the big announcement on the 8th will be a tour.)

OMG. I'm arriving in Toronto on the 17th for a short vacation. If anyone wins this and needs a +1, I'll gladly buy dinner or bring you something from the States (as long as it doesn't get me busted at the border). If I score tix, I'll happily give up the +1 to anyone who can make it.