uglyredhonda

This probably isn't the answer, but Randy Staub (who mixed this album) was an engineer for Bob Rock for many years, including Metallica's Black Album (among other titles).

He also played "Guns of Carolina" on something called The Rush (apparently on a Shaw Cable cable access channel). For some reason, the clip includes Lance setting up and Matt's soundcheck, including a run-through of "Guns" (so he performs it twice in the clip). http://new.livestrea...videos/30349380

The one-way rental kills you every time. There's really no good way around it. (One thought: I wonder if you could do that trip via rail.) For the drive itself, I think Riley's on the right track - I feel like that gap between Thunder Bay and Saskatoon would be more like driving cross-country through Nebraska or Kansas - I've heard it's boring as hell. If it weren't November, I'd suggest starting in Edmonton and ending up in BC (though that still might be a better plan) - there's a lot more interesting stuff to see on that drive. For me, the real hit and miss of the cross-country tour is the weather. Not snow, necessarily (depending on the region), but the temperatures start to drop pretty sharply as you get into November. Some of those drives might be a little unpleasant. This probably isn't the answer you're looking for, since it's not quite as glorious a trip (and it sounds like you might have done some of this before), but if you're looking to do this on the cheap(er), I'd suggest doing an Ontario sweep the last week of October. Use Buffalo as your starting and ending point (the car rental and flights would be much, much cheaper) and do Barrie, Kitchener, London, and Toronto. (Maybe Montreal if you want one long drive in the mix. If you did Montreal, you could see how the rates to Rochester or Syracuse are and potentially use that as your starting point - but Buffalo would probably still be the winner.) Or even just Toronto/Montreal - that'd make for a pretty great long weekend. (I'm doing something similar the week before - Kingston/Hamilton. I'd love to have been able to do Kitchener/Toronto, but I couldn't do that long mid-week.) Reading this again, I just gotta say, that night was AWESOME. We had great seats, Massey is awesome, ending with "Fake Empire"... so good. :D

Sadly, you could have written that exact post six or eight years ago. Not to derail this thread, but in the modern era, I truly believe that people don't use torrents/pirate sites as often as anyone thinks. If you talk to the average millennial - I doubt any of them could name a piece of torrenting software. The truth is, they're not buying music at all. They listen to Pandora or Spotify. (Unfortunately, those companies pay jack to artists.) However, many of those same people do go to shows, and are willing to give money to the artist if the artist is creative about it. I don't know how any new artist can get started. Music today has to be about the love of it - making real money off of it basically amounts to winning the YouTube lottery. It's starting to feel like the current path is to either sign your career away with a label deal or build a fanbase the old-fashioned way and hit them up with a Kickstarter when you're ready for the next project. Low-level bands do not make money touring. Never have. Fifteen-plus years ago, labels would pay for tours with the expectation that they would make it back on album sales. Not anymore. Today, the label funds their early tours with the expectation of receiving a share of touring and merchandise if/when the band is a success. That never happened fifteen-plus years ago - the labels used to let artists keep everything they made on the road. Established artists have a distinct advantage in everything, too. (Not that it's necessarily easier.) For example, Toad the Wet Sprocket recently did a Kickstarter hoping to get $50k for a new album. They got almost $300k. But a new(er) artist would be lucky to get a couple hundred dollars. But, to me, there's something a little bit sad about artists having to sell meet-and-greets/VIPs to turn a profit. It's completely understandable, and a nice way for fans to have access to the artists they enjoy, plus the additional goodies. But it didn't used to be this way. Publishing as an industry is fine, so long as royalty rates don't decrease under upcoming legislation changes (especially in the States). Also, more and more often, new bands break because they have one song used in a tv show - and many of them receive royalties when the show re-runs.

Kind of a long-shot, but, if you have a chance, call the Massey and HPT box offices and see what they do about service fees for tickets purchased in person. It's not uncommon for venues to waive the service fees (or charge less of them) for tickets bought at the box office. (Hamilton tickets are $39.50 and $29.50 before fees - Massey's are more.) Also - if you didn't mind sitting upper-deck - there are some pretty decent seats in the second balcony in Hamilton that are $43 (fees included) on Ticketmaster. (Front-row upper balcony is often really good.) Optionally, you could try what I used to do when I had a free night and didn't care about being disappointed if I didn't get in: show up on the night of the show with whatever you're willing to spend and see if anyone has a spare. If the show's not sold out, it's usually pretty easy to find people with extras - and people seem to be willing to take less if it's cash and if they know the person actually wants to see the show. (There's also the see-if-you-can-score-a-free-ticket-at-the-box-office trick that I once used successfully - though, honestly, I wasn't doing it on purpose. I can throw that in the Lounge if anyone's curious.)

Laughably, they uploaded it to US iTunes with "feat. Yes", and it's still that way as of this moment. The US always gets the cool stuff. :P (Seriously, though, not really - it doesn't look like the US iTunes pre-order comes with immediate "Arrows of Desire", though I wasn't willing to try it to find out.)

If your PVR has component outputs (red green blue), you can use something like this. http://www.futuresho...9/10242273.aspx I have an older version of that (the 1212) that I bought when I realized that I had a bunch of programs on my DVR that I wanted to keep but couldn't buy anywhere. It hooks up to your computer via USB. (If it's like mine, it comes with Windows software only - Macs need something like EyeTV to capture the feed.) I'm hoping somebody should be able to grab it another way, though - maybe from the webcast.

Kind of a surprise to see Pat Steward playing drums for Tom Cochrane and Colin James. (Explains why Matt grabbed Blake for this tour.) For the moment - if anyone wants to see what they've missed, the YouTube stream includes everything up until now. (Hopefully, they'll leave it online once the show is over.) I'd forgotten what it's like to have a mayor that everyone loves. Mayor of Calgary got huge applause. (Alberta Premier... not so much.)

Yes regrouped recently and released a new album without their best-known singer. This feels more like an error all the way around - I can't imagine any reason that Matt would work with them (or vice versa). Best known for their extended prog-rock wankery. Roundabout (live) But their "mainstream" era resulted in one of the best music videos ever made. Trippy as hell (in a dark and good way). If you've never seen it before, it's worth the 4:25. Owner of a Lonely Heart

Woah, did he get Yes to play on this album? Might this finally be the prog-rock opera based on the Lord of the Rings that he's talked about recording? (Maybe "Arrows of Desire" is about Legolas?) ;)

For me, one of their absolute best songs is a relatively obscure cover (a TNLTL b-side): Iron and Stone

Dala opened the September show, but were definitely off the tour by November. They dropped off right after the Ontario dates that year. Btw - NLX sounds like a band, but was just the stage name of singer-songwriter Natasha Alexandra. http://www.nearfantastica.com/news/new-opening-act.html

Nov 12, 2007 - NLX I had to dive for that one. I remembered that Dala unexpectedly dropped off the tour early, but I couldn't remember who replaced them. If this Zuckerbaby fan page (Angelfire, wow) is accurate, it looks like they only opened the Alberta shows: http://www.angelfire...rbaby/news.html

August 8, 2004 - Wil Sept 20, 2007 - Dala Nov 9, 2009 - Mother Mother

Hate to say it - this was not unexpected. (At least not to me.) The only way the US tour ever made sense (especially as a full-band tour) was if Matt's label was footing some percentage of the bill. Historically, that's typical for labels trying to break acts - label funding makes the tour possible. That his label hadn't put the single onto iTunes was the first huge red flag. They clearly didn't/don't have a strategy for breaking Matt in the US - getting a single onto iTunes is a trivial way to start. Breaking him in the US and UK felt like a major part of his signing with them, and I hope (assume) he's already read them the riot act for this. I can already hear them complaining that Old Fighters didn't sell enough to "justify" more funding - and that since it was "just released", it's too early for a new album release. Considering they didn't do any real promo for it... (Those are the kinds of things I've heard labels tell bands. A friend of mine was told by his label that if his album sold x number of copies in Dallas over one weekend, they'd fund a music video and a tour. It was nonsense - they knew in advance that it wasn't going to sell x. He still believes them and blames file-sharing for the failure.) I really hate this for Matt. The last two US tours were on his dime - essentially building up to what would hopefully be a big push this go around. (That would pretty much be why they stuck to the same cities as the last tours.) And, unless his label has a major change of heart (maybe in the spring), I'm worried this may be the end of the road as far as US shows (beyond border cities and maybe NYC). I can't see any other way for the right circumstances to come together again to make it happen. I think the only upside - it's far better that this happened now rather than two months from now.

Man, that'd be a no-brainer for me. Pearl Jam, then catch MG in St Catharine's or Hamilton. That'll probably hurt MG's show a bit. However, PJ is so expensive now that it might price a lot of people out of going.

Things are so weird with US radio now - if I were being paid to break a new act, I think I'd have to find a new job. AAA does seem like the right match, but most AAA stations seem to be doing their own thing - there's really no consistency. Every MD is doing their own blend of new and old. (I think the only consistency between AAA stations is that they all play The Police at some point during the day.) Take here in Atlanta, for example. A year ago, we had a heritage alternative station (99x) and a second AAA station, which mixed new songs with stuff going back to the 70s. They were both dismantled last fall. Clear Channel recently started up what feels like an alternative/AAA hybrid. Those three stations have/had completely different playlists, with 90s alternative seemingly being the only common element. City & Colour has played several shows here in the last couple of years with good attendance, and, for the life of me, I can't figure out how anyone here has heard of him/them other than online or word of mouth. I swear I've never heard any C&C songs on the radio here. Ten or fifteen years ago, all you really needed to do was get KROQ and 99x on board, and the rest of the country would follow suit. Nowadays, it feels like a lot of these "new folk" bands are finding success by somehow sneaking onto CHR. (I'm almost embarrassed by the number of alternative-ish bands that I'm hearing about for the first time when they play SNL.)

I think "extended single" is a newer term to describe a single release that has more than just the one song. The advent of digital outlets made one-song single releases very common, which wasn't the case previously.

Honestly, it may have been there for a while. Not sure why Universal never put it on iTunes (maybe they can't because it was used as a pre-order bonus), but 7Digital is so obscure that it wouldn't surprise me that nobody ever saw it. Btw - there is a way for Americans to buy it, if anyone is so inclined. I'll post how in the lounge.

Honestly, though, it took about a week for that second show to sell out, which is about in range for a show of that capacity. At that pace, most promoters wouldn't immediately book a third one (though they'd consider it). I can't fault them for booking the venues that they did this time. Matt hasn't been promoted in the UK or Europe in more than a decade, and there really wasn't a good way to figure out how well the shows would sell. Book someplace large, and it would be a nightmare if it didn't sell. Anyway, potentially better news - Matt just retweeted something from his UK promoter that suggests that more shows might be in the works. If you're not already subscribing to Matt's Twitter or checking his website daily (which I assuming you aren't if you waited that long to buy tickets to the second show), you should make a point of doing that now.

Just gotta say - YOU ARE MY HERO! This is an amazing find. I didn't realize at first that Universal uploaded this as a one-track single release, complete with artwork. It's definitely a lot different than the other mix. Some of the added orchestration is almost a bit creepy. The difference in length is because there's a tacked-on ending of some creepy calliope-esque music. And, of course, for fun, you can now place it between "Mass Production" and SOPS and see if the pre-release track listing of AOB would have made sense: http://www.chartatta...audio-of-being/

I completely forgot that the album has already been recorded. There were some fun shenanigans on Twitter during the sessions. (Weird that the interview says it was recorded in 2011 - I'm assuming they meant November 2012.)

Does it mention it in the liner notes? "Mixed by Chris Lord-Alge" or some such? It was a surprise to me - I'd be surprised if Matt preferred that version (though I know a couple people who do). Made me wonder if they had to do that to get around the possibility that Atlantic might still have rights to BM in the US - the rest of the BM tracks on the compilation were the same mixes on the Canadian and US releases. (Else maybe somebody figured it was more "radio-ready".) What caught my ear was the ultra-loud double-tracked vocal on "always hit the brakes". It's subtle in the original mix, and way up front in the remix. (That, plus Lord-Alge always had a penchant for making snare drums sound like the drummer is punching cardboard.)

Interesting discovery: on iTunes (at least), the version of "Strange Days" on Old Fighters is the US remix, not the original mix.

And, for Canadians, it's not actually that crazy a price on Amazon.ca ($16.54 at present). Obviously no digital download, but if you wanted to go that route, you could just download the individual tracks. (PlayStop.ca has it for $13.15, but I haven't shopped from them since they were CD Plus, so I can't necessarily vouch.)