Your Saturday Seven

I have a good deal of random information to unload. The best way to get this information out is by way of a list. I like my lists.

1. To follow up on the post about the loaner couch, it's here. Unfortunately, although hilariously small, it's not funny enough to post a picture of. The delivery guys also dropped off a reclining leather chair that no one has sat in yet, or will.

2. My recording program of choice is Ableton Live. It's fantastic. In all honesty I was using a pirated copy of it for a few months. I noticed some bugs, but not enough to ruin anything for me. Last week upon opening the program a nasty little dialogue box popped up basically telling me that they had found me out. Doing some quick research it became easily apparent that Ableton has crazy anti-piracy coding that even those nerdy software crackers can't figure out. All of my files were locked away in the deepest depths of my harddrive. It took about 5 minutes to decide I needed to buy the program, which wasn't so nice on the old pocket book. However, immediate action was needed. So, well, watch the music pour out.

3. Speaking of, in a two-day record-a-thon I started and finished a remix of Juvelen's song "Hanna". No less than a few hours after its completion my pal Gustav was pumping it into his DJ set. It was just like in the old days when the studio would cut a lathe and immediately run it to the local radio station for a spin. iLathe. At this point I'm not sure where or how the remix will get released. I'm looking over my options. But I'm really happy with it so it will be available eventually.

4. I will do whatever is necessary to watch the Super Bowl next weekend even it if means changing my sleep routine and calling in sick to work. I will be Bearing down most definitely.

5. I have been listening a shitload to a guy named Eliot Lipp. I recently discovered his music in the form of a podcast via Hefty Records. In this podcast Mr. Lipp does a wonderful mix of songs from his catalogue and other interesting musics. It's something like a half hour in length and comes highly recommended by yours truly. Go grab Eliot Lipp's Electronic Beats.

6. My next podcast, The Unreleases, Vol. 2, will drop next week. It'll be 12 more slabs of sound from my distant and not so distant past. And following that, probably sometime in March, will be Let Me Put My Goggles On: The Mathlete Mix.

7. With the seven, seven-eleven, seven-eleven
Seven even back do' Joe I picked up the cash flow
Then we played bones, and I'm yellin domino

Total snow job

Winter came to Stockholm finally, for real.

Here, sit on this

To celebrate our new apartment, life, etc... we went out couch shopping. This happened a few weeks ago actually. We were still in Uppsala but more than ready for the move to Stockholm and figured a new couch is exactly what we needed for our new digs. So we decide against Ikea ("too Ikea-looking") and upon flipping through some catalogs found a couch from another lesser-known furniture chain that we were way into. We go to the store, pick out our color, arm style, feet style, material, etc... It's a build your own couch sort of vibe there. Good price, free shipping, nice. Must wait 4-6 weeks for the couch to find it's way through the furniture birth canal; understandable as we realize that good things come to those who wait. Yesterday some mail from the furniture company comes and reminds us that we're waiting for a couch. M'sweet rings them up to get a status update which is not horrible but she's told we still have to wait another four weeks. Then, now this is classic, she goes into we wish we could have our couch sooner because we're all up in here sitting on a mattress mode. And it worked. We still won't be getting our couch for a month, but next week the company is going to drop off a loaner couch. That's right, a loaner couch. We use it for a bit then we never see it again. They said that "it might be leather," which is gross. We'll see what we sit on! Details forthcoming! Loaner couch!

One week in

Greetings from my new home, Stockholm. I've been here for one week now and have pretty much settled in. I can see the apartment's floor finally as nearly all of the moving boxes have been emptied, broken down and thrown into their respective recycling bins. I went through last week sans internet (tear), but am now obviously back online and in business. It feels really great here. I'm glad to be back in a city. Not to dis Uppsala, but my time there was up. I'm not the small town guy I once considered myself to be. Chicago changed me on that front many years ago. I hope to settle down here and make this city as comfortable as any place I've been before.

In other news, the reaction through emails and in conversations on the podcast series has been all really positive. Of course I'll be continuing on with it. Expect another volume of The Unreleases to surface in early February. I've come up with quite a few new ideas for future podcasts and am really excited about the prospects. If you've got the MBs to spare I've got the goods to deliver.

On the album front: I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. After over a year of recording I am getting really close to seeing a finalized tracklisting. The album is tentatively scheduled to come out late this spring in the States on Lesson Records. As far as I can tell I'll be the label's first release but as I've metioned before it will not be the first time I've worked with Jason Pierce. We're both really excited and are looking at the new label and new album as a fresh canvas to paint the fuck out of. When more public information on the label and the album arrive you know I'll be updating right here.

I dig Sundays.

The Mike Downey Podcast Series

This has been a long time in the making. Besides the fact that I started recording myself on 4 track in 1995 and it's now 2007 (holy crap!), I've thought quite a lot over the past few years as to how or if I'd make any sort of attempt at releasing any portion of my large backlog of unreleased songs. What held me back from starting this project years ago was that since I've always been such a small blip on the radar, I didn't want to go through all of the trouble of putting together a rarities album and then come to find out that nobody really cared except me in the first place. And like most musicians, the most recently recorded songs were the ones that got the attention, not something recorded 3 or 5 or 10 years ago.

I am definitely still excited about recording new material and releasing it. I'm more excited about that than ever actually. But I've also come to a point where I can comfortably look back at what I've done and have no reservations about it. All of that led me to right here. And here is a pretty nice place.

When I was in Chicago last September I dug through boxes of my stuff in my parents' basement and found about 10 or so CDs of mix downs I'd done (and a huge load of cassette tapes, but I left them for my next visit home). Any of you who know me or have followed along with my blog realize that I like to document stuff. So it was no surpise that I had these CDs. What was a surpise was that I actually enjoyed listening to them. Sure, not ALL of the songs are worth your time to listen to, but there are moments. And now I'd like to start sharing some of these moments with anyone who's interested.

Like I mentioned before, releasing this stuff "for real" on CD would probably be more problems than rewards. I don't want anyone to have to pay for these songs. I also didn't want to make mp3 albums because then I'd have to add it to my discography or something. The idea of putting it out as podcasts seemed perfect for me. I wouldn't have to really make a big deal about it and people could subscribe to the podcast and receive easily digestible chunks of it at a fair tempo. If you like it, burn it to a disc or let it live in your iTunes. If it's not your thing, no big deal. Now I don't want to shove complete pieces of junk into your ears just for the sake of releasing old stuff. Trust me, I'm going to be instilling some quality control into this project. I like to think I know where to draw the line. We shall see.

The Podcast Series will start out with a couple episodes dedicated to unreleased songs of mine, new and old. I also want to give some really limited releases and out of print stuff some new life as well so I'll be putting those compilations together in the future. I've always wanted to do a collection of cover songs that people I know have written, so that could happen. And I may release some DJ mixes, just so every episode won't be my songs, but stuff I've been inspired by or just like to dance to.

Wow, this turned out really long. It's time to let the first episode loose and stop yakkin'. Hope you enjoy!


The Mike Downey Podcast Series page

Archival Materials

So over the past few days I've been uploading a bunch of old photos from all of my old bands and projects. I've been wanting to get a lot of this stuff up online for document's sake for a while now. (Thanks RJ Porter for all of the Wolfie photos!) I grouped it all together in this flickr set. If anyone out there happens to have any pics of me, or my bandmates, from the old days please get in contact with me. I'd love to add to the collection.

On Friday I'm planning on bringing the reminiscing to yet another level. I will be unveiling the first episode of my podcast series in which I'll be unloading a good majority of my audio archives. See you back here on Friday.

The Rest of this Year is Yours

New Year - The Firebird Band - mp3