Tracklist for Days Go By
Thursday, April 12, 2007 - 04:59 PM
We went to the mastering studio yesterday to finish up the final little bits of production on what is now officially titled Days Go By. Since it’s now set in stone (well, etched into a CD master, anyways), I can now provide the track listing for Call it Karma’s first full-length CD:
1. Days Go By
2. You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
3. Caramel
4. American Dream
5. Naughty Dog
6. Confession
7. Jack
8. Secret
9. Summer Weiss
10. Friend of the Devil
11. Goddamn Map
12. Peter
13. Promise
It’s being sent off for duplication this week, and we should have CDs available for the show on the 27th, which is now a CD release party as well as a Bon Voyage to Erin!
Almost Done
Monday, April 09, 2007 - 11:54 AM
Well, after several nights of overdubs, and many notes to the engineer for revisions to the mixes (our engineer, Corey, must be so sick of us by now), we’re finally in the home stretch. All of the mixes are final, the song order is set, and we head to the mastering studio this week for that final “spit and polish”. We’ve even got the cover art almost complete. Once we send everything off for duplication, we should have our first full-length CD ready in just a matter of weeks!
It’s really good, by the way. Everyone in the band is really happy with the way it turned out. I know I am. We got a lot done in a very little time, and what we have is good. It could have easily been garbage given the number of songs we did in just a couple of days. Likewise, it could have easily been just a few songs, not an entire album’s worth, that we ended up with.
Initially we’ll be doing a limited run of only 100 copies. We’ll then be trying to shop it to independent labels. (If the initial run sells out before we can get it picked up, we’ll likely get more made to distribute ourselves.) Keep checking the Call It Karma web site for more details when the album finally becomes available.
In the studio
Monday, March 26, 2007 - 05:39 PM
We (Call it Karma) spent the weekend in the studio laying down tracks for a yet-to-be-named upcoming CD release. We hope to have some pressings of it available by the time we play our show at The Store on April 27th.
We’re doing this now, by the way, because Erin is moving in May and will therefore be leaving the band. We’re deeply saddened by this, of course (except for Erin, who embarks on the next chapter in her life - we wish her Good Luck), but we wanted to have some good documentation of where we’re at as a band at this point in time. So, we decided to finally record a full length album.
We’ll be finishing some overdubs over the next week and a half, and then the engineer does his magic. (Yes, we’ve actually got an engineer this time, instead of mixing it ourselves. The final product should be light years ahead of the last release.)
Eventually, we’re going to shop this to independent record labels. Hopefully it’ll go somewhere.
At any rate, it was a pretty frantic weekend. We setup and did some basic sound checks on Friday night, spent all day Saturday recording the rhythm tracks, and all day Sunday over dubbing the vocals and trumpet parts. Saturday and Sunday were long days. (Don’t think for a second that professional musicians don’t have “real” jobs - there aren’t many people who would work the constant long hours that recording and touring demand.)
Of course, two days is a really short amount of time to try to record an album in. But, given the fact that we wanted to do this before Erin left, and trying to fit it into everyone’s schedules, we had little choice. We didn’t get to everything we wanted to (but did get more done than what I had personally expected), but what we have is good. I can’t wait to hear the final product!
R.I.P., I.P.A.
Monday, March 19, 2007 - 05:13 PM
I finished off the last of the batch of my IPA this weekend. I’m always a little sad when I finish of the last of a batch. It’s weird, when you brew your own beer, because you think of what went into making that batch. Sure, you could make another batch with that same recipe, but that batch, that little piece of you is now gone forever.
At the same time (well, not exactly at the same time - it’s just a figure of speech - but you get my meaning) I racked the Porter that I brewed last weekend to the secondary (for those of you not in the know, that means I transferred the beer from the primary fermenter to the secondary). So, the circle of Life (beer is Life, after all) continues.
I can’t wait to try the porter, by the way. I added some licorice and vanilla beans to the boil. When I was transferring the beer I could smell a hint of those ingredients in it. That gave me high hopes for the end product!
Why Blockbuster is Doomed to Fail
Sunday, March 11, 2007 - 01:50 PM
Blockbuster is doomed. The online retailers are going to destroy them. This is not because Blockbuster cannot compete online, it’s because they cannot compete in the one place that sets them apart from the online competition - in their own stores.
You see, Blockbuster has a huge advantage over their online competition, and that is their stores. With an online only service like Netflix, you don’t get the option of going to the store to pick out a movie. If you decide one afternoon that you want to see a certain movie, you have to add it to your list and wait for it to be delivered. With Blockbuster, you can just go to the store and get it (assuming they have it in stock).
I want to take a moment here and mention that I’m not including download services in this comparison, as I don’t think they are in the same class yet. It’s not easy, especially for the average consumer, to download a movie and get it to their TV. And, even for those who have their computer connected to their TV, either directly or streaming (like with Apple’s soon to come AppleTV), the quality of downloaded movies is not the same as a DVD, let alone the high-def formats.
Let’s get back to the stores. This is where Blockbuster should shine, this is their advantage. However, this is where they fail miserably.
Yesterday, Carrie and I decided we wanted to see “The Departed”, which had just come out on DVD, so it wasn’t available yet on the “OnDemand” feature that comes with our cable service. So, we decided, for the first time in at least a few years, to drive up to Blockbuster. Now we remember why we stopped going there in the first place.
We found the movie we were looking for rather easily, it was one of two copies left in the store. (Had it been out, Blockbuster has an “in stock or it’s free” guarantee, which is nice.) So, we quickly grabbed it and headed to the counter.
At the counter, all of the cashiers had customers, but there was no line. So, we stood behind one of the open registers and waited. Meanwhile, at the other end of the line of registers, on the other side of a row of shelves of candy and other impulse items, someone lined up behind a different register, and someone else got behind them.
After a short period of time, the other register was free and they took care of the customer waiting on that end. Then, the register we were waiting at freed up, and the cashier called over to the people waiting on the other end “next in line”. (Apparently, that was where the actual line for the registers started, even though there was no sign or anything indicating that.) She then turned to us and said, “Sorry, but they were waiting longer.” She had clearly seen us standing there the whole time.
I replied, “No, actually, we were here longer and didn’t realize that the line started over there.” She promptly ignored us, and turned to call over to the other waiting customers “Next in line, please.” She got no response, since the other customers weren’t paying attention, so she preceded to pretend that we weren’t there, and walked over to get the other customer.
Now, since this took place, more people had gotten into the line, so we were forced to get behind them and wait. When it was finally our turn (at a different register, thankfully), the cashier took our member card, and movie we were holding, and then proceeded to fix the informational computer that was set up for the customers by the registers. Once that was done, he processed out member card, which had to be updated since we hadn’t been there in so long. He then helped the cashier next to him (the same one that ignored us earlier) and came back to try to up-sell us to sign up for their online rental service. Carrie quickly told him we weren’t interested, that we just wanted to rent the movie we had and be on our way. He went back into his sales spiel, and we had to cut him off to finish our transaction.
Finally, out of the store. But, our adventure doesn’t end there.
We went home and popped the movie in and began watching it. Half way through the movie, it began to stutter a little, then just froze up. Great. I took it out of the player and tried cleaning it a bit with a dry cloth (my shirt), and popped it back in. It played for a couple of seconds, then stopped. Arrrgggh! I tried cleaning it again, popped it back in. I wouldn’t go any further. ARRRGGGH!
Besides the piss-poor service, now I remembered the other reason we stopped going to Blockbuster; most of the movies that we’ve rented on DVD there are horribly scratched and stop playing half way through (or, at least, “stutter” through out the entire movie).
Now, we either return the movie and wait for it to show up on OnDemand, or exchange it for a different copy and hope that whoever rented that one before us didn’t treat it like shit.
At any rate, it’s the last movie we’ll ever rent from Blockbuster.