So this starting a label thing is looking kinda nuts and might not work. I'm not quitting, but it might not get nearly as far as I was hoping it would. For instance, a friend and I got in touch with a member of a prominent alt-rock band from the nineties. This band member felt that our goal of assembling a retrospective for their group with a focus on rare, live and unreleased recordings was a great idea and one whose time had finally. We started talking, he said he was going to send us some tapes, and we haven't heard from him since. Now, I'm not attacking the guy or trying to give him trouble, as he has his own life and job, so if things got hectic for him I understand. Furthermore, my friend has reiterated that this has happened with this specific band member before and that we'll likely hear back from eventually. So no hard feelings, it could still happen, and there are more ways than one to get the job done, but despite a lot of work on our ends, it's not going anywhere right now. If I could get someone from their old label to answer some phone calls, that might be a different story, but it would help if I knew who I should be calling.
On a somewhat related note, I still get asked why I shut down the site and what is happening. The basic story is things became to difficult to achieve. Sending links was fine, but links only lasted so long, and the files were big, and it was really time consuming to re-up them regularly, and links would get reported despite my best intentions, and torrents weren't a feasible solution. As I've always promised, I'm not quitting, but running the site with it's original goals became fairly difficult to achieve. I'm still working on the final version of the Paul's Boutique Companion which I hope to share around February, but I can't find anyone who can help with the artwork. Otherwise, the second version of the site, the one that had it's own address and such, I paid for it for two years and I'm currently unemployed, so I let it go. I'm sure I can get a good domain name when I need one, but until then I'm just going to post here.
I am thinking about working on a musical restoration project of sorts, one that should be doable, though I don't know how long it could take. To the best of my knowledge, no tape rips are available of the Pixies' original Purple Tape. I know the content has been issued elsewhere, but there are questions as to the mix. The aesthetic and flow changes considerably as well, so I think it needs to be found. The four Mr. Bungle demo tapes are another example of something that needs to be found, though these are around online in decent to awful quality. There have to be copies of those tapes lying around somewhere that could be provided to make high quality, lossless rips of. I know there are others, but those are the first ones that come to mind, and this should be doable, we just have to work on it. If you want to help, drop me a note, because I'm sure I could use some assistance!
Regarding the hunt for lost and rare demo stuff, I'm still occasionally doing clean-up work on tapes, usually with iZotope RX2 Advanced. I just did a little work on the Beastie Boys bootleg known as Original Ill which contains a near-final version of Licensed To Ill, albeit one with their Beatles cover/re-write, I'm Down, and various alternate versions of released tracks. Most of the tracks have no real differences, though some have subtle changes or extra lyrics. Rhymin & Stealin, for instance, has an extra ad-lib towards the end where someone, I believe it's Mike D, says I smoke my crack, a line that Columbia/Sony/Def Jam understandably wanted removed. There's also a version of Fight For Your Right with an extra, unused verse. I might post this somewhere eventually. It's nice that the bootleg is still around and in lossless no less, but the various glitches and sound problems can be easily repaired now, so why not fix it preservation reasons, right?
Okay, that's it for now, I'm going to make Mannwich because Nick Offerman rules. That's not a statement advertising support for Mannwich, though I do like it, but that statement is in support of Nick Offerman because he most certainly does rule. He's married to Megan Mullally, you know. I always had a thing for Karen on Will & Grace. Yes, I am a straight male!
