Yesterday, there was an article in the NY Times about CMJ.  It was nice to see them mention up some bands that have played Tick Tick shows, going on to be highlights in the big city, including Arbouretum, Wye Oak, and of course, WOMEN, who stopped in Burlington on their way down to the festival.  Well done, beloved bands!!!!

But the NY Times article is missing the point.  The article is basically about how nobody there is about to make lots of money, and “the large-scale music business might as well have been on another planet.”  Well, dude, “indie” can still be short for “independent.”  The reporter doesn’t actually talk to any of the bands about what they actually get out of CMJ, or what their financial or career goals actually are.  I bet that if he did, he’d find that there are many different ideas about what success is, or how realistic bands are about it. Some musicians see CMJ as an ultimate attainment.  Some bands are grateful to be on tour at all.  Some musicians resent showcases like CMJ or Pop Montreal for the degree of industry involvement they incorporate.

But I should cut him a break, since his role writing for the NY Times about this is to explain indie music for the NY T’s boomer readership, by writing sentences like “In the 21st century it’s more important to draw listeners to a Myspace or iTunes or Emusic page than to find a limited-edition vinyl manufacturer, as in the ’80s.”  Although that’s wrong too, since vinyl manufacturing has experienced a 77% increase from 2007 to 2008.

Too bad records are made out of oil!

Check out the trailer to this movie we are co-presenting with the lane series. It looks incredible. I love the drool.

Also, Colin-Patrick Charles designed a great poster for the show. Get the details here.

More info on cooling down the planet here!

We’re all hard at work now for our open house on friday night (6-9PM), like kids in a sweatshop. Dale is cleaning screens and prepping for print. Libby has come for a visit and is cranking out the prayer flags!

Go baby go!

Tick Tick

Julia and I pulled out all the woody materials from the garden plot to ready it for the fall plowing under. We found a secret stash of potatoes that we feared had rotten. They are nearly all purple, the texture of a toads skin and the size of a toddlers fist.

Soak the sun all.

Rock Point North, Burlington VT

For the past couple months, Tick Tick adjunct and incredible illustrator, Colin-Patrick Charles has been working with David Strackany to produce a new design for a set of tees for Paleo. They had been communicating via email, delving into the seen unseen, Until NOW!

For the next couple hours, David hand rolled all the tees into tubes, taped them up and labeled them with their size, and made another point brutally clear, that we need an intern to do that kind of work.

All parties interested in rolling up t-shirts, mopping and vacuuming, cleaning squeegees and putting up posters around town please contact me immediately. This is a real opportunity to discover the inner workings of a screen printing business while being shamelessly exploited.

Designed By Colin-Patrick Charles

Thank You Seven Days for the sweet article!

Hanging out!

So we actually did a process print.!  We have been afraid to try this for a while, just thinking we would fail horriblly.  But we succeeded! Our Registration is about as good as you can get manually registering colors. Our registration which I would say is about 92% on is pretty incredible. 100% is impossible even with amazing equip. These are just test prints on 140lb French Paper, when we actually do the LP covers I will post finals!!

More about process printing here!

We had a busy couple of days printing!  Check out some pics of the Mt. Eerie and New year posters being created!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Rucchi and I were sweating bullets!  We also did our first ever CMYK Process print, that turned out awesome. I will post pics soon.