Archive for January, 2008
January 30, 2008 at 7:25 pm · News
So, sometimes when albums go out of print, an artist will receive unsold copies back from record stores. Or maybe they’ve found a few sealed copies laying around in a forgotten closet. Every once in awhile, said artist might even need a bit of extra scratch when these things occur.
All of the above are now true about many titles in the Marc With a C back catalog, and that benefits you guys. That’s right, I have a limited amount of copies of the older records available for a ***very*** short time. I’m excited that I can offer these since I’ve been asked about them so much recently. But seriously, don’t sleep on this… these aren’t going to last very long. I’ll be keeping up with these very closely, making sure that each order gets taken care of, and also that we don’t end up with orders that can’t be filled.
AND, get this! If you order any of my old compact discs through PayPal before February 28th, you’ll get a FREE CD-R copy of my remastered (i.e.: better sounding) version of 2003’s Shock Treatment album. This is an extra cool bonus, because it’s never been available in any physical format before, and it likely won’t ever be again. Mostly because I can’t sell it or… I’ll get sued. Ahem.
Heeeeeeeere’s how to order: Navigate over to my MySpace page… www.myspace.com/marcwithac. You’ll see some PayPal buttons there, and you can order copies of Life’s So Hard, This World Is Scary As Fuck, Bubblegum Romance or The Early Stuff securely and cheaply. Like, to the tune of five bucks each. And you don’t even need a MySpace account to do it. Awesome(s)!
Thank you all so much in advance, not just for your support, but also liking my music and helping me get these out of my closet! I hope you’ll all like them!
Love on ya,
Marc
UPDATE: As of 01/31/08, we’ve sold out of the remaining copies of Normal Bias yet again. All orders made before this announcement will still be filled, but it’s unavailable once again until we repress it. If you’d like to purchase it in mp3 form in the meantime, you can do so by heading over to this page at Amazon.com. Thank you all so much for all the support!
January 27, 2008 at 1:02 am · Journals
Hiya. Welcome to what may well end up being the most self-serving blog entry I’ve ever written.
As I’d stated before, I’m so happy with my last album, “Normal Bias”, that I’d be quite comfortable not releasing anything for quite sometime. We’ve got some plans for the year, but none of them really involve making an album of brand new material. That doesn’t mean that I’m not writing – I am – but unless I get a collection of 10 or 12 songs that jumps out at me and yells “ALBUM!”, I’m not gonna force it this year. Instead, we’ll focus on releasing the DVD (:::crosses my fingers:::), doing a few tour dates when applicable and putting the bulk of the Marc With a C catalog online for digital purchase. When we get around to rereleasing all of the pre-2007 albums, I’d like to include bonus tracks of unreleased and mostly unheard material from the era of the album it’s attached to. But I don’t know if anyone’s actually interested in that.
Anyways, since I’m taking a working break to write, reflect and take stock of what I’ve done, I figured this would be a good time to go through my entire catalog and figure out exactly what works for me and what doesn’t. See what’s aged well and also figure out what makes me cringe. I decided I’d let you see what I came up with. If this doesn’t sound interesting to you… move on, as this blog entry isn’t for you.
Read on »
January 20, 2008 at 3:11 am · News, Official Bootlegs!
Hi guys! I’ve got a few exciting things to tell you!
1. At the moment, I’m really, really sick of the song “Life’s So Hard”. Do you mind if we give it a rest for the next few shows? It’s been played at nearly every show for like two years now, and since half of the song relies so heavily on improvisation, I’m kind of sick of thinking about it. I figured that MySpace would be the right place to ask. And I guess that I technically don’t even have to ask… I’m just not gonna play it for awhile. I’d like to ask you all for your cooperation, you know?
2. Okay, so my birthday show was an utter blast and a half. Lots of friends and fans came to Taste to have a little party with me. Some of the wonderful gifts I was handed at the show included but are not limited to: a bunch of blank Type II cassettes, zombie picks, a light up hat, a Deep Throat poster, lots of alcohol (including some really tasty vodka!), a book called The Rock Snobs Dictionary, and let’s not even get going on all the beer that was handed to me that night. Whew. The show was lots of fun, and since Ryan Price recorded it for posterity… it just became Volume 3 in the Official Bootleg Series. Here’s the story, we’re allowing it to be downloaded here on my MySpace blog for the next seven days. After that, it goes offline for good. You’re allowed to trade it to your friends or do whatever you’d like with it, but this is a special limited edition download. Here’s some info about the show:
- Okay, it was my birthday, so it goes without saying that Chris and I had quite a few drunks duirng the set, and it shows. Some of these renditions are really sloppy, and I get pretty out of it towards the end. Consider yourself forewarned!
- This is a bootleg, and it sounds like one. If you’re looking for a high fidelity recording, well.. you probably shouldn’t be listening to Marc With a C at all? I mean… you know.
Official Bootleg Series Volume 3: Marc Gets Drunk On His Birthday, 1/17/08:
Read on »
January 9, 2008 at 11:07 pm · News
After years of requests that I make my albums available in a downloadable digital format, I’ve given in. Not because I enjoy selling you ones and zeroes in place of actual albums, but because many, many people only listen to their iPods and such. If this is the way that people want to experience the songs that I make up, then I don’t want to stand in anyones way. Therefore, we’ll be slowly making most of the Marc With a C catalog available on iTunes and Amazon.com in mp3 format.
Yes, you’ve read it right. I, Marc With a C, will be selling my albums through online digital retailers. I’m also happy to be doing it.
There’s no better album to kick this off with than the 2007 collection of crowd favorites, What The Hell Is Wrong With Marc With a C?. We’ll be reissuing my last album Normal Bias in this fashion very shortly as well. If this turns out to be a viable way to get my songs into your hands, we’ll go backwards with re-releasing almost all of the Marc With a C albums. But, guess what…? What The Hell… is available on Amazon right now! Like, AS WE SPEAK. That means if you’ve been wanting to get a copy of, say, “Nerdy Girls”, “Laura, I Need Medicine”, “Life’s So Hard” or any of the other crowd favorites but didn’t want to buy a full album… nows your chance. You can either buy the whole 20 song collection, or just grab your favorites. It’s that simple. Just click on the following:
Buy What the Hell is Wrong with Marc with a C? at Amazon MP3. 256 kbps. No DRM. Only $8.99!
It contains the following tunes:
1. The Problem Is Me*
2. No London In Brazil
3. Nerdy Girls
4. Stuck With Me
5. Freezing in Florida
6. Till You Come Home to Me
7. Laura, I Need Medicine*
8. Broken Record Player
9. RetroLowFi
10. Every Single Friend
11. I Need a Hug
12. Life’s So Hard
13. She Loves the B-Sides
14. Why Don’t Girls Like Me?
15. Bounce Bounce Bounce
16. A Very Special Episode*
17. Bite Size Help
18. If I Had a Dealer*
19. I’m In Love With Everyone I Know
20. We’re All Gonna Die
*new versions/previously unreleased
Can you handle it? I hope so. You’ve all been asking me to do this for years, now I’m asking you nicely to show me just how important it is that I move into the digital age. Make me feel like a rock star, people!
Love,
Marc
January 7, 2008 at 10:55 pm · Journals, Official Bootlegs!
If I’ve learned anything from reading the blogs of my friends, family and fans, it’s that if you’re in a close proximity to the end of a year/beginning of a new one, you have to write something reflective while also giving yourself some sort of pep talk for what’s coming up in the new year. Hell, I’ve done those before too. They aren’t bad, just predictable. I also uniformly suck at them. I can’t be reflective on a schedule. It doesn’t work that way for me. It’s usually like in… April. And then I’ll write something ridiculous telling the story – or setting the record straight – on something Marc With a C related.
On the other hand, I hate being left out of things, so here’s something kinda similar. It won’t get terribly personal or anything, as that’s what the songs are for. Not my blogs.
2007 was one of the happiest years of my life on a personal level. I stayed in a good and positive mood for at least 90% of the time, and that’s seriously some type of record for me. I’m sure that those circumstances led me to feeling pretty fearless when it came to releasing Normal Bias, which was my last full-length album to date. I still think it’s my best album yet, and I still get really excited about playing songs from it at shows. There’s not a single second of the recording that I dislike, and if I have any regrets about it, it’d probably be the fact that I never finished recording a lengthy song called “Linda Lovelace For President” that was slated for the album. I felt that it was the themactic crux of the album, but for whatever reason the song just wasn’t fitting, and every recording session for it went totally awry. Some takes of the tune could last up to twelve minutes, and the only somewhat finished version (the demo) clocks in around seven minutes. Of course, this is all pretentious meanderings – the song had nothing to do with Linda Lovelace, and was mostly a free-form noise jam. Lyrically, the song alluded to the fact that some of the original programmers for America Online – or more specifically Quantum Link – may have had slightly sicker ideas in mind for the internet tool than just being an information superhighway. Not that you’d ever get that from the actual words in the song. In the end, it’s best that the song stayed unearthed and Normal Bias was released as-is. And that’s it. That’s my major regret for 2007: even though I released hours of music in some form or another, it bugs me that one of them didn’t get heard. What a tough life I lead. Boo-hoo.
I had two drummers in 2007. Ryan Price in the first few months of the year, and then Chris Zabriskie refilled his old drumstool. I guess it probably looked dramatic at the time. Maybe even felt that way. Really, it wasn’t. I like Ryan as a person and a drummer. We hang out whenever we get the chance. Same with Chris. The only difference is that one isn’t actually in the band anymore… and Ryan is still welcome to play drums onstage whenever it woks out for both of us. Really. The year was less than dramatic, even when the “drams” looked like they were afoot.
I made lots of new friends and fans. I got a simple day job that I like just as much as I like to play/record songs. As a matter of fact, I’m so damned satisfied musically at the moment that I haven’t finished a new song since we released Normal Bias. Even though I have some lyrical ideas kicking around, I don’t feel much of a drive to write more… for once. I’m totally cool with Normal Bias being the last official word for Mw/aC for awhile. Heck, I even prepared a demo of nine songs projected for the next album. Had a theme in mind, Chris and I were sharing writing duties… and then it turned out that my newest songs were just not up to par. That probably had a lot to do with them all being rehashes of earlier unreleased material. So, we closed out the year with an EP full of songs that Chris Zabriskie wrote and a couple of really good shows.
And this is the part where I’m supposed to look forward to what 2008 has in store for me. I’m not clairvoyant, so I’ll just tell you what is already somewhat agreed upon by many folks in the Marc camp:
1. We’ll hopefully release a DVD of a live show this year.
2. I’ll be giving in to the more “cutting edge” types and making some records available for digital purchase for the first time.
3. Chris and I want to do some touring. Not much, just a little.
4. As of this writing, I plan to turn thirty years old on January 17th, 2008. Some would be scared by this and think of all the things that they haven’t accomplished. Maybe start considering their own mortality. Not me. I’m not scared of the natural aging process, and I’m quite proud of what I’ve made of myself. I mean, the only thing I’m not crazy about in my life is the cigarette smoking, but until there’s a ‘stop smoking aid’ that doesn’t cost more than I spend on cigs per week, I’ll keep smoking.
We’re celebrating my birthday with a show at Taste in Orlando on Thursday, January 17th at 9:30 PM. Bob On Blonde will be playing, as will The Pizza Brothers. I might get drunk before my set. Who knows?
Oh, and there is one last thing…. To thank all of you for another year of letting me be Marc With a C, here’s the next installment of the Official Bootleg Series. This one is called Share The Covers, Bitch. It’s a collection of covers I’ve recorded at home just for fun between 2003 and 2007.
1. “I Can’t Get Her Off Of My Mind” (The Monkees).mp3
2. “They Don’t Know” (Kirsty Maccoll).mp3
3. “God’s Away On Business” (Tom Waits).mp3
4. “The Gnome” (Pink Floyd).mp3
5. “Weird On The Avenue” (The Frogs).mp3
6. “No Man’s Land” (Alice Cooper).mp3
7. “Brand New Key” (Melanie Safka).mp3
8. “UPS My Heart” (Steve Poltz/Mojo Nixon).mp3
9. “Mr. Roboto” (Styx).mp3
10. “I Melt With You” (Modern English).mp3
11. “I Love Little Pussy” (Little Marcy).mp3
“I Can’t Get Her Off My Mind” is from a scrapped plan to cover a Monkees album in it’s entirety. Same with the Kirsty Maccoll song. “No Man’s Land” was released as my Christmas single in 2006. “I Melt With You” was recorded for my fiancées birthday in 2005, as it’s her favorite song of all time.
I hope you’ll all enjoy this very much. And if you do, I hope you’ll tell me. I mean, it’s my birthday, but I’m giving you a present? Wow. I’m nicer than I make myself out to be. I guess it doesn’t hurt that these are all some of my favorite songs in the world. The next one will be even cooler, and will more closely reflect what I’m into these days. Lately, I’ve been mostly listening to Kirsty Maccoll, John Entwistle’s solo albums, Sun Ra, Can and Chris Zabriskie’s new album. All of these inspire me greatly to make something big. Not big in the popularity department, just big in the “holy crap that’s an awesomely unexpected album” way. I don’t know that it’ll work out that way, nor do I know if I’ll even release an album of new material this year. I’m pretty happy going to work, spending time with my family, and playing pop shows where we’re both happy with the songs performed.
And I’m happy to be a part of your life. Seriously.
Love on ya,
Marc
