My friends, I’m up to my eyeballs in Marc With a C happenings.
In the last few weeks, I had a bit of a dream come true when I dropped the needle on some sweet red vinyl and heard my own voice coming out of the speakers. Sure, I’ve released more music in the past than I can keep up with, (seriously, I have almost no idea what’s out there and what isn’t at this point), but absolutely nothing has compared to this. As I was so terrifyingly told on my last guest spot at Nerdy Show, there’s a good chance that one day soon we’ll see a huge flare-up of the sun that will render all of our digital wares useless. I’m not sure that I totally buy that, but it’s comforting to know that if all of technology should be destroyed, that all you’ll have to do to hear some of my songs is put the tonearm onto a wax copy of RetroLowFi: 10 Years Of Marc With a C, put your ear close to the disc and make the platter turn… and bam. There are my tunes preserved for all of eternity. Unless the sunspots melt all of our petroleum based products, in which case… well, I’m gonna have an entire room in my house dedicated to warped records. Making my point obsolete. Nevermind. Vinyl’s as final as it gets for now, and I’m glad to be preserved. Those grooves are magical, and it was like hearing some of my own songs for the first time ever. This is a limited pressing, and while it won’t sell out overnight, once they’re gone, I don’t have any plans to repress it. You can nab yourself one on the “Record Store!” page of marcwithac.com.
Of course, I’m lucky that these were ready in time for my performance at this years Nerdapalooza. This is my third time being invited back, and if the current setlist sticks, I’ll only be repeating about three songs from past performances at the festival. Who knows, though? I could just show up and play “Nerdy Girls” nine times in a row. I always change things at the last minute anyways. Regardless, I’m playing on Sunday, July 18th at around 5 PM, so if you can make it to Orlando for the most fun music festival I have ever been to, I’ll be excited to see you there.
The next gig after that is in early August at my old haunt known as Stardust Video in Orlando. I’ll be performing two of my records in their entirety: Normal Bias and fan favorite Bubblegum Romance. I’ve been asked numerous times if there’s a special occasion that convinced me to make such a move, and here it is for the record… ready? It seemed like fun. That’s it. Plus, both of those albums are heavily represented on the RetroLowFi compilation, so I suppose that in a way it’s sort of celebratory, but it wasn’t really intended as such. With Bias, I get to play pretty much my favorite of my own albums straight through, meaning that I’m getting the chance to play some certain songs that I really, really love but never have time to put in a setlist, and with Bubblegum, there’s a huge cluster of some of my most oft-requested tunes mixed with tracks that I haven’t played in upwards of seven years. Seriously. I have to relearn more than a few tunes to play them at this show. And as is the case with any of my shows that run into the “marathon” category, if time permits and the audience is willing, I’ll totally do one of my patented all-request encores. Although this time I might try to come up with a system that’s a bit more effective than just having everyone yell stuff at the same time. As I get older my hearing goes out just a tad more, and it’s getting harder to make out what the hell you’re saying to me. At a show in April, I misheard a shouted request for “Melena” and instead wrote a new song on the spot for what I thought was yelled: “Lolita”.
And of course there’s Tampa OddCon to look forward to in October. And probably the traditional Rocky Horror shows with the Rich Weirdoes over Halloween, but nothing is confirmed about that just yet. So maybe I shouldn’t have typed that. Oh well, too late,
Other things I’m currently working on: I have about thirty minutes of new material demoed for the next Marc With a C album, so far. The new songs are cool, but I have absolutely no idea what will make it to the finished product, which I’ll tell you about as soon as it’s good enough to release. The tracks I like best so far are “The Kindergarten Steely Dan”, “Good Night Miss…”, “Try To Just Stop” and… I dunno, I like “I Would Build You A Home”, but how many people want to hear another long, drawn-out piano ballad out of me? I’ve also remastered an older cover of mine for a tribute album that I can’t tell you about yet. I started work on a song for another tribute album I can’t tell you about yet besides the one I just mentioned. Actually, I’ve been recording quite a few covers lately. More than usual. Weirdly, I feel like my pace of recording has slowed to a crawl, but I’ve technically pressed the “record” button on enough stuff to make a double album without editing anything, and my last album was only released to the public in March. I can expect absolutely no one on earth to have the attention span that it would take to hear every little tune I make up, so for now, I’ll just tease it in bloggy-journal-type-things.
Oh, and I did some work with Sci-Fried. More on that soon, when I’m able to say more than “oh, and I did some work with Sci-Fried”, haha. Some teasers: you’ll really like the song, and I’m playing an instrument that you’ve probably never heard about me playing before.
On another note: As many of you know, all of the records I have made as Marc with a C are freely available to download for no money whatsoever at marcwithac.com. But, if you can believe it, some folks find downloading zip files to be entirely too much of a burden for their, busy, on-the-go lifestyles. Some people just want to hear song real quick like as they powder their faces or what have you. So now, besides selling vinyl and CD’s at my website, and beyond letting you download whatever you’d like for free, you can now stream pretty much all of my officially released studio work for no charge at marcwithac.bandcamp.com. This does not extend to certain limited EP’s or the live albums, but… holy crap, there’s a lot of friggin’ songs up for your perusal. If you see fit, you can also download the music there on a “pay what you want to pay” basis. You can donate anywhere from nothing at all to a gazillion dollars per song. The world is your burrito. Well, at least as far as my songs are concerned, it is.
Speaking of burritos, I’ve been looking for years for a place that can replicate the type of delicious burritos one can easily acquire on any street corner in San Diego, but it’s been slow going. I have to wonder how some of this crap is ever even passed off as “food”, really. My pal Hex hails from some similar stomping grounds as I do, experienced the same woes as myself, and he showed me an awesome place called California Burrito Express right here in Orlando. My wife and I have eaten there more times than our own house in recent weeks. That’s not really a shameless plug, but more of a “holy crap, we’ve eaten a lot of burritos lately, and it’s all I can think about”. Seriously. This place is awesome. I’d go to their 24-hour drive through right now if I didn’t think that my wife would kill me for not waking her up and bringing her with me.
I should probably wrap this up. I will leave you with some parting words that you should take to heart: I am currently working on *way* more than I am telling you about in this blog, and much of it will be a total surprise to you. I can keep a secret or two when I have to. 
Love on ya,
Marc
PS: Oh! If you’d like to hear a newer song of mine, Independent Clauses is hosting a compilation EP of various artists that features an exclusive demo of my new song “Brian, Jenny, & The Mayan Calendar”.
