March 21
Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know how excited we are to be playing our first Grog Shop Show. I have seen some of the greatest shows of my life at The Grog Shop whether it be the old one or the new one. I have seen Pedro the Lion, Coheed and Cambria, Onelinedrawing, Coinmonster, Cows in the Graveyard, Codeseven, Xela, Leo, Chauncy, Fallout Boy, The Beautiful Mistake, Iron and Wine, Minus the Bear, Braid, Emery, and one time I got shut out of a free Deftones show back in 1996 when they were big, but not so big that they couldn't do a surprise show at a tiny club for free.
And those are just the shows that I can remember.
So, that is why we are so excited to be playing the Grog Shop on monday. We have the worst time slot, first at 7:30 PM, but it doesn't matter. We are playing with some really talented bands on Monday and I think you will be really impressed by the show we put on with Starloft.com
Please come out to this show. It is really special for us because of all the amazing shows we have seen in the past. If The Company Line could somehow capture one tenth of the specialness that I have received personally from shows at The Grog Shop then it will be nothing short of an amazing night.
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January 12
As a band full of people who have full-time jobs and girlfriends/wives and other hobbies and other things to do, it is always nice when you see a little break on the horizon. No worries about us breaking up or anything like that, but our drummer is leaving town for a couple weeks this month and it should be kind of nice to take a little break.
I am hopefully going to be able to write a couple of new tunes during that time period, watch a lot of movies, hang with my girlfriend, etc. Before I know it, those two weeks will be up, Bradley will be back and we will be trying to get our chops back in time to play our show at the HiFi Club on February 19th.
Here's hoping I can make the most of that time off and get some really great songs written. I have a couple of ideas floating around in my brain and it will be good to get them out of my head and onto paper.
Craig
The Company Line
By the way, I am listening to this great song by The Go! Team and I am not sure why I like it, but it is addictive. It is some music with some cheerleaders yelling out a cheer about We Will Never Be Defeated.
Check it out if you get the chance.
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December 28
In all our lives, we go through periods of time when things aren't the way we want them to be. Maybe we would change the people, places, or things around us. Maybe we would use the fast forward button on an imaginary remote control to speed up time until the unbearable and annoying have passed. You would fast forward well past that last tear in your ducts that excretes before you can realize there isn't another coming and you might as well stop crying.
Unfortunately the fast forward button doesn't exist.
Because of that, it is sometimes easy to digress to earlier happier times when things were so good that that time period holds up in your mind as the standard for normalcy. It may be above normalcy in actuality but as humans with expectations as they are, most of us toss our standards as high as we can against the wall, like a pickle from a McDonald's cheeseburger. And we watch to see just how far that pickle slips down before it decides that there is equilibrium between the gravity, the stickiness and the comforting friction provided by the wall that causes it to finally stop at a point.
It is with this false sense of normalcy that we cling to things that remind us of those time periods.
One of my relatives has had a fast-forward worthy year or so. She has been stuck in a below standard period. There is nothing anyone can do to change it. It is just one of those unbearable times that everyone has to deal with at some point or another. There is no turning it off. You can work hard to distract yourself at every turn, but at the end of the day, when you fall asleep and when you wake back up again, the reality will slowly sink in and an imaginary - but all too real burn will once again ignite the back of your head.
It is periods like these when we put ourselves in that time machine to find our personal epitome of normal. We hunt out things that will remind us of these times in the hopes that it can work to be the ultimate distraction. Maybe we can recapture feelings and escape a little more into something older, more comfortable and more familiar. I think my downtrodden relative was searching for something just like this when she was looking for an album by a guy named Jimmie Spheeris, which she casually mentioned to me last night at a family gathering.
Jimmie Spheeris wasn't a very prolific artist, laying down a couple albums in the 70's, and all his stuff has gone out of print. As a result, all the used copies of his album are for sale in the Amazon Marketplace for anywhere between $150 and $250. While I have been in places in my life where I would have considered spending that amount of money in the hopes of feeling better, even if just for a moment, it is beyond a lot of people's wills to pay a ransom like that for something that should never cost more than $15.
With this in mind, I immediately went to the Internet to see what I could find about Jimmy Spheeris and the availability of his albums. I found out all the information above about the discs and the ransom that people were asking, and then I went to iTunes to see if, by chance, someone had made the disc available. I found that it was available on iTunes for $9.90. All you have to do is know how to grab iTunes and burn a disc. But lest you take that knowledge for granted, not everyone in the world is hip to iTunes. I had that information and I was able to grab the songs, burn them to a disc and hand it over to someone who was about to take part in a little time travel.
The look on her face when I handed over a CD that she had talked about so longingly in the half hour prior was a combination of disbelief, relief and pure happiness. While you and I both know that I didn't do all that much that most of you couldn't also do, it's kind of the right place, right time thing and I was happy that I could do something for someone yesterday.
But now that I am a day removed from this, I can't help but wonder - now that she has most certainly listened to the CD - where the pickle is on the wall, now that she has listened to the disc. Did it stick up near the top where she threw it, or did it slide all the way to the plastic molding that sits between the dry wall and the floor?
To Buy Jimmie Spheeris at iTunes, Click Below.
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December 25
Hey everyone. Just wanted to thank all of you who made it out to Peabody's this weekend. We had an awesome time. We played one of the best shows we have played in the year we have been together.
We also got a DVD of the performance, so we will be sure to get some clips or total songs online as soon as we can. I will let you know where you can download them as soon as I can.
I will also be sure to put up some songs that aren't on our demo so you get to hear some of the newer stuff from us.
Thanks again for coming out.
Craig
The Company Line
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December 7
It is interesting how the music industry has changed over the last five years or so. I got into playing music and writing songs, because I was bored and needed an outlet. I always wanted to write songs and sing them. What I never really imagined is that I would become a web marketer at the same time.
Not that I am complaining. It is a good thing that we, as bands, can get websites up, share MP3's, tell people about our shows on Myspace and Purevolume and get a bunch of virtual friends who can hopefully become real live meat space friends at a rock show in the future. These are amazing times with amazing possibilities for many bands to achieve subsistence instead of just a few Creed-type bands making billions and selling out arenas.
Just like the old days when some of the most successful bands worked the hardest, it isn't much different now except instead of plastering paper flyers all over the universe, I am tapping at keys and emailing with potential fans all day long in the hopes that one out of a hundred comes out to the show to take one of our demos for free.
I am not unhappy that this became part of the deal, but it is surprising because nobody tells you this stuff.
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Iamsuperduperandyourmusicsucks
keeep up the good work guys
posted Feb 26