Liner Notes: #18 (and Kickstarter launch…)

Hello, everyone, Cecilia here. Time for our almost-monthly “backstage” look at how things go here at DGC, wherein we do the meta-talk and also just share cool stuff we’ve found on the Internet that we think you might like. Or that we liked anyway.

And yes, I made the Kickstarter live today. But read this other cool stuff first. *wink*

DC PUNK FILM
Case in point of cool stuff: a reader pointed this out first, and I thought I’d bring it up here. A documentary filmmaker is trying to collect footage of Washington, DC from 1980 to 1990, for a film on the DC punk scene from that era. Full story is in the Washington Post, go check it out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/documenting-dcs-punk-past–with-your-help/2012/03/21/gIQAmlvXSS_story.html?wprss=rss_music

Especially if you have any photos or footage of DC in that era: they want it!

CAT ELVIS
I’ve had a couple of people want to know if Cat Elvis is real. Cat Elvis is just a figment of my fevered imagination… I think. Just to be sure, I googled around, and lo, I did turn up the following:

How weird is that? Basically just give the one on the left cat-boy ears and whiskers and you have pretty much the exact thing.

If someone can find me an ACTUAL cat!boy Elvis ornament, though, I’ll name a character after the first person who sends me one in the mail!

(Daron would like to state off the record that he prefers Johnny Cash to Elvis, but he would never say so in front of Cat Elvis, because “you don’t disrespect the King.”)

AUDIO BOOKS
Okay, how’s this for cool news? Audible.com has contracted the rights to do Audio/MP3 versions of DGC! Nifty, eh?? I’m psyched! I’m not sure how long it will take for them to produce the audiobooks. I’m guessing 4-6 months?

On the one hand I’m chewing my nails a little, because I have a very clear idea in my head what Daron’s voice sounds like. I know what part of New Jersey he’s from (slightly south of where I went to high school myself) and how low key his tone is. I was afraid to tell them to give him a Jersey accent because I’m afraid they’d go out and get someone who sounds like the cast of “Jersey Shore.” (Daron’s accent is from not that far south and is much WASPier.) I settled for begging them to find a voice actor who isn’t one of these deep-honey “voice over” types, because the biggest mistake would be to make him sound too old.

On the other hand, how cool is that? Audiobook! I should stop worrying and let them do what they do. I gave my casting notes and now it’s up to Audible to do the rest. I’ll post when it’s actually for sale!

KICKSTARTER
So, soon there will be audio books. But ever since I brought up the idea of Kickstarter during the whole Paypal flap, I’ve had people asking me regularly when there will be a “real” book. The only way to make it feasible to manufacture and print books is to do a Kickstarter campaign, but I think we could have reasonable success at that. I’ve been running spreadsheets and trying to figure out what’s the right amount of money to ask for and what incentive gifts to offer, and I think I have it figured out.

The entire serial, as you know, is LOOOOOOONG. So the book would be for ebooks 1-3 in one volume. And if that works, we’ll start planing for a second volume. The official launch of the campaign will be Monday (tomorrow), and when it goes live I’ll put a link up here. (Actually, I’ll try to make it live today, Sunday the 22nd, but I’m traveling in Minnesota, speaking at a bisexuality & sex activism conference and I’m not sure how reliable my Internet access will be…)

I’m going to aim low: under $3,000, just to make sure printing, proofreading, art, and layout costs are covered. I’ll only take a payment for myself if we go significantly over that. (If we hit $4,000, I’ll do it on better paper and such.) Right now I figure my income still comes from continued donations on the website and on royalties on sales of the book if it sells through Amazon, etc. I wanted to keep the amount relatively low to increase the chance of making the goal. We shall see how it plays out!

Here’s the link to the Kickstarter page, which you may share all over the place.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458565937/darons-guitar-chronicles-omnibus-book

And the promo video I made for it! You can get the embed code for this on the Kickstarter page and share it around too:

FONT DESIGNER
I’d like to give a nod here to David Kerkhoff, who designed the font I’m using for the Moondog 3 logo, which will be available on glossy stickers and T-shirts as rewards in the Kickstarter campaign. The font is called OOMPH and I licensed it from here:
http://www.fontspace.com/david-kerkhoff/oomph

It is free for non-commercial use, but I gave a donation to make our selling of the shirts official.

GRAVATAR
If you like to comment on posts on the site, you can have an avatar (photo icon) if you sign up for a free Gravatar. At Gravatar.com you associate the picture of your choice with an email address. Use that email when you comment and the Gravatar you have set up will appear automatically. You don’t need to sign up as a user at Daron’s Guitar Chronicles at all, just always use the address you registered at Gravatar. We love getting comments, by the way, in case that wasn’t obvious. 🙂

ALTERNATIVE MUSIC
Daron’s recent rant about “alternative” music echoes a lot of what people in radio and on the fringes of the music industry were saying in 1989. How did it come to be that certain varieties of rock and roll were “mainstream” and certain were “alternative”? It wasn’t about money or sales at all. U2 and REM and INXS all sold just as well (or better) than many of the pop metal, hard rock, or Top 40 pop acts. But because they were difficult to categorize, because they didn’t sound like what had come before them, they were labeled “alternative” by the industry. Note that none of the three of them were particular “New Wave” either. New Wave was a subset of “alternative.” Eventually all three of those bands would be topping the charts regularly…

And eventually (around the time Green Day and Everclear hit number one) “alternative” became the top selling rock category. Because music fans could care less what category label some executives want to slap on the back of an album and they know rock and roll is always about searching for something new, hot, and different. Something you haven’t heard before. Something your parents didn’t listen to.

But here’s the kicker. “Alternative” music is now the dominant rock genre, and they still call it “alternative.” Even though it’s now the mainstream. So what are they going to call the next thing that comes along, the alternative to alternative?

I’ll worry about that in another ten years. Next, we go back to 1989.