Here we are, a Sunday night in Buffalo. Temp about 1 degree, high winds. We're trying to seek out any open "venues," though the better word would be avenues by which we can get our music heard......live........and loud.
Off the top of our heads we thought Neitchze's, Mohawk Place, Soundlab, and Mr. Goodbar. We're not quite honky-tonk to fit the bill at most other places.
We got press kits to a couple of those places. Snow does not mix well with press kits. And they honestly weren't kits quite yet either- I'm still on a mission to find black matte paper folders to hold all of this stuff.
The Etchings decided it would be as good a time as ever for our newest EP to get some play on college radio. The above photograph depicts our subzero walk to the closed radio station. We even tried to smoosh a CD under the door. I guess there is a reason for the post office after all.
Classic band-day guerilla marketing schemes. Our "photo session" fell through.....we even had plan B and C lined up, and when they all collapsed we just laughed about it. If you've seen our myspace, you would notice that there are four shadowy figures. Even we can't figure out who's who in that one.....
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When I lived in Boston, every musician told me I needed to have business cards, or I would never become a successful musician. I immediately ordered 1500. Color: bone. Text: black, rubbery, and raised above the surface. I had arrived.
Shortly thereafter, I moved into a closet sized room in Jamaica Plain where I worked as a dog-walker. It was hot as hell, and I needed something to prop the window open while I installed my air-conditioner. The cardboard box of business cards was the perfect fit.
Somehow I managed to get the air conditioner in the window, and during the final steps of sealing off the sides, I pushed the entire box of business cards on to a lower roof of the building.
I had no immediate recourse, as I did not want to overstep my boundaries while living in a new place nor did I want to expose myself as a moron- I was sort of a live in "caretaker" for the pets, and the building. So I left them. I figured, "Eh, next quiet day I'll go get a ladder. No big deal."
But as we all do, I forgot. And it rained. And it blew. And it rained some more. And it dried.
The box disintegrated, and somehow 1500 of my business cards were carried by weather across Jamaica Plain, to Brighton, the North End, and on throughout infinity. I tried to collect as many as I could find, but of the 1500 I actually located about 70.
When I walked the dogs, somehow everyone knew my name. They asked my why I was so fiercely aggressive in my guerilla marketing tactics. They asked what kind of music I liked. I just played along.
In this age of "going green" it was probably not the happiest of accidents for the sidewalks of Boston. But it was only paper; God only knows, guerilla marketing works in strange and mysterious ways....
If Kurt Vonnegut were still with us, he would slap me across the head for using one of these ;
What he probably did not consider is that sometimes when you go to college for music, you have to prove to the world that you know where certain things like semicolons belong.
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Long-winded post: band sounds great. we are hungry to play. will you listen to us?
-NR
