Yeah I know there’s nothing about this blog pages appearance that reflects who we are, but at least we didn’t set anyone on fire setting it up. If you’re a superawesome WordPress theme masta then send an email to email@hateinthebox.com for a chance to prooooov it 
Ok silly time is over, back to mixing 
So after the Draculas Ball show apparently a lot of people wrote to me on MySpace. can’t blame them, as I don’t have an obvious “contact me” type thing on hateinthebox.com . Curses!
Anyway, why is it so unreliable? I haven’t logged in since Valentines Day of this year. So I figure a lot of people probably think I’m ignoring them. But there’s a reason for that. A reason I was recently reminded of. I went to log in and… error. Ok, refresh. Error. Logout and log back in? Error. Fuck this.
…and here I am back in something other than MySpace. It’s really funny to me. Everyone talks about the power of the internet, resources within everyone’s reach blah blah blah. Yeah but it’s like saying you can do all kinds of stuff at the beach. There’s all this sand! We can make castles, moats, hills, bury stuff, play volleyball, the power is ours! The possibilities are endless! Then the beach closes. Yeah.
Don’t build your dreams on other peoples stuff (websites in this case).
Thanks for all the kind words sent to the band’s profile by the way. Blight checks that all the time because she’s more patient than I am but I do hear about it.
Why I like writing whereever the least fans are, I don’t know. Maybe this is some convoluted compromise by my subconscious to make me feel like fans are being given some inside scoop on things when most of you don’t even know this exists.
Maybe it’s because I’d rather be writing songs than making a custom theme so it fits with the rest of the website.
Anyway, our new lineup is complete. Or more accurately, has been complete for a few weeks now. It’s a pretty damn good lineup too. No weak spots in the bunch. Impressed ourselves a few times at rehearsal, which is pretty funny.
So dates are being booked. Book us. We’re already booked pretty good actually for the summer, but haven’t started promotion in earnest yet. This probably doesn’t count.
Alright that’s a little something to get the writing gremlin out of me. Back to working on the site.
So when we last left our hero, he had been reminded of the many pictures he had not yet shared with the adoring public. Pictures that were archived to CDR discs not so long ago.
Yeah, I’m copying pictures off of those old CDRs onto my drive now so we can sort through and start putting more up for you guys. Only a bunch of the CDrs are all dead. You cannot imagine my dismay.
What the hell ever happened to newer technology being better? When I found our first giveaways, translucent colored floppy disks with one mp3 and an html page with some pictures, they all worked! It surprised the hell out of me that after being thrown about so many times being moved from one studio to another that they managed to just open right up. Was really cool too btw, like a time capsule kind of experience. That was a pretty cool idea too looking back, CDs were still really too expensive to giveaway as promos but you could fit a lot on a floppy if you were mad sciency enough.
Anyway, so of course I had to do some looking around and see what the fuck was up with these CDRs not working. And of course I find article after article on how CDs last longer than floppies and other old stuff, blah blah blah. Can I get a check for lying please? Is anyone wanting to sell something that I can maybe just say what they tell me and buy me a new Ax-7? Ridiculous.
I always tell people that live shows to me are so awesome because every show is a once in a lifetime, unique, happens now and never happens again exactly the same experience. I suppose seeing no photots, video or audio from these past shows makes that more true than ever. I really really really enjoy seeing bands I like live. There’s just no substitute for being there, hearing and seeing and feeling everything direct, right from the artist to you.
Well, I suppose it’s time I get back to seeing what I can recover that *does* work.
Curse you CDR man! You tricked me into trusting you *this* time… but watch your back
Oh, I’m late? Well… I’m sure some culture out there thinks I’m early so don’t hold it against us. Paranoia makes the calendar a stranger.
Anyway, Blight and I recently rediscovered this thing after it being created for us by an unknown race of majestic builders that has since moved on, spreading Hate in the Box musics to a faraway galaxy where we will one day rule as king and queen, joyously taking delight in live adaptations of our creative works by… but I digress…
Yesterday a friend was over while I was watching a DVD of the Easter show we did at CBGB before it was disappeared by the secret order for the desiccation of coolness in New York City. So I’m watching this, and at the risk (again) of seeming like an egomaniacal genius in love with his own creations, I exclaimed “This show is awesome, I don’t remember even seeing this video!” To which said female guest replied “You have more videos?” To which I volunteered “Of course, we used to video every show and I have these CDs full of pictures that are a big pain to sort through too. Photographers give them to us all jumbled with other pictures of people and bands from the nights, sideways and whatever like they just dumped the camera onto a CD and never bothered checking to see if incriminating anything about themselves is on there that they forgot to delete.” So then she says “You have pictures too!? And all you have on your site and MySpace is like those however many photos?” The tension grew, and the harsh light of truth seared us both, at which point I got my coat, went to the market and got some apple juice.
Somewhere there was a point, but it is lost now. Perhaps we’ll have a contest to find it. Maybe the pictures we post later will serve as clues.
Found this article here that discusses at length how Digital Rights Management makes it so that almost any awesome music system you build will only frustrate you. What makes this a little bizarre to me is that I often hear people complaining about the limitations of iTunes and their DRM system, but more people buy Hate in the Box songs in the iTunes locked format than our unlocked MP3s on our site.
Does this mean most people don’t really care about the problems or do they just not know the unlocked versions are available? I can’t imagine anyone preferring limited content to free unrestricted content but that’s what it looks like when I look at what people are buying.
Do you wish that bands would all provide DRM-free songs for download on their sites so you wouldn’t have to deal with the stupid conversion nonsense, or is not that big a deal to you?
Here’s the original article
Playing shows and stuff for you guys, I get to hear a whole LOT of new music all the time and don’t really have to look hard when I want to hear something I haven’t heard before.
But what if you don’t want to start a band and talk to strangers and deal with WEIRD stalker type people?
Well have I got a solution for you! I didn’t make it, so I can’t really make loot telling you but because I actually have been having such a fun time playing around with it I may as well share with the rest of the class.
There’s this site, last.fm (yeah it really does end in dot FM) that you can do a lot more with than I have time to write about. Basically it’s like internet radio, but instead of a station it’s like a dynamic list of stuff to listen to. So you either tell it to play stuff similar to an artist, or some tags like “hard polka” and it starts to stream stuff. But the cool part is you can straight skip any bullshit. It’s like TiVo for radio kind of. AND you can ban tracks that suck really bad so you never hear them again and heart tracks you like so they come back. And the more you do that the better it gets because it knows what you like and don’t like. And there’s no annoying radio voice guy trying to convince you some concert/car/new jello flavor you don’t care about is cool, just songs. Maybe I’ll find something to hate about it soon after writing this, but whatever. I’m having fun now putting in ridiculous tags and bands that I can’t even name something similar to.
Alright! One more place to post once every three months! Woooooooo!
