It's A Secret!

Success at last! Below is the painting titled The Secret, painted by local artist Christie Cheng. This is destined to become the cover and packaging artwork for Another Second Childhood...

I'm basking in that sort of post-hunt hunter-gatherer glow at the moment. I found out that the artist is in school in San Diego and I'm glad I was able to play a small part in championing her talent.

Hopefully, discovering that her work is marketable may also encourage Kristie to keep on painting. As Bonnie Hayes once sang: "Art is an industry..."
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Click here to get our music!

Click here to see our videos!

Puttin' On The Muffin Top...

I finally got sick of waiting for people to call me back, so I picked up the phone and dialed Erika, the agent who is making arrangements for me to get the purchasing rights to "The Secret", the original painting that I am hoping will eventually become the cover art and packaging for Another Second Childhood.

"The artist is away at college, and difficult to track down at the moment," Erika said when I finally reached her. She sounded fairly annoyed that I was calling her, as in "How DARE someone call me and actually offer to pay money for artwork that one of my students created!" Erika asked me again how much I was willing to pay for the painting and promised to call me back in a week, then she hung up quickly. I made a mental note that I would just move on and keep looking if she doesn't call me back in a few days.

The good news today is that after pushing things around in my head and listening to rough takes for weeks, I may finally have a confirmed set list for Another Second Childhood:
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Horse On Crack
Just Deal With It
First Day Of School
Army Of Plastic Weirdos
Giddy Girl
Another Second Childhood
It Goes Without Saying
Come On Kids, We're Leaving
Squirrel On Acid
What If?
Everybody Hates My Guts
White Knuckle Driving
Super Shiner
Troglodytes
Soap For Kicks
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So that's how it looks now. I feel like I will need to set aside time on a schedule to work on this or it will never get done. I recently quit my long-term day job at Big American Bank and now I'm working at Big American Insurance Company, so there has been a lot of excitement and stress around the home front.

These days, I'm definitely living up to the old Chinese axiom: "May you live in interesting times". The Mini Ice Age is coming, so I'm working on putting on a few extra pounds in order to be ready to hibernate when the time comes.

First writing session with Diane

Last Saturday marked an historic event - the first real studio jam session / writing session with Diane and Larry!

(more soon - off to work now, at my NEW day job...)




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If You Can Believe All the Hype....

Since there were no gigs on the calendar and no rehearsals scheduled, I figured I might as well start entering the band in contests.

In December, I received notice that Symon's New Blue Diamonds had been selected as a featured artist at Skope Media:

"Thanks so much for your submission to Skopemag.com! We have just reviewed your profile and would like to feature your music on Skope for 1 month. Please feel free to email 1 MP3 or 1 URL to your music video via Youtube/Vimeo/Myspace. We would like you to choose the current single that you are most currently promoting."

(I should be mentioned that I had originally submitted to this contest through the ReverbNation contest page) I sent Skope a link to the video for Girls Who Drink, after reading the fine print that reveals that my video will be one of dozens of videos in random rotation on the home page for a month.

I tested it out - I sat on the home page at Skope for almost an hour and kept refreshing my browser to reload the page, and I never saw our video come up even once in the viewer. In the meantime, Skope started sending me invitations to sign up for pay-by-the-month subscrription-style services, which I'm sure are just fine, but I dunno... spending my own money on "digital online promotion" instead of actual physical event promotion seems rather foolish at this point.

I really need to get my ass busy and book a show somewhere. It's rather ironic because money is not really the resource issue at this point, it's TIME. I'm right in the middle of changing up my day job for something new, and that is taking all my effort. Also, since the band does not have a real club-going following anymore or a presence in the local scene, I will have to hire someone who knows what they are doing to pump our one gig in 2012 AND also rent a club somewhere to throw the event. yEEEeeeesh!

In the meantime - I also entered all five videos on the Symon's New Blue Diamonds Vimeo web site to the Annual Vimeo Festival Awards contest. It was cheap and from what I saw when I checked it out, they have a little bit of everything featured in various catagories. There are CASH prizes, too - up to $50,000 in prize packages and incentives for the purpose of shooting more videos, which is all right by me. I dropped almost $5,000 shooting the Rhino video, so I know how much winning this contest could help defray the cost of yet more silliness.

The Vimeo site says this about the contest:
"Entries will be judged between February 21, 2012 and April 30, 2012 (the "Judging Period"). Awards will be announced on or before June 7, 2012."

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Happy New Year!

Just wanted to wish everyone a very Happy New Year!

I only made one New Year's resolution for the new year, and that is to not be phased or upset by anything in 2012 if I can possibly avoid doing so. I'm going to be Mister Mellow this year and just not get overly excited by angry people, my day job, or anything else.





Last year I was pissing blood on and off for several months, and a battery of doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me, even after months of tests. I worried about my boss's angry threats, which started in mid-year and continued all the way up to the end of the year, and amazingly, I'm still employed. And despite the doubts of some of my old associates, I am still married and my wife tells me that one year later she has "never been happier". (She's pretty outspoken and I have to believe she is telling me the truth on this one.)

I'm not really advocating apathy, but if you have your health and a loving family, you probably already have what you need to do well. I'm getting back to my roots and putting all my anger, frustration and other bullshit whining crap into the new album, which will probably be recorded in Los Angeles sometime after we move. I have no real band at the moment, it's just me writing and arranging as fast as I can before the moving company shows up.

Here's a sneak peek at the new music for those of you who are following what is going on. These are test tracks that were put together on my humble laptop in the new studio down on McKinnon St. (there is also test artwork but I cannot show it to anyone yet as negotiations with the artist are at a critical stage)
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