404. And a fan dies.


Bad news of the week is that our only fan has died. Our loyal ally since the beginning succumbed to damage incurred as a result of an accidental fall. Luckily finding and buying a new one online is easy nowadays. Keeping the air fresh and circulating in the rehearsal room, especially in the summer heat is a problem.

In between rehearsals we snuck in a marketing revamp call on Teams (for better or worse that's what we use, it used to be Skype up until recently). An hour was spent trying to remotely coordinate an Instagram <> Linktree integration, but it kept spewing out a 400 error. Tony has been charged with seeing it through with Linktree's backend. We also quickly agreed that we should go for the tag "alitheband", "ali.the.band" or "ali_the_band" wherever we have an online presence. I just counted 22 different accounts for online tools and communities. There's got to be more.

Meanwhile, the preparations for our new video are almost complete! Shooting will take place Aug 21-23 in the untamed and calm northwestern Bulgaria. The script long-approved is deeply emotional and supports the song at all the right moments, the crew as excited as we are, and - for the first time - we will only be watching from afar, as unfortunately none of us can make it there for the shoot. It's coming to us ready in mid-September and we can't wait to see the results and share them with everyone. This time, even the song is ready!

The sweet, sweet time away from everything in the rehearsal room started with a debrief on our latest plans for shows, marketing, rehearsals, and other topics for Orli. He's back from vacation spent on the beach grading his master students' thesis on a laptop. Turns out ChatGPT can't do this yet, or so Orli claims. Tony is still in his summer chateau in Burgas, while Kalo couldn't join because closing in on 50 years of age limits the physical capacity after a testosterone-only getaway to a QOTSA concert Berlin. It must have sucked, because he's not shared anything about it. Talking about concerts we discussed possible plans B and C for our gig at Rebel Rebel (sharing the stage with The Sisters of Mercy) where contingency is necessary given that Tony will be flying in from Sweden that same afternoon returning from a wedding. Soundcheck we'll need to do without him and can probably do so without much issues - we can set up and check his gear easily enough, and we can use a recording from the X32 mixer, if necessary. Now the live show, in case of any flight issues (a common occurance in EU air travel), is a different matter. Half-jokingly we should be ready to sync to some of Tony's recorded parts and display pictures from the wedding on the big screens next to the stage. The technology we've got, but whether we'll have the cojones to do it - hopefully we won't have to find out.

Then we got to the juice that is playing through and jamming on two of our new songs. One we've been working a lot for a bit, but have for the most part forgotten the details of, and one which for the first time more than two people were playing. We came up with some nice ideas: a solution to an intro issue, lots of drumming details to keep the rhythm tight and swinging in the right way, guitar tones, etc. One of the best things about early song incarnations is the "pher-phla-per-the-on-stay" nonsense lyrics Ali comes up with on the fly.

Staying an hour longer than we planned despite being drained from long mountain walks and post-vacation fatigue is always a good sign. We still love doing this. Listening to the phone-recorded demos on the drive home gave a sense of potential and another new beginning going into a very promising and surely active fall/winter period for the band.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Milenski Entranski.

Image
We're not doing a "wrapped" for 2025. The lessons are in the notes, the gratitude for all the support is ongoing, the pains of the downs were felt, the highs of the ups as well, the landlord called to raise the rent as we move into the eurozone, the hopes for 2026 are up - only time will tell what we'll accomplish. We had a special guest at our rehearsal - Emil Mihaylov. A former financier, now local bakery owner and luthier extraordinaire. But most importantly a very kind-hearted man who knows what he's talking about and does much more than talking. He stopped by to showcase Sparky, a custom-made guitar you'd be afraid to touch, and he'd beg you to get your hands all over it. First thing you notice is the sparkling blue top as if made of a disco queen diva's dress. Surprisingly light and flawless playability across the "zebra" baked maple neck. With a full-body sound you'd swear is coming from a semi-hollow guitar. Especially made tremol...
Read more

Love Is The Fing.

Image
Another eventful week started off with the release of the Toaster video, continued with internal meetings setting up for the future, moving into the SoAlive conference workshops and meetings and is still to be capped off in several hours with our live performance at the same conference. The Toaster video has been the biggest production that we've ever had for a video. Philippe, Alex and the team put their heart and soul into it - their own words which we subscribe to fully. All of us incredibly proud to share the video, its message and the story behind it. But fighting algorithms of big tech without paying a fee progressively feels like a losing battle. Toaster accumulated 2.4K views. By comparison after the same period Don't Hate Me had 2.7K, Bliss & Blasphemy 3.8K, The List 4.3K and Freedom 5.8K. We're using the same strategy, platforms, etc. and addressing a larger fan base. Yet the results are disappointing. We don't mind not being noticed, it's part of the ...
Read more

Trust the Process.

Image
  One could say that a lot has happened in the past 10 days. The truth is that it happened before that, but we decided to keep the full story for later. We continue the same strategy for now, but some parts we'll share. The photo is our last group photo before we heard the biggest news of our history so far... Kalo decided that it's time to focus on things more important than the band. And there's many of those. We understand and respect this move unconditionally as hurtful as it is. First and foremost emotionally.  But it also means that we needed to get to work on an issue we never faced before. We had people leave the band, but we never had to introduce a new band member. Turns out - it's not easy! For obvious reasons, we cannot share too many details - but it's a non-professional musician, who fits into our family/office day job rhythm (anything else would be frustrating) and can play some mean bass. These are our core criteria, but only time will tell how every...
Read more