On the whole, I’d say it went very successfully.

Just so people realize, Joyce and I ran (run) the whole show ourselves (with some order-filling/mailing help from Westicle and a friend of Joyce’s who I don’t know.) Anyway, I’m not making any excuses (because this is the business we’ve chosen), but getting all of the pre-orders out (not to mention made) on-time was no small feat. And though it’s hard to believe, we do, in fact sell a fair number of records. And we like being an independent outfit. No system is perfect, but we try every time to dial it in more and more.

This is no shmooze bullshit: I’m well aware of the loyalty of PB fans. The fans make it possible for PB and Ashmont Records to be more than just a hobby. It’s that simple. So, truly, thanks to everyone who buys and enjoys the records. I love making records, and it is sweeter for me when the records mean something to people. Hard to believe, but I have an ego.

Joyce is going to rip me a new one for writing this, but I feel very strongly about it. Now comes the bad part, and I’m sorry there has to be a bad part: To the couple people who wrote rude letters to Joyce (and I’m not talking about the few disappointed people who missed the pre-order deadline. Most of those notes were funny and creative.), I say this: (1) Lighten up. We’re two people doing our best. (2) If you feel you were treated so terribly by Ashmont Records that you’re on the fence as to whether you can support me, my label and my band, well, don’t waste too much of your life thinking about it.

Because I don’t want to end on a downer, I say once again, thanks to everyone who made this pre-order season go smoothly. I hope the records deliver (once the post office delivers.)

It’s a sunny day up here in Toronto. Haven’t seen too much of it as I’ve been doing some press interviews over the phone. They’ve actually been okay, which isn’t always the case. Sometimes the questions can be a bit grim. When the interviewer says, “I don’t really know your music, so could you decsribe it for our readers…” that’s when you know you’re in for a long one. I stopped answering that question years ago. Thank god for cell phones (even though I don’t have one up here.) I blame a crummy connection on a “bad cell” before hanging up. (For those of you who wear glasses: If you’re walking down the street and you see someone you don’t want to talk to coming your way, take off your glasses, squint like mad, look pissed-off, and pretend to be trying to remove a stubborn smudge from a lens. Mumble a few super-offensive imperatives at the smudge for good measure. Look like you just locked yourself out of a running car. That should keep any pain-in-the-ass passerby clear of you because you’ve scared them.) There you have it. I am a liar. Anyway, these interviews were actually pretty good.

The record is out today in the USA. Came out in the UK and Europe yesterday. It’s been a little while since a record of ours/mine has “dropped” (as they say in the biz) worldwide simultaneously. I guess that’s supposed to be a big deal. What’s the significance? I have no idea.

And for those of you who have asked/suggested, my answer is this: There shall be no release party. I find that kind of thing creepy, for me at least. I also don’t like receiving gifts at holidays/birthdays. I say to family and friends, “Get me something in June when you’re not obliged. Now there’s a gift with intent. And make sure it’s something I want. What’s the point otherwise? And no, I can’t help being an incorrigible little shit.”

There shall be no release party. The only way I would ever consider it is if I subcontracted the priceless Pernice Brothers brand out to other bands in different cities. Each band could do the gig in their respective town. Hold on. Why limit this to a release party? I’m a much larger thinker than that. Introducing the 2006 Pernice Brothers Franchise World Tour. One night only. Everywhere. As for me, I’ll be on my sofa watching Antiques Roadshow come set time. I’m getting quite good at assessing the real dollar value of Limoges, Navajo blankets and all sorts of shit from the Ming Dynasty. My new heroes are Lark E. Mason and Suzanne Perrault. The latter is, by far, the most beautiful appraiser to have ever appraised. The former, the most sensitive. On that episode where Lark wept upon seeing a Chinese marble gargoyle statue, I swear, it was compelling television. My wife and I held eachother and wept for Lark, for the intensity of his passions (and for all passions) and his most considered acquiescence to them. It is also because of you, Lark (and the most mint Ms. Perrault) that I now repeat with great zeal and fervor: There shall be no release party.

Please, release me, please.

I finally finished making all of the cd booklets for the pre-order bonus cd. Next time I have a brilliant idea, like personally hand printing all of the covers, someone (Joyce) talk me out of it. On the positive side, our audience seems to be growing. On the negative side, our audience seems to be growing.

Regarding the bonus cd, I really like a the remixes, and yes, it was very late at night when Deming and I burned them. In the past, we were always up against release date deadlines and personal scheduling time constraints, so we didn’t have a lot of time to screw around and burn alt mixes. A few probably exist somewhere for songs on the previous records, but not too many. We would pretty much mix a tune until it sounded good, burn it and move on. We operated on the “This one sounds good, why do another” premise.

Regarding the demos: These are the tapes I made in my little room at home. I sent these tapes, clams and all, to the rest of the band so they could learn the song forms. The vocal melodies are there, as is my simple guitar/bass and keyboard playing. The real fan will probably find them interesting when listened against the finished recordings (where “real” players can be heard.) Personally, I don’t have any interest in listening to any of it, but that’s me. I do, however enjoy seeing how another’s art progresses from stage to stage: Back when I was an undergrad at UMASS, my friends and I used to “study” at the Smith College Library. One spring the library had a bunch of handwritten drafts of Sylvia Plath poems on display. I believe they would become her book The Colossus. It was pretty cool to see a poem like “All the Dead Dears” progress from draft to draft. One or two drafts was scribbled on pink paper on the back of an official school memo. I don’t know, I like that stuff. It lets younger artists see firsthand that even someone as electric as Sylvia Plath edited her stuff. It didn’t all just fall out of her head perfectly (though in her case, near the end, a good deal did. But look what happened to her.) Take William Carlos Williams. Now there’s an editor. he could edit the living shit out of a poem.

Regarding those who think Ashmont should make the pre-order cd available as a for-sale item: Not going to happen. Joe Public would demand his money back. (Like when a fifteen year old Peyton Pinkerton bought his first Jesus and Mary Chain record. He got home, listened to it and thought all the distortion was a defect. Sweet naive Pink. I wish I could have seen the hardened record clerk’s face when Pink, cash receipt in hand, asked for his money back.) Pre-order bonus cds are for you hardcore fans who enjoy all that stuff I wrote in the paragraph above.

I guess in the near future, a writer’s archive collected in a library somewhere will consist of a bunch of hard drives and burned cdrs. “Hey, wanna go over to the Kennedy Library and sniff through X’s hard drive?” Not quite the same as leafing through Hemingway’s handwritten notes. If I’m not mistaken, in an earlier draft of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway had originally written Jake’s reply to Lady Brett as: “Isn’t it completely fucked-up in the melon to think so?” I have to say, I like the final version better.

In an unrelated note: “There Goes the Sun” references Chet Baker and not Elliott Smith.

In another unrelated note: I would love to tour: UK, all of Europe, New Zealand…anywhere, really. I love to travel and play music, and see other places. The guys in the band are the same. It’s simply about money. I don’t even mind just breaking even on an overseas tour, but we simply don’t have the dough to lose. And we’d lose a lot. If the economics work out, I will be there. It’s not personal (except for that one guy who is knows who he is. I’m a very docile man until I am not.)

The record’s out in a week, and I’m pretty excited about it. I know the guys in the band and Mike Deming put a lot of themselves into it, which is how it should be, really. There’s an appropriate, crude expression that pertains to penis size: Some are show-ers and others are growers. (Pernice Brothers make growers.) (Sorry, Ma. Had to do it.)

Keep all talk of self-loathing to a quaint minimum in front of your child.

In response to Mr. Pelecanos’s Guardian piece, I have decided to devote my life to spoof crime writing, if not simply to crime. Below is a treatment for a movie followed by a sample scene. Note: I realize the actor Dolph Sweet is dead, but some producer with a lot of suck with God/Spacemen ought to be able to coax Mr. Sweet back to work.

“Black and White and Red All Over”
by Chip Cornea
Randall Robinson (Wesley Snipes) is a hard-nosed homicide
detective in Los Angeles. He’s a good cop who’s biggest flaw is
that he cares too damn much. He and his wife (of eight years)
Florida have been separated now for nine months. She’s living back
in Delaware with family. She never could understand why Randall
gave up on his dream to have a nightly gig as an alto sax front
man in his own nightclub. Randall never could make her understand
that when his innocent twin brother Jerome got murdered in a drive
by back in 1989 something changed in him. When they pinned that
badge on Randall at cop school graduation, they pinned it to his
skin…good and deep.

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