The secret of good comedy, and cd marketing

…timing.
It is a singularly frustrating business that often feels like a punishment to try and market a record. Pilgrim isn’t geting anywhere near the kind of review coverage it needs to become visible. Christ knows where the slips occur with these things, but the cascade is a killer. The distributor doesn’t get enough review copies out in advance of release. By the time this becomes clear and i have personally sent out most of my print run allowance to magazines and sites, the UK release date is already at hand and most of the reviewers won’t look at anything unless its a pre-release – even the shit heel second rate web-based zines that are compiled by 13 year olds after they’ve finished their homework. Everyone needs to feel like they have critical importance in these matters I suppose.
Then there is the frustration of posting out copies to specialist press which, despite the best intentions of their owners, fold without warning. Both Judas Kiss and Aural Pressure closed up and moved on in the week after copies being posted. I still have a sneaking suspicion that the record is cursed and will close down the operations of all who come into contact with it. So, if you have any magazine you want to stop stone dead – buy a copy of Humsn Greed’s PILGRIM and post it to the review editor. Sure as the pope shits in a nun’s mouth the magazine will fold in days!
But the brutal truth about the matter is that without reviews – and until HG can get any kind of live profile – it becomes a near impossible struggle to shift records.
Then there is the frustration of having a rash of good reviews in Portugal – where no distribution has been arranged!
And then the frustration of announcing a release date in the States, posting out pre-release review copies – then having the distribution fall through – with the reviews collapsing in the wake of that – and its bye bye stateside profile, bye bye review copies, and so forth.
Meanwhile, certain beard tugging, noodling, pretentious publications which, politically, will have to remain nameless – are busy dribbling ecstatically over anything with reference to drones and clicks and non-standard formats like 3″cds and cdrs and audiotape wound round pencils propelled by sharpeners embedded in cat’s arses featuring the sub sonic murmurs of house fly synaptic pops and solar winds. Anything but a fucking emotion! Meanwhile their fucking useless antipodean reviews editor keeps leaving review copies lying in bistros and spouting endless guff about it being lined up – its lined up, yeah, yep, lined right up, yeah…
Best still my bleating mouth, retreat to my red wine, my little book of promises and my tall green candle and remember that whatever is done should be done, in Irving Layton’s phraze “with reverence and delight”

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