Greenfoot

The day (Greenfoot) Music Died

Jeromey Balderrama

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So to add to my NaBloWriMo failure, I ended up missing yesterday’s post as I spent the evening with my Greenfoot friends, having our last rehearsal.  After we decided last month to put an end to the project, we wanted to gather one last time and do some basic recording and play some of our songs for one last time.  Last night was a lot of fun, and hopefully I’ll be able to share those recordings soon.

I wanted to share some videos that Greenfoot has posted throughout the years, the first being one that we took after about 6 months after I joined the band:

After Julien joined the band, we started playing out again in the spring of 2008, and had the opportunity to have some more video taken at Smokin’ Joe’s in early 2009:

Over the years we played some really interesting places. One that comes to mind is getting up at 4am so that we could play at the Colfax Marathon, right on the street.

Over this summer we got to be the featured band at some farmers markets, which was a pretty fun experience as well:

Looking back, it was a really fun project and I’m really grateful to all of my friends who got our emails, came out to our shows and enjoyed our music! Now with the chapter on Greenfoot closed, I’m excited for what’s to come.

Closing the chapter on Greenfoot

Jeromey Balderrama

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I’ve been sitting on this for about a little over a week, but I am now able to post that as with all good things, Greenfoot has come to an end.  We’ve had a good run, but we’re going to be taking an amicable split.

It’s been a fun four years. Over that time we’ve played over 50 shows, recorded 2 EP’s totaling 8 songs, have written over 20 more songs and played some really fun covers.  Both Jake and Julien – as well as Kevin – have been great band-mates, and I’ve really enjoyed playing with them.  Hopefully our musical paths will cross in the future.

Thanks to all of my friends who came out to support us over the years. We definitely had many fun shows, have played some really interesting places and appreciate all the support that you’ve shown to us – I personally really appreciate it!

Greenfoot wasn’t my first band and most certainly won’t be my last, as I definitely want to get involved in another project.  I’ve detailed some of my drumming influences and aspirations on a drumming page I created. If you or anyone you know is looking for a drummer, check it out and drop me a line!

Broadcasting Greenfoot Recording – watch me drum!

Jeromey Balderrama

I just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know that my band, Greenfoot is starting to record new songs for an EP we’re releasing this summer.  We’ll actually be kicking off the sessions on Sunday, starting with m on drums!

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We’ll actually be broadcasting the sessions live on UStream, so if you’d like to sit in and see us record come check it out!  We’ll kick things off around 11am MDT, but should be going all afternoon.  I’d definitely love for you to stop by and let me know what you think!

Reasons to for Bands to Quit MySpace

Jeromey Balderrama

I ran across this great post a few days ago that I found to be very relevant as my band evaluates where devote on-line energy.  This brings up the elephant in the room that all bands need to discuss sooner or later.

>> 5 Reasons for Bands & Musicians to Quit MySpace

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It’s no secret that MySpace is on it’s way out.  The prominent rise of Facebook, coupled with our pain threshold for spam, flashing graphics and blaring noise has worn out MySpace’s welcome.  Long ago have I abandoned any meaningful time spent at the spent for my personal profile.  For my band’s profile, I still log into MySpace a few times per week, but the ROI has continued to decrease for our band and MySpace.

The biggest thing you can take away from the article is Reason #3:

Other bands are not your primary source of attendance

According to the statistics I’ve heard, there are roughly 8 million bands on MySpace, and you have 15,000 of them as friends! Unfortunately, those people are probably not buying your albums or attending your shows. While they may be good to do a show swap with, or bro down with for a tour some day-they’re not helping you pay the bills and put butts in your seats.

The 10% of users that are real people more than likely COMPLETELY ignore the “bulletins” that you can blast out to everyone. When was the last time you went to a show based on a bulletin you saw on MySpace? [Assault Blog]

I can’t tell you the last time I’ve interacted with an actual fan on MySpace.  Almost every interaction I have is with other bands, and the ones that aren’t bands are booking agents/venues – which is really only the valid communication that goes on for us on MySpace.  The collaboration is on MySpace is also a downside, because typically when these venues list you on their promotion, they link our MySpace, which isn’t our best web presence out there.

The article lists some great resources & alternatives to using MySpace.  We use some of them including Twitter and Last.Fm.  There was one omission which I think is starting to become unavoidable: Facebook.  While I agree that it’s always best to own your own content and presentation, along with the concession that Facebook is a little harder for brand outreach – but you need to be where people are at – which right now is Facebook.

Until then, I think we’re going to start to wean ourselves off of MySpace.  I don’t think we’ll ever stop posting music, pictures and show schedules there, but only because it doesn’t hurt to keep things updated for booking agents.  However, I think it’s time for bands to focus their energies elsewhere.

When will Apple open up iTunes LP’s?

Jeromey Balderrama

At the recent Apple’s iPod Gushfest, they announced a new feature in music purchases in the LP format.  This is supposed to be the next generation of the album format’s liner notes, photos and additional goodies you get when you pony up money for a CD.  This looked like a feature that may turn out to be cool (depending on how much they charge for this), but as a band that sells on iTunes I was very interested in how the LP was going to become available.

Details are starting to formulate, but because Apple hasn’t been very forthcoming with details (as if that’s a surprise), it’s given away to rampant speculation.  Initially the news broke that Indie (Independent) artists trying to implement the LP solution were told by iTunes reps that LP’s weren’t available to Independents.  Not only that, but to get an LP into iTunes, labels needed to pony up a $10,000 production fee.

Apple refuted the claim saying that they’re going to release open specs, and that no production fee would be charged. The fact that they’re going to release the open specs should hopefully enable content creators to create them – but we’ll see if they really become successful.  It’s surprising that iTunes doesn’t appear to have a sense of urgency about putting these specs out, considering that these have been out for over 6 weeks and only has 16 LP’s to show for it.

My guess is that unless they open LP to include a lossless audio format, there’ really isn’t going to be much incentive to get people spend the extra money and buy these instead of a CD.  I would also guess that Apple probably put these together due to pressure from the record companies and probably won’t invest their full attention towards this – not unlike the Apple TV.