(Heck, at its new intersection. Photo credit: Scott Crawford)

• Heck moved to PORNO CONTINENT!
  Yes, I moved my beloved (by about 8 people) Second Life club to a fantastic parcel of land on Zindra, Second Life’s new adults-only continent. The build’s done. Formal grand opening soon. In the meantime, bring on the pr0n.

• Free Music Program Continues Next Week
  Yes, that’s kind of like non-news in a way, but I don’t have time to post something before the holiday weekend, so we’ll get to it sometime after Saturday. In the meantime, some stats:

  June MP3 Song Plays Or Downloads (my stats program doesn’t differentiate):

  june:

  Zenova: 280
  Sybil (Instrumental): 276
  Sybil (version): 250
  Sybil: 243
  Puppet: 227
  Wolftab: 217
  Tonight: 207
  Something In My Drink: 172
  Ecstacy: 151
  Untitled: 148
  Chord: 127
  New Song: 85

  total:

  Sybil: 419
  Sybil (Instrumental): 361
  Sybil (version): 315
  Ecstacy: 287
  Zenova: 280
  Puppet: 269
  Untitled: 225
  Wolftab: 217
  Tonight: 207
  Chord: 188
  Something In My Drink: 172
  New Song: 85

  So, the exposure appears to be reasonably solid so far, and feedback from people I’ve talked to has been solid as well. Donations are still quiet, but I’m cool with that. The button’s below if you’re feeling frisky. More stats next month, and another free song next week.

  
  

  
  
  
  

• I’ve been thinking about the movie “Trading Places” a lot today. Specifically, the scenes toward the end with the baggage clerks (Al Franken and Tom Davis) arguing over who gets to drive the luggage cart next (though the late Stephen Stucker comes to mind in their scenes, too). Then, the words “Senator Al Franken” appear in my head, and for a moment, I become very proud of the world that I live in. Then I start laughing about the gorilla.

• I may be off the grid for a good portion of the rest of this week. Stay black, Happy Canada Day, and for those of you in Senator Al Franken’s home country, Happy Blowing Shit Up Day. Be safe out there, but not so safe that it keeps you from firing Roman Candles out of your butt. Just make sure you light the right end.

Here’s what’s up, as of now…

Sleep: I started my day at 8:45 PM yesterday. That tell you anything?

Meds: I tried 75 mg of Zoloft instead of 50. Not so good. Back to 50. Considering trying 25 as my next experiment. I end up taking about half a .5 mg Xanax maybe once a month still. I was on Diclofenac for my leg (see below), but that was SHREDDING my stomach, so I stopped, just going with Advil for it now.

Therapy: about the same. Doing a fair number of sessions over the phone because my sleep’s been messy for most of this year, so that’s kind of a drag, especially when we keep trying to deal with relaxation techniques when my life stays out of the way long enough for us not to have to address it. Have you ever tried practicing relaxation techniques when you’re on the phone? It doesn’t work.

Running: none yet. Leg is feeling better, to at least some degree, though. It’s interesting, soaking in a hot bathtub a week and a half ago did more for it than a year-plus of rest, ice, anti-inflammatories, and so forth, but alas, there is no bathtub here. My plan, humble as it is, is to start testing the leg with short walks next week, barring any setbacks. I’m going to start building up strength that way, and when things are significantly better, I’ll start the running program again, probably in the Fall.

Court case: in a total holding pattern. Remind me to call my lawyer and cause trouble this week.

Second Life: Heck still exists. Not a lot of activity there at the moment, but there is a movie playing there now. Going to see about moving to PORNO CONTINENT when they start letting mainlanders relocate this week, as that’ll put an end to the “Well, can I or can’t I?” questions surrounding some of the more, um, adult facets of what goes on there.

Music: two things of note here.

First off, I’ve been releasing some! Go get it, it’s free! Donations have been slow (to be expected, not sweating it, but hey, donate if you’re so inclined), but music that was just sitting on a hard drive is now getting played or downloaded by people an average of 62 times a day, with pretty limited promotion outside this site, and the numbers keep improving. I would say that this is better exposure than I had been getting.

Second, to the excitement of about a dozen people, I am once again playing improvised Moog synthesizer for the reformed Get Precious. Our first gig back was on June 12th, my 35th birthday, and no one aside from Geoff Precious himself (this includes the rest of the band) knew I was coming back until minutes before I took the stage. After 3 and a half years without a single full-band rehearsal, we were…well, what we always are, which is an accomplishment in and of itself. What’s more, we had fun, which was very important to all of us. No anxiety involved in playing the show (but GP was always a lighter load than my solo shows or even Murder In The Dark shows, less responsibility), outside of that one constant, the “I want to get up there and get it over with” dynamic. Opening bands, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth! Y’all get to enjoy the remainder of your evening sooner than headliners do! As for the future of Get Precious, we’re talking about that now, and we’re going to keep it fun and not careerist, but we’ve all agreed that there should be one. Todd thinks we should do gigs with ABBA, but we haven’t contacted Benny and Bjorn about that yet. Stay tuned.

Writing: the output on the comic book project I’ve started has been a little slower of late, but I’ll get back to it soon. In the meantime, if there are any artists in the audience who want to do super-hero comics with a slightly pre-Crisis DC, but realistic bent to them, get ahold of me.

Higher Education: I think about it all the time now, but I’ve gotta move ahead on the court case before I open up another can of worms. So, for now, it’s “home schooling”. Planning on spending a good chunk of the second half of this year getting serious about learning things. Hopefully it works out. If you want to kick in for “textbooks”, I’ve got a bunch of stuff listed on my Wish List nowadays. Any of the books on comics or physical fitness would be welcome, if you want to keep your purchases purely educational.

Money: phase one of The Scott Crawford Government Bailout Package into its 3rd month. It’s nice to be able to buy food and get a break from paying for therapy and prescriptions (Though I still can’t find a general practitioner who will return my phone calls; bring on health care reform!). I’m still not in great shape or even good shape by any means, and I can still use any help you’re willing to contribute, but I’m doing a little better. “It’s a long way to the top”, though, as Bon and the guys once said.

That’s about it for now, unless y’all can think of things I haven’t. Floor’s open. “What’s your opinion? We’d like to know.”

(Roger “Wildchild” McKenzie, press photo, photographer unknown. If you took the shot, let me know and I’ll credit you.)

Back in ‘95, when I was working at a publicity office, I worked for a few months with a woman named Donna. Donna had a boyfriend named Roger, who was trying to get some demos of his heard under the name “Wildchild”, as I remember things. She played them around the office a few times, and a song called “Renegade Master” stuck in my head a bit, fun little hook to it. Roger would pick her up from work every so often, too, so I met him a few times. He was pretty quiet, but seemed nice enough. Never really had a conversation I can remember with him, but I think of him now and I think “friendly enough guy”.

Fast forward a few years, and I’m out at a club somewhere. Music playing, all of a sudden, I hear the hook from “Renegade Master”. No one I was with knew what the fuck I was talking about, but I was like “Holy shit! It’s Roger!”, and started dancing. Sometime after that, I got a copy of the record, and I still give it a listen here and there. It’s loud, dumb, fun music to bug out to.

For some reason, even after all these years, I’d never thought to look Roger up and say “Hey, cool that your record caught on, hope all is well” or even see how he was doing beyond the fact that his record did well until today. A friend of mine referenced “Renegade Master” on Facebook earlier, and I was like “w00, Roger!” which made me say “Fuck it, let me look him up.

I got to Wikipedia and found this:

“Roger McKenzie (1 January 1971 – 25 November 1995[1]) also known under his production aliases of Wildchild or DJ Wildchild, was an English musician and DJ. Born in Southampton, England, he released many singles on labels such as Hi Life Recordings, Ultra Records, and Polydor (UK). The tracks “Jump to My Beat”, “Renegade Master” and the subsequent “Renegade Master 98″ were his most successful. Fatboy Slim’s Old Skool Mix is perhaps the most famous version of “Renegade Master 98″. “Renegade Master” was his first in 1995, peaking at #11, but was surpassed by the success of Fatboy Slim’s remix “Renegade Master 98″, which peaked at #3 in 1998.

Just before his death from an undiagnosed heart condition, he formed his own record label, ‘Dark & Black’.”

Now, I’m not gonna act like I really *knew* the guy. He was to me, in all truth, a guy who picked my co-worker up from work and made a cool song. Still, what a fucking kick to the gut. As I said to another friend, “I haz a sad today, not a huge one, but still, it’s like “Whoa, he died and it took me this long to find out?”, on top of “Whoa, poor dude was only 24…”, on top of “Whoa, that was almost 14 years ago”, on top of “I wonder how he’d have felt back then if he knew that my friends from New Jersey would be talking about his song on the Internet 14 years after he died”. Damn Wikipedia. Made me go all quantum.” Just a lot of thought-provoking stuff in there. I almost died when I was 24, too, and at that point, I’d accomplished almost nothing. I’m 35 now, and just barely starting to scratch the surface of what successes Roger had before his passing. I bet he’d trade, and I know I wouldn’t, selfish as that may sound. Damn shame for anyone to go so young.

So yeah, today, I am pouring a 40 on the ground for Roger, who some of you may know as Wildchild. If Donna or any of his other loved ones read this, I’m very sorry for your loss, and hope you take joy in the memories you have of him, as well as the fact that years on, he’s still making people dance. For the rest of you, here’s a clip of Roger on Top Of The Pops. Enjoy.

A bit of a change of pace for our fifth installment. Back a few years, everyone and their mother was playing around with a program called ReBirth, which emulated Roland’s TB-303 Bass Synthesizer, as well as their TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines. I’ve used ReBirth on a few of my other tracks (the forthcoming “If I Could” is probably the most noticable one), but not a lot of my “screwing around with ReBirth for the sake of it” tracks or patterns exist, beyond this one…

New Song by Scott Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at: http://www.mybigblackcock.com/

This means you can play it on commercial and non-commercial radio, remix it, copy it for your friends, put it on your web site, whatever, as long as I am properly credited, this license information is included wherever you choose to put my music, and, if you sample it, remix it, etc., your music containing any part of my music must be released under this same license unless you contact me specifically to negotiate other terms that I agree to.

Here’s the song, but in a departure from usual policy, it’s just a 128k mp3 file, no WAV. Amazingly, I’ve had this floating around for years, at least 5, but I’ve never recorded a better copy. I believe I still have a functioning copy of the ReBirth file, so if there’s a ton of demand from audiophiles, I can attempt to re-record it at some point, but surprisingly enough, the 128 still sounds fresh, probably because sound never actually exited a digital environment.

New Song: 128k MP3

Right-click this file (or Control-click it, on a Mac) and go to “Save as…” to save it. If you want to play it first to hear how it sounds, click the play button next to the mp3 download link.

If my bandwidth takes a hammerin’ from all this fun, I may also post links to .torrent files, so you can help spread the load around, but let’s learn to crawl first.

As for artwork on this one, I’ve never done any. Does anyone want to make me some? That’d be kinda cool.

I told you a little bit about the track above, but here’s a little more. It was programmed, performed (yes, the filter twisting and the punch-ins/punch-outs were done live by me, for better or worse) and recorded entirely in ReBirth, which is a fun little free program if you’re running a machine that will still behave with it. It’s instrumental, and it was done, from what my disc cataloguer tells me, sometime between June 13-15, 2000, so it’s been hanging around here for 9 years doing nothing, virtually unheard. I labelled it “New Song” back then, and have never changed the title, even though it’s hardly new anymore, and has no attachment to any other song called “New Song”, whether by Howard Jones, The Who or anyone else who’s ever used the same title. Really a pretty simple, elementary track, but I can still listen to it almost a decade later and not cringe, so I figured I’d share it with y’all. Enjoy, and if you end up making any music with ReBirth, share it with me!

From here, I’ll be continuing to compile and finish up what I have of “babykiller.”. I probably won’t record any new tracks that I haven’t already, not yet, anyway, but I may tweak a few (For example, the vocal track on “If I Could” needs some serious help). I will probably also throw some bonus tracks up as I go through my archives and find stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Stay tuned!

While I’ll be doing all of this free of any kind of mandatory charge, and I think I’m going to move forward with that plan for the rest of the time I’m making music, donations of any size above $1.00 USD (below that, and PayPal fees make your donation kind of useless, sadly; if you want to give me less than a dollar, do it in person) are greatly appreciated. Donations will enable me to compensate the people who work on this music with me as best I can, as well as perform much-needed repairs and upgrades on my aging home studio. Ideally, this will result in more music being made and released, though I’m trying to take this music thing one tiny act at a time these days. In the meantime, thanks in advance for your continuing support, as well as for all the support you’ve given my music and I over the years. As always, if you have any questions about this release or anything else, suck@mybigblackcock.com.

Some might say I should save “the best” for last, but that’s not always how we roll around here. While I know it’s occasionally a bummer when Echo And The Bunnymen drop “The Killing Moon” smack dab in the middle of a set with no build-up, it needs to be done sometimes. So with that, I give you “Tonight”.

Tonight by Scott Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at: http://www.mybigblackcock.com/

This means you can play it on commercial and non-commercial radio, remix it, copy it for your friends, put it on your web site, whatever, as long as I am properly credited, this license information is included wherever you choose to put my music, and, if you sample it, remix it, etc., your music containing any part of my music must be released under this same license unless you contact me specifically to negotiate other terms that I agree to.

Here’s the song, in both 320k MP3 and WAV format. (Sorry, FLAC nerds, but you’ll just have to convert your own. Consider it your punishment for the years of y’all being snobby to people on torrent sites, while posting “lossless” copies of things like Sammy Hagar albums. As I’ve said in the past, “When you post Sammy Hagar albums to torrent sites, EVERYBODY loses”.)

Tonight: 320k MP3 | WAV

Right-click these files (or Control-click them, on a Mac) and go to “Save as…” to save them. If you want to play them first to hear how they sound, click the play buttons next to the mp3 versions of each song.

If my bandwidth takes a hammerin’ from all this fun, I may also post links to .torrent files, so you can help spread the load around, but let’s learn to crawl first.

No cover art for this one. Really, does it need any? I think it’s at its best when it’s on scuffed up, dirty little CD-Rs that get passed around without a case, don’t you?

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the lyrics.

Tonight
Lyrics by Scott Crawford
Music by Scott Crawford and Kage Hopkins

it’s not always black or white
the difference is only slight
in a world that isn’t right
lick my fucking ass tonight

lick my fucking ass tonight
tonight
lick my fucking ass tonight, oh

darling, don’t put up a fight
I just want to take a bite
you make my whole world seem bright
lick my fucking ass tonight

lick my fucking ass tonight
tonight
lick my fucking ass tonight
in a world that isn’t right
lick my fucking ass tonight

on the loneliest of nights
maybe I am too uptight
you make my whole world seem bright
lick my fucking ass tonight

lick my fucking ass tonight
tonight
lick my fucking ass tonight
in a world that isn’t right
lick my, lick my, fucking ass tonight

lick it tonight
lick it tonight
lick it tonight
lick it tonight

This one sorta speaks for itself, and loudly, I might add, but I’ll give you a little backstory, nonetheless: back when I was in Murder In The Dark, Kage started playing the bassline of what became “Tonight” during practice one day, and I thought it sounded a bit like The Chameleons, so I laid down a drum track and, being a jackass, started singing the chorus you all know and love over the top of it in a sort of Mark Burgess voice (apologies to Birdy, who I hope will get a laugh out of the song if he ends up hearing it, at the very least). About 5 minutes of other ridiculous, improvised lyrics later, a legend was born. I’ve heard talk of it being played in foreign lands and enjoyed by people who have no idea at all about the context of the song, it was a live favorite at MITD gigs before it came with Kage and I in the divorce, and I still have people mentioning it to me, years later…”You did that ‘lick my ass’ song…that’s awesome!”, all of which is pretty cool. I’d feel kinda like an embittered one-hit wonder, if the song weren’t so goddamn funny.

Like I said, this song was co-written by Kage Hopkins, and he’s graciously decided to let me do whatever the hell I want with it, so if you decide to make a donation via the button below based solely on the virtues of this song, please note that in the “Note” section of the donation page, so I can kick him some of the money, and by all means, check out his shit, too.

From here, I’ll be continuing to compile and finish up what I have of “babykiller.”. I probably won’t record any new tracks that I haven’t already, not yet, anyway, but I may tweak a few (For example, the vocal track on “If I Could” needs some serious help). I will probably also throw some bonus tracks up as I go through my archives and find stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Stay tuned!

While I’ll be doing all of this free of any kind of mandatory charge, and I think I’m going to move forward with that plan for the rest of the time I’m making music, donations of any size above $1.00 USD (below that, and PayPal fees make your donation kind of useless, sadly; if you want to give me less than a dollar, do it in person) are greatly appreciated. Donations will enable me to compensate the people who work on this music with me as best I can, as well as perform much-needed repairs and upgrades on my aging home studio. Ideally, this will result in more music being made and released, though I’m trying to take this music thing one tiny act at a time these days. In the meantime, thanks in advance for your continuing support, as well as for all the support you’ve given my music and I over the years. As always, if you have any questions about this release or anything else, suck@mybigblackcock.com.

Some of you may remember me mentioning Deb McGee in last year’s New York City Marathon coverage. Some of you may also have noticed that she’s become a regular commenter here since then (she found my mention of her on a Google search, and stuck around after that…), and is a pretty swell gal in general. Well, Deb’s friends down in Virginia have started the Race For McGee 10 km in her name, to benefit the ALS Association. I’m pretty sure this is the second year they’ve done it, and it goes without saying that it’s a great cause. The race takes place at 7:30 PM on June 20th, 2009 on the boardwalk in Colonial Beach, Virginia. The race will be followed by a post-race barbecue as well, and if you’re not familiar, post-race parties can be a lot of fun. Deb’s not running in the 10K from what she says, but I’m pretty sure she’ll be there, so say hi for me if you run into her. I’m sure she’ll get a hell of a kick out of hearing from anyone who heard about the race on My Big, Black Cock, so don’t let her (or me) down, my hairy-palmed readers!

If you’d like to enter the race, grab a t-shirt or make a donation to the ALS Association via the Race For McGee, the mail-in entry form is here (warning: PDF file at the other side of that link), and the online one (which you’ll need to sign up for a Race Timing Unlimited account in order to access) is here.

Time for more music! I am releasing the long-awaited debut, self-titled and only EP of alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.abortion under two different licenses:

Zenova and Wolftab by alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.abortion is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at: http://www.mybigblackcock.com/

This means you can play it on commercial and non-commercial radio, remix it, copy it for your friends, put it on your web site, whatever, as long as I am properly credited, this license information is included wherever you choose to put my music, and, if you sample it, remix it, etc., your music containing any part of my music must be released under this same license unless you contact me specifically to negotiate other terms that I agree to.

There’s a reason why I’m licensing this song separately than the others, which I’ll get into below, but with this one, do whatever.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the record, in both 320k MP3 and WAV format. (Sorry, FLAC nerds, but you’ll just have to convert your own. Consider it your punishment for the years of y’all being snobby to people on torrent sites, while posting “lossless” copies of things like Sammy Hagar albums. As I’ve said in the past, “When you post Sammy Hagar albums to torrent sites, EVERYBODY loses”.)

Zenova: 320k MP3 | WAV

Something In My Drink: 320k MP3 | WAV

Wolftab: 320k MP3 | WAV

Full “alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.abortion” record in ZIP file: 320k MP3 | WAV

Right-click these files (or Control-click them, on a Mac) and go to “Save as…” to save them. If you want to play them first to hear how they sound, click the play buttons next to the mp3 versions of each song.

If my bandwidth takes a hammerin’ from all this fun, I may also post links to .torrent files, so you can help spread the load around, but let’s learn to crawl first.

Here is the cover art for the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.abortion EP (right-click the picture (or Control-click it, on a Mac) and go to “Save as…” to save a higher quality image):

And here is a secondary graphic I used on the MySpace page, because I know you all love animated gifs:

In the meantime, a little bit of explaining and some “lyrics”: wow, this is some messed up music. I actually created it on a dare with myself, y’see. At the time it was made (late 2004 to early 2005), music was just beginning to explode on MySpace, and promotion of music wasn’t the well-oiled machine it is now (*snicker*). Back then, it was very, very easy to get your music a lot of plays and get your band a lot of friends just by playing the game right, getting your profile page seen in the right places, and so forth. The band didn’t even have to actually exist. So, over Christmas week of ‘04, I set out to see if, just on pure piss and vinegar, I could get a band very, very noticed despite said band not actually existing, despite the “band” not being comprised of anyone whose name anyone knew (sort of a spin-off of my feelings at the time that the little bit of notoriety my name had was hindering my success rather than helping it…I’d been around a long time and accomplished very little at that point, so I was feeling like my work, whatever form it took, wasn’t getting very much respect or credibility from the peanut gallery; these days, I could give a rat’s ass) and despite the music not being terribly commercially viable in any way, shape or form. I was thinking pure promotion here.

So, first, I cracked open an image editor and doctored up some images so they’d be all provocative-like. Then, I came up with the name, while I was looking through a list of Usenet newsgroups. Then, I recorded the first song, “Wolftab”, using rough recordings of a nonsense lyric I’d heard in one of my dreams (”How can it be, my little Wolftab?”, the only line of the whole song; it’s stretched out so I say it very slowly, and backmasked over the top of that) that I had laying around and a bunch of other noises. Most of the construction of the song was done mathematically (in fact, on all 3 alt.abortion songs, math played a heavy role, as did symmetry, backwards masking and so forth). I had it finished in about 2 hours, and while it’s the roughest of the alt.abortion tracks, it’s got its charms.

From there, I wrote up some nonsense that sounded vaguely controversial and invented a half-assed persona named “Mr. Abortion” or “Mr. A” to curate the whole deal, grabbed a MySpace page (deleted when I began phasing out MySpace) and went to work. I added early adopters with huge friends lists and popular bands, and left comments for them so my profile would be visible on their page. I tried to keep those comments “in character” and say something new and weird to everyone, rather than just using your classic “Thanks for the add!” form letter. I then also created a LiveJournal account for Mr. A, and in another act of half-assed creepiness, I used a serial adding script to randomly add 500 LiveJournal users as friends. Some were not pleased. Others warmed right up to Mr. A. A lot of what’s posted there tells the story of alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.abortion better than I could here, especially as it’s been a while and I don’t remember it all.

I will note, however, that “Zenova” is indeed named after Zenova Braeden, who has a pretty popular MySpace page. After I added her, the comment I left for her said “I’m going to write a song about you.” So, not long after that, I sat down in front of my computer and made that song. I think it’s the best of the three alt.abortion songs, but it’s also unbelievably creepy. To this day, I listen to it and wonder how anyone, much less me, could make a song that sounds like that. I guess there’s something to be said for doing that. I sent her another comment telling her that the song was finished, with a link, but I never heard from her. I have no idea if she listened to it, or what she thinks of it. Zenova, if you read this, hi! Hope you like it.

I did one more song after this, “Something In My Drink”, which got 2 revisions, the second of which has the sample I used at the end (which was added for the first and only alt.abortion live show). I may end up hearing shit for the sample used in the revision posted here, despite the fact that said sample was recorded by a bunch of major news outlets, spread everywhere for decades (similar to Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech), and has lyrics in it that have perhaps the most dubious copyright claim ever attached to them. Wikipedia’s even got the damned thing up (with a justification, admittedly), and they’re pretty careful. If people who have a legitimate, defendable claim to the rights want it taken down, they’re welcome to send me a takedown notice and I’ll replace it with the original version, sans sample. If not, cool. As seen above, I have released my music for “Something In My Drink” to the public domain, unlike all of my other works, as I feel this is most “good faith” way to handle this issue, and perhaps the best way to get the song heard the way I think it should be heard. I am not a lawyer, though, so dissenting opinions are welcome.

Like I said above, the LiveJournal account does a much better job of telling the story of alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.abortion than I could here, in a voyeuristic, in-the-moment kind of way. Hopefully, it (coupled with my description of events here) gives you some context into what the hell I was thinking or doing. The experiment was a success, a failure, and a successful failure, and probably eventually a failed success story as well.

From here, I’ll be continuing to compile and finish up what I have of “babykiller.”. I probably won’t record any new tracks that I haven’t already, not yet, anyway, but I may tweak a few (For example, the vocal track on “If I Could” needs some serious help). I will probably also throw some bonus tracks up as I go through my archives and find stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Stay tuned!

While I’ll be doing all of this free of any kind of mandatory charge, and I think I’m going to move forward with that plan for the rest of the time I’m making music, donations of any size above $1.00 USD (below that, and PayPal fees make your donation kind of useless, sadly; if you want to give me less than a dollar, do it in person) are greatly appreciated. Donations will enable me to compensate the people who work on this music with me as best I can, as well as perform much-needed repairs and upgrades on my aging home studio. Ideally, this will result in more music being made and released, though I’m trying to take this music thing one tiny act at a time these days. In the meantime, thanks in advance for your continuing support, as well as for all the support you’ve given my music and I over the years. As always, if you have any questions about this release or anything else, suck@mybigblackcock.com.

Thanks to Firepile (and be safe over there!) for sharing these! She’s apparently also tweeting in the area, despite all the talk of The Great Firewall blocking transmissions in and out of China, so while it may also be filled with such Twitter gems as “I dun a poo”, you may wanna check that out as well.

My Big, Black Cock: bringing you scoops the news networks can’t even manage.

(Sita at my club in Second Life! Click the image to go straight to Heck!)

For those of you who have lived under a rock for a few months and haven’t heard me say it yet, I love “Sita Sings The Blues”, a new animated film by Nina Paley, not just because the movie itself is brilliant, but also because, as you’ll read here (warning: there be some spoilers), Nina went through HELL trying to get this movie released. I have the utmost respect and empathy for anyone who stands up to the “intellectual property” machine the way she has and continues to. Indirectly, Nina’s the one who finally got me off my ass to start releasing my music for free, and she’s awesome.

So, to serve the dual purpose of entertaining my guests there, and giving a little more attention to Nina for her efforts, today, I set things up so people can watch “Sita” at Heck, my club in Second Life (as you can see in the screenshot above). I told Nina about it, and she was pretty jazzed, so she wrote about it on her blog! (Thanks again, Nina!) And now, the circle is complete.

One more time, though, folks…whether you watch it at Heck or out here in that “other” life, you should totally check out “Sita Sings The Blues”. Best movie I’ve seen this year, and I’ve seen some good ones.

Here’s what’s happened so far on the mp3 download front (updated to include all of May):

Sybil: 176
Ecstacy: 136
Sybil (Instrumental): 85
Untitled: 77
Sybil (version): 65
Chord: 61
Puppet: 42

Very surprised, thus far, that the alternate versions of “Sybil” are doing so well, especially the instrumental. For those wondering, the original is the one on the Propaganda video, “(version)” is the second mix that I did and preferred, as the vocals actually sound like Jaki on that mix, and “(Instrumental)” is so you can practice at home.

More of you need to download “Chord” and “Untitled”. They’re fun little numbers.

If you’re wondering, I’ve managed in a few short weeks to get “the ritual.” heard more than it was in 2 years of being on the for-pay download services, and I’m reasonably sure that I’ll kill the number of plays that music had on MySpace by the end of the summer. As for donations, which I mentioned not having gotten when I posted “Puppet”? I’ve gotten at least one since then. That’s all I’m at liberty to say, aside from “thank you very much” to anyone donating, and “keep those donations coming” to anyone who hasn’t yet.

Finally, if you’ve downloaded music, drop me a line here and let me know what you think of it, good or bad. If you haven’t yet, help yourself! It is free, after all.

The official diagnosis, finally: Bursitis, Shin Splints and Tendonitis.

The doctor should’ve just busted out the ever-popular “AIDS Of The Knee” while he was at it.

I don’t half-ass this stuff, do I?

I’ve got a treatment plan in the works, but suggestions for how to deal with this, from people who’ve dealt with all of this before (especially if it’s been the same combo) are of course welcome and appreciated.

A lot of you downloaded or listened to every track on my last release in the first week, despite my releasing “the ritual.” to very little fanfare. No donations yet, but I’m sure you’ll get around to it. Regardless of my not making my first million yet, I am happy, as the music is being heard.

With that in mind, I’m releasing another song, under the license below (which *should* be valid for all future Scott Crawford releases, barring any complications):

Puppet by Scott Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at: http://www.mybigblackcock.com/

This means you can play it on commercial and non-commercial radio, remix it, copy it for your friends, put it on your web site, whatever, as long as I am properly credited, this license information is included wherever you choose to put my music, and, if you sample it, remix it, etc., your music containing any part of my music must be released under this same license unless you contact me specifically to negotiate other terms that I agree to.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the song, in both 320k MP3 and WAV format. (Sorry, FLAC nerds, but you’ll just have to convert your own. Consider it your punishment for the years of y’all being snobby to people on torrent sites, while posting “lossless” copies of things like Sammy Hagar albums. As I’ve said in the past, “When you post Sammy Hagar albums to torrent sites, EVERYBODY loses”.)

Puppet: 320k MP3 | WAV

Right-click these files (or Control-click them, on a Mac) and go to “Save as…” to save them. If you want to play them first to hear how they sound, click the play buttons next to the mp3 versions of each song.

If my bandwidth takes a hammerin’ from all this fun, I may also post links to .torrent files, so you can help spread the load around, but let’s learn to crawl first.

Cover art for this single will be posted here as soon as possible. I know I said that about “the ritual.” too, but I haven’t been feeling Photoshoppy this week. Soon, my pets.

In the meantime, a little bit of explaining and some lyrics. “Puppet” was written in May of 2006 (Corrected, thanks, Laura. -S), over the course of about a week, maybe a week and a half. I know that it was done in 2 band practices, and performed for the first time about 5 days later. It’s been performed live a small handful of times, though I don’t think any live recordings exist. It’s probably my favorite of my songs thus far. I had Rozz Williams and Alice Cooper pretty firmly in mind when it started to take shape, though the big finish is kinda Brendan Perry. Not sure how I got from point A to point B there. Guitars were performed by Kage Hopkins. If you decide to donate based upon the merits this song, please say so in a note on your donation (there’s a box on the PayPal form), as not only will it give me an idea of what’s driving people to donate, but it’ll also remind me to kick some of it to Kage.

Puppet
by Scott Crawford

I’m a puppet
Pull my strings
Do you like the way I shake that thing?
Wanna take you for a little ride
Don’t you worry
I won’t come inside you

Everybody thinks I’m quite insane
Me, I think they’re rather inhumane
Watch the way they rip each other apart
It makes great television…but is it art?

Just like all the others, you will outgrow me
Always looking, like a fool, for what will set you free

Puppet in a pile of misfit toys
Fading signal in a sea of noise
Shards of my predecessors in my feet
Still expecting me to keep the beat

The show is over now
The laughter fades
It was an ugly little masquerade
No idea what tomorrow will bring
I want to follow you
Can’t cut my strings

When you close your eyes, and you look away
It may sound like “go to hell”, but I’m begging you to stay

I’m begging you to stay
I’m begging you to stay
I’m begging you to stay
Please don’t go away

Aw, c’mon, don’t you wanna play?

From here, I’ll be continuing to compile and finish up what I have of “babykiller.” and the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.abortion record and releasing them (possibly as part of the same record; for some reason, I still hear the alt.abortion material in my head as part of the Scott Crawford live set). I probably won’t record any new tracks that I haven’t already, not yet, anyway, but I may tweak a few (For example, the vocal track on “If I Could” needs some serious help). I will probably also throw some bonus tracks up as I go through my archives and find stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Stay tuned!

While I’ll be doing all of this free of any kind of mandatory charge, and I think I’m going to move forward with that plan for the rest of the time I’m making music, donations of any size above $1.00 USD (below that, and PayPal fees make your donation kind of useless, sadly; if you want to give me less than a dollar, do it in person) are greatly appreciated. Donations will enable me to compensate the people who work on this music with me as best I can, as well as perform much-needed repairs and upgrades on my aging home studio. Ideally, this will result in more music being made and released, though I’m trying to take this music thing one tiny act at a time these days. In the meantime, thanks in advance for your continuing support, as well as for all the support you’ve given my music and I over the years. As always, if you have any questions about this release or anything else, suck@mybigblackcock.com.

Pee that smells like Febreeze.

Like, you pee, and it smells like Febreeze, but it’s actually still urine.

Think of the things you could get away with!

After much thought, I’ve decided to begin releasing and re-releasing my music for free. The first of these releases is “the ritual.”, which I am re-releasing under the license below (which *should* be valid for all future Scott Crawford releases, barring any complications):

the ritual. by Scott Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at: http://www.mybigblackcock.com/

This means you can play it on commercial and non-commercial radio, remix it, copy it for your friends, put it on your web site, whatever, as long as I am properly credited, this license information is included wherever you choose to put my music, and, if you sample it, remix it, etc., your music containing any part of my music must be released under this same license unless you contact me specifically to negotiate other terms that I agree to.

If you’ve already purchased the record via iTunes, Amazon or somewhere else, awesome, thanks! Know that the lion’s share of that money went toward keeping this site up and running, while I was deciding what to do with my life. Despite the new “free” policy, I’ll probably be leaving my music up on those sites for at least the time being, because they’re good databases to be in, and because I’m paid up through at least next January. In the meantime, know that as long as this site’s up, you won’t have a problem re-acquiring the songs if you lose your original files somehow (hard drive crash, accidental deletion, you decide they suck but then change your mind, whatever). I’ve also still got CDs available for sale on lulu.com, for those of you who want to support the cause and have a physical CD without rolling your own.

If y’all have purchased or plan on purchasing my music from iTunes, Amazon, Lulu, etc. despite it being here for free now, it’d be cool if you guys could leave me (hopefully positive) reviews on any of the sites you’ve purchased my music from (my listings are linked in my sidebars), mentioning that the files are now available for free here! Yes, I’ve gone insane.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the record, in both 320k MP3 and WAV format. (Sorry, FLAC nerds, but you’ll just have to convert your own. Consider it your punishment for the years of y’all being snobby to people on torrent sites, while posting “lossless” copies of things like Sammy Hagar albums. As I’ve said in the past, “When you post Sammy Hagar albums to torrent sites, EVERYBODY loses”.)

01. Ecstacy: 320k MP3 | WAV
02. Untitled: 320k MP3 | WAV
03. Sybil: 320k MP3 | WAV
04. Chord: 320k MP3 | WAV
05. Sybil (version): 320k MP3 | WAV
06. Sybil (Instrumental): 320k MP3 | WAV

Full “the ritual.” record in ZIP file: 320k MP3 | WAV

Right-click these files (or Control-click them, on a Mac) and go to “Save as…” to save them. If you want to play them first to hear how they sound, click the play buttons next to the mp3 versions of each song.

High-quality cover art, including tray card and disc label, will be completed and posted here as soon as possible.

In the meantime, here’s what I wrote in the liner note for the 2006 release of “the ritual.”, as well as an image file of the front cover:

“In 1994, Scott Crawford recorded “the ritual.”, a commissioned work for Fred H. Berger’s Propaganda Videozine #3. 12 years later, the work has finally been removed from the vaults and released. During that time, many have wondered why it didn’t get released right away (that part is a story for another day), and some even went as far as to hook a tape recorder to their VCRs to bootleg the audio from the original videotape!

This release, including “Sybil (version)”, a never-before-heard outtake from the sessions for “the ritual.”, would not have been possible without the following individuals: Fred H. Berger (who commissioned the pieces that became “the ritual.” in the first place), Jacqueline Loversidge-Barclay (who literally bled for the transcendent vocals you hear on both versions of “Sybil”), Skylab Studios (who were accommodating despite this clearly not being their kind of project), Ted Wohlsen at Cook Street Sound (who graciously handled the transfer of the recording from the original DAT), and Miranda Padgett, who finally drove home the point that yes, maybe people really did want to own a copy of this music.”

(Higher quality image file here)

If my bandwidth takes a hammerin’ from all this fun, I may also post links to .torrent files, so you can help spread the load around, but let’s learn to crawl first.

From here, I’ll be compiling and finishing up what I have of “babykiller.” and the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.abortion record and releasing them (possibly as part of the same record; for some reason, I still hear the alt.abortion material in my head as part of the Scott Crawford live set). I probably won’t record any new tracks that I haven’t already, not yet, anyway, but I may tweak a few (For example, the vocal track on “If I Could” needs some serious help). I will probably also throw some bonus tracks up as I go through my archives and find stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Stay tuned!

While I’ll be doing all of this free of any kind of mandatory charge, and I think I’m going to move forward with that plan for the rest of the time I’m making music, donations of any size above $1.00 USD (below that, and PayPal fees make your donation kind of useless, sadly; if you want to give me less than a dollar, do it in person) are greatly appreciated. Donations will enable me to compensate the people who work on this music with me as best I can, as well as perform much-needed repairs and upgrades on my aging home studio. Ideally, this will result in more music being made and released, though I’m trying to take this music thing one tiny act at a time these days. In the meantime, thanks in advance for your continuing support, as well as for all the support you’ve given my music and I over the years. As always, if you have any questions about this release or anything else, suck@mybigblackcock.com.

AWESOME. Just…awesome. Even if you’re big on NERD CANON and hate J.J. Abrams, you’re basically a pud if you don’t enjoy this film. Go see it this weekend, help it make a fuckton of money, and hopefully they’ll put out 100 more like it.

Just don’t go see it here.

It was the first theater we went to, and the sound went tits up in the theater 15 minutes into the movie. So, an angry mob marched into the lobby, demanding refunds or a restart of the movie in another theater, totally reasonable in an opening night situation. Alas, the help were DICKS. They gave us a litany of excuses, most of which were bullshit and passes…not refunds, but passes…to a theater that’d already fucked an entire audience out of our opening night Star Trek, so we could all come back and spend money in their snack bar AGAIN. Inexcusably bad customer service there (not to mention that paying three employees an hour’s worth of overtime would beat the hell out of the hit they’re gonna take from lost customers and giving out about 120 passes, even after the revenue from the snack bar), and I’ll be returning there today to raise holy hell with the manager, ideally to get our money back. Even if I do, avoid avoid AVOID Mega Movies in East Brunswick, NJ. I have passes to the place, and could take friends to see the movie for free tonight (I plan on seeing it in the theater at least one more time), but I’m totally hesitant because I don’t want to give their snack bar any business or have them go through a shitty experience like the one my group and I had there last night.

Now, a lot of you may be wondering how I saw the movie, if we went to the last showing somewhere and got fucked. Our tale is just beginning, even though, for a lot of folks, the
last show of the night at that dive we went to first meant going home unhappy.

Me? I wasn’t having it. I wanted my fucking Star Trek, and as the man said, “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.”

So, just for the sheer hell of it, we went to the AMC/Loew’s theater up the highway, to see if perhaps they’d take pity on our poor, nerdy selves and maybe open another screen on the basis of our sob story and our inherently useless passes (since we were broke from getting hosed by theater #1). First gatekeeper was the security guard patrolling the parking lot in a truck. We told him the deal, and he was nice enough not to chase us off, telling us “hey, give it a try”. We go to the door, flag down gatekeeper #2, an employee who tried shooing us away at first, but we got him to come out and talk. Our sad, pathetic story of woe basically went: “We’re nerds and your competitors fucked us out of Star Trek. Help.” He took pity on us and let us in, directing us to the guest services counter, where the manager was. We repeated our story to him, and while he, like theater #1, couldn’t open another screen and was on his last showing of the night, he sighed said “wait here”, and went into his office. He returned with 3 passes from his theater, which he totally wasn’t obligated to do, and above and beyond that, he said “there’s a Regal Cinemas about 5 miles from here with a Midnight showing. They honor our passes sometimes. Go there, talk to (name of manager here), and you might get in. Good luck!”

Wow.

So, we got in the car, hauled ass down the road to theater #3 (it was 12:03 AM when we left theater 2), ran up to the ticket booth, and explained our story to the kid working it. He got on the walkie-talkie to a manager, who came to see us and heard our story, at which point she got on her walkie-talkie and talked to the manager whose name we were given and said “OK, let them in.” We walked in just as the Star Trek logo hit the screen, a few minutes into the movie, but we’d seen up to that point before the sound went tits up at theater #1.

Double wow.

Beyond awesome work from all parties involved aside from theater #1.

The movie theater business in general gets a lot of much-deserved shit heaped in its direction these days, because of stuff like the crap Mega Movies pulled on us, but everyone at the AMC theater and the Regal theater deserve a huge round of applause for doing things the right way and doing us a solid. They had absolutely no obligation to help three people who showed up when they were trying to close up and bugged them (and despite the sound of things, I didn’t walk in there thinking the world owed me a living; we were out late anyway, and figured we’d do it on a lark to see if anyone would help us), and yet, they did, and in one case, they even sent us to another competitor in the hopes that we’d have a good moviegoing experience there and STILL keep them in mind the next time we wanted to see a movie. They turned what could’ve been a crappy night and one that would’ve further soured me on the entertainment industry (an industry that, make no mistake about it, is a mess) into a great one. Huge kudos for that, and if anyone higher up from either AMC or Regal is reading this, the people on staff at those theaters deserve a raise. Don’t give them any shit, as they just earned you guys 3 regular customers.

So, yeah, great night.

The movie was as good if not better than the payoff of actually getting to see it last night against all odds. Go see that motherfucker, and if you’re in central New Jersey, I recommend doing so either at the AMC Loews New Brunswick 18 or the Regal Cinemas Commerce Center 18 in North Brunswick, but not at Mega Movies in East Brunswick, NJ.