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.
