Artwork is wrapping up on Maintain Radio Silence, and it looks great. George Otvos, as usual, has done a great job.

A thought of mine for a while, regarding physical music product, has been that as it has moved from large albums, which took up a lot of space, to cassette tapes and CDs, that there has been some sort of subconscious impact on the "space" society gives music within our daily lives.

If you buy that, its just another reason why less and less people buy music at the $14-$15 level...its just not worth that much to anyone anymore. Without the time - the "space" allocated in our lives - to digest whole albums and experience new music, no one's willing to spend even half of historical CD prices to purchase whole albums.

In piecing together Maintain Radio Silence's artwork package, I am really happy about the decision to have the album done in DVD packaging. Not only is there more room in the booklet contained inside - which is nice! - but I am interested to see how people respond to the larger, unorthodox DVD-style packaging of the album.

I suspect it will be received favorably, as the art looks really cool, and its likely that when I am running a label as my fulltime job, I will release all label albums in this larger DVD packaging. Not only is the larger size of the DVD package a "plus", but there is perceived value in anything looking like a DVD these days - they are just that popular.

Maybe its much ado about nothing, who knows. But I like that the album looks a little different even BEFORE you hear any of it.

I have my Operations exam tomorrow from 1 PM to 4 PM, and then Finance's final exam from 8 AM to 11 AM (ouch!) on Wednesday. Then, it'll be naptime before LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING that night!!!

Also, the Titans beat the Bills today (in Nashville) behind 3 TD (2 passing, 1 rushing) of Billy Volek...and Vanderbilt men's basketball is now 6-0 and, with a couple of SEC road wins, headed toward an NCAA Tournament berth.

Better get to sleep - after the exam tomorrow, I'm going out with Lori to dinner with her aunt and uncle at Carrabba's! YUM.

About to call it a night after hanging out with Hetesh and watching Vanderbilt whip Indiana in men's basketball here in good old Birmingham.

I'm sitting here right now listening to "The Long and Winding Road", in anticipation of getting to here the new "Let It Be...Naked", which reproduces the famous Beatles album but with several production changes, including stripping some of the songs of the "wall of sound" which was producer Phil Spector's landmark.

I love just getting some work done while listening to good music!

The cover for Maintain Radio Silence is done, as the creation of the album artwork (for its DVD-case packaging) is pushing ahead. It looks cool, and I'm excited about the project wrapping up over the next month...so I can decide what exactly I'm going to do with it!

Business school is definitely going to be ratcheting it up a notch until the end of the semester. I'm glad I've been able to get some stuff done even in the first day or two of this break. Lori flies in Wednesday, so obviously no work will be done between then and Friday, til we go back to Nashville!

Found out last week my grandmother has stage IV lung cancer, as well as colon cancer and breast cancer. Likely, the cancer developed in part of the body and has just spread everywhere. She won't live long, but hopefully this Thanksgiving will be a great time to be with her and the rest of my family. I don't even want to think about it, she's been such an incredible person in my life. I just hope I am able to visit enough from Nashville down to Birmingham while she's still here.

I am headed down to Auburn this afternoon to stay at Airport House with the guys. Mark is coming in from Atlanta, and Ben and Steven will be coming over from Tuscaloosa for the big game...THE IRON BOWL. Auburn should crush Alabama easily, if they play well. They've been back-and-forth all season, so we'll see what happens.

I'll come back to Birmingham Monday and get some schoolwork done, as well as fixing my car. Lori will fly in from Nashville Wednesday night, and will get to spend Thanksgiving with me and my family! We'll head back to Nashville together on Friday.

My trip to Auburn today has been delayed by a meeting with a lawyer over at the Vandy Law School regarding the new label venture that me and two other Owen guys (Kris and Quentin) are starting up. This will be of substantially larger scope than the label I started in college, though we may retain the Mariner Records name. The premise around which the label will operate is a killer idea and we should be able to convince some experienced music industry folks to come on board, as well as VC to lend us some help as well.

Curiously enough, the person in charge of all music retail for Best Buy was an Owen graduate...one of several contacts in the industry that the three of us have discovered in the short time we've been planning this venture.

I'm extremely excited. Although I can't go into the details here, I am beginning to see exactly how a future in music can lead the way to making some great money right out of grad school, and lead to even larger plans.

Early in the week, my grandmother entered the hospital with pneumonia and possibly cancer. After running a test that caused a massive slowdown in heart rate, doctors had to insert a pacemaker.

She's doing better now, but I'm headed home this weekend as a result to visit and check up on the situation. I'll leave immediately after attending the Owen Finance Conference at Loews Vanderbilt Hotel on Friday, an event I'm really looking forward to.

Last time I was home - two weeks ago - I took my car for its regular maintenance, and also to get the engine looked at (the "check engine" light keeps going on and off every couple days or so) and to get my left brake light replaced. Unfortunately for me, when they fixed the brake light, they miswired a variety of things, and now my blinkers don't work and the wiring of the buttons on my steering wheel have a variety of unintended functions!

Needless to say, the car dealership will be another stop in Birmingham this weekend as well.

Fire Emblem, just released for Game Boy Advance, is a killer turn-based strategy/RPG hybrid that would alone almost justify buying the system. Highly recommend it if you're looking to kill off some productivity.

Also, in other news, the Titans are turning into an unstoppable force in the AFC. McNair's brilliant passing is opening up the dormant running game, and toss in a very, very solid defense that doesn't miss a tackle, and you've got a recipe for winning a bunch of games. Titans are going to win the Super Bowl this year, I just know it!

Life is good. After a weekend of visiting Satya and Hetesh at home, and Ben and Steven in Tuscaloosa, I'm back preparing for a brutal Accounting exam coming up on Friday.

I had to get up out of bed once I remembered I hadn't sent my Operations group my part of our group assignment due Thursday...another guy is piecing all the individual parts together to make the paper cohesive, which was my job last time, and by sending it to him hours late, I hope I haven't thrown him off too much.

I discovered tonight, on my hard drive, a recording of the first song I recorded with George (in my living room!) which he wrote, and came right at the start of my interest in recording music, writing music, and all that stuff. Its a great thing about computers, the way they archive the past in incredible detail. Certainly, I had forgotten completely about the recording, and it was great to listen to it and remember how fun it was playing together at the start of undergrad at Vandy.

What, years later, eventually became of those sessions - the Jimmy B & the Fortune 500 material - will be my blueprint in recording new artists, at whatever point in the future I am operating my label full-time. I look forward to adding film and video game projects to that as well. I can't tell you how great it would be to be financially - and, to some extent, creatively - responsible for the latest, incredible new video game to hit the market. I probably wouldn't be able to stop playing it...haha.

Matrix Revolutions comes out today, but I promised Lori I wouldn't see it until I had taken my Accounting exam. She's great at keeping me in line...seeing the end of the classic trilogy will be a great reward for hard work on Saturday, instead of having it throw off the entire timing of the week by seeing it before my exam.

She did a great job of raising her LSAT score from 156 to 160, which along with Phi Beta Kappa from Vandy, ought to be able to get her into Vandy Law in early decision. We'll hear back by December 15, and obviously there's a lot riding on the line there, as she may be headed off to Baylor Law in the spring if she gets deferred or rejected. I'm optimistic - things work out like they should.

I am really looking forward to visiting Auburn for this year's Iron Bowl! I haven't seen John, Jeremy, David, and the Airport House gang in a long time. And depending on which Auburn team shows up, maybe Auburn has give us something to celebrate.

Its getting late...I have to get up at least somewhat early to review accounting ratio interpretations. Seeing the connection between b-school work and future earnings keeps this train moving, though. Time to get some sleep - its going to be a long couple of days.

Life at the Owen School of Management has begun.

Tons of reading, too many assignments, and more than enough work...but its great because everything learned is important and applicable toward the future!

On Monday, the first official day of class, my Leading Teams and Organizations class met and I was assigned to a team to complete a case study on a fictional character named Erik Peterson. The case was due Wednesday, giving us only 2 days to assemble 5 pages of text (plus 2 exhibits) and it was really tough since we had an international student in our group who speaks "just enough" English. Which, of course, wasn't enough, but we made it.

I don't think I've had this much fun doing this much work since math team in high school!


On another note, after running one of my usual Google searches on Jimmy B & the Fortune 500, I found the following profile of a random Furman student, who for some reason felt compelled to include a quote from War Machine among his favorite quotes!

Its cool to find stuff like this that happens as a result of putting a creative work out there...you never get to see how people respond to it, but you know some people do enjoy it and take something away from it.

http://www.w4gs.org/memberpages/af4hk/profile.htm


If you haven't placed your order for both "Everything You Know Is Wrong" - Jimmy B & the Fortune 500's last work for a while - and "Maintain Radio Silence", by instrumental disc, you need to do it soon so you can get a free Mariner Records frisbee!

We're not skimping on the frisbees, now...they are regulation size and weight. There aren't many of them at all so go to jbf500.com and mail me a check and order one!

Lori surprised me today with buying me Two Towers as a present for starting business school, but told me I couldn't watch it until my work was done on Thursday (end of business school week of classes) ... so I guess I better get back to work.

Talk to you soon.

Full post coming on orientation ending and classes at Owen about to start!

One quick thing...I would give a lot to find out who exactly runs www.metrock.com, and the corresponding "Metrock Records". Another Squished Mosquito production? What the hell?

No one in my family or extended family has any idea what it is or who's running it...kinda strange, huh?

Friday's here, and running some errands with Lori and her sister tonight, including dinner at 5 and Diner! Slurp.

Its a wrap...Maintain Radio Silence is complete!

I am extremely pleased with the album. I wasn't sure, entering the project, if an album of 12-15 instrumental songs with piano as the primary instrument would be compelling.

I still don't know if it is (!) but I think most people will really enjoy it.

The Steinway concert piano blended wonderfully with a variety of synth sounds of all different types for some promising new re-interpretations of Jimmy B & the Fortune 500 material, as well as some brand new songs...some of which were simply made up on the spot!

In the next month or two, I will plan a new initiative behind the promotion of Maintain Radio Silence ...approximately 250 copies of the instrumental album will be personally delivered to Nashville-area nursing home residents, with follow-up performances to occur on a month-to-month basis.

This will be a great way to give back to the community, and to show my appreciation for being able to do what I love to do and record new music for release by Mariner Records.

I will also be seeking out a lawyer to license some of the instrumental music to commercial interests...this will be the primary way I hope to regain the investment in the album's production.

Bradley Hartman, the engineer who recorded Maintain Radio Silence from his house in Hillsboro, was wonderful to work with and a great talent with bringing out the best in the audio. I hope to work with him again at some point.

I'll be back and forth from Birmingham in the next day or so, moving stuff from home up here to my new place, then Orientation at Owen starts bright and early Wednesday. See you soon.

Recording Maintain Radio Silence is underway and is actually a day ahead of schedule. As I've mentioned before, the album is strictly instrumental...recording piano for all tracks has concluded and I'm halfway through laying down the accompanying keyboard pads/synths to the songs.

The track listing will be different than the one I originally posted...a revised listing will be posted next week. Some changes include the addition of an instrumental version of "Near From Far", an additional new track or two, and the integration of Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is" into "Someone Else's Song" as an introduction.

Next Monday and Tuesday, I'll be moving into my new place over on West End (3415 West End, to be exact) and I can't wait! The condominium unit I'm moving into is actually a 2-bedroom unit, so anyone who wants to come visit Nashville is welcome to come and stay. I believe the Vanderbilt/Auburn game is up here in Nashville this year, so I expect to see plenty of people up here!

Orientation at Owen starts next week!

The following is an email that I sent to the Jimmy B & the Fortune 500 listserv...

--------------
On September 30, Jimmy B & the Fortune 500's follow-up
album "Everything You Know Is Wrong" will be released at a price of
$4.99.

On November 11, Bradley Metrock's solo piano instrumental
album, "Maintain Radio Silence", will be released at a price of $7.99.

You can order BOTH for $10.00 and receive a high-quality Mariner
Records frisbee FREE.

A single check for $10, made out to Bradley Metrock, can net you 3
Mariner Records discs!!

For details, visit Jimmy B & the Fortune 500's homepage,
www.jbf500.com.
--------------

Everything is progressing smoothly for on-time releases of Mariner Records two new discs of material prior to the end of the year.

When I get a chance this weekend, I'll be back to elaborate on Mariner Records' stance on piracy, as well as my progress toward a National Championship for Vanderbilt's football team in NCAA Football 2004.

Writing a quick entry before what promises to be a hectic weekend.

Courtney Wilson is getting married! This is wonderful! I will be attending the ceremony on Saturday and absolutely can't wait. Couldn't happen to a better person, and I really look forward to catching up with several friends both Thursday night in Birmingham and Friday night in Georgia.

Tomorrow is the last day of my internship at Extreme Writers Group, and Michael, Jason, and Rya are taking me out to Logan's for lunch to celebrate! That was my choice because I haven't been there in so long and its SKRUMPTIOUS.

Back on Sunday. See you then.

Slowly getting prepared to begin tracking my solo project, Maintain Radio Silence. It will consist of 12 instrumental songs, some of which are re-interpretations of JBF500 material, some of which are new pieces, and some of which are cover tunes.

Bradley Hartman will engineer the album, and it will be recorded on a Steinway concert piano in his home studio in Hillsboro.

Tentative track listing:

1. Black and White
2. Before The Day Is Done
3. Maintain Radio Silence
4. Paradox
5. As I Am
6. Happiness in F Major
7. The Way It Is (instrumental cover of Bruce Hornsby's song)
8. War Machine
9. No One Knows
10. Carry On
11. [instrumental medley of 90's covers]
12. Revolution



Art production has begun for "Everything You Know Is Wrong", and its still on time for its release date of 9.30.03. Inside the album liner notes (which will be a booklet, like "one day soon" featured) will be lyrics as well as a statement by Mariner Records condoning piracy. Yes, condoning piracy...more on this later.

My solo album will be released on November 11, with a b-side surfacing on a new webpage sometime in October.

Back from Dallas in time to resume the good old night job at Measurement, Incorporated tonight. Isn't that the shadiest name of a company you've ever heard?

I sit from 5 to 10:15 (4 to 10:15 today, cause I'm going in early with nothing else to do.) and grade the SAME PROBLEM OVER AND OVER the whole time. The problem is an open-ended free response math question from the Massachusetts 10th Grade Exit Exam.

Already, someone has gotten fired due to use of a racial slur, the company is running approximately one month behind in a job that was supposed to take 6 weeks at maximum, and half the people there don't even understand the math behind the problem. If it weren't for a good-sized paycheck I get from them every now and then, there wouldn't be much reason to stick around even a day longer.

Fortunately, it doesn't last much longer, as Owen's MBA Orientation begins August 13.

My internship at Extreme Writers Group has been wonderful, but it will be ending within a month as well. Getting to see the insides of the music publishing world, and the great business acumen of the two co-founders Michael Martin and Jason Houser, has been eye-opening and a great jumpstart to business school.

With "Built To Last" just about wrapped up, I have started reading "Don't Know Much About History" by Kenneth C. Davis. It takes American History topics from Columbus' voyages to the Bush/Gore election debacle and goes through them in a question/answer format that makes for really interesting reading.

Being in Dallas with Lori was really enjoyable, even though the Mariners lost last Sunday night when we took in a night game. Her family is a lot of fun to be around, and were really hospitable. I am looking forward to going back!

Only other news is that I cancelled the studio session in Birmingham for this weekend to give me more time to prepare new material for an upcoming mostly-instrumental solo album, tentatively titled "Maintain Radio Silence". I think there will end up being a track on there by the same name, but too early to tell. Everything is still on track for the release of the "Everything You Know Is Wrong" EP on September 30.

Gotta go to the bank before heading out (early) to MI. Hopefully everyone is doing great.

Headed to Dallas to spend the July 4th weekend (plus some) with Lori and her family...back July 9th in time for work at night!

I got to sit in on Shannon Lawson's latest recording session at Omni Studios on Wednesday, and it was great! I got to meet several established studio musicians and watch how long-time professionals go about recording songs they have never heard prior to that day. Fascinating stuff.

I have a long entry I've been waiting to write about my night job grading papers, but it will have to wait. See you next week, and have a great holiday!

Bradley

Headed to Gulf Shores after work both at Music Row during the day and my paper grading job at night (which I look forward to posting about later!), back Monday night late. Hope everyone has a great weekend and I'll catch up with you later.

Birmingham people, I might be back in town one of the next two weekends, lets plan something.

bradley

I post on a music industry message board from time to time, and I recently posted this 'thesis' of a post this past weekend. I thought I would repost it here...hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Bradley

The Power Of Collection

What is it that seems to separate music from other forms of entertainment in our culture?

After all, on some root level, CDs are the same as DVDs, which are the same as video games, which are the same as books...all have value as forms of entertainment for people to pass time.

The genius of American marketing has added another aspect to American consumption of entertainment, though...The Power Of Collection.

When you purchase a book for yourself, you read ('consume') it. But when you're done, guess what? It still has value!

You take it and add it to your "library", and the book takes on its new purpose of being part of your collection.

DVDs have begun to capture this "collector's" appeal. In advertising, you'll hear "Add Terminator 2, Special Edition, to YOUR COLLECTION TODAY!" And guess what, you will.

Pokemon...Beanie Babies...baseball cards...bobble-heads...The Power Of Collection dominates our culture, thanks to marketing that tells us we are losers if we don't conform.

Yet, the music industry has lost its connection with this key aspect of American consumerism.

Clearly, this didn't always used to be the case. Baby boomers everywhere either talk about their vinyl collection, or how they sold them all and really wish they still had them today.

Kazaa and the advent of widespread piracy of music has stripped CDs of their "collection" aspect, for good, and given it to the proprietary MP3 format.

Without this power of collection behind it, no wonder CD sales have slowed steadily.

The people who go to buy a CD as a gift don't pick one up for themselves anymore. The people who go to buy the new release by an established artist don't pick up a catalog title. And the people who go to buy an album from the best band in their favorite genre don't pick up the new release by a new band in the genre.

In short, the loss of the collection appeal has brought "impulse buys" of CDs to a standstill.

Had the phenomenon of CD price inflation not existed, CDs could have given MP3s a battle over which format would best support the American NEED to collect.

But a variety of pricing factors made it easy for Americans to turn their back on CDs. Now, as a result, we have a culture that has, by and large, shifted its music consumption to the computer.

For the music industry to again generate massive profits, and get back to where it should be, the full exploitation of the American desire to collect will have to occur in this new computer medium.

Combine these developments with the exponential increase in average storage space on American personal computers, and you can see where this is headed.

The music industry has to:

1) Get every single song ever recorded onto one central database (accessible to iTunes or whichever of its competitive offspring manages to defeat it, for licensing.)

2) Don't shut out indies or amateurs to this database. It is impossible to shut out competition over the Internet, so failure to include anyone who makes music who wants to be part of this service will stall American consumer acceptance.

Attempting anything else would "run against the grain", would go against the very spirit of the Internet.

3) Appeal, via deliberate marketing efforts, to the desire of consumers in the digital age to have as many songs as possible in one place.

The collection aspect will have users getting on iTunes to download one song that they happened to hear on the radio or in a friend's house, and then they'll end up downloading 50 songs simply because they get caught up in downloading song after song because they "need" them.


The Power Of Collection is going to be what puts a lot of money in the pockets of music industry executives - and artists! - in as little as a year. Its already managed to do it on a smaller scale with Mac users via iTunes, and its just the beginning.


Related notes:

1) 99 cents per song (the current iTunes pricing) is bad for two reasons. One, its too high. Second, pricing all songs the same is damaging to the promotion and marketing of new artists.

Who's going to pay for the mp3s of a new rock act when U2, The Eagles, and Fleetwood Mac have all their songs for 99 cents?

Is a new band's mp3 worth as much as "With or Without You"? Hell no! Pricing all mp3s the same is not only counter-intuitive, but counter-productive as well. And this is just one situation where equal pricing becomes a problem.

As for why 99 cents is too high, my reason is that its too much of a jump from free. But whoever ends up pricing mp3s is going to have some pretty interesting numerical analysis to do.

2) MP3 downloads MUST be on a permanent basis. None of this "the file deletes itself after 30 days" business, because no one's going to be able to "collect" something that magically disintegrates after a month.

At work today, I put on the new Radiohead disc ("Hail To The Thief") and listened to it as I went about my internesque duties.

All of a sudden, Jason (Universal A&R guy) walks out of his office and barks "what the hell is that?"

I explain its Radiohead's new CD, and how I'm not a particularly rabid fan, but I think the band makes interesting music. "They're just weird, dude. I know a lot of people like them, but I just don't get it."

That basically captures the essence of Radiohead. Some people "get it", and hail the "genius" group as a modern-day Pink Floyd. The others just scratch their heads at both the music and the viciousness of the "holier-than-thou" indie rock mentality that the band represents.

To quickly review the band's recent history, they released a widely acclaimed concept album called Kid A, which depicted a lonely story of the beginning of human cloning. I loved the album.

Then they released Amnesiac, and unless you like a bunch of random noises in no particular order, you'd hate it just like I did. Much of the album is unlistenable, at least to me.

Which brings us to this latest work, Hail to the Thief, which witnesses the band merging some tried-and-true songwriting elements with the best of what Amnesiac had to offer, yielding a "pretty good" album. Lead singer Thom Yorke is still as hard to understand as ever, but the music this band makes is still interesting and should prove to be influential within the rock genre.

If Kid A gets a 9/10, then Hail To The Thief would get a 7/10 on Bradley's Completely and Totally Objective Scale (tm). Amnesiac would've received a 3. Some great moments, some weak ones, and overall a pretty good disc.

Some of the stronger tracks include the very cool "Backdrifts", the vintage Radiohead sounds of "2 + 2 = 5" and "Go To Sleep", as well the creepy "We Suck Young Blood".

Weaker tracks include Yorke's ode to parenting "Where I End And You Begin" and the flashback-to-Amnesiac "The Gloaming".

Maybe I'll see these guys play a show one of these days. Pick up the album if you have liked any of their previous work, cause you'll probably enjoy it.

I've been playing a good bit of Age of Mythology lately...this game is an absolute must-have if you enjoy the lusciousness that is modern computer gaming. We've been playing it frequently on our little apartment LAN we have set up...its well worth your while, so check that out too.

Seattle takes on the Braves this weekend after losing the previous series against the Expos, which are playing like a great team so far this year. Hopefully Seattle will win the final game tonight and not get swept, but even so, I want the Mariners to push the Braves around this weekend, since they are the more probable World Series opponent, should Seattle be so lucky to make it that far this October.

No work tomorrow means the weekend starts early. See you later!

I've begun reading "Built To Last: Successful Habits Of Visionary Companies", and its really, really good. I recommend it to anybody interested in business...

It is remarkably similar to "A New Kind Of Science" by Stephen Wolfram, a massive book I read last summer in DC. That book was about the simple patterns that underlie every single component of our world, whether its science, math, psychology, sociology, computer science, economics, etc. Wolfram uses a host of computer tools to analyze these patterns...its worth reading but takes forever.

This business book I've just started reading takes a list of 18 "visionary" companies - companies that have survived multiple CEOs and multiple product cycles, and multiple successes and failures - and compares them to a list of comparable companies that weren't quite "visionary". Juxtaposing the "gold medal winners" with the "bronze and silver winners" in the business world causes simple patterns to emerge...the true reasons behind why some companies stay influential and at the forefront of their respective industries, across a long period of time.

I would tell you what these patterns are, but I've only read the first chapter of the book!

Regardless, the "simple patterns" discussed in the groundbreaking Wolfram book, as well as the "simple patterns" in this massive best-selling business book, seem to make a statement for the importance of simplicity, even on a personal level. And that's what I've been thinking about today.

Today is Lori and my 9 month anniversary! Because Mike is coming into town, we're going to wait til tomorrow to go back to Midtown Cafe, where we had our first date, and then watch some Laci Peterson thing on Dateline tomorrow night that she wants to watch.

Oh yeah, my fantasy team sucks. But the Mariners are on a roll...took both from the Mets today before heading back to Seattle to face the Expos and Braves. Freddy Garcia pitched his first complete game since May 2002, and seeing as how he's been the only weak link on the team, the M's are looking pretty dangerous right now! Lets hope it lasts.

Its proving to be difficult to get the band together to record the second half of the new album, so the first half (5 tracks) will be released in late September by themselves. The "Everything You Know Is Wrong" EP will go on sale exclusively on our webpage, www.jbf500.com, for $3.99.

The "One Day Soon" LP will remain at $6.99.

All Jimmy B and the Fortune 500 songs will become available on iTunes Music Store sometime this fall, so individual tracks can be downloaded for a fixed price, which will probably be $.99 apiece, as set by Apple. That being said, the band is definitely on hiatus for a while.

The "War Machine (remix)" music video is still in the works, and will most likely simply be released on our webpage for free this fall. More info on this later.

Well, even though the band will not be recording this summer, I will be hitting the recording studio to begin work on a solo album. This is going to mainly be a "piano" album, with simply the piano and vocals, as well as occasional synths thrown in, and certainly some guest appearances by friends. It will be released in November 2003.

There will be re-interpretations of JBF500 songs, such as an interesting new version of "Before The Day Is Done" that has lyrics changed to be about divorce, instead of the original version (which will appear on the EYKIW EP in the fall) which was about the war in Iraq. I plan for this to be a duet, but haven't contacted anyone about singing it yet. I got the idea after reading about Hillary Clinton's new book that's coming out...interesting stuff.

There will be about 4 or 5 new songs, about 4 or 5 "re-interpreted" JBF500 songs, and about 4-5 piano instrumentals, for a total of somewhere around 13 or 14 tracks. The disc will go on sale on the www.jbf500.com site, as well as a new as-yet-unveiled page, for $8.99. There will also be some sort of deal where purchase of my solo album or "One Day Soon" will get you the EP for free.

I've been thinking about titles for the solo album, but nothing definitive yet. Recording begins July 11 in Birmingham.

Work here in Nashville at Extreme Writers Group has been going great. They pitch songs to different country artists, and also manage several acts in different genres.

I will start a new job to raise some extra $ on weeknights, working for this company that grades elementary/middle/high school standardized tests from around the nation. I'll work at night, so weekends will still be free and my internship isn't affected.

Lori and I are still dating...she is working at Dillard's at Green Hills Mall. We will be going to Arlington to visit her family over July 4th weekend, that will be fun. We'll even get to see the Mariners destroy the pathetic Rangers in the process!

Current book: "Built To Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies"
Current album: Really not enjoying the latest Train disc very much, although "Calling All Angels" is just a great song
Current movie: Animatrix is incredible! Go get it!

I'll update this blog regularly throughout the summer as I have time. If you're coming through Nashville, let me know!!

Bradley

Hi! Welcome to my online journal. This space will chronicle the creation of Jimmy B & the Fortune 500's second studio album, as well as contain random thoughts and diatribes.

Talk to you soon!

Bradley


-------
Edit: Hard to believe I've been blogging here for just about 4 years. From playing in a college band and recording an instrumental album, to finding my wife and best friend senior year at Vandy, to getting out into the work world as well as founding and running the iTest. It's been amazing. For anyone traveling back to this initial post, I thought I would provide some context. Maybe I'll just keep doing this for another 4 years. Bradley