Wred Fright Novels Available At Roxy's Emporium

On the blog, the past couple of months have been devoted to the new album:  Old New Battered Blue (give it a listen if you haven't already; it's available pretty much wherever you can find digital music), but that doesn't mean there hasn't been other stuff going on, so I'm catching up on things now and the next couple of posts.  One fun thing was stocking my novels at Roxy's Emporium in Elyria, Ohio USA.  My old pals Ken and Suz let Deb, the proprietor, know that she needed to add an author to her cool local writers section:  me!  So I brought over some books.  Ken filmed a funny video they put up at the Roxy's Facebook page.  It is here, though they seem to have missed the "W" in "Wred" (Oh, well, it's silent anyway):  https://www.facebook.com/reel/1669968207532659 

There aren't too many places one can walk in and buy my books.  Mac's Backs in Cleveland Heights, Ohio USA has a few.  At one point, Skylight Books in Los Angeles, California USA had some copies of The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus.  Mainly, I sell my books by mail order/online, but it's nice to be able to walk into a bookstore and find some indie literature, so thanks to Roxy's for stocking my novels!

They were on the bottom shelf the day I dropped them off because Deb was planning on reorganizing the local writers section, so I hope no one spilled coffee on them or no kids get to them (they're for mature readers generally).  It's a really nice local writers section.  When I get out there again, I already know one novel I'll be picking up.  The little mall the bookstore is in also has some other cool shops including Voodoo Zombie Video, a fun horror movie store run by Ken and Suz, and a waffle place that looked fun but was still getting set to open the day I was there.

Check out my latest novel, The Front Yard War, which you can now find at Roxy's!  

Old New Battered Blue Out On Spotify

The new album is out on Spotify, so presumably the distributor now has it just about everywhere digital music is available.  There's a zillion musicians out there releasing zillions of songs, but check it out if you like Modest Mouse, The Fall, Wire, Sonic Youth, The Sex Pistols, Flipper, Butthole Surfers, Mirrors, The Damned, Social Distortion, and the other artists Spotify must think I sound like based on their fun Wred Fright Radio.

For more Wred Fright music, give his latest album a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp!  

Old New Battered Blue On Bandcamp!

 

The new album's out on Bandcamp now also.  This one has my secret mastering trick on it (I burn a cd, normalize volume, then rip the tracks from the cd--boy, how fancy!), so it sounds a little less intense than the original recordings on Soundcloud.  Now you have your pick of audio!  The embedded album starts with "the single", but just use the arrows to go back to the beginning or forward to a later track.  It looks like the album's on Spotify now also, but I haven't listened to it yet to make sure it sounds all right.  The next post will probably deal with that.

 

For more Wred Fright music, give his other albums a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp!   

Old New Battered Blue Out On Soundcloud

wredfright · Old New Borrowed Blue

The new album's out on Soundcloud!:  https://soundcloud.com/wredfright/sets/old-new-borrowed-blue.  It should be on Spotify soon if it isn't already.  By the next post, it'll probably be up on Bandcamp.

For more Wred Fright music, give his other albums a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp! 

Music Video For A Song From The Old New Battered Blue Album

 

I chose "Terri Cockring" as the song from Old New Battered Blue to make a music video of because I like the song and thought it would work well with the visual concept of making funny faces while brushing teeth.  It came out pretty well, though I had to brush my teeth twice because the first take was shot at too low an angle (this is what happens when you are your own camera operator).  Since there are no hot chicks in the band (where's Bananarama when I need them?  Probably in England) since the band is me, I had to star in the video myself.  Enjoy and remember to floss!  The album should actually be out in the next post, starting with Soundcloud.

 

For more Wred Fright music, give his other albums a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp!

Old New Battered Blue Liner Notes

  

The liner notes for my new album are done.  They can be found here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/15hyxDRsG0BZoj3vK171KYxrOF0FTH5K0/view?usp=sharing  The album is Old New Battered Blue.  The album will start popping up on various listening services in the next few weeks, but for now you can read about it at least.  I'm probably going to make one video for the album.  Which song should I pick?  Feel free to email or comment if you have a suggestion.

For more Wred Fright music, give his other albums a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp! 

Old New Battered Blue Track List

  

The track list for the new Wred Fright album, Old New Battered Blue, is as follows:

1. Dance Party At The End Of The World
2. Unreported News
3. Terri Cockring
4. But At Least You're Not Bitter
5. The President Shit His Pants
6. Crossing Guards Often Have A Thing For Me
7. Partying By Myself
8. Republican Cereal
9. Orange Marmalade
10. Kimberly James
11. Gumshoe
12. Ambulance Driver
13. Staring At Ruby
14. Vagina Dentata

The album clocks in at about 35 minutes.  You can hear the tracks now at https://soundcloud.com/wredfright though I have not created the official album/playlist yet (about three weeks away from that if the current workload trend continues--it's possible the album might even pop up on Spotify between now and then, but I doubt it).  This album is unusual in that I haven't released any new music since I finished the recordings from the album (they are recorded, however, and ready to go--look for them in a few months once I clear out some other stuff also already in the pipeline).  Look for the next post to feature the liner notes for the album.

For more Wred Fright music, give his other albums a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp!

Old New Battered Blue Cover

Here's the cover for the new album.  This is the original image before it got pushed into the standard square album format.  I do miss the days when album covers were works of art or playful such as Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti where one could play with the sleeve to have different figures appear in the building's windows.  However, those days are long gone.  The cd version of Physical Graffiti isn't quite as much fun, and cds in general tend to have less interesting artwork due to the smaller size.  It got worse with MP3s, so I just aim for something that will look decent when at reduced size.  A punching bag, Valentine's Day decoration, and duct tape probably doesn't make for the greatest album cover but when compared with the awful AI/computer art I see these days on other albums, I'm quite happy with it.  Vinyl's comeback has meant that the size of album covers can be restored to their former glory, but with most people experiencing the album as a computer stream, it's still not quite the same.  Spotify (and I'm sure some of the other music streamers as well) allows listeners to click on the artwork for a larger image, but on my monitor at least it still looks about the size of a cd cover.   In any case, it's mostly just packaging, but it's still fun to have an appropriate or intriguing image as part of the total artifact.  Next time, I'll post the track listing.  In the meantime, you can check out the first five albums in the links below.

For more Wred Fright music, give his other albums a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp!

Old New Battered Blue

A new Wred Fright album should be out soon.  I already uploaded it to the distributor because the last album took two months for them to distribute (that's not a complaint--they're free in hopes, vain hopes in my opinion, we'll all make money from the album down the road--one can't complain when it's free really), so you can find it on Spotify and other places probably in about two-three months unless the processing period has greatly improved or worsened since last year (I would guess worsened as I suspect some people are using artificial intelligence to crank out audio, so there are likely more releases to distribute--I have not used AI as it's not interesting to me as of yet but I won't hate on it as I don't want to sound like a guitarist hating on synthesizers in the 1970s).

The new album is called Old New Battered Blue, a play on the old wedding advice of something old, new, borrowed, and blue.  It was originally just going to be a collection of some older songs I hadn't given the full solo treatment to yet, but I kept writing new songs, so it's a mix of both.  I originally planned on doing a cover on it (the something borrowed the battered replaced), but I didn't want to go to the bother of paying royalties/getting a mechanical license.  A record company can deal with that accounting; I'd just rather have fun.

In coming weeks, I'll post about the cover, track listing, and liner notes, as well as let you know when it's up on Bandcamp, SoundCloud, and Spotify.  It's a fun record.  Nothing else really sounds like it even with all the great music being released these days, so that's cool.  Maybe this one will actually get a review somewhere (let's hope they don't just say it sucks or something, but I'd probably still be happy just to finally have a record review six albums in).  There are no plans for a cd or vinyl version (though any interested parties are welcome to get in touch).

For the previous Wred Fright albums, stream or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp!