(Days Just Past) As a popular dorm poster once declared, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” While you could say this on any and every new morning, New Year’s Day is certainly the traditional time to commit to a fresh start in life, love and general happiness. I try not to put too much pressure on this day of new calendars and metaphorical page-turning but yeah, I’m looking to hit the reboot button and get some cool new things happening in 2016. (Note that I’m posting this on January 2, but I wrote most of it on 1/1/16.)
First off, I hope your December holidays, whatever you celebrate, were as happy as our family’s Christmas was. At our annual open house, the Fezziwig Ball, we had 81 people stop in to share food, drinks and fun. Christmas morning was the usual bacchanal of good cheer and not-entirely-cautious consumerism. I had much musical bounty to enjoy, including cool new print matter like “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Day-by-Day Trivia Calendar;” Carrie Brownstein’s memoir, “Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl;” Elvis Costello’s “Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink” (book edition; the digital download of music arrived earlier this year) and “Dust & Grooves: Adventures in Record Collecting,” a massive tome that, among other purposes, serves to prove to my husband that he could have it much, much worse when it comes to how/where I store my music.
As for actual playable new tunes, I am the proud new owner of The Unthanks Memory Box, a bee-you-tee-ous collection, requested from and obtained by my British-resident (for now) PhD graduate. It includes a vinyl 7″, a CD, a DVD, postcards, recipes and much more, all letterpress printed with love. There’s even one piece signed by the band members.
My other daughter, a Toronto resident (for now), took my request for cool new music to heart by sharing a local favorite with me, The Meligrove Band, in two formats – Shimmering Lights (vinyl album) and Let It Grow (CD). I also got Ryan Adam’s 1989 on gorgeous sea-foam green vinyl, given to me by my 89-year-old mother. (No, she’s not as hipster as all that. She gave me a check for $25 and I ordered it for myself, but it’s no less appreciated.)
Meanwhile, my Beatles fanboy husband scored the #1’s CD/DVD set and Ringo’s photography book, and a copy of Mojo with a CD collection called Songs the Beatles Taught Us. Also, a gift from me to him that’s really for the both of us – Laurie Anderson’s soundtrack to Heart of A Dog.
(Looking Ahead) As this new year begins, I post here in hopes of better organizing my social media presence. I’m currently most active on Twitter (@mariannemeyer) and plan to revive my Instagram account (ClosePersonalFriend) since my high tech research team (two neighborhood teens with good taste) tell me that IG is where it’s at. Nevertheless, I remain an active Facebook user, though I intend to cull my friends list to remove people whose negativity drags me down. (Nonetheless, here’s the Facebook link if you want to reach out.)
I’m still writing as a pay-by-the-click digital lackey: Digital Music Examiner (national music news and free, legal downloads), DC Concert Photography Examiner (DC local news and concert reviews with photo slideshows) and AXS Contributor (general tour and video news).
And then there’s this...(Read on for a Freebie)
Since nobody’s beating down my door with offers to write about music for real money, I have been exploring the world of self-publishing, both POD (print-on-demand) and e-books and plan to get way more involved in the coming year.
My first foray into the latter, e-published in December, is a simple concert photo book of Aussie pop/punk boy band 5 Seconds of Summer, shot when they opened for One Direction in 2014 at Nationals Stadium. I originally intended to create an ebook of 1D photos, and still plan to do so, but decided to start with 5SOS as a simpler effort, since I had fewer photos and, frankly, wanted to tackle the learning curve with a band I didn’t love like I do my 1D boys.
Admittedly, the 5SOS nation has not, so far, risen to my bait. I am not selling well, with mostly just friends and family shelling out the $2.99 (hey, it would cost them more to buy me a holiday latte!) or using promo download codes the iBooks system gave me to toss about. Speaking of which, the first five people who send an email to my new eddress – Marianne@closepersonalfriend.com – will get a free download code of his/her very own.
Maybe not the holiday gift you were most hoping for, but what they heck – Happy New Year, m’dears!
Close Personal Friend 