...as i am to music, id have a successful, grown-up career. but I'm not, so i don't.
As the shit was hitting the fan over Christmas break, i found solace in a viral marketing campaign that seemed to be supported by a lot of the bands that frequent my earbuds. i had NO idea what i was getting myself into, but the thread on ap was a good distraction from everything falling apart around me.
i guess i should do a quick little recap because most of you wont know what i am talking about, and to those that do, you can go ahead and skip ahead.
alright, so after the tweets, i followed the link to heatthing.com, where there was a creepy ass video of a really tall clown, and some words and stuff, and then a button to sign up for the mailing list. i love mail as much as the next person, and i feel like most bands don't even use these things, so why not give away my address to a murderous clown, right?
it was about a week later, and these letters started showing up in people's mailboxes around Long Island. they were mailed from somewhere local and were creepy as all get out. around this time we determined that the author of these letters, Levi Gundmundson, was dead. the initial name we had was Gundmunson, and there was an obit for him from exactly three years prior. so now a dead man is mailing people letters.
about a week later, the next round of letters started appearing, but weird thing is, there was no address on these letters. the creepy dead guy hand-delivered the second round, meaning that now he knew where some of these people lived and had been to their houses.
the second round of letters lead to a scavenger hunt, which lead to digging up boxes with cell phones in them, making phone calls and discovering another box with a prize inside. there was some jumping ahead here with the letters and the boxes, but in the end, two more boxes were recovered, both with more artwork and jump drives featuring the first song we were to hear from the album.
this was kind of huge, and the shone community ate this song up. i know i listened to it nonstop for about a week. Mandy and i went to see the hold steady during all of these shenanigans and neither of us could get our faces out of our phones (and off of the ap thread) long enough to really pay attention to the concert. good thing I've seen them before, huh? (it also didn't help that i had sailor Jerry's instead of captain. i couldn't see straight.)
after the song was out there, things were quiet for a bit, and then the artwork started showing up. there are nine pieces, each part of a 3X3 grid, and each containing the name of a track. these nine pieces put together form the album artwork. so far, this seems to be the only piece of the puzzle that our little cult hasn't been able to put together. its frustrating, but we will have that answered soon enough, if it isn't already...
then, last week, a few letters went out to Philly area followers. there was another little scavenger hunt that lead one of the girls to Creep Records in Philly, where she found a letter from Levi stating that there would be an announcement made at the Piazza at Schmidt's on Monday the 21 of January at 6:30pm. obviously i was not missing out on this.
(you can come back now if you already knew all of that.)
So we headed over to Philly tonight, after getting a much later start than anticipated (some of the fallout from the crap that was bringing me down a few weeks ago kept me from leaving when i wanted to), and met up with a bunch of fellow ap'ers at a pizza place right near the piazza. we got to talk to a few of them, (hi Ken and Ashley!) and we all talked a bit about how we were pretty sure that we were going to be murdered in a few minutes. (i still wonder what the older couple sitting behind us was thinking.)
after everyone finished eating, we headed over as a group (strength in numbers, right?) to the Piazza to find out what all of this hullabaloo was about. there were others there that weren't part of our pizza party, and we were all kind of standing around a dark courtyard waiting for something. we didn't even know what we were waiting for, other than it was an announcement, and we took an educated guess as to where to focus. (we were right.)
i was not only recording what was going on for my own good, but i was live-streaming the event for those at home that couldn't be there with us. the stream had about 230 viewers, so i feel like i did some good there. anyway, the screen flickered, and slendyclown himself appeared with a scroll where the messages came across.
we were told that the album would be released on 2/5 (just a few days before the show at the Mercury Lounge in NYC) and then sent on yet another little search. we were told to go to the bar to our right and look for a birdhouse. we all stormed the place, but didn't see a birdhouse but as we turned back the way we came, it was hanging in the door. (I'm totally convinced that the chimney smoker that was sitting on the bar stool hung it after we all came in.)
inside the birdhouse (i think, it was dark and there was a lot going on. inside of something, though.) was ANOTHER Levi letter and around 10 jump drives with another single on them. the letter told us to go to Creep Records and there would be a listening party of the entire album.
we went. we listened. the overall consensus seems to be favorable. i know i liked what i heard. there are a few streams floating around now but the quality is not the best, so i don't feel like it would be the best way to listen. if you want to, though, i can surely link you, as i have a stream in my bookmarks.
this whole thing has been so much fun. I'm kind of sad that 2/7 is so close, because that means that the end is near. there's not likely to be anything else going on between now and then. the only things we dont have are the album artwork and the members of the band. the artwork we should have discovered already, but not everyone is playing the game with us, i guess, and i dont think we will know the members of the band until the show.
until then, though, i am going to listen to the songs i have available and try not to worry too much about being murdered by a really tall clown.
