Dan Rather, Scumbag

I’m very pleased to announce that we have an exclusive Free Mp3 Download of our song “C-B.S.“, courtesy of ReverbNation and Microsoft Windows! It’s a great chance to get our music in front of a new audience, and to promote some political common sense at the same time!

Along with our track, you can download (freely and legally) an Mp3 from over 1000 great bands, including some of our favorites Reverend Horton Heat, Fishbone, Poison The Well, The Lemonheads, The Pietasters, The Kottonmouth Kings and our close personal friends Faulty Conscience!

Every computer I have ever owned has been a PC, both at home and in the studio, with Windows (Windows XP x64, to be exact) being my preferred platform for music and video production  and about a million other things,  making it was a natural choice for us to jump at the chance when we were asked to participate in this promotion.

The Murder is a PC

To get your free Mp3, simply follow this link and then click “Download Mp3″ (Or “Download M4A”, if you prefer). You can also browse the listings of other artists participating in the promotion. There’s no catch, the downloads are completely free; You’ll see (but not hear) some ads on your screen in addition to the album’s cover art, which is how they keep your new tunes from costing you a cent.

So what do you have to lose? Grab 1000 songs on Microsoft’s dime, I’m sure they won’t mind!

This post is going to become the first in a series of items geared toward up and coming musicians who need advice on advancing their careers. There are so many things I’ve learned along the way that I wish someone would have pointed out to me, so hopefully this will help some of you out.

The Murder - Merchandise Display Close Up

Today’s topic is the importance of effective branding. Like it or not, this crazy thing we’re involved with is called the music business for a reason; that’s because it’s exactly that — a business. Back when I first got started playing music almost 20 years ago, any band perceived to be making any profit off of their music would be chastised and labeled a sell-out, among other things. However, in the age of electronic distribution, DIY ethos  and cutting out the middle-men (IE: record stores and labels) the term sell-out is somewhat antiquated, especially since what we’re selling is effectively ourselves.

Even if you’re lucky enough to make a living doing this, you still need to keep food on the table and if it’s still just a hobby or something you’re working toward, you should at least get some form of reimbursement for what you do. This can come in many forms, from the obvious ones like the money you get paid for performing and selling CD’s and T-shirts, to some not so common things like endorsements and sponsorships.

This post will focus on your image and branding through effective merchandising (we’ll save endorsement deals for another post) because it is one of the things over which you can have 100% control. First and foremost, this entire concept can be summed up in one sentence:

Your Band Is Your Brand.

My goal is to hopefully break the misconception that many punk rock bands have, that if you’re punk your graphics and merchandise have to look like shit. You can have a nice slick package and still be “punk”. Look at some of your favorite bands: take a really close look at the design of their merchandise and CD’s (and I’m not talking about Blink-182 or Green Day, although, to be honest, their graphic designers should be commended) and you’ll see that there’s a certain level of professionalism there. This is important.

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The Murder Live @ O'Brien's Pub

Well, it took about two months, but I finally got around to uploading the pictures from our show at O’Brien’s Pub in Allston!

Roach & Pat @ O'Brien's Pub

The show was put on by Shawn Refuse of Shawn RefuseYoung & Strong Boston, and it couldn’t have gone any better. He’s a good dude and a great friend, and really knows how to treat the bands he does shows with, and nothing proved this more than him showing up with a stack of pizzas at the beginning of the night!

The opening band, Dirty South Revolutionaries had some problems with their van (We can relate) and weren’t able to make it, so local favorites Superpower stepped up to the plate to get the night going. I ended up getting really wasted and spent half the night arguing politics with my arch-nemesis Dave Tree (Just kidding, Dave!)

Jack Snyder @ O'Brien's Pub

Next up was Capital Scam from Austin TX. I really enjoyed their energy, and they put on a great show! I’m happy to say we made fast friends with them, and we’ll definitely be hitting them up when we head down south.

After they finished up, we took to the stage and had a blast. I continued the back and forth between Dave and I, which in my humble opinion only added to the show.

Steve Brocone @ O'Brien's Pub

One of the big highlights of the night was having Juston Speed and Nasty Nate of Entrophy fame jump up onstage when we played our rendition of Will, just like old times! My memory gets a little hazy at this point, but I would like to shout out to my boy Pat, one of my co-workers who made it out to support us.

All in all it was a great night, but if you wern’t there you can live vicariously through the pictures in our Flickr Set.

So Facebook is quickly becoming the premier social networking site, and being the tech-savvy guys we are, we don’t want to fall behind the times.

That’s why we invite you to join our fan page on Facebook, so you can connect with us, as well as a slew of like-minded individuals! It has music, tour dates and everything else that we had on our MySpace, with new content being added regularly!

See you there!