Through the miracle of science, there are finally moving pictures of us on the internet. We just kind of threw them up there because we realized the only other clip of us on YouTube was 18 seconds long - please feel free to add your own if you have any, or let us know if we uploaded something you shot without attribution, or whatever.

We’re giving our media section an overhaul in much the same way as the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon - slowly, and wetly, but for keeps.

Also, a new show just got confirmed, but we don’t want to steal the tour page’s thunder.

These are the gap-toothed years, when the ascap tooth fairy leaves quarterly statements under our pillows, rewards for the little bits of “anodyne” and “spaghetti streetwalker” that play largely unnoticed in the living rooms of Swedes and Italians and Mexicans.

What I mean to say is that we’re 7 years old, that this is the time that you pat us on the head and ask, “So Speechwriters LLC, what do you want to be when you grow up?” Do we want to be firemen? Veterinarians? Corporate financiers or chief technology officers?

When we grow up we will be rockstars. Here’s our 1st grade talent show:

There’s a really good article by David Byrne in this month’s Wired, about where the music industry currently is and where it’s headed. I get articles like this forwarded to me by friends and family on a seemingly hourly basis, but this is one of the better ones.

To add our $0.02 to the discussion - Speechwriters LLC is and always has been a self-distributed band. It’s a model with more than its fair share of attendant headaches, but on balance we’re pretty happy with the way it’s been working out for us. It’s forced us to learn things like HTML, graphic design, audio engineering, contract negotiation, orienteering, and ground combat, all of which have made us better, more interesting people. It’s given us the freedom to take breaks when we need to, without worrying about violating the terms of our contract or having to produce a sub-par album under duress. It’s given us closets and closets full of t-shirts and CDs.

That said, there are a lot of times when we feel like it’s Thanksgiving 2007 and we’re still at the damned kids’ table. As great as it is to own all our own masters, we tend not to play the same caliber venues as our major-label friends, and the extra $0.33 we get for every song we sell on iTunes loses a bit of its luster when we realize how few we’re actually selling relative to, say, J-Gro.

But, for us at least, the pros have definitely outweighed the cons, and often in ways that aren’t readily apparent to those outside our immediate circle. It’s a topic we love talking about, to the point where we’ll hijack unrelated conversations if left unchecked, so we’re probably going to start peppering the band blog with Hunter Thompson-esque anecdotes from our not-so-illustrious past, in hopes that any would-be DIY rockers among you can learn a thing or two from our successes, failures, and outright disasters.

Happy New Year,
Dave

Behold: our latest free EP.