Thanatos' Christmas Moments EP streaming everywhere November 25, 2022.

For years, at least since the first Projekt Records Christmas record, Excelsis-A Dark Noel was released, I wanted to write some original Christmas tunes.  I even tried to do it.

I tried. But the songs were ...well...crap. Earlier this year I wrote some I sort of liked. I set up some studio time with William Faith. Then I decided the songs needed work and I wasn't in the mood for that.

I was, however, saved by the bell. William's band, The Bellwether Syndicate, was about to go on tour and he didn't have time. I thought "GREAT, I can rewrite these."

Of course, being me, I didn't.

The day we rescheduled to record I was hit by an inspiration and completely rewrote both songs. Even I think they came out well. Scary Lady Sarah even sings back up on one while William and Sam Rosenthal add their musical talents.

There are also two "old standards." on the EP. Be sure to look at your favorite streaming site on the release day. There is even a video (more on that later).

Track listing
A Special Gift (Christmas Moments)
All The Gifts We Got Wrong (A Christmas Song)
O Holy Night
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

In the previous post about Thanatos tapes being transferred to digital I noted that I have no idea what was ON the tapes for Blisters. It turns out that those tapes had ALL the tracks. The reason this is interesting is that the record was partly recorded using a half inch 8 track and partly done with a 16 track cassette. Much of the record was created with virtual instruments and samples. I honestly thought may things would be missing.

There are, unfortunately, entire songs that are missing from the 8 track masters and I regret those can never be recovered (the source material is gone).  There will be no Splinters remix!  NOW. I don't feel like this record NEEDS much in the way of remixing so that is a good thing. But I have ideas for possible ways to "repurpose" these tracks and do new versions.

As to the first Thanatos record, this endless night inside? It is transferred as well and, over time, Jason Donnelly, aka DJ Puzzle) will be remixing the record. He has his own life and work so I suspect this won't be done tomorrow but he is on it.  Once I figure out what to do with these transfers I will likely get around to doing the same for An Embassy to Gaius. I have the digital versions of at least part of I Am Not Job and Coyote in the Graveyard  already. 

As to the image here on this little post....The Thanatos Comes Alive!-Part 1 (The 90s) recording will be up streaming at Spotify and all the other streaming sites on May 27 (or thereabout).  Yes the image is different from the Bandcamp one but these things happen.  Packages from the kickstarter for this are still sitting here waiting to be shipped....but I had a HERNIA operation so I have been hobbling around a lot lately. I will still get them to the folks who helped out well before the deadline put forward!

I spent time today reading and revising lyrics for a Christmas ep and the next prospective Thanatos full length, Love Songs for the Indigent. I still hope to have both recorded this year.

The first Thanatos LP,  This Endless Night Inside, came out in the Fall of 1993. Back in those days we recorded to 1/2 inch tape. The second Thanatos LP, An Embassy to Gaius, was also recorded to 1/2 inch as was part of Blisters, the third.

The tapes for the first three Thanatos records have been siting around waiting on me to get off my arse and have them digitized. I finally did so.

The question here is what am I going to do with these once they are digitized? Do I go for a remix/remaster and release them again? I honestly do not know if it is necessary with regard to the first record. I think it sounds fairly good as is. If I could go back in time I might try to rein in the reverb a bit but at the TIME? That was what I wanted it to sound like.

Why should 55 year old me get to boss 26 year old me around?

But let's see what we find on the tracks before we say NO WAY. Maybe Sam and I missed some brilliant track on a song that should be included in a new mix.

Far more intriguing to me is the tape for Blisters. I have no earthly or otherworldly clue what is on these tapes. That record is quite sample heavy with many instruments running virtual. I have joked that the entire tape may just be armpit noises.

More likely than that is the possibility that bass, guitar, vocals and a click are on the tapes while most of the samples and virtual instruments are absent.  There is absolutely no reason to remix and remaster the original version of Blisters. I think it sounds great as is.  This leaves open an intriguing possibility; what about a new record based on what IS there? A sort of Thanatos Re-Blistered or Blisters 2022. Is this necessary? Is the world clamoring for it? Not really but it would be fun for me and right now my idea is to have various people take what is there and make entirely new songs using the parts.

Whether this happens I do not know but we shall see. I certainly didn't pay for the digital masters to do nothing with them. 

One discussion I've had is doing vinyl for This Endless Night Inside. I am totally open to doing that if the time frame for vinyl production becomes less lengthy. I've seen turnaround times of over a year for small batch vinyl. I'd need to know, in advance, I could sell at least 100 copies before I would even think about doing it. I'd have to charge something like $35-40 for a single vinyl disc record . Would people cough that up?

You tell me!

Why did Thanatos cover Body Count's Cop Killer?

The reason is simple; the constant freak out over every song written by a black man that contained violent imagery made me what to do the cover.

It wasn't supposed to be a cover of just Cop Killer, however.

It was supposed to be a medley of  the song and another one--Bruce Springsteen's State Trooper. Being good citizens we asked for permission. Body Count gave it (Sam got a number which wound up being Ernie C's cell phone). Springsteen's people sent a cease and desist order, despite the fact we hadn't actually, you know,  released anything.  This made my dislike of Springsteen's music a bit more personal though which was good. I no longer felt the need to pretend like I gave a shit about him. His fans would always do the Grateful Dead thing; they ask if you've seen him play and you respond "No, I hate his music."  Then they come back with "But he puts on a FOUR HOUR SHOW."  I don't want to see the man for 10 minutes let alone four HOURS.

But, as usual, I digress.

The point, of course, was that  Springsteen or Johnny Cash can play songs about murder and mayhem and no one peeps. But a black man? HELL no! Unfortunately what we did was toss in some meaningless lyrics which gutted the entire point of the cover. Ideally I would have found another song by a less douchey artist than Springsteen. Or we could have just scrapped the song but I've never been one to waste recorded material.

Also let's dispense with the notion Cop Killer is a "rap" song. It isn't. It is a punk metal song by Body Count. It keeps getting put up as an Ice-T cover for some reason.  Body Count is Ice-T's band of course but it is a rock act. That was also part of this. It was having a little bit of fun with the notion of a rap artist's metal song being covered by a white guy who then (sort of, as close as I could get to it) raps the song. This part of it was entirely lost on everyone.

Sometimes, no one gets my jokes.

But that is the story of the Cop Killer cover. It still strikes me as weird that it is, by far, the most streamed song by Thanatos. It is far from the only cover. It just goes to show you the power of Ice-T I guess.

I remember in the early years of crowdfunding, when Sam Rosenthal dove into the pool, there was an old acquaintance of mine's boyfriend who took exception. He was incredibly angry about the notion of crowdfunding.  He was also angry at the notion that Sam was doing it -- in much the same way people became angry at other musicians for doing it.

I wish I could explain why.

Mercifully this has faded as people have come to accept that crowdfunding is how it is done now.

I will use the example I know best--myself--to discuss how it works for a small project. When we did the last record, Portland, I forget HOW much we raised. Somewhere around $2000. A fairly modest amount. People think "hey, I could use two grand!" But the fact is? We don't GET the two grand. The money pays for the expenses, in essence, reimbursing the artist for what it all costs. Since we recorded at Sam's studio we didn't have recording expenses but he lives in Portland and I live in Chicago. I had to get there.  Expense #1 (to say nothing of the expenses while I was there). Then there are the expenses related to the actual production of the discs. When I do these by myself I do really bare bones things. Sam is , as many of you know, not into bare bones design! So the discs themselves cost money. Then there is a cost for mastering the disc. Following this there are the costs of the other rewards, the posters, the t shirts. When someone pledges for one of these a big chunk of that goes to the production cost of the item.

I believe we built in a "profit" for ourselves of about $400 each.

We spent AT LEAST 40 hours doing only the recording of the disc. If all we did was that? We'd be making $10 an hour. Pretty good money! Three times the minimum wage!...in 1980.

Of course that isn't all the time we spent on this. Sam had to do the design. I had to write and rewrite lyrics and music. This took MONTHS. I never tabulate the hours I work but if I did we might be getting painfully close to that $3.10 mandated by the Federal Government in 1980.

None of this, by the way, is complaining. It just is how it is. I could not DO music without crowdfunding.

Essentially the crowdfund is like the advance you got from a record company in the old days. You may get to keep some of it but a lot of it goes into producing your "product". I know some people recoil at the notion that music or any art is a product. These are usually people who don't make their living doing either or they are people who already became rich working in these fields. Then you have the luxury of not thinking about every dime.

This isn't to say that I actually think about "what will sell" when I make music. I don't at all. That would be pointless. I do what I do then I try to figure out how to pay for it. And Crowdfunding helps a lot with that.

A final thought here is that crowdfunding is basically a pre-sale. If you can pre-sell something these days it is a huge plus. I could make a bunch of physical copies or release to streaming with no crowdfund. But it would take a long time to recoup what is spent. It is part of marketing, spreading the word and more these days.

STREAMING is also a big part of how it works for us small timers these days. My next rant is going to be about that. And how people who don't do music (and a lot who do) need to reassess  streaming as well.

Thanks for reading!

Patrick Ogle

The Thanatos kickstarter for Thanatos Comes ALIVE Part 1 (the 90s) funded today. It took a wee bit more than 24 hours. It was admittedly  a rather modest fundraiser . It was basically to pay for mastering and some other incidental expenses. Nonetheless it was awesome to see a dozen or so people to step up and make it happen.

What happens next is that this gets mastered and then put up at various streaming platforms. Hey..even Spotify. I know old hippies will be mad at that...and "twitter & facebook activists" who spend their lives on two of the most deleterious creations in post modern history.

But I digress....This is still live for a dozen days and any help spreading the word?....Would be appreciated. Look at the publication date on this post? Then add a week at least ...I wont be on anything owned by facebook until after that (they banned me for 24 hours...I banned them for a week...I encourage YOU to do the same. I also removed all their apps from my phone too..Instagram, Whatsapp and disabled Facebook).

Social media is really a cancer. But they are not the only one.

Thanatos THANATOS Spotify Mixtape #3

Thanatos Spotify Mixtape #4

While I was tagging people who were included in the various mixtapes I noticed that, when the bands don't use their NAME in their Twitter handle it can be sort of difficult to find them. After trying to contact people three times it suddenly dawned on me; I don't have MY band name in my twitter handle!. Just my initials and last name.

What if Iggy Pop has been trying to get in touch? Or Sam Rosenthal?....

So, while the @paogle account will remain and I will mostly use that? There is also a purely music based account @thanatos_music. If you dont want to see my fighting with fascists, generic morons, ranting about politics, posting about fine art or wine...or sports...or all the other shit I do on the broader account? Maybe follow the other one! I am NOT getting another Instagram account. Folks are going to have to live with all the photos of cats and Humboldt Park.