I just got this via email—I think it's going to go on a website at some point. But, I wanted to post this here, since the photo is so great.

"Far too often we find ourselves listening to music as a background entity. Then along comes the Ear Reverends' Err or Man. The music invites you in, and you find yourself transported into a realm of Yes's, synthesizers, ambient beats, guitar riffs and poetic lyrics. Each track has its own unique underlying sound while the whole journey becomes a round trip adventure—then you find yourself back where you started from, walking away, whistling one of the many tunes running through your head."

~A Monkey's Review

My current definition of theme music for the Ear Reverends is: music created for other people to use on a website, in a video, or with a book. In one case ("Spy? Music"), the theme was more of an experiment that came out of a discussion of why it made no sense to create a theme. So, it's a bit of an anti-theme—which probably will be obvious when you hear it.

Newly released to this site is the theme for the Rockonator (scroll down, click the "get recommendation now" button to hear the theme in context). This theme was produced in early 2008 by the Ear Reverends, and it's well worth 14 seconds of your time. (Hmm, that's two 14 second long themes I've now composed. . .)

The Rockonator is a feature on the Rock On website, the companion to Dan Kennedy's excellent and funny book about the big record business, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad. The stories in Rock On about creepy corporate record business life are really relevant to the Ear Reverends—e.g., that lifestyle is exactly the kind of thing we like to avoid.

You can listen to the Rockonator and other Ear Reverends' theme music in the theme music section of this site.

The CD Baby page for Err or Man just went live this evening. Although there is a lot more of Err or Man still to come on this website, I think it's safe to say that Err or Man is now available—anyone who is interested can hear it and see it.

Just to be clear, you can now buy a copy of Err or Man, the new CD by the Ear Reverends. Yes, really!

So, welcome! And, for some welcome back! This is a "soft launch" of the site, and I am not 100% confident that it's all stable, actually.

Once it's more stable, I'll start launching more of the Err or Man pages, and start turning on the other site features—especially the music player for playing tracks online.

Also, the Err or Man CD / Book will be available in a few days via CD Baby—I'll post the link when I've got it!

Yesterday, I shipped out the first 9 boxes / envelopes with copies of Err or Man. Now I am down to a few more copies in the studio to hand deliver to people in Seattle, and then I’ve got a short break before the next batch of artifacts arrives to be assembled into their proper cd / book / goody packages.

Some of the mess after getting things packed & shipped

Cleaned that up, and now just got to get this site cleaned-up!

Packaging up copies of Err or Man is proving to be a nice lot of work. Mostly it’s the limited edition copies, which have extra objects in the bag and hand drawings and signatures. But, this first batch going out (both limited editions and first editions) is almost all wrapped-up and ready to go! And, then, going forward, I think I’ve got the hang of what I’ll have to call the Err or Man packaging process when we launch Err or Man Industries (just kidding).

Some pix:

Front of a limited edition package
(next to a classic photo of Soren Alderson and Bernard Bernard)

Back of a limited edition package

Desk during packaging, and a stack of finished packages

You might recognize a box on the desk as being the Steve Reich 1965-1995 box set, which I love and am enjoying listening to all 10 CDs of again right now. If you know Reich’s music, you can imagine me packing up Err or Man bags while listening to “Drumming” and “Music for 18 Musicians.”

HereJam studio has been temporarily converted to an assembly room, as we put together the books and CDs. Finally! For the folks who already have ordered Err or Man, your copies will be going out soon. And, then we'll have Err or Man ready for public release, too!