The Crimson City Newsletter Archive (issues #1 and #2)
We had to move our newsletter activities over to a new platform, so for posterity, here are the first couple of emails we sent out
#1
What’s happening?...
- Our first single
- What’s coming next
- Please share with your friends
Hey everyone,
I can only imagine the first few people who will be getting this will be people we know directly, maybe we’ve sent you a link, in which case, thanks for supporting us by clicking in, we couldn’t have done any of this without you. Thank you.
If you like anything you see here, please sign up using the subscribe button at the top to hear more from us!
We want to use these emails to:
- Tell you when we’ll release recordings, videos
- Share our live dates
- Write about interesting things to do with being in a band in this cursed time
Starting at the top…
Our first single, Revenant King, is out now
Doot doot
Revenant King is a song about being dead, and rising from your grave to haunt those you loved in life. Relatable stuff. It’s a song about feeling terrible, but having someone who loves you anyway.
Listen here! - https://linktr.ee/crimsoncity
It’s one of our most traditional songs; a little country inspired number, with some very cool organ provided by the producer for this track, Jon Segar (thanks Jon!) and a ripping guitar solo.
In terms of more music, and stuff to listen to and watch - In two weeks time we’ll be releasing an awesome music video cut together by our bassist Elle, featuring us recording the song at Factory Studios in Bristol.
A couple of weeks after that we’ve got a cool performance vid coming out, and then we’ll release our second single, Queen Foul. Lots more on that to come.
We’re playing a show at The Moon in Cardiff - 27th June
Looking forward to this one. The other bands we’re playing with The Financial Year and Bedford Falls are excellent, so if you’re not away getting sunburnt to fuck at Glastonbury and can get down to Cardiff, it’s well worth it.
We’ll post any future dates on our insta, and also share them here with as much time as we can.
So, why the newsletter?
Our music, our personalities and basically everything else about us just doesn’t translate well to the main social media platforms. We’re too old and our skin hangs flaccid from our tired bones.
We do have an instagram, because you’re not allowed to be a band without at least ONE social media presence, so please do follow us there if the mood takes you
We’ve always been skeptical about how useful these things are for musicians, except for being able to broadcast “we’re doing a gig” or “here’s a new song”. It obviously works for some, which is great.
Music is an intimate thing: it has a lot of important social aspects, but ultimately a song is just the people playing it, and the people listening. Trying to make that relationship work, while also trying to make sure you’re delivering your message in a way that keeps people scrolling doesn’t seem fun at all.
Most social media platforms are built to maximize anxiety and envy, as anxious and envious people tend to sit and look at their phones (which is very good if you want people to look at adverts for Galaxy Projectors and Japanese trousers), and as someone who is as easily pulled into that stuff as anyone else any opportunity to get away from the unending hell-hole of social media is always welcome.
If we’re going to put energy into sharing thoughts and what we’re doing, i’d rather do it properly, with space for context to talk about interesting things, and to not worry if i’m serving the algorithmic overlord in the best way possible
There’s a lot of subjects we’d like to talk about, cool music (not just from us) that we’d like to share, and stories to tell. We’d also love to hear from you: anything you find interesting, or anything you’d like to know about being in a band, what hair products we’re recommending, or where to buy the best galaxy projector.
If any of that sounds interesting to you, please subscribe and we’ll be back in your inbox soon (but not too often, don’t worry!).
Keep on keeping on.
Cheers,
Crimson City
P.S here’s a great insta about how to head into every week
#2
JK: It’s really tough starting a band from scratch, it’s a second job you don’t get paid for. There’s lots of hard work involved, practicing instruments and vocals, writing music, writing words, throwing the words away and writing better words, band practice in rooms that are either too hot or too cold, walking across Cardiff with 40kg of crud on your back.
But by far the toughest part is trying to promote yourself and get heard in a pretty noisy world, the music industry and conventional wisdom is insistent that social media is critical, we need to make relatable, authentic, content. We’re encouraged to become experts in marketing and PR. Have a “release plan”, “goals”, “strategy”, “a team”.
Some people are great at this stuff, and good for them, but it’s not us, so we’re still very much working out how we find and speak to people who we think might find our music a positive addition to their lives.
It seems sometimes that the whole industry is based around everyone getting paid except musicians, small promoters, and venues that care about new music.
But that doesn’t interest me at all, never has, and it’s why we can’t thank enough the people who’ve taken a chance on us, the small promoters, indie venues, and more importantly, you.
People who’ve listened to the music, and come to our shows - in a world where the competition for your attention is cutthroat and brutal, you chose to give us some of your time, so thanks. For us, the art only exists when we’re communicating with people, and you’ve been a part of the work, probably the most important part.
SHAUN: I just want to get really famous and rich so I can have a personal assistant. Like, how great would that be? “Hey, go get me grapes.” And suddenly: grapes. And if you didn’t like the grapes, you could be like “These grapes bore me, remove them from my sight.” So yeah for me it’s always been about fame and money first, and art second. Possibly even third, because grapes are probably second. Anyway as a band it’s such a relief that we’re all aligned around my vision, which is clearly the most important and necessary.
JK: On to the news!
THE NEWS:
We’ve not been idle, in the time since our last newsletter where we released our first single Revenant King (Link to listen on Bandcamp, Link to listen on Spotify) we’ve released a music video for that song…
…and our second single Queen Foul!
We’ve also added some performance vids of us doing play throughs of Queen Foul and Revenant King to our youtube channel - check it out.
WHAT’S NEXT:
First, in the next few weeks - we’ve got a music video coming out for Queen Foul. Maybe making these vids is an extravagance, but i’ve always loved music videos, and Elle is so good at shooting and editing them, we can’t resist the artistic challenge.
We’ve also recorded an EP, it’s a really interesting collection of songs, building on what we’ve done already and going to some new places. We've got a few little extra bits to record which we’ll do ASAP, then get into the mixing. I expect we’ll lead with a couple of singles and then release the whole thing proper. I’d love to do a CD/Tape/Vinyl? of the record, maybe with the first two singles included in some way, but we’ll have to see - let us know if you’d be interested in that!
Keep on Keeping On
CC
