the album curse

[scottgalvin]

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back in 2016 i did a show called One Light Nite. there was a cover charge for the show but no financial compensation for me as a performer. instead i was promised a high quality video recording of my set. my set was around 25 minutes and was the best i'd done up to that point. i was extremely disappointed to hear back from the promoter of the show letting me know there was no audio or video of my set available despite all the effort that went into recording the entire evening. over the years i've forgotten the reasons i was given as to why i wasn't being provided what was promised.

to make up for it, i scheduled an event at the same venue and had someone else in mind to record my set. on the night of the recording rockford got hit with a snowfall warning and it was expected to have blizzard conditions. i remember it snowing a decent amount but nothing like it was predicting but since businesses and other events were shutting down i figured it would be in my best decision to cancel as well.

i tried again in 2017. i got to go on the 104.9 WXRX morning show to promote the recording and had huge hopes for it. the house cafe was always good to me as far as crowds and hospitality was concerned and i figured i was in safe hands.

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the night went well and i left the house cafe assuming the recording was a success. i went on to book an album release party show and had things set up for the release. at one point the person who recorded my set got in touch with me to let me know things were going well. then i got news that halfway into the audio it became unusable. there was significant buzzing and crackling from a soundboard issue. needless to say i was devastated. i did a run through of the album after a comedy open mic at the house cafe a month or so later to see if we could get any audio to frankenstein something together and that was also a bust. i figured it would be but also figured at that point i didn't have much to lose and was giving up on the idea of ever putting out this album.



the album release party show was still booked and the decision was eventually made to try yet another recording. the same person who recorded me at the house cafe had felt like they wanted to make things right and they recorded my set that night at the hope & anchor. i wasn't crazy about how the set itself went. i was thrilled by the packed house and had a good time otherwise. but what really pissed me off was that i got ghosted by the person who recorded me. didn't hear anything back from them and never received a copy of my set directly from them.



there was an unrelated post in a chicago suburbs comedy facebook group where this person was being a smartass so i chimed in and mentioned how getting a copy of my recording would be cool. the person then took it upon themselves to ask for my paypal email and return my money and screenshot it like a wiseass. i have no gripes about getting a refund but i never once asked for it. all i was asking for was my recording and i'd even gotten to the point where i would have settled on a reason why i was being ghosted. i never did receive a reason and even got called an asshole for bringing up this person recording me twice and leaving me with nothing. then given a refund i didn't request in a smartass manner.

eventually in 2019 matt drufke was getting a comedy festival up and running called on the fox and asked me if i would be willing to let them handle my album recording. i was reluctant to try again but ultimately decided to and was very happy with the outcome. i may do another post in the future about that night specifically but for the sake of this post i'll just say everything was handled with 100% professionalism and comfortzone audio did a solid job recording me. chris may recorded the video and he and i did the editing. a couple weeks after setting up my final album recording chris borrowed the tascam recorder used to record my hope & anchor set and that's when i finally got a copy of that audio. i knew at that point i wasn't going to use it but i was happy to finally get closure on that as well instead of wondering how it sounded.

i definitely learned my lesson