DwDunphy 
Ceremonial Kernel
Registration Date: 08-18-2003
Posts: 1,817
Location: Red Bank, New Jersey
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Realizing that the fan club and the complications due to last years specialty discs has hampered the works, I kinda guess we're good for the year. But did you guys have any plans for specialty discs (that needed pushing back) and would you be willing to give us a sample?
Just wondering...
DwD
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08-23-2003 07:52 |
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audiori
Administrator
Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
Location: Missouri
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Yeah the main reason the fan clubs were soo hard to get out this year,
is we got the 77's Bottomline discs, the Mike Roe Rosebud discs,
the Terry Taylor Avocado Club discs, and the Prickly Heat discs all at
the same time. Trying to put all those together all at once since they
were all already late when we recieved them, was a task.
Then it puts us behind on email, and regular orders.. uggh.
Some people get nasty if you don't reply to email 10 minutes
after they send it. I wish we could find someone to sit and answer
email 24 hours a day for free.
But, as for the question yes we have plenty of ideas. Demos, live stuff,
DVDs, etc. The hard part is figuring out which stuff people will actually
want, Terry would actually want out and he wouldn't want to save for
a DA box set or something some day.
We do have access to an original cassette 'master' of the Jubal's Last
Band demo tape from '74. Sorta rough sounding, but might be good for
a fan disc if Terry doesn't want to hold it for a box set. It's got some
songs that were used on the first DA album, and some unreleased
old songs. Kinda cool to hear.
We have a dub off the master of the SonWorshippers film and permission
from the producer to put it out on DVD... it's kinda cool.
We have really been tossing around the DA anaheim show as a DVD,
the guy that has the master wants us to put it out. It's not perfect,
but a good multicamera DA show from around '85.
We thought about a compilation DVD from the BBQ tour...
maybe a companion piece to the coffee table book Terry
and Mike were talking about.
We also FINALLY have found a source for a good copy of the
DA at Calvary Chapel in '79-'80 or so video, it's a multicamera
thing with about 4 songs.. we wanted to start a DA live compilation
DVD with. Been tracking this down for about 10 years.
We had a very blurry copy before.
There are tons of ideas, just finding the funding.. knowing if it's
the right thing to put out or not is the hold up.
When we get the guys set up to take over the various sections of
the fan clubs, we can discuss with them some ideas too. Maybe they
have some suggestions on things. We've tossed around lots of ideas
before but time has always been a problem. Maybe a members only
messageboard section, or page on the websites, just not sure yet.
I still really like the Wilco page idea... they have a page where
if you bought their last album... you type in a number from it and
it opens a page with mp3s of a EP with the artwork for download.
__________________
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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08-23-2003 11:01 |
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DwDunphy
Ceremonial Kernel
Registration Date: 08-18-2003
Posts: 1,817
Location: Red Bank, New Jersey
Thread Starter 
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| Have you considered the Cafe Press CD route? |
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And I, for one, would love to see a DA live disc circa "Darn Floor-Kalhoun-MotorCycle-Bibleland". I know that the band didn't really tour for most of these, but could there be a way of compositing those songs that were played during, oh say, the Dogs sets or even the Terry solos into a comprehensive collection of the BAI DA songbook?
Just thinking out loud...
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08-23-2003 12:10 |
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ToryNotion
Mind Peach
Registration Date: 07-27-2003
Posts: 194
Location: Seattle Wa
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First off, let me say that I know we all really appreciate the great work 'audiori' (which I'm finding is both J&E, right?) have put into the web site, the message board and the store(s) and everything else. I've just recently drifted back to DA obsession after wandering in the wilderness for many years and i've found this site/board to be a Godsend. And from reading between the lines it seems that you do it all as a labor of love.
re: angry letters from web store customers, I wonder if some of these come because customers see the well designed, professional looking web site and web store pages and expect that there is a large, full time staff devoted to order fullfillment like you'd find at other web retailers. You also say that orders are usually filled in 24 hours in the order they are received, and while I'm sure that does happen sometimes or even often we all know that recently, due to circumstances beyond your control, this has not been the case. Perhaps if you had some order tracking software that would automatically email customers as orders are filled and shipped that would cut down on the volume of email inquiries re: orders but I imagine such
software would be rather expensive.
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08-23-2003 12:38 |
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Mark
Moderator
Registration Date: 03-18-2002
Posts: 9,525
Location: Grand Encephalon - Words have their place but live what you say God can have His way when you hit them with Love
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I would love all of the ideas you guys just mentioned.
__________________
But never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. - C.S. Lewis
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08-23-2003 13:20 |
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Mark
Moderator
Registration Date: 03-18-2002
Posts: 9,525
Location: Grand Encephalon - Words have their place but live what you say God can have His way when you hit them with Love
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I especially like the idea of DVD's and box sets that have unreleased material.
__________________
But never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. - C.S. Lewis
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08-23-2003 13:23 |
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Mark
Moderator
Registration Date: 03-18-2002
Posts: 9,525
Location: Grand Encephalon - Words have their place but live what you say God can have His way when you hit them with Love
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I like what another of my favorite bands does at their website. They sell their CD's, DVD's, t-shirts, fan club releases, gold record personalized to their fans, etc. They are now running a new campaign for releasing their next album Marbles. Everyone who preorders will get their name in the CD. Many of the things they are doing or have done mirror what DA, 77's, etc. have done. Check it out for marketing and merchandise ideas for here.
www.marillion.com
__________________
But never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. - C.S. Lewis
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Mark: 08-23-2003 13:28.
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08-23-2003 13:27 |
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audiori
Administrator
Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
Location: Missouri
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Yeah it is...this whole thing is done on a shoestring budget.
It is very difficult to even break even a lot of the time. The
Christian music market isn't what it used to be, and when bands
do cutting edge type stuff it just doesn't get pushed and promoted
and supported like the mainstream artists do.
We get angry letters from people and when on one hand you can
understand they want their order quick, on the other hand when they
say things like 'you guys should run this like a business'... we think,
if it was ran like a business we would have shut down long ago.
It truthfully would not exist without volunteers and supporters, and the
promoters and fans that know how things really are. I know Solid Rock
and other artist websites are in a similar situation..
We do get the letters from people who think they are ordering from
Sears or something. We have people that write to JT, Terry, Mike Roe
or Tim White about orders (who have nothing to do with filling orders,
because we volunteered to do it so they wouldn't have to) and they
don't seem to understand these people are in other states and all they
can do is forward the message... which makes it TAKE LONGER for us to
respond.
We had one guy who had a real problem with an order... it got lost
in the mail or something. He had made another order sometime after
that and cancelled it immediately. We already had it packaged up and
ready to go, so we sent it to him free to make up for the other problem...
he contacted the Better Business Bureau to complain. So we told them
he was complaining over a free CD...
There are also a few out there that even make up order problems -
complain about orders they never made, etc.. or just exaggerate a small
problem into a huge crisis and complain to the bands or somebody.
We've actually caught people making up lists of problems that never
happened. One person did that and intended to send it to JT, but
accidentally sent it to us.. it was this long list of problems he claimed he
had with us. In reality, the only problem he had was with one order
(out of dozens he had made over the years) where he moved and
entered his old shipping info in the order form.
Sometimes we wonder what these people want... are they just
trying to hurt the band? We have really started to think that there are
a handful of people out there that actually *do* want to hurt the guys...
like the recent problem on the 77s board where a guy was mass-emailing
fans with rumors about band members. Whats the motivation there?
I don't see how it could be anything positive.
We're not sure about how to get it accross to people that we are basically
volunteers who have full time jobs and try to fill orders and answer email in
our spare time. Imagine coming home from work every day to hundreds of
emails to answer and tons of orders to get out... oh and don't take a day
off or go on vacation. Don't get me wrong, we love doing this... we want
to do this... we plan to continue to do whatever we can to help these
guys no matter what we have to deal with... but we'd love for people to
understand exactly what it is that we're doing. I think most of you get it,
but there is a very vocal handful out there that obviously don't.
Do any of you think a "store" FAQ would help? Explaining our situation a little bit?
j and e
__________________
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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08-23-2003 13:37 |
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rob 3.0
Luteous Llama
Registration Date: 08-28-2002
Posts: 399
Location: Where the River Bends
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I think a Store FAQ would be cool. I also think that a link on the main site about known order delays would be cool too. That way we can just click there and see what's up with certain projects and you guys won't be flooded with the same emails all the time.
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gone, gone with God, but gone
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08-23-2003 14:38 |
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ToryNotion
Mind Peach
Registration Date: 07-27-2003
Posts: 194
Location: Seattle Wa
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I think something on the web store to explain how it is operated and more frequent posting of web store operating status would be helpfull. I know
that you're getting other folks to handle some of the fan club stuff so that should help keep the orders flowing smoothly, so maybe it's a moot point.
You don't want to scare prospective buyers off re: how quickly orders are processed but you also don't want to give buyers unreasonable expectations in those times you get into a crunch. I wish I had the answer.
I'm sure the retailers that have their own order entry systems that allow customers to check the status of orders, etc cost many, many thousands of dollar, so thats probably not a viable solution. I know in one of our coorespondences you said you have to answer a lot of emails with general questions about the band like what album is this song on, etc. Maybe a link for questions about the band and different email address for these questions would help, but you can't make people use the correct link. I've seen some really cool search pages for Gratefull Dead and Neil Young set list that allow you to put in a song name and see when it was played. I could probably code something like that for you (just checking against the
official releases) when I have the time.
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08-23-2003 14:59 |
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audiori
Administrator
Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
Location: Missouri
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| quote: |
Originally posted by ToryNotion
I'm sure the retailers that have their own order entry systems that allow customers to check the status of orders, etc cost many, many thousands of dollar, so thats probably not a viable solution.
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We'd love to have something like this set up. We're getting ready to
do a complete redesign of the stores... we'd like to at least have
something set up that would keep track of our stock for each title
and let people know automatically when something goes out of
stock. Since we're such a small store with such a small budget, we
can't keep thousands of every title in stock at all times - so with
older titles, we generally only have 30-60 at any time. Occasionally,
we'll get a burst of orders for that title and sell out over night.
| quote: |
I know in one of our coorespondences you said you have to answer a lot of emails with general questions about the band like what album is this song on, etc. Maybe a link for questions about the band and different email address for these questions would help, but you can't make people use the correct link. |
Thats an idea. We've had people offer to help answer email - which we
never really figured out how to do.. because if they get an order
question, they'd just have to ask us - which wouldn't cut down on our
email at all. But, we could, like you say, find someone that would be
willing to answer the trivia. Some people would still write the wrong
person.. but it might help a little. Anything would be helpful.
__________________
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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08-23-2003 15:15 |
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DwDunphy
Ceremonial Kernel
Registration Date: 08-18-2003
Posts: 1,817
Location: Red Bank, New Jersey
Thread Starter
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| I don't understand this... |
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You would think that fans would be a little more understanding about this stuff considering:
a) DA and the 77s base their music on Christian values
b) The info that these sites are basically voluntary is hardly hidden knowledge
c) In the end, you get your stuff and it's worth it.
But I guess there will always be those who can't be satisfied and won't afford someone the courtesy of patience.
Sorry to hear how negative things have been!
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08-23-2003 16:03 |
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Joey T.
Tallowy Tamale
Registration Date: 03-13-2002
Posts: 7,777
Location: you can't fire me, 'cuz i quit! - Kurt Cobain....
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| RE: I don't understand this... |
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| quote: |
Originally posted by DwDunphy
But I guess there will always be those who can't be satisfied and won't afford someone the courtesy of patience.
Sorry to hear how negative things have been! |
oh, you should hear the little babies 
on the dadl..... 
jason and eric, you guys do a great job! 
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08-23-2003 16:07 |
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ToryNotion
Mind Peach
Registration Date: 07-27-2003
Posts: 194
Location: Seattle Wa
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| RE: I don't understand this... |
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| quote: |
Originally posted by DwDunphy
b) The info that these sites are basically voluntary is hardly hidden knowledge
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Well, it took me about 2 months of pretty intense DAmbing for
that Gnosis to sink it, and while I'm not the sharpest knife in the
drawer I ain't no dummy either. I don't think the casual fan who wandered
in to the web store would get the impression it was a volunteer
operation. But I've been wrong about a lot of other stuff....
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08-23-2003 16:14 |
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audiori
Administrator
Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
Location: Missouri
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Also we are always open to real suggestions, like the FAQ about
who we are and how things are done... This whole T-Shirt place
was a suggestion from Jeffrey K. We had never heard of them,
and it's perfect for some products that wouldn't otherwise be availible.
We don't want to print a thousand Kalhoun shirts and sell four..
but with this, if four people order them, it's GREAT! Plus, there are
some good other product ideas that we can use in the future.
And the place wants to get into other printing things.
I remember asking on tha DaDL once for suggestions on how
to promote the guys in a chaep cost effective way.. there
was dead silence. There has to be some good things we all
can come up with to get their name out there that doesn't cost
thousands of dollars. DA has a lot of smart fans, a lot that have
held various jobs in the music business, radio, etc. We should
be able to come up with some things, places to send CDs or something.
Even ideas on products you guys think would sell well, would help
the band financially.
j and e
__________________
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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08-23-2003 16:16 |
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DwDunphy
Ceremonial Kernel
Registration Date: 08-18-2003
Posts: 1,817
Location: Red Bank, New Jersey
Thread Starter
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| Well, people can do their part |
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I wrote a review for "Buechner's" for the site I'm with. While this may not be available to everyone, there are other ways of telling people that DA, the 77s, The Choir and the Dogs exist.
The t-shirts are gonna go a long way in doing that, as the general public still thinks Christian music imagery is less 'Doppelganger' and more 'Songs Of The Heart', and not in an ironic way either.
DwD
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08-23-2003 17:06 |
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audiori
Administrator
Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
Location: Missouri
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Yeah we kinda hope to see tons of DA and 77s shirts at like Cornerstone or
other Christian fests... that would be cool.
And yup any exposure on websites and stuff is great! I remember
someone saying to us when we started this site that they would take
their DA site down, we told them not to, DA deserves as much
exposure on the web as possible.
On the same lines, if your DA related website is not listed in links
let us know... we will add it.
__________________
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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08-23-2003 20:41 |
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DwDunphy
Ceremonial Kernel
Registration Date: 08-18-2003
Posts: 1,817
Location: Red Bank, New Jersey
Thread Starter
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08-23-2003 22:43 |
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