Junk mail

Aristatic (our e-mail account) is the target of many direct marketing campaigns. Neon Phosphor has lately taken up the hobby of replying to such e-mails, especially ones that claim to have stumbled upon our great music, and "will you please upload it to the site I am promoting?"

Today, I got an e-mail from an A&R person from the Independent Artists Company, who claimed in his form letter that he was "a fan" of our music and that "I thought of you recently when we were trying to figure out which good acts haven't been invited yet. No, this is not random spam, I swear." Great, so I shot back an e-mail asking if he would explain how he heard about The Tonics and which songs he liked. Even if he hadn't actually heard us, I figure he'd be forced to do it now, if he wanted our business badly enough. [Later, Toby actually replied to my e-mail, saying that he'd heard about us from "a friend who listens a lot at download.com" and that their favorite songs are "Elegy For Anne Bancroft" and "Lucy." Fair enough. We'll put something on IAC.]

Other recent unsolicited mail have included:

• A "hot new British chill-out band" called Mooli
• An invitation to join BandSpace
• Frank from Hot Live Bands who's putting together a compilation CD and would like to talk to us about the possibility of having one of our tracks featured on it. Ironic, since we are anything but a hot live band at the moment.
• Ted Beam from South Pasadena who "listened to 'Lucy' online and really liked it" and wanted to get the members of Sculpted Static (our old band) to attend his show at the Bent clothing store on Mission Street.
• Again addressed to Sculpted Static, an invitation to join Artisterie, who are "real fans" of our work.
• Toonopoly, a logo/sticker/site designer with "competitive prices and great ideas that will blow your mind."
• Vince Griffin inviting us to use the full-service Sound Vision recording studio in the South Bay area

If you want to contact us, please e-mail aristatic@yahoo.com. You will get a reply.