Most of the 250 Cruel Music releases were lost in the fire. Cruel Music is, obviously, going to be going away for a while now, until we can re-group, and try to make sense of everything. I did manage to pull a few of the tapes out of the ashes. Some of them are, remarkably, in pretty good condition. Some others can be re-built. Most are gone, though. A lot was accomplished during the 28 months that we lived there. I recorded something every month. It was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. Now the majority of those 28 months of work is gone. I do have a handful of songs left on my Zoom PS-04. Some were things that I was working on for the 29th release, and some were still stored on there from the 28th release. I'm going to do a compilation-type CD of that material within the next few days. Like a "Best Of The 28 Months..." Then, my 29 months of work will be done.
What next? I'm going to delicately sift through the remaining Cruel Music releases, and salvage everything I can from the recordings we've done over the last 21 years, and digitally remaster all of it to CD and/or DVD format... That's something that I've been meaning to do for a while now, but never got around to it. Now I have an excuse to get started.
We lost all of our clothes, almost all of my guitars, over 600 audio CDs, nearly 100 video games, the car, old pictures, etc. Of all the things we lost in the fire all the creativity of Cruel Music was one of the most painful things for me to lose. I've been meaning to put all of the Cruel Music stuff out in the studio for a few months, but I just left them in the closet. If I would've put everything in the studio I'd have all 250 releases today. But, because I put them in the closet I have *SOME* of it left, at least. Oddly enough, that closet was the only part of our house that was still standing after the fire. If they would have been anywhere else in the house I wouldn't have any of them left.
