Mike Freeman Blog

Recycling Cassettes!

Several months ago I started asking the question of what to do with a stock of legacy cassettes, from back in my Spellbound days of the 1980s-90s, that I had been storing in my closet all these years. With the help of a bottle of Elcasetero watching over me, I finally came to difficult decision to break them apart to recycle the paper, plastic, metal etc. It was a total pain (each cassette has 5 screws) but was the right thing to do for the environment!

Grammy Vote

Finally completed my Grammy vote selections! It's always great fun listening and voting, especially when you uncover surprise gems!

2018 Recap!

Mike Freeman 2018 Recap

The first half of 2018 was filled playing lots of gigs with Jose Mangual Jr’s Son Boricua, Julio Salgado-Nicky Marrero, and Ray Mantilla. At the same time, mixing, mastering and wrestling with the artwork for my latest recording was in high gear. There was plenty of busy work preparing for and leading up to the release of the new CD.

venetian-blinds-cover-web

“Venetian Blinds” hit the radio and online music stores in August receiving robust airplay and reviews across the US and other parts of the globe through the end of the year.

“The Vibesman” was released in 2012, “Blue Tjade” in 2016 and “Venetian Blinds” in 2018. During that short period of time it’s interesting, and eye opening, to see the drastically changing landscape of the music business in terms of CD sales, versus download sales, versus music streaming. The trend is clear! Given that, it’s important to learn more about tapping into Spotify playlists etc. If you’re a curator please consider adding ZonaVibe music to your streaming playlist! You can also follow us on Spotify

Performances


In addition to another summer time gig at Third Street Music and a CD release at LaFonda, ZonaVibe had the pleasure of performing two nice Labor Day festival concerts in Wisconsin; The Fox Jazz Festival and Riverfront Jazz Festival. We had a great time performing and the music was very well received!

Last year I pledged to keep in better contact with everyone by email and through by my website blog. I’m happy to say I did manage to do a bit better in that regard with a few more email shoutouts and more blog posts in 2018.

Website Revamp:
Speaking of the website, I finished off 2018 and launched 2019 with a fresh coat of coding paint, as well as content update, to the Jazzvibe.com website! The current revamp makes navigating the site much easier and, for the first time, makes it truly mobile friendly. It was painstakingly sampled on most all device formats from iPhone and iPad up to 27" iMac.

The results are an overall cleaner, more focused viewing experience. And, most importantly, the music store has a greatly improved CD buying experience. Head over and check it out! http://www.jazzvibe.com

As my cycle goes, it’s now time to start writing a new batch of music for my next recording project!

Best Wishes in 2019! 🎉🎶🥂