10/8/04
I've slowly been working up an appreciation of The Byrds, that I keep hoping will be the next blog entry, but for some reason, I'm having a hard time finishing it. Its getting lengthy. You will read it anyway, and then say “thank you”. You will.
Copper Man news: the album is done! Done diddly-done. There are currently ‘pre-release’ copies being burned at a dupe house not too far from where I type. Anyone who wants one, drop a line, well work something out. Most of them are earmarked for label mailings, but if enough people feel the need to get a CD-ROM in a slimline case and no artwork just so they can hear this record (which is worth it, I should add), well print up some more.
The completion of the recording does raise the specter of design. A classic album needs a classic album cover, you know. For a long time, I had a very clear image of what the cover was going to be, but I've since soured on that. Something involving tourists in NYC, in sort of a pastiche of “Sgt. Pepper’s”. But, really, does the world need another rip-off of that image?
It's times like this that I wish my art school education would kick in (hello, RISD!), but I'm a little dry.
Well, maybe I'll just stumble on something. We're cleaning out the attic for our end-to-all-yard-sale-sales, and the stuff I'm uncovering has really got me locked into a Proustian Rush Deathgrip. All the sketchbooks and notebooks, comics and movie cards. Who knew that Topps made a card set for “Back to the Future II”?
There's even a box filled with a fine scrim of ash from the 1980 Mt. St. Helen's eruption; my uncle bought me a can, and my friend thought it would be a hoot to open it and spill the contents all over the floor. Why there should still be ash in this box is a complete mystery to me. Did I scoop it up and then dump it in the box, thinking that, somehow, this stuff would be WORTH SOMETHING someday?
You know, I think I just might have.
Anyway, it's all got me seriously re-living history, and the air in the attic is symbolically dank, musty and hard-to-breathe. So, it's practically a guarantee that I'll find something that will make just a rocking album cover.
Maybe just a picture of my memory-laden corpse, strewn with the accumulated crap of my pack-rat past? That certainly sums up the spirit of the album, if not the letter.
-Dave
Here's a link: James Lileks. One of the most interesting collections of 20th Century ephemera you're ever going to find, with commentary. He's also the funniest, smartest writer currently working in newspaper. The blog on his own site reveals that in recent years, he's taken a political turn sharply to the right, but there's plenty on the site that's bias-free and funny (and melancholy, too).
The blog entries are good, and it doesn't take much of a read to figure out where I ripped-off most of my blog style from, but if you're even a mild lefty like me, you may find your teeth grinding at some of his more... shall we say, strident, observations.