THE NEW (DRAFT) MUSIC VIDEO...

ZA draft of the “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?” video is on YouTube. I won’t include the link, because I think I can re-make the video better. I was after enough funkiness to be charming, but what I got is too much; it needs to be competent as well, and the draft is very short on competence.

Problem is with the scanner, I think: using the scanner was supposed to make all the images the same size, but it didn’t—the paper was the same size, but the scanner only caught the part of the paper that had drawing on it. I can fix that problem, I think, by having something in the corners of each piece of paper—the scanner will be forced to consider that part of the “drawing.” (There is an advantage to having tools that aren’t too intelligent.) That should make each drawing the size of the paper, and will give me the consistency I need.

Hardest part may actually be forcing myself to re-do it. I tend to not like re-doing stuff. I like having it perfect the first time because I don’t want to go back to it.

In this case, re-doing shouldn’t be a long and painful process. It only took about three hours to do the line drawings and scanning, and less than an hour to put it all together. Of course, this one was easy. Other music videos will necessarily take longer, because they will entail actually using a camera and doing captioning. And I will be more insistent about being perfect the first time.

I do have the luxury, if one can call it that, of not having to work on just one thing at a time. I have laden myself up with enough “I’ll do this when I’m unemployed again” work that I can (and should) be doing several things at once, all the time. Just like I did when I was working as a city manager. So along with this first video, the Deathgrass album cover has been designed, along with the CD label (both stark and simple, and eye-catching), practice with the band for the album and the “Failed Economy Show” concert mostly arranged, and some of the publicity lined up.

I have a draft poster for the Failed Economy Show, too, though I’m still not sure of the date (I think it’ll be February 5). It helps to be able to do this stuff fast. This coming Tuesday night is the Thirsty Lion gig, and I’ll be doing at least a couple of other things on the trip to Portland, to be as efficient as possible. I will be avoiding the snow on the way there, too. I don’t have time to worry (which is another luxury, I guess).

I looked up the copyrights for the songs on the album, and with one exception they’re all between 2005 and 2009, so they’re all post-Santa’s Fallen music. (The “Tillamook Railroad Blues” (2002) was on the first, solo album I did, but has never been recorded with a band.) I wonder if I should include lyrics? Back in the days of vinyl LPs, I always liked having lyrics on album covers; that’s how I learned to play a lot of those songs. If I could fit everything on an 8x14 sheet, it’d work (8x11 paper can’t be folded properly to fit inside a CD case). I’d have to do my own packaging if I did that—no outside service would be able to do it—but I’m probably going to have to do my own packaging anyway, to save money. It might be easier to include a coupon instead, for a “2011 edition” of the Joe Songbook (which has all the lyrics, and chords, too) at a discount price. The coupon would be a nice giveaway at gigs, too.

Whatever I do has to be uber-professional, though; if I can’t make what I do the equal of anything out on the commercial market, I don’t want to do it. If I’m going to compete in the same marketplace as the Big Boys, I have to be able to do everything as good as they do. And mostly, I can. (And that’s why I’ll re-do that video of “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?” Soon. It did get 13 “hits” the first day, though.)

Joe