Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Lunatics Are Raving







































From all the way back in 2002, here's the artwork for One Starry Night at the Shop, a live LP by Barbara Manning and the Go-Luckys. My pal Willem from Swamp Room Records sent me a CDR of the album and asked if I would design a sleeve for it. The music was quiet, introspective and vaguely psychedelic indie/folk rock, light years away from the sort of trashy, overamplified nonsense that is my stock in trade and somehow I couldn't see how anything I could draw would be suitable for that sort of album. I like to try to stretch my boundaries and try new things but in this case I did something that I have almost never done in my art career: I wrote back to Willem and told him that I didn't think I could handle the job. He sent me a very earnest message asking me to reconsider so I took another listen to the album. Suddenly ideas started to fly and I began making sketches. It turned out to be one of my favorite pieces of all time and I received a nice email from one of the band members letting me know that they liked it too. Swamp Room did a great job printing the glossy, high quality sleeves and inside the same art was printed sans text on a very cool looking 12" picture disc. I have always been really glad that I decided to go ahead with this project. Thanks, Willem. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

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