Remastered Classics

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 4 August 2014.

I like the one-at-a-time approach, that is, one song per podcast episode. We could put these on Bandcamp with a pay-what-you-want option and a special download code, which would be "buried" somewhere in the podcast. I like the podcast to be roughly on a topic related to the song's time period, perhaps with a segment discussing thoughts about the song and its development. We could have the other musicians in at this point! We could also play some songs that were influential in our creative decisions.

But, again, I'm getting hooked on this diegesis (and, really, exegesis) over mimesis idea. It's soooo satisfying to me, both classically and postmodernistically! Classically, we're avoiding being a cause of moral degeneration; postmodernistically, we're analyzing a story that was never written--so much cooler than actually writing the story.

Bret Easton Ellis

Do listen to one of those Bret Easton Ellis podcasts. I would recommend the 7/14/14 interview with Michael Tolkin on the topic of pragmatism in screenwriting. It starts with a moment in Hollywood's history in which the screenwriter almost became a novelist-caliber artist, and why that didn't happen. This American Life and The Moth, likewise, all diegesis. Mostly historical and autobiographical too.

We're better at intellectual discourse than we are at writing and acting out dramatic roles (you're better at that than I am).

As for the "album" idea, I still think a modest 5 songs is a better idea at this point. We could put in a gentle plug for people to help us, by paying more for each released song: the more successful we are this year the more likely we can do more next year. I mean, in a sense, the 5-song release is an album of sorts--an EP, really. And yes, the songs I chose don't have any strong thematic or narrative link that I am aware of, so I guess that would be a "greatest hits."

As we get more of these releases (assuming we keep this cycle up over a number of years), maybe we can come in and do a "box set" of "remastered" stuff. If we have some weak parts that have started to annoy us over time, we can fix them. We can sit down and talk through some ideas for "remastering."

You already know about my love affair with the box set.

I was also a huge fan of crop circles

As someone who came of age in the late 80's and early 90's, the box set of remastered classics was like what an LP would have been for kids of earlier decades. Opening that sucker up, flipping through the huge glossy book while blasting "Immigrant Song" or "Mountain Jam" on my parents' 6-disc CD player "carousel."

Enjoying all the high-contrast black-and-white photographs, the lyrics scribbled on hotel stationary or napkins, the liner notes written by some hanger-on...

Man, that was IT in the early 90's!

So another postmodernist thing is to never have recorded the real albums--just go straight for the box set of remastered classics! And write the story in the form of liner notes (what a grossly undervalued genre!). It'd be nice if we could have little "thumbnails" of the actual albums to include in the massive book. And is it time to start putting out a box set with 4 Compact Discs (yes, CDs) inside as a "collectors item." I think it is!

Well, this is all fantasy way beyond our next steps, so I'm going to stop!