Difficult packaging: the good, the bad and the stupid

[FLORIDA MAN]

[Fire of the Mind]

Exhibit A is a release that was given to me by the creator at a noise festival I played at in Lansing MI. I don't remember his name and i can barely read the handwritten sharpie label on branded cdr. I think it says Buttman?

I think it actually says "butthash," which was supposedly a street name for "jenkem," if you remember that ludicrous moral panic.

I have scans and photos somewhere of a set of my collected work up to that point which I gave to what was then a good friend to whom I have not spoken in years. It was constructed out of an inverted cereal box taped back together inside-out and included one of the heavily decorated detached covers of a dictionary one of our dogs had destroyed. I plan to get back to that level of bullshit when I'm able to burn CDrs again, and definitely whenever I do cassettes. I know a few artists of a similar mindset…

The weirdest in my current collection packaging-wise are probably the hand-printed cardboard sleeve editions I got of some CDs I received in an order from the EAI artist Kevin Sanders some years ago. This is followed by the two recent Sutcliffe No More records which, for the first sixty copies of each record, are packaged in this strange ablative sleeve the consistency of a very thick garbage bag, sealed with a strong adhesive which tears the plastic when you attempt to open it. Seems a bit prankish, which I'm honestly all for given how weird people get about collector culture and owning pristine items—myself included at times, much to my shame.