« De-ceiving & Re-leasing »

Fifty to a box, I had about five boxes of Receiving in my closet for yearsFor some years and a few house moves, I have been quite unclear what to do with the five or six boxes of my CD Receiving which was completed back in 2001 after about a two year creative process. I ordered 500 originally and over several years parted with maybe half that many, keeping a pretty close tab on who had them. I kept an Excel spreadsheet file of who I gave them to, sold them to (and for how much), whether they went to industry contacts or coworkers or strangers and so forth. The actual pressing price essentially made each copy a $3 business card, plus the price of mastering which made it about a $4 item. This is to say nothing of the amount of studio gear I bought or of my time, nor of anyone else's who played on it or helped in various ways. For a while I nicknamed them "my $4 business cards." For the past few years, with all the moving house that has taken place, and the almost complete distance I have felt from music-making, they have pretty much taken up a small section of garage space, going unnoticed and generally doing nothing. I've felt for some time I needed to do something. I thought of auctioning them off on Ebay as a block, and if someone can pay themselves back and profit, then okay. Or I thought of cutting them loose on someone who might be more creative to sell them or do something with. But none of that was exciting enough.

I've long since disabused myself of the idea of getting paid back, and I am rather sick of the usual business of making apologies for it being an old piece of music I recorded when I was woefully depressed. So I needed another gimmick that would spare me all that awkwardness and speed the process up so that I could get rid of these things before I turn 40.

I just had to be rid of these, so any place was good enough, including the streets of SaThe idea was around some time ago, but I finally did it. Today I finally took a box of 50 with me to work and indiscriminately handed them out to a few coworkers, or kitchen staff I have gotten some rapport with and such, but more unusually I just left copies scattered about town on the streets: window ledges, transformer boxes, entryways, people's car door handles... I have about 200 more to go. It was quite a time leaving them like exposed easter eggs. A few elicited some giggles as I went. Call it performance art. I get the feeling people could like it more by the randomness of it all compared to whatever pathetic sales pitch I would make to guilt someone into receiving a copy.