Goodbye, Nickelsville

The following half dozen cartoons are featured in a 128 page book proposal entitled Welcome To Nickelsville, a collection of Seattle-centric cartoons selected from over two hundred and thirty installments of my weekly A Drawn Perspective feature, which, until earlier this month, was featured in six community newspapers in the Seattle area. The strip, which ended earlier this month, another victim of the disappearing world of print journalism, ran nearly every week since its inception in November of 2004.
Focusing regularly on the political machinations of Greg Nickels, Seattle’s two-term mayor, who was defeated in the city primaries on Aug. 21st, A Drawn Perspective ended only five days before the mayor’s concession, denying me the opportunity to comment on that noteworthy, but not overly surprising outcome. It was the stepping down of a man whom I hardly treated warmly over the past four-plus years, finding his style of self-congratulatory leadership to be tiresome, if not downright negligent, a tenure full of large, mostly-empty promises, careless acts of public arithmetic, opportunistic bedding-down with deeply-entrenched private interests, moral grandstanding, and, perhaps above all, an acute, seemingly-obsessive focus on his personal legacy, a trait that appeared all too-evident as he choked back tears on Aug. 21, wearing the look of a man caught in his pajamas, facing an oncoming train.
It would be comforting to claim the two challengers who survived Nickels in the primaries to be individuals with experience and impressive credentials in public governance, but it just isn’t so. One rides in on a horse called “Business”, ready to roll up his corporate sleeves and run the city like some moneyed investment, the other appears more benign, but just as vague on the practicalities of his platform, if not his general understanding of the everyday demands of such stewardship. Come next year, the citizens of Seattle may well be looking back and missing the days of Nickel’s blowhard, fist-thumping reign.
In order to draw a conclusion to that era, I put together Welcome To Nickelsville earlier this year and shopped it to the only local publisher who I thought might have had an interest in publishing it. That interest not having materialized, I now put it out for all to see, viewable in its entirety as a slideshow by clicking here. Also, for a wider look at the four-year run of A Drawn Perspective, click here.
Of course, if there is someone out there who might still like to offer this to the world as a printed edition, please feel free to contact me. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy it, for what it is, perhaps the last such chronicle of its kind that this city will ever see, the editorial voice of local print journalism fading into the digital noise.

The Art of the Imaginary Record, Part 2: Dogs, Cars, Clowns and Spaceships, The OMS years come to an end.

The cover art to Le Coiffeur De Chien, the seventh album from Our Musical Situation. This record, a concept story about a boy, a girl, and a stolen French poodle, contained the musical barking of Bette, the dear, departed pet of OMS bass player, Kevin.

A change in aesthetic arrived with the seventh full-length Our Musical Situation record, which appeared in early 2002. Out were the dolls, in were the dogs, at least for this special release, crafted to look like the soundtrack to an imaginary French film, Le Coiffeur De Chien (The Dog Groomer). Presented as a re-issue of a 1962 recording, it ushered in the fabricated history of the band, picturing them as teenagers, working diligently in their Seattle-based studio, creating the soundtrack to the latest “nu-wave” film by avant-garde celluloid expressionist Francois Sirius. As the liner notes state: Sirius was so convinced of their suitability to his project that he left them alone for four months to build the music, only telegraphing occasionally to ask “How my five American geniuses can be doing, oui?”
The next release took almost a year to see the light of day, an unimaginable lag for a band that had produced half a dozen records in their first year of existence. Titled The World is Getting Worser it contained tracks culled from a variety of sessions, recordings made between January and June of 2002. Another concept record, their third, it was inspired by my having spent ten days circling the island of Kauai on foot, sleeping on beaches, venturing onto the small island’s only circumbendibus road for the occasional thumbed ride. It’s eleven tracks charting the age of the automobile, from Henry Ford to global warming, the design was a far more austere event, involving found photography and other imagery. This was the first credited to The Strathblaine Blister Collective, an imaginary design group whose name originated with a very real childhood accident involving bare feet and a hot stove.
The eighth OMS release, Heroes & Vaudevillains, came out in the summer of 2003 and was the first art directed by someone other than myself, namely Eric Reynolds, who some might know as the associate publisher of the leading alternative comics publisher, Fantagraphics Books. These sessions, recorded on Dec. 14, 2002, were cleverly compiled into yet another concept record by Reynolds, drawing upon his keen knowledge of the legacy of such early pop masterpieces as Smile and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, creating the second, long-lost record by the young OMS, one that chronicled the life of a 19th century German carny.
Reynolds also produced the ninth OMS record, OMS…in Outer Space!, giving it the appropriate look of some science fiction pulp novel from the early 1950s.
Next came the inevitable “greatest hits” compilation, entitled Home Sweet Home 2001 – 2003, put together again by Eric Reynolds and featuring artwork by Gary Panter, perhaps best known for his work on Pee Wee’s Playhouse.
Following a busy year, 2003 seeing more than half a dozen releases from other imaginary acts on the A Very Limited Recording Company roster (see Pt. 3 for the full story on some of these), the next OMS release didn’t arrive until early 2004, this one being the Heroes & Vaudevillains CD/DVD Special Edition, a two-disc set which I designed, utilizing art from the original, and featuring the very first AVLRC-related video tracks (other than a primitive video track included on the band’s fifth album, The Old Pedal Effects Sessions). Filmed by Seattle video auteur “Nathaniel Nateman”, the three brief films put a whole new wrinkle to the ever-expanding fabric of Seattle’s only wholly-imaginary record company.
Yet another year passed before the final OMS record was released. A posthumous offering (the band having parted ways, amicably, sometime during the late summer of 2004), it was aptly entitled The End is Here! and featured a new and sparse approach to design from yet another mysterious graphics collective, one which I chose to call Nobody You Know Graphics.
But, of course, know you know the nobody you know, so there goes that mystery, just another part of the inscrutable AVLRC legend revealed. Enjoy!

PS For a more complete look at these record designs, click here for a fancy slideshow.

The inside cover to Le Coiffeur De Chien, styled to look like an old movie card advertisement.

The back of Le Coiffeur De Chien, showing a teenage OMS hard at work in their Interbay studio (a fictional replacement for the very real “triangle studios”, birthplace of records like Nirvana’s Bleach, as well as home of Chris Walla’s Hall of Justice studio throughout the early part of the century, a building that sat just across the street from the OMS recording suite).

The gatefold of Le Coiffeur De Chien, featuring director Francois Sirius’s emotional recounting of his working with OMS on his 1962 film of the same name.

The cover art to the eighth OMS record, The World is Getting Worser(sic), a conceptual group of songs charting the world after the introduction of the automobile.

The gatefold art to The World is Getting Worser, culled from an old science fiction pulp digest. Artist unknown.

The CD itself, showing the full design of The World is Getting Worser.

The cover art to Heroes & Vaudevillains, the ninth OMS full-length and the first designed by Eric Reynolds.

The back of Heroes & Vaudevillains, as designed by Reynolds.

The gatefold of Heroes & Vaudevillains, showing Reynolds’s clever usage of old children’s flip-book illustrations to portray the band in 19th century fashion.

The cover art the tenth OMS release, OMS…in Outer Space!, again designed by Reynolds.

The back of Outer Space!, a candy store of sci-fi neurosis.

The inside cover to Outer Space!, pointing out the culprits responsible.

The cover to Home Sweet Home 2001–2003, the greatest hits package, put together by Eric Reynolds, with a little “help” from artist Gary Panter.

The first spread from the multi-paged booklet to Home Sweet Home, chronicling the storied history of Our Musical Situation.

The concluding pages of the Home Sweet Home booklet.

The cover to Heroes & Vaudevillains, the CD/DVD Special Edition, featuring three OMS video tracks.

The opening spread of the Heroes Special Edition booklet.

The Heroes Special Edition CD, proudly displaying itself.

The cover to the final OMS record, the posthumously-released The End is Here!, from 2004.

The opening spread of The End is Here! picture booklet.

A view of the complete OMS library.

Another view of the collected thirteen OMS records, the largest entry in the AVLRC catalog.

Yet another view of the proud product of the imagination.

The Art of the Imaginary Record, Pt. 1 OMS: The Early Dollhead Years, 2001–2002

During the summer of 2001 something strange happened in Seattle that very few have ever known about, and for good reason, as it was primarily an imaginary exercise. A music label sprang up, literally overnight, an enterprise that, to date, has released more than fifty full-length records, platters of murky origin, and even murkier musical pedigree.
This covert, make-believe concern, aptly named A Very Limited Recording Company, was born in response to five young men, each already an integral part of the city’s cultural landscape (such lofty positions best left unspoken), who saw fit to dispense with traditional song-making concerns and forge ahead, blindly, into their own, uncharted madness, churning out wholly improvised “songs” at the touch of a recording button, like some secret dada wing of the famous Brill Building. Calling themselves Our Musical Situation, they produced some eleven full-lengths, plus numerous re-packagings and side-project recordings (all of which shall be featured in further installments of this pictorial history). The only rule was “record it all, and edit later”, a credo that gave rise to such chestnuts as Cheers to the Creepers, Daddy’s Hole, and the entirely inscrutable Teabag Joe, songs that still warm the hearts of imaginary music listeners everywhere.
The full, dense, eight-year history of AVLRC has yet to be written, suffice to say that this is merely an introductory glimpse at the earliest manifestations of its rapidly-mushrooming catalog.
Having been in the right place at the right time, I was enlisted into this great act of impracticality, quickly finding myself the sole agent of the company’s art department, turning out all CD packaging, promotional materials and the official AVLRC newsletter. Later, as the swell of product outgrew my capacity to aptly furbish all with suitable visual flourish, another willing sole was drawn into the enterprise, but these earliest images that follow are all the result of my keen interest in helping define the imaginary notion, something I still hold dear to a fractious heart, even as the dogging demands of reality skulk ever closer to my door.
I hope you enjoy these highlights, culled from that pioneering bridge of summers, spanning 2001 to 2002, a time during which I chose to portray the five members of OMS as plastic-headed dolls, something that, in retrospect, seems quite prescient, the music industry itself having become a less-tangible thing in the intervening years, the faces of its ever-rotating crop of cash stars growing more unreal, and frustratingly static, by the day.
For a more-detailed look at the art packaging of each of the first six OMS records, simply click here.
And, please note, all frivolity aside, I do design and accommodate actual musical product: records, posters, t-shirts, etc. Feel free to inquire if you are an interested party. As you can see from the gallery that follows, I utilize a wide variety of means to capture the character of the musical project in question.

Happy second birthday, OMS!

The boys celebrate their second year by winning the coveted Tea Kettle Award, an assuring sign of recognition from an imaginary industry. At right is band manager, Clarence Credence, brother of AVLRC CEO, the late Donovan Credence (yes, the imaginary are capable of escaping the mortal coil too).

Unused version of the cover photo to the sixth OMS album, Sgt. Special’s Lonely Organ Band Sessions.

From the same album, an unused view of a historic OMS performance in a Detroit club, circa 1972. As the band prospered, so did its ability to age backwards. A nifty tack of the imaginary, that.

The cover to the very first OMS record, The Softball Shorts Sessions, recorded June 30, 2001, and an obvious homage to A Hard Day’s Night, The Beatles’ third UK album.

OMS guitarist and singer, Eric, from the blur-themed Softball Shorts photo sessions. Note that this head lasted only one record, a better Eric soon to be found.

OMS drummer, Chris, from the same sessions.

OMS bassist, Kevin, equally blurred.

OMS guitarist, Kurt, but a blur.

OMS singer and instrumental clown, Jem, as blurry as they come.

The cover to the band’s second full-length, The Thirty-Five Candles Sessions, recorded on August 11, 2001, in celebration of bassist Kevin’s thirty-fifth birthday.

An unused, alternate cover to The Thirty-Five Candles Sessions.

Another unused image from the second record.

The intended cover to an aborted early side-project, The Old Growth EP, featuring Kevin, Jem and Eric (who would later become known as The Dreaming Boys – sans beards).

A view of the photo shoot for the above cover, revealing something of my fabrication process.

Pages three and four of the multi-paged booklet that accompanied the third OMS record, the decidedly conceptual The Jeffica Sessions, the band’s strange telling of the “scar-crossed” tale of a transgendered life.

The inside cover to The White Room Sessions, the fourth LP, recorded November 17th, 2001.

An alternate version of the cover photo to The White Room Sessions.

Another unused image from White Room, revealing the set I fashioned for this shoot.

The cover to the fifth record, The Old Pedal Effect Sessions, recorded October 27, 2001. (Five releases in six months, not bad.)

An unused image of the band, as a bowling team, with an unidentified gent at left, rumored to be Gustav Salubrius, renowned AVLRC producer.

The cover to Sgt. Special’s Lonely Organ Band Sessions, recorded December 1st and 8th, 2001. This was to be the final act of the band’s doll-faced era.

A variation on the back card art to Sgt. Special’s, the boys sporting their most handsome country and western gear.

Another shot from the Detroit club session, capturing the crowd in motion.

Finally, the OMS boys, in all their finery, posing for a press luncheon.