THE MUSTER POINT PROJECT

TMPP4XMAS

Vinyl! My collaboration with indie rock artist Kevin Franco aka The Muster Point Project just got all Olivia Newton-John - physical. Now you can listen to this modest body of work talk complete with ticks and pops. Good vibrations move air.

The music industry has always been subject to technological disruption. Sheet music publishers and instrument makers were not happy with the inventions of radio and the phonograph. Record companies were fine selling music fans new media so long as the formats remained exclusive. Home taping wasn’t killing the industry in the 80s so much as lousy albums, one hit and nine duds. Digitization and Napster were, however, real disasters, twinned at that, compressed MP3 files sounded terrible and nobody involved in the creation through to the distribution and sale of a song got paid. Only that venerated little tech prick Steve Jobs at Apple was able to monetize this disequilibrium. If malls, both downtown and suburban, and Amazon combined to kill “Main Street,” the iPod killed record pressing plants. The few that survive scrounge and scavenge replacement parts from the decrepit hulks or their sister factories. 

It's not easy for indie acts like TMPP to get vinyl to market in a timely manner. Get in line behind Taylor Swift and the Rolling Stones and don’t forget your cheque book. The production lag can be as long as a year. I submitted the lyrics for “I Got This” to Kevin last March. Shortly afterward we talked seriously about trying to write more songs together. Kevin said he envisioned an EP of maybe five cuts. Could I write ten more for him to sift through? I thought, “Oh. I can at least try.” He was obviously more confident than me because that’s when he would’ve had to book 5 KG’s pressing. He never said a word, never pressured me.

I don’t stream music. I suppose iPods have their places, summertime picnic table docks. I confine my time in the YouTube vortex to a couple of hours one night a week. The hook is the video, my musical heroes were young and good looking at one time. And sometimes YouTube is no different than leafing through my old address book – everybody’s dead. I told Kevin, you know, should anything come from our project, a CD would be nice. He said, “They’re not cool enough.” I turned to the Stones (as I tend to do) – no expectations. Oh well. A memento on a shelf would’ve been a bonus.

Teenagers sleep a lot, for uninterrupted hours impervious to their bladders. If I wasn’t sleeping (or coping with my bed spinning like a top), I was seated on it, listening to music, propped against the wall, my pillow vertical for padding, my knees drawn up, the record jacket and its inner sleeve in my hands. Printed lyrics were always a godsend, not just to follow along, but because sometimes elocution and enunciation aren’t terribly rock ‘n’ roll. Their inclusion didn’t guarantee anything though. To this day I can’t be certain if Mary’s dress (clingy, mid-thigh length in my imagination) swayed with the movement of her hips or waved something like Marilyn Monroe’s subway grate white one in the draft of the slammed screen door.

Once my first novel was off press (Murder Incorporated, 2003) a box of author’s copies was delivered to me, not at home, but to the ad agency where I worked. I was not an efficient employee that afternoon. My Calgary publisher had contracted Kevin’s ad agency to design the cover. He did that particular job himself. Here we are together again: 5 KG on vinyl. You see your first book for the first time or hear someone sing your words on the radio and, well, you’re in a parallel universe or dreaming in the darkness with a complacent, complicit, cooperative and uncomplaining bladder, because stuff like that can’t possibly happen in real life. It’s beyond surreal to put a record on the turntable and follow along to your own lyrics printed on the back of the sleeve – even if you already know all the words, what’s coming next.

If you don’t or can’t shop bricks and mortar in Edmonton or Calgary, you can still buy 5 KG on line. Go here right now. But wait! There’s more! Cleverly concealed within this post is a discount promotional code worth an astounding 25-percent off! For even bigger savings, bundle 5 KG with What’s the Point? - TMPP’s latest full-length CD! Oh by gosh, by jingle, hurry! Act now! Operators standing by.   

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is celebrating ten years as your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything. My companion site www.megeoff.com has been refreshed, revamped, revitalized and otherwise reinvigorated. Watch and listen to some of the songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project or buy 5 KG, the complete EP. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer.