MP3 Heist, part II

I've been listening to Brian Eno and John Cale's collaboration Wrong Way Up for days now. It's nosing out Garbage's Version 2.0 for top-of-the-CD-stack right now. This has been a busy position; British Sea Power became my new favorite band a month or two ago, and for a while I was wearing out Arcade Fire, but Eno and Cale would hold that honor if only they were a band. Somebody needs to banish them to Kerguelen Island for a couple of years with only a recording studio and a little French restaurant. This is the most incredible thing I've heard in ages.

I've always thought the recording industry was being shortsighted to attack MP3 swapping, but now I realize how thoroughly mad they are. One high-quality MP3 stash and I'm all set to buy up the Eno and Cale back catalogs and start hunting down interesting jazz and quasi-jazz in the wake of St. Germain. Rick named all our old servers at Iridio after bands: blondie, lush, culture, ella, byrd, dandy, cocteau, breeder, marley, pixies, gusgus, and miles off the top of my head. I contributed radiohead, kraftwerk, and catherine. And now I'm inclined to go through the rest of them. (Score two so far for cocteau and pixies, and half points for gusgus.) Blondie I've already been listening to (from a roommate's MP3 collection, naturally) and they're pretty good.

The Great MP3 Heist

Rick has left our poor little team at work, in order to go back to doing cool stuff, having natural light, and that kind of thing. We are very sad about this. (We're really excited for him, though, and looking forward to the Big Party next Friday.)

On the other hand, he left his Powerbook behind; being a man of impeccable musical taste and generous spirit, he left his impressive MP3 collection intact. I tried slurping the whole thing up but iTunes told me I didn't have enough disk space. So I had to be choosy, but so far the highlights include Garbage's 2.0, St. Germain's Tourist, and the Gotan Project (which I already had, somewhere, but haven't seen lately). And I've hardly even gotten started. I think my next trip to Easy Street Records is going to be expensive.

Thanks Rick!

Oh, the kids these days

I've been thinking that when I go to college, I shouldn't have too much trouble with the cultural adjustment. But today Hampshire's admissions propaganda department sent out a link to a student's blog. Apparently the idea was to show us how cool it is to go to Hampshire.

Mein Gott. Reading that makes me feel about a hundred years older than her. And tired. She has a paragraph that I'm guessing has more words in it than this entire blog. I'm not at all sure I'm prepared to use the word "ginormous" or fight over Fruit Roll-Ups with my friends. I haven't even seen a Fruit Roll-Up in a very very long time. And Harry Potter is not even a little bit part of my cultural background—I read the first one and was entirely ungrippèd.

Not that this changes anything. But I hope there are some grown-ups there too, this notwithstanding. Otherwise I guess I will have to hang out with my sister more, just for cultural conditioning...

Calling cards

If there's time, I'd like to print some calling cards. I have a decent-size pile of light blue Magnani Pescia, and I'd certainly like to use the platen presses, which are lovely old cast-iron Industrial Revolution pieces. One is a Chandler and Price Old Style, with curved spokes on the flywheel, and the other is a Pearl with fabulous red pinstripes on the black paint.

On the other hand, October was a big letterpress casualty already. I don't regret that one bit—this has been the most amazingly mind-expanding and horizon-broadening thing—but I really really need to take care of some other things. Like college applications for instance. So I don't know. Perhaps I'll see if I can just do something not-too-complex in class time.

Letterpress progress

My letterpress project is nearly done now. I managed to fill up every spare moment I had in October with wandering around the library looking for ideas, sketching them up, setting type, setting the same text in half the typefaces in the shop, and otherwise getting things ready. Those things took so much time that I had to basically pick out paper and ink without thinking about them; I just went with the one clear vision of it that I had, which was black type and a dark blue linocut on light blue paper. I was thinking of more of a dusty cadet blue paper but oh well. Practically everyone recommended the Magnani Pescia, which was brilliant. Thick and soft and beautifully-textured and squishy, the type bites right into it and gives a very pleasing impression.

Getting all the rest of it together, especially setting my colophon (good lord, did I test a lot of typefaces for that) took so long I ran out of TA-supervised shop time to actually cut my paper. I was getting kind of concerned about that and considering who I would have to beg (probably Jynn) to help me cut it between then (Sunday afternoon) and my press date on Tuesday. But after leaving the print shop, I ran into Gabe from my class at Uptown Espresso, and as I was explaining my predicament I realized that we have a perfectly good print shop with a big paper cutter at work, so I went in Monday morning, picked up my paper, and took it in to work. Robert asked Matt to show me the ropes, which he very kindly and patiently did. I now know how to run a Heidelberg hydraulic paper cutter; that one must cut the edges that one wants to keep with the back side of the blade, so the pieces you want must be cut long and trimmed; and lots more, although there are still plenty of buttons that I have no idea of the purpose of. Thank you Matt! I owe you a broadside and a beer!

I took the day off of work Tuesday to mix my ink. Amy was there and helped me a great deal. She made me feel a lot better about using plain old black for my type pass, pointing out that not only would the play of light and shadow created by the impression of the type be as good as having a third color, black would look very handsome and not dull at all on the fine blue paper. She was exactly right.

Finally, with only a short sandwich and coffee break, I was ready to go on press. Robert (one of the TAs) and Brian (one of my classmates) assisted me on the Vandercook Number 4. Getting everything set up just right took a long time. Now and then, things like this make me realize that I take a long time at many, many things. Getting the alignment just right was hard, and I couldn't get the measurements to all add up, so I was convinced that the page or something was crooked. Robert had to gently upbraid me for trying to do everything with measurements and arithmetic and not just setting the thing up, straightening it up on press, and printing. I wonder who is right and in what context. Certainly I like to be meticulous and precise in my measurements in woodworking and that kind of thing; otherwise you wind up with crooked kayaks and downdraft tables that don't seal. But when in Rome...

We got through the first pass, producing 48 good pieces out of 60 that I cut. About a third of the spoilage was the expected test pieces during setup, while we got the alignment and ink coverage nailed down. Another third came from not adding ink until a piece came out without enough ink, which one can learn to avoid by listening to the inking rollers and adding ink before you run short. I need to work on that. Finally, I wrecked a disgusting number by forgetting to set the trip/print lever to print, producing only a faint and smudging impression.

That left about half an hour in class, so we cleaned up and Amy scheduled me to print the second pass—just the linocut, with my blue ink—with Robert on Sunday. Twelve hours away as of this writing. I went in today, got out my blue ink, brayered it onto my lino block, and pulled an ink proof onto one of the almost-but-not-quite-fully-inked spoiled pages. I was concerned about whether my blue was going to look good on the blue paper. It is. I've got a beta copy (I pencilled in a beta where the edition number would go) and I'm very happy with it. I only hope there's enough blue ink to get me through all 48. If not, I'll have to see if I can squeeze in another run later. At least if that happens I'll have a chance to use a different color, which would be interesting.