Liner Notes For My First Album

I just know that the recording industry needs a guy like me. I will be the cash cow they have been looking for now that Micheal Jackson is dead, and will kick out multi-platinum albums like I'm tearing through a six-pack. I just haven't decided what medium I should shoot for yet.

Every time I mention my writing to my buddy, Franklinton, he tells me that I should learn to write songs, as he heard John Cougar Melloncamp say that once you learned how, it was the easiest thing in the world. I know nothing about writing songs as I'm not musical at all, but I enjoy music and could make for a very dynamic front-man for some aspiring band. Well, it's either that or go with a spoken word/comedy album and maybe that's more up my alley, even if it will be a much harder sell to the record execs.

Either way, I still have to come up with this awesome and timeless first album and that might take a while. So for the time being, I'll just have to hammer out the liner notes and make sure I get all of my thank-you's and shout-out's straight.

The cover art will be a black-n-white photo of me in a trenchcoat on a wet city street and the only color will be the flames of a burning barrel. The title of the album needs to be familiar but edgey like, "Bernadette Peters' G-String" or "Rectal Thermometer 9" or something. I'll have to work on that.

At the top of the opening page has to be a list of the band members, what they played, and which songs they appeared on. This might take up most of the first page as I'm going to need a couple of different horn sections, but this can all be ironed out later.

Next will come the long list of rat-bastards who made shit loads of money off of my genius, such as the producer, the three assistant producers, various ad agencies, my manager, every S.O.B. at the sorry ass label I manage to corral into publishing my masterpiece, the mixer, on down to the coffee boy, and the janitor.

This will be followed by the names of various "handlers" that the record company hired to keep me out of Christian Science reading rooms, public fountains, and political debates. They will also have been responcible for the right "aspirins", my grapefruit addiction, and shots of B12 being adminstered at the right time. These dim-witted thugs will for the first time see their names in print and it won't be in the court records section of the paper.

At this point the band is going to want to see their friends and managers names, but since I am the true backbone of the entire band, I will only allow them a small postage stamp sized space in the liner notes, right next to the Parental Warning on the last page. I think that's only fitting.

The second page must be a photo that is moodily lit, again in black-n-white, of...oh I dunno, a dead dove or some tooth paste or something. Might give it a tragically romantic feel maybe, but I'm thinking there might need to be just a few drops of blood. Not too many, just three or four. I'll have to call the art department on Monday and see what they can work up. Those lazy bastards will cost me a fortune, as all they want to give me is clip art!

The third page is the next with print, and has the words written in different fonts against a diamond-plate steel background. Maybe spray paint a unicorn with a hand-grenade on the diamond-plate and rough it up a little with a wire brush. Might be a nice touch. After all, this is the page that gives you a long list of the fancy instruments we used on this album as well as web addresses where you can purchase the super expensive items, not to mention where you can join my fan club and get my newsletter, T-shirts, hats, and bumper stickers. It's just one more chance for the corporation to soak up rewards of my brilliance.

Damn their eyes.

I'm thinking that the fifth page should be a collage, but I'm open to ideas.

The sixth and final page will be clogged with ads for how we used Dolby Sound to record this as it "had a much warmer feel" and it reminded us of "listening to The Beatles in mono" or some such B.S. Don't believe a word of it. All of my stuff will be changed in post-production and I won't have the slightest bit of say about it.

But despite them, I'll still go double platinum!

The great thing is, if I make it big, you're all coming with me!

Doc

P.S. - I only noticed on the reread of this that I called this an album and that is showing my age.