box vox

Pageviews as Burgers: a package design blog McMilestone

Not that I’m all breathlessly over the moon about this, but I noticed a couple of months ago that box vox’s pageviews had exceeded the 1 million mark. Never mind that it’s taken three years for this to happen. If pageviews were burgers I’d be supersized. If page views were dollars I’d be rich. (But not super-rich.)

It took Andrew Gibbs and the dieline only a year to hit the same milestone, but in the competion for pageviews among package design blogs, I’m embracing the philosophy espoused in The Belle Brigade’s #1 hit song, Losers.

One package designer’s repudiation of American exceptionalism? (Or just sour grapes?)

(Official “Losers” video, after the fold...)

Yesterday And Today

Yesterday I read in the Times, that photographer, Robert Whitaker has died.

Today I’m learning more about the two photos he took that were each used as the cover photo for the Beatles’ “Yesterday and Today” LP.

I knew that both photos were sometimes there simultaneously, one on top of the other.

I first learned about the “butcher” cover in 1969 when was in 9th or 10th grade. Visiting Clarissa and her fraternal twin sister, Clara, I noticed that their copy of the Yesterday and Today album looked different from the one I had. The title font was the same (“Siegfried” by Dieter Steffmann) but the photo was different.

I was amazed to hear that, by peeling off the photo of the Beatles with the prop trunk, Clarissa had revealed the photo of the Beatles with the prop doll parts and raw meat, printed underneath.

She told me that it was some kind of censorship thing—that people had been offended by the raw meat in conjunction with the doll parts on the original cover.

I remember going straight home and peeling up a corner of the photo on my copy of the record and being pretty bummed out that I did not find any hidden raw meat.

Reaction was immediate, as Capitol received complaints from some dealers. The record was immediately recalled under orders from Capitol parent company EMI chairman Sir Joseph Lockwood ...

Capitol initially ordered plant managers to destroy the covers, and the Jacksonville plant delivered most of its copies to a landfill. However, faced with so many jackets already printed, Capitol decided instead to paste a much more conventional cover over the old ones. The new cover, featuring a picture of a less-than-content band posed around an open steamer trunk, had to be trimmed on the open end by about 3 mm (1/8 inch) because the new sheet, known as a “slick”, was not placed exactly “square” on top of the original cover. Tens of thousands of these so-called “Trunk” covers were sent out. As word of this manoeuvre became known to the public, owners of the altered cover attempted, usually unsuccessfully, to peel off the pasted-over cover, hoping to reveal the original image hidden beneath. Eventually, the soaring value and desirability of unpasted-over Butcher covers spurred the development of intricate and complex techniques for peeling the Trunk cover off in such a way that only faint horizontal glue lines remained on the original cover...

from Wikipedia’s entry about “Yesterday and Today”

What surprises me now, is to learn the extent to which a whole cottage industry with special terminology has sprung up around this minor branding fiasco and the concealed album covers.

Copies that have never had the white cover pasted onto them, known as “first state” covers, are very rare and command the highest prices. Copies with the pasted-on cover intact above the butcher image are known as “second state” or “pasteovers”; today, pasteover covers that have remained unpeeled are also becoming increasingly rare and valuable. Covers that have had the Trunk cover removed to reveal the underlying butcher image are known as “third state” covers; these are now the most common (and least valuable, although their value varies depending on how well the cover is removed) as people continue to peel second state covers. The most valuable and highly prized First and Second State Butcher Covers are those that were never opened and remain still sealed in their original shrink wrap. Since the first documented collector’s sale of a mono Butcher cover LP in 1974, which fetched US $457.00, the value of first state mono versions has consistently appreciated by around 100% per year.

In 1987, former president of Capitol Records, Alan Livingston released for sale twenty-four “first state” butcher covers from his private collection. When the original cover was scrapped in June 1966, Livingston took a case of already-sealed “Butcher” albums from the warehouse before they were to be pasted over with the new covers, and kept them in a closet at his home. These albums were first offered for sale at a Beatles convention at the Marriott Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport on Thanksgiving weekend 1987 by Livingston’s son. These still-sealed pristine items, which included nineteen mono and five stereo versions, are the very rarest “pedigree” specimen “Butcher Covers” in existence. These so-called “Livingston Butchers” today command premium prices among collectors, the five stereo versions being the most rare and valuable of these. In April 2006, Heritage Auction Galleries sold one of the sealed mono “Livingston Butchers” at auction in Dallas for about $39,000.

There are also websites specifically devoted to devotees of this record cover — thebutchercover.com, for example.

(More photos from Robert Whitaker’s “butcher” session, after the fold...)

Banks Beer Cigarette Pack Radio

One of these Things is Not Like the Others

This collection of cigarette pack radios includes a changling. Although the all of the radios above appears to be flip-top crush-proof cigarette boxes, “Banks” is actually a beer brand. (via: AntiqueRadios.com forums)

(Banks Beer bottles, etc., after the fold..)

Winston Cigarette Pack Radio

In 2009 we did a round up of package shaped transistor radios, which incuded a Marlboro Cigarettes radio. Here now is another vintage, cigaratte-pack-shaped, transistor radio. This time the brand is Winton. (via: Hakes.)

Cigarette radios, generally came packaged in a slightly larger “crush proof box” ... a fake pack of cigarettes containing a fake pack of cigarettes.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

“God Save The Tea” Jamie Reid and Specificity in Punk Package Design

Make International’s “Punk Range” china (designed by Keith Brymer Jones) comes in a carton that references two different Sex Pistols record sleeves, originally designd by Jamie Reid.

Reid’s ransom-note collage technique came to typify “punk” style in the 1970s, but it’s surprising how many packaged products there are today that reference these two specific designs: 1. the “God Save the Queen” single sleeve (& poster) and 2. the LP cover for “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.”

As an American, I had the orange version of Never Mind the Bollocks, and I loved the intensity of the fluorescent orange, but I recognize that the earlier British release has more in the way of provenance. (See also: Talking Heads 77 fluorescent orange packaging)

(More, after the fold...)

Foundry

Also found at Gift Fair: Packaging for Tatine Candles “Foundry” line. The industrial vibe of these chipboard boxes caught our attention. The company’s founder explains Foundry’s package design this way:

“FOUNDRY Materialized from my love of industrial warehouses, design, and objet’, vintage motorcycles and the men who ride them, and of course, Rock n’ Roll. I admire history and craftsmanship in old buildings + things, how they were made and how they work. The collection reflects heavyweight found objects, completely handmade and re purposed in recycled glassware with vintage motorcycle racing numbers. The thick recycled chipboard box includes a copper grommet and leather pull...

The concept was in my head and designed and collaborated with perfection by the darling Becki, my beloved designer.”

Margo Breznik, Top Notes (The Tatine Candles Blog)

“Becki” referred to above, must be Rebecca Snyder of A La Mode Designs—(the same firm that designed and developed the Tatine Candle website.)

“On press” on left; “die” for die-cutting the boxes, on right

We weren’t the only ones who admired Foundry’s package design. It won “Best in Show” for NYIGF’s 2011 Extracts category.

(One more photo, after the fold...)

Accordion Packs

Although one of the packages above is literally an accordion-shaped package, by “accordion pack” I really mean it more generally, as packages, designed “with features resembling an accordion or its bellows.”

With a need to contain varying quantities of a product, the bellows-like ability to smoothly expand and contract is a useful feature that many packages aspire to. The folded gusset of the once ubiquitous brown paper bag is, perhaps, the simplest application of this mechanism.

Here are 5 (more recent) examples:

1. Auberge du Soleil’s “squeeze box” package (designed by Evelio Mattos of Design Packaging Inc.) uses an accordion-like structure, first to protect, and then to expose its contents...

Built completely out of folding board, the squeeze box concept developed for Auberge du Soleil Napa Valley is 100% recyclable. The hand-made truffles are well protected by the internal divider which moves with the box and allows for optimal product display.

Evelio Mattos, LuxCrux

2. Camille Bloch’s “Accordéon” is an assortment of 6 Swiss chocolate bars, contained in a “twin-pack” of tins, connected by a bellows. According to Global Packaging Gallery, this package includes a “music module which plays Swiss music.” I’m interpreting that to mean that the bellows are merely conceptual, that electronic accordian music is emitted and that this package is a simulacrum and not a fully functioning “wind instrument.” (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

 

3. Popular Noise’s record cover construction for their series of 3-issue “record releases” is also an accordion related package. (via: The Dieline) The bellows-like expansion, is particularly remarkable, considering it appears to be made from a single, unglued piece of rectangular paper:

“The packaging folds out to a beautiful letter-pressed poster containing information about the Journal, the musicians, and the compositional process.”

–The Journal of Popular Noise

(Examples 4 & 5, after the fold...)

Package-Related Music Packaging

Assuming that we can still call album “cover” artwork that accompanies a digital download “packaging” then the image above is surely part of a package-related music package. The cover of Edison’s free “Dehydrated Water” EP is obviously a roughly retouched version of the Bernard Dehydrated Water can that we were looking at yesterday.

Another Edison release—in collaboration with Evak—is also package-related and, in this case, there is an actual (albiet “Limited Edition”) release. Six Pack O’Death simulates the look, if not feel, of a Budweiser beer label. Artwork by Mildew.

(See also: S.A.P. and Immortal Water)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Older Guys with Record Player Cars (3 Kinds)

While looking at engine-shaped recordings, I noticed that there were three kinds of record-player car:

A. cars with built-in record players...

The video does not show this car’s owner, but I consider bandleader, Lawrence Welk to be the spiritual father of the onboard car record-player. (Since he appears in 1956 ads as a spokeman for the new gadget)

B. toy cars that play records... 

There’s lots of “vinyl killer” commentary about this device but I like the appreciative “Record Runner” video from Grand Illusions the best. The gent demonstrating is Tim Rowett.

C. cars that are made out of record players...

This would make a better story, visually, if the record player parts that Martin Gutierrez Sandoval had used to customize his VW were more signifying of record players—like say the turntables or the stylus arms—but whatever part that is that he had 2,470 of (by the time he had retired from the Gerrard record player factory) they do give his ultra-ventilated car, a delicately lacy look.

Interesting that 2 out of 3 of our record-player cars are VW. (See Also: Volkswagen Box)

About the older guys: the only question in my mind is “Which kind do I want to be?”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Motor-Shaped Music Packaging

And as long as we’ve brought up engine-shaped beverage packaging, it’s also worth noting that there are also some engine-shaped music packages out there.

On left, from 1986, a Mike and the Mechanics engine-shape 45 “picture disk.” (See a photo of the back at Newtown Rare Records)

On right, one of a series of “American Motorcycles” motor-shaped CDs from UMAP Team Berlin. Housed in conventional CD jewel boxes, the CDs, in this case, are shaped like motorcycle engines...

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Rauschenberg’s Record Cover

Limited edition Talking Heads' album Speaking in Tongues (Photos from: Your Money Is No Good Here)

In addition to sometimes using packaging to make art, Robert Rauschenberg was also occasionally asked to design a package.

From David Byrne’s 2008 NY Times Op-Ed remembrance of Rauschenberg:

I approached Bob Rauschenberg in the mid-’80s to design a cover for the Talking Heads record “Speaking in Tongues.”

...It was not unusual for a pop musician to approach a fine artist in those days; other contemporary artists had collaborated with pop bands in the late ’60s and early ’70s. I was pleasantly surprised, though, when Bob, who died this week, eschewed simply reproducing a work on the album jacket in favor of re-envisioning what the whole LP package could be.

His package consisted of a conceptual collage piece in which the color separation layers — the cyan, magenta and yellow images that combined to make one full-color image — were, well, deconstructed. Only by rotating the LP and the separate plastic disc could one see — and then only intermittently — the three-color images included in the collage. It was a transparent explication of how the three-color process works, yet in this case, one could never see all the full-color images at the same time, as Bob had perversely scrambled the separations.

Needless to say, the design posed some production problems for Warner Bros. Records, so it ended up a limited, but very large, 50,000-copy edition, released in addition to the regular, mass-produced version. Luckily, everyone shared in the crazy idea of making radical art that could also be popular. Nowadays there might be concerns about the return on investment, but at that time the label let these matters slide.

I later became friends with Bob and his collaborators, and it was an incredible world to enter. I sensed immediately that Bob had never become cynical about his work. Even after he found success, he continued to see the world as a work of art that simply hadn’t been framed yet.

... Bob drank heavily. In the ’80s, I discovered him once at his studio on Lafayette Street, in mid-afternoon, with a glass of Jack in his hand. I, rock ’n’ roll guy, was amazed to see an established artist living one aspect of the rock ’n’ roll life much more intensely than I ever dared. I did wonder if some of the beautiful jumps and leaps in his conversation were partly alcohol-related, but his output remained transcendent, so I figured he was managing it.

Being around Bob was often like being on some kind of ecstatic drug — he inspired those around him to not only think outside of the box, but to question the box’s very existence.

Bob the Builder, By David Byrne
NY Times, May 16, 2008

Rauschenberg also won a Grammy Award for the Speaking in Tongues album cover art. Regarding the “production problems” Byrne alluded to, Frieze Magazine notes:

It took the Talking Heads half a year to find a company that could make Robert Rauschenberg’s Speaking in Tongues cover for them. Keyboard player Jerry Harrison finally turned to a firm that made Oscar Meyer hot dog packaging. Apparently it’s not that easy to find a company to vacu-form a clear vinyl record.

New Feeling, by Jennifer Kabat
Frieze Magazine, March 3, 2008

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Bobby Grossman’s Corn Flakes, Die Originalen

“I photographed a number of friends eating Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. The idea originated at RISD when I took a Mick Rock photo of Lou Reed and put it on a box of German Kellogg’s Corn Flakes... You can find a photo of Andy holding the box in Victor Bockris’ Lou Reed biography.” [above left]

–Bobby Grossman

The photo on right is Grossman’s original photograph. (thank you, Bobby!) A color photo of the box was also published in an illustration annual sometime in the 1970s and a black & white photo of the box was featured in the NY Rocker. (shown below)

Yesterday’s post was about the famous (but not infamous) people who are allowed to appear on Kellogg’s Corn Flakes boxes. But it was this subversive take on their package, by photographer, Bobby Grossman, that first set me thinking about cereal boxes as a new, heavily censored type of media.

Ostensibly all-American—(Kellogg’s featured an American flag on one recent version of their corn flakes box)—but they’re really a multi-national, hence: a German box from the 1970s. Onto this already somewhat foreign backdrop, Grossman superimposed as unlikely a mainstream cereal box hero as can be imagined: Lou reed in black leather & black nail polish.

On left: Bobby Grossman’s Corn Flakes box (with appropriated Mick Rock photo) as it appear in the NY Rocker (via: SFview’s Flickr Photostream); on right: photo by Grossman of Warhol eating corn flakes

As a photographer, Grossman then proceeded with a series of unauthorized endorsement shots. Celebrities, but not the sort of celebrities that Kellogg’s generally celebrated. Andy Warhol (of course) but aside from him, mostly musicians...

Photos by Bobby Grossman of David Byrne, Deborah Harry, and David Johansen eating corn flakes

Do musicians in particular have some special affinity for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes? I’ve read that John Lennon wrote a song based on a particular Kellogg’s television commercial jingle...

“Good Morning Good Morning” is a song composed by (credited to Lennon/McCartney) and performed by The Beatles on the 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Inspiration for the song came to Lennon from a television commercial for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. The jingle went: “Good morning, good morning, The best to you each morning, Sunshine Breakfast, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Crisp and full of fun”.

from Wikipedia’s entry on Good Morning Good Morning

And there’s also the Robert Hilburn book entitled “Corn Flakes with John Lennon.”

But the irony of Lennon using corn flakes advertising as a critique of the middle class, pales in comparison to the irony of Lou Reed on a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box.

Certainly if Kellogg’s would pull Michael Phelps boxes from their shelves due to pot smoking, they’re not likely to feature the author of a song entitled “Heroin” on their cereal. But the irony runs deeper still...

According to Grossman, his idea for putting Reed’s picture on the box “originated in 1974 while listening to Sally Can’t Dance.”

 So considering that Lou Reed’s “Sally Can’t Dance” album includes, “Kill Your Sons” a song about Reed’s electroshock therapy as a teenager in the 1960s...

Reed received electroconvulsive therapy in his teen years to “cure” homosexual behavior; he wrote about the experience in his 1974 song, “Kill Your Sons”. In an interview, Reed said of the experience:

    They put the thing down your throat so you don’t swallow your tongue, and they put electrodes on your head. That’s what was recommended in Rockland County to discourage homosexual feelings. The effect is that you lose your memory and become a vegetable. You can’t read a book because you get to page 17 and have to go right back to page one again.

from Wikipedia’s entry on Lou Reed

And considering the history of Kellogg’s founder, John Harvey Kellogg...

One of the leading advocates of circumcision was John Harvey Kellogg, who is well known for his pseudoscientific views on human sexuality. He advocated the consumption of Kellogg’s corn flakes to prevent masturbation, and he believed that circumcision would be an effective way to eliminate masturbation in males.

from Wikipedia’s entry on Male Circumcision

But Kellogg’s antisexual advice did not end with corn flakes & circumcision. Electrical shocks also came highly recommended as a cure for unwanted sexual impulses.

Electricity.—Probably no single agent will accomplish more than this remedy when skillfully applied. It needs to be carefully used, and cannot be trusted in the hands of those not acquainted with the physical properties of the remedy and scientific methods of applying it.

John Harvey Kellogg
Plain Facts for Old and Young, 1881

(For more about John Harvey Kellogg, see: Porn Flakes)

Also chilling: Kellogg was among the early proponents of the American Eugenics movement and helped the found “Race Betterment Foundation” in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Eugenics was practiced in the United States many years before eugenics programs in Nazi Germany (and in fact, U.S. programs provided much of the inspiration for the latter).

from Wikipedia’s entry on Eugenics in the United States

So for all these reasons, I say, Grossman’s Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, die originalen box with the Mick Rock photo of Lou Reed (a Jewish boy from Long Island), strikes me as ultra-ironic.

(Another Die Originalen irony, after the fold...)

Ouzo Bottles

Time to put some of our reference material into the recycling, but I wanted to at least take a picture first: an ad hoc collection of ouzo bottles from Annabouboula guitarist, George Sempepos. Given to us to provide some style cues for the cover image of their Immortal Water packaging. (inset)

See: their review at Lucid Culture. (See also: Bouzouki-bots)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Zipper/Banana Mash-Up

The cover of The Dandy Warhols’ 2003 album, “Welcome to the Monkey House” featured this painting by Ron English. (a mash-up of the 2 aforementioned Andy Warhol album covers: Velvet Underground “banana“ & Rolling Stones “zipper”)

See also: Bananagrams

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Sticky Fingers Packaging: Zipper vs Tin Can

1. Zipper

Like The Velvet Underground’s “banana” album cover with its novel peeling banana sticker, the other well-known Andy Warhol produced album cover (the Rolling Stone’s “Sticky Fingers” on left) also had novel, conceal/reveal packaging gimmick: a functional zipper, beneath which was another photo of the same model wearing jockey briefs. (See also: Packaging Junk)

Warhol’s chief collaborator for this (as well as the Velvet’s banana cover) was actor & graphic designer Craig Braun. The success of the project was nearly derailed when the zipper packaging began damaging the product:

...a problem was to arise when the first pressings were shipped. Stacking the albums on top of each other caused the zip to press into the album above. This succeeded in damaging the vinyl, ruining side 2, track 3: Sister Morphine. The designer, Craig Braun, was threatened by the record’s distribution label Atlantic, with a substantial lawsuit—but he was to come up with an ingenious, yet simple, solution whilst “very depressed and very high” of pulling down the zipper before shipping so that any damage would only occur to the central label.

–Nick James

2. Tin Can

The album on the right was the alternate cover (designed by Hispavox Records) released in General Franco’s Spain, when authorities objected to the suggestive zipper package. Not the most appetizing of product placements for Fowler’s West Indian Treacle, but this was probably before anyone had ever thought of suing for product displacement. Note the vintage-style bull’s head can-opener. (via: Sleevage)

(After the fold: Jagger writes to Warhol, “Please write back saying how much money you would like.“)

The Velvet Underground: Book & Banana

Only collectible because of the influential band that named themselves after a copy they found in the street: this 1963 paperback “The Velvet Underground” by Michael Leigh (on left) was given to me as a birthday present around 1983–84. (from someone in another rather influential band)

Can’t say I’ve ever read it cover to cover, but I like the whippy “T” typography and have kept it in its protective plastic for 28 years. (Also: am I crazy or is the S&M boot illustration by Paul Bacon Studio on the cover kind of related to Warhol’s early shoe illustration work?)

The book on the right was a 1968 follow up sequel. (Nice that it features a photo of the earlier book.)

Also collectible: the first Velvet Underground album (below left)—the one with the peel-able yellow banana skin sticker. (We have one of those too, but only because Debby was cool enough to buy one and her records are mixed in with mine.) It always struck me funny how Andy Warhol’s signature was so prominent with no mention at all of the Velvet Underground or Nico on the front cover. Similar to Robert Brownjohn’s humorously arrogant stationery design for Michael Cooper. (Of course there might have been more information on a label affixed to the disposable shrink-wrap...)

The album with the green banana (on right) is the 2007 “Unripened” bootleg LP, made from an acetate pressing of an earlier version of the official 1967 release. (different mixes, different takes, etc.)

On the original cover the small printed instructions read, “PEEL SLOWLY AND SEE”;  the instructions next to the green banana read, “UNRIPENED LISTEN SLOWLY AND HEAR.”

There are lots of other versions of (and allusions to) this album cover, and Warhol’s silkscreened banana design has been pretty influential in its own right.

(A bootleg book/record cover and some related Warhol/Velvets banana merchandise, after the fold...)

Back in the Boxes

Packaging for two products, each called “Back in the Box”

1. Back in the Box™ by Classic Games Company was a packing puzzle in which 17 tetrahedra of various sizes are fit back into a cube-shaped box.

Despite rectangular box inside, the shape of the package is more exotic. Appears to be rectangular box with one corner truncated to make a triangular top flap. A rare example of polyhedral puzzle packaging reflecting its unusually shaped contents, the truncated corner simulates the shape of the tetrahedrons inside. (Photos, on right and above, left are from Baxter Web Puzzles)

2. “Back in the Box” the 1994 seven-song "David Byrne" CD: design and photography by Deborah Norcross.

I like the blurry photo of the little box, and of course I want to know, what did it once contain that we are now meant to imagine going back in the box?

Note: track one is parenthetically entitled, “Vox in the Box mix” 

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Tattooed Consumer Packaged Goods

We’ve already touched on CPG tattoos yesterday and last week. Here now is a fuller accounting of the product range that some loyal consumers are wearing. Permanently.

Note: The upper right photo of the man with the Hellmann’s Mayonnaise tattoo is © by Robert “Ferd” Frank who played in a band called the Aerovons and recorded an album called Resurrection [album cover here] at Abbey Road in 1969 and who later played bass with John Cougar Mellencamp.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

 

Bouzouki-bots & Ionic Ouzo Bottle Caps

After yesterday’s post about Annabouboula’s ouzo-style CD package, it might have been nice to do a whole “Greek Week,” but I only have enough material for a Greek couple of days... Think of it as a mid-week “Greek Weekend.” I try not to blog on the actual weekend. (Seldom on Saturday. Never on Sunday.)

The bouzouki-shaped ouzo bottle (shown above, left and center) is part of the same figural bottle tradition that brought us other stinged-instrument bottles: viobots and banjobots. Are bouzouki-shaped bottles called “bouzoukibots?” I don’t know, but I’m guessing they are highly collectible.

The column-shaped Ouzo bottle on the right features a large Ionic capital as a bottle cap and is obviously a prized collectible object.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Immortal Water

Finally got a chance to design some more music packaging—a cross-referential CD package with an Ouzo-style bottle label for Annabouboula’s long awaited 3rd album, Immortal Water.

The Greek expression “annabouboula” means a confusing noise that aouses passion. We present to you a collection of Greek songs, some old and some new, that convey our confusion and our passion. Our confusion is an ingredient of our identities: Greeks of the Diaspora dreaming of the Greece of a recent past that no longer exists (if indeed it ever existed), as we confront the Greece of the present. Our passion is the main ingredient of Immortal Water, a life-giving potion that flows from the soul and is a distillation of all the varied music we love. We all imagine ourselves, and this is the modern Greek music of our imaginations.

Annabouboula, the band, is the preeminent Greek-American trio consisting of producer/anthropologist Chris Lawrence, guitarist George Barba Yiorgi¹, and singer, Anna Paidoussi.

The title track of the new album is based on Marika Papagika’s 1928 recording of a traditional karsilamas 9/8 folk tune of Greek Asia Minor...

“From your sweet eyes, aman aman, immortal water does run; And I asked you for a little bit, aman aman, and to drink you gave me none”

Aidhinikos Horos (The Magic Fountain of Your Eyes)

Tears, fountains, Ouzo, shipwrecks, mermaids... clearly, there are deeper meanings for “Immortal Water” than are dreamt of in my philosophy, but from my limited, mono-cultural perspective, I just really like the idea of “bottled tears” as Annabouboula’s new consumer product.

What they did was take a traditional belly dance and rembetiko music (smokey Greek blues) and electrify them, adding a funky rhythm and a wild psychedelic undertow to these dark and moody songs of passion and heartbreak.

Wikipedia entry on Annabouboula

And the music? The swooping keyboard riff—(a descending glissando, I think it’s called)—in the very first song (Hello Sailor) worked on me like a (psychedelic) undertow and carried me happily out to sea for the duration. (Hear for yourself!)

(Footnoted Digressions, after the fold...)