Attention is the new currency

After a night of mulling things over, I've realized I must return to the research component of this project, especially after visiting the Mecca of handmade covers. Anacortes (pop. 16,000) has a long history of doing this sort of thing, which has its roots, as I have gathered, with Bret Lunsford bringing in weird new records and tapes to The Business (Anacortes record store) and starting the Knw-Yr-Own label. (Please correct me here if I miss anything) Very few of the weird records were bought in this small town, and a few people released music on tape with his record label. Phil Elvrum was hanging out at the store quite a bit in the mid-nineties during high school and making zines and cassette inserts in the backroom with Bret's newfangled Xerox machine. Now Phil is creating his own music, runs a label and print shop and collaborates with other musicians in the locale. Bret manages Anacortes' What the Heck Fest, a four day festival to showcase Anacortes and bands from around Washington and the Pacific Northwest. Karl Blau, who's in the band D+ with Phil and Bret runs a mail order service in which subscribers receive handmade album art and goodies with a CD. Meanwhile, an old firestation has been converted into the Department of Safety, an all ages venue and residency for artists and musicians. In other words, this small town in Northern Washington is ripe with people supporting music, art and creativity, and challenging the common held belief that small towns are not culturally valid spaces. It is no wonder that it had some of the most striking handmade pieces.

One of the central questions of this journey/project is "why make handmade covers?" To some, this question is so obvious and the answer so self-evident, but it's a difficult one to articulate nonetheless. A figure in Minneapolis told me that album covers provide the visual complement to the sonic piece and that it's a way to make one's work more conceptually holistic. While this answer gets at why we have these physical objects around in the first place, (other than for buying and selling purposes) the statement could hold equally as true for commercially printed record jackets as well. Handmade things that exhibit any sort of creativity is an indicator of a celebration of life was an explanation that a Seattle record store owner offered to me. A prolific musician and artist out in Anacortes said that he wants to be surrounded with handmade things because they manifest a network of production as well as a community. Later, the same man offered up this statement: "Attention is the new currency."

This somehow resonates with me. People's attention is divided all the time. How does a band with a myspace page (or not) grab someone's attention? How can one step out of a crowd of thousands all raising their hands yelling, "pick me!"? Everyone with a computer, or a four-track, and an internet connection can produce something of value--the tools of production are in the hands of everyone. One way to do this is to invest more attention into the product that one is selling, giving or trading to others. When you invest more attention, people are perhaps more willing to give more of theirs in exchange.

This has probably been the case with handmade covers since the beginning; now even more so given the current technological state of things. There were probably more reasons back in the 80s, but we'll talk more on that later, after I make a trip down to Olympia in the next few days.

later,
James

PS someone said I should post more record covers on flickr. This will happen soon, as it is a great idea