Homemade or Not?

So hold the phone for a second. What exactly does this "researcher" mean by homemade? How does he get to choose what's homemade and what's not? After all, he's taking the photos of records, and supposedly, only the records he photographs are homemade. What if he misses something, or he deliberately leaves something out? He's never really gone into the Latin or Traditional Eastern European Polka sections in every store. What if there's a whole subculture of Polka nerds who feel like a limited edition of 300 homemade album covers made out of their late grandma's skirts would serve as the perfect visual complement to the auditory waltz?

Perhaps his methodology is flawed. Maybe he's lazy. There are homemade Avant Garde jazz records out there in the Jazz sections of record stores, believe it or not, but he doesn't talk about those. Why doesn't he comb through those cases of records like he does with the experimental and punk sections? He's probably missing some crucial local free jazz scene that is on the brink of blowing everyone's mind.

And what's with being selective about what records he actually trades for or –God forbid– purchases, and sends to people for his Homemade Album Art Historical Preservation Society, a mouthful which he refuses to turn into a a bite-size acronym? Is he turning into a fetishist himself? Maybe he has a set of his own aesthetics that he loves to entertain with scantily clad record jackets.

But really, let's not forget about this first question: what does the researcher mean by homemade? It really seems as though the homemade has to be something that's mass-produced, according to his undefined definition. But what of those DJ "white labels" (that usually just consist of putting a label on the vinyl or writing on it in sharpie), bootlegs and inkjet printed covers? So many of those "Punk" records he describes embody the punk aesthetic, but isn't inkjet printer art, done by some dude who recorded onto his laptop, burned CDs and printed the covers done in Microsoft Paint on his Canon 5200, embodying the punk philosophy the most? Is THAT homemade? Why aren't those covers, deserving a medal signed by Iggy Pop, featured in the Record of the Day sidebar?

Here's what we'll do in light of the researcher's pathetic attempts to include his readers: scrap that Record of the Day crap for a day and take a poll. It's a little sketchy, (but not methodologically sketchy like political polls are) since the blog's "gadgets" don't allow true/false yes/no answers, so you'll have to answer to each of the four categories. He's good with math–he'll figure out what the stats mean later. For now, do the poll and we'll find out what the rest of us think.