Your Defining Album

Cafe Society
1

OK, let’s indulge our inner wannabe Music Star for a moment…

Against all odds, you’ve become a Major Music Star- be it as head of a group, on your own, as a DJ, however- it’s not important. All over the planet, Teenagers and Audiophiles are queueing up to buy what whatever you care to commit to vinyl/CD/mp3.

And now, the time has come for your Defining Album. This is the one that will grace all those VH1 “Top 100 ____” shows, the one people will argue about over drinks in the local pub, and the one that, 25 years from now, will inexplicably become enormously popular in some random Middle Eastern Sheikdom.

Your artist or band name isn’t important (but feel free to include it if you like!), nor is the genre of music (people will buy it anyway, because you’re just so cool).

So:

  • The title of your album

  • Something suitably wacky/pretentious as the “meaning” or “inspiration” behind the title

  • A description of the cover art

I’ll get us started:

Keeping the Zulu out of the Kitchen

A couple of years ago I bought an antique Martini-Henry rifle. Naturally, I was a little concerned at how my then girlfriend (now fiancee) would react to me coming home with another gun (even if it was 125 years old), and the guy at the gun shop jokingly suggested I should tell her that it would mean we’d never have to worry about Zulu warriors attacking the house.
Sure enough, I got home, and her reaction was basically “What the hell is THAT and how much did it cost?”, so I told her it was an antique rifle and it would be ideal for protecting the kitchen from impis of marauding Zulu warriors. Ever since then, when someone’s asked what “That old gun” is, she tells them “It’s for keeping the Zulu out of the Kitchen”… and doesn’t that sound like an excellent title for an album? (BTW, that’s a true story!)

The cover art would feature a typical housewife cooking dinner in an ultra-modern kitchen, whilst several British Redcoat soldiers in Zulu War-era uniform lean out of the kitchen windows firing Martini-Henry rifles at an unseen (but presumably Zulu) foe, while other soldiers drink tea at the kitchen table or fossick in the pantry for supplies. It’s just such an interesting mental image, and the type of thing you’d expect to see on classic LP covers.

So unleash your inner Music Star, and describe to us your Defining Album! Groupies sold separately… :wink:

2

Well Barbara. After my ascent to country stardom my wife left me. She likes to say when she met me I was poor, and when she left me I was poor. She ain’t far from wrong. I spent the last six months putting together an album about me and her, and all the hurting she put me through.

Why thank you. I call it “Bitch, you ruined me.”

I can say that on TV? Right Barbara? Might I say you look mighty hot even without the soft light they normal hit you with.

Anyway here you can see the cover. That’s me at my local bar. Interestingly enough I am not lyin’ in my own vomit. At the point they took the pictures all I had left were the dry heaves. But some frat boys had some bad Tamales and were able to cover for me.

Now that is a needle in my arm. Sure, I’m diabetic. Whatever you need to think darlin’. Say Babs, can you hold your liquor?

Right, the album. I got a few songs right here:

You’ll be the one to die alone.

I gave you my love and you gave me VD.

If you take off the ring I’ll pick up the gun.

Mama din’t love me, so why should you.

I won’t hear you cry. (The duct tape song.)

She left me for a lady, and won’t let me watch.

I’d hang myself but you stole the sheets.

Ten beers to love me, ten beers to leave me.

The baby ain’t mine. (The Vasectomy Blues).

Most of ‘em are based on true stories. Say Babs, you got any sleeping pills here? I been dyin’ for a buzz.

3

I love both entries - HeadNinja are all those yours? They should really be songs!

Now I gotta come up with something!

4

My defining album, (after my breakout concept album incorporating both music and cover art into the total package,) will be an Emo/Goth/acoustic psychedelia crossover by the name of “the Sea of Cortez”. (It’s a reference to a Promise Ring song.)

The cover will be an Upstate NY waterfall but blued out. It references both the Sea aspect of the title and my NY roots, as well as the “blue” feeling goth and emo have sometimes. The title could be in Beatles-era wavy font.

It will have a cover of the title song of course, along with a cover of a couple Syd Barrett songs and a cover of Afternoon Delight, sung in a Goth voice, with instrumental bridges from Bolero. (May as well take the most notorious of everything together.)