Well, dear readers, you just knew that I would share the cover of the new Sandy Bainum album just as soon as I could, didn’t you? You just knew I would and so I shall. The packaging for this one is as superb as the Christmas album – it’s like that one, a digi-pack, and it’s filled with stunning photographs and fun notes from Sandy, Lanny Meyers and little ol’ me. Now, Sandy is a stunningly beautiful woman, so we all knew we’d have nice photos. But was also knew we wanted a certain feeling from the packaging – we wanted it to be appealing and welcoming and we wanted it to reflect the album’s title: Simply. Poor Doug Haverty was sent 1000s of photos to choose from. He narrowed that down to a few hundred, which we all saw. Sandy had a couple she liked that weren’t in his picks, so we added to that, and then I went through the narrowed down stuff and chose my favorites, which were about seven images. I then asked Doug to just come up with a few cover ideas, which he did. Happily, one of the ones he mocked up was one of my seven favorites and that’s the one I responded to instantly. It just had that indefinable something one wants from a cover and it kind of did exactly what I was hoping it would do. If I’m remembering correctly, he’d originally used a different font on that cover idea, but I had him swap it out for the title font I loved from one of the other cover ideas.
Sandy liked several of the ideas, but she was great about deferring to Doug and I for the final decision – in the end, everyone agreed with the one I liked, and, of course, we got to use all the other photos we loved on the digi-pack and inside in the twelve-page booklet. This should be going to the printers this week, and these digi-packs take about two weeks to turnaround – once we have them, then the actual pressing only takes a day, so sometime in mid-October we’ll announce the CD. So, here’s the cover.
I just love that photo and love Doug’s design and I hope you do, too. And here’s a little teaser – we already had the teaser of the title song, and here’s Where or When. This is my arrangement – I’d been wanting to either sing or record the song for fifteen years. I just love it’s haunted quality and what it says – gorgeous melody, gorgeous lyric. But I wanted to do something interesting to it, something no one had ever done. I tried various pop feels, and didn’t like any of them. I played and played with it, to no avail. And then about a year-and-a-half ago I went back to it and was fooling around at the piano and just hit on the idea – a what if idea – what if we did it with kind of a Kurt Weill feel? As soon as I went down that road it just seemed so right to me. When I threw together an act for singer Karen Gedissman she did the arrangement, but we never had enough rehearsal time to truly have it the way I knew it needed to be. When I played it for Sandy, she loved it, and Lanny responded well to it, so we decided to put it on the album. And what Lanny came up with for the orchestration was just amazing – I just broke out in a huge smile when we ran it down the first time with the orchestra. It did everything I wanted it to do and then Lanny thought of stuff I hadn’t even dreamed of. So, here’s our take on Where or When with Sandy doing the song proud.
So, yesterday was a long day. I was up at six in the morning to announce the new Kritzerland release, and I was back in bed by six-twenty and back asleep by six-thirty. The phone rang twice in a row around nine o’clock, but I didn’t answer – I was having a really kind of delicious dream and I somehow managed to get myself back to sleep AND back in the dream, which doesn’t happen very often. I woke up and found that it was eleven-thirty, so I think I did all right, sleep-wise. But I then had to rush my morning ablutions so I could make my noon lunch with singer/songwriter Harriet Schock.
Lunch was really fun. Harriet is a delightful and down-to-earth woman and a wonderful songwriter. We chatted about all manner of things, she gave me some CDs to listen to, and we were there for quite some time. I had my ham and Swiss on rye. After that, I went and picked up a couple of packages, then came home. I had a lot of orders to print out, and I began writing the commentary for Sandy’s album launch show that we put together when she was here a few weeks ago. Then I did a three-mile jog, planked, and did thirty-five sit-ups. Then the helper came by and got the invoices and CDs will ship in the morning.
Then I went to Gelson’s but didn’t find anything I wanted, so instead I went to Subway and got a foot-long Subway club for my evening foodstuff. It was good and that and the sandwich coupled with the jog, probably netted me out at 1000 calories or thereabouts. I got the replacement Blu and Ray player and hooked it up – it works perfectly save for the wireless doohickey – I inserted it but it doesn’t seem to be able to glom on to my wireless network. When we did that with my other region-free player (same brand) it found my wireless network instantly. So, I may have to have the guy who installed that come over and see if he can figure it out. I’ll also have him swap out the HDMI cable for the one that came with the player – I think it’s a much better cable. Once the wireless is fixed, I’ll be able to stream and watch You Tube on the TV. Then I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched most of a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled Hatari, and import from the UK, but region-free. I’ve always had a soft spot for Hatari – I loved it when it came out, and thought it had breathtaking photography that really shone on the 35mm IB Tech prints. I wish I could say the Blu-ray looked great, but alas it doesn’t. While it’s obviously scads better than the DVD, it lacks detail it should have and it’s all rather soft looking. They may have used an older transfer and put some DNR on it – I don’t know and it doesn’t matter – the color is nice, but it should be razor sharp and look incredible and sadly that’s not the case.
Today, I shall finish writing Sandy’s commentary and get that to her so she can learn it. Then I will hopefully print out more orders, we’ll ship CDs, I’ll eat, hopefully I’ll pick up some packages, I’ll do a jog, and then I have to go look at a theater space in the evening.
Then it’s more meetings and meals and meals and meetings, including another trip to The Smoke House, seeing Little Shop of Horrors and other stuff.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, ship CDs, hopefully print out more orders, finish writing Sandy’s commentary, eat, and look at a theater space. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite films involving animals – where an animal of some sort plays a prominent role? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall quote a line from a TV show involving one of my favorite animals: Hi-yo, Silver, away!