winter of crows - page 25 (god-damned lying media bought-and-owned corporate bastards) 



and that's what i think of them, corporate bastards. i hate the media, especially when they lie to me about snow.

that's a coctails poster there on the wall; a feature of a kitchen i once knew. the coctails originated at the kansas city art institute, and kept coming back there or years. the only time i got to see them play live was at recycled sounds, right before they split in 1995. they remain one of my favorite bands regardless. by the time i was paying attention to what was going on around me, much of what had been happening in the early to mid nineties was already passing away, quickly followed by the near-desert of music and comics that lasted almost five years.

in search of ephemera from that brief golden age--interesting and no coincidence that it was mirriored musically as well as in comics!--i have found an interview with john upchurch, coctails member, at a geocities page that exists now only as a cache by google . . . afraid of its vanishing, i reprint it here in its entirety, and please contact me if this displeases you, o gods of the internet; and i'll link to some permanent place that it might reside, if any, etc.

John Upchurch Interview

You’ve seen them. You must have. You know those records that just leap off the shelf when you first catch sight of them in your local record shop. You know the ones? The ones that don’t look like the other, humdrum glossy shrinkwrapped ones… the ones sending out palpable signals of a genuine attention to detail… the individual ones… Think “Shellac At Action Park”. Think “Tortoise”. Think “Handwriting” by Rachel’s. These are just a few of the covers produced by Fireproof Press of Chicago, Illinois. Sadly, since folding in 1998, the Fireproof Presses are no longer stamping and pounding out the dye. At POI, we feel some form of recognition is long overdue… to the people who made us appreciate the fact that records and CDs can be beautiful things to behold and to touch, as well as to listen to. We spoke with John Upchurch, Fireproof Press’s one-time proprietor, about all things inky and cardboard-y. Oh, and cloth dolls.

Could you explain a little about the origins of Fireproof Press, for those who don't know?

When the Coctails were all living together, there were other artists sharing the same loft space. One of these was Matt McClintock who brought an old hand-fed letterpress to the space. He had found, restored and learned to run it while down in Kansas City. We all took a hand at learning how to operate the press and produced a few pieces of Coctails merchandise on it (doll labels, button labels, newsletter etc.) along with other artwork and projects. I happened to be "between jobs" when Tortoise came to Matt and asked him if he could print their album covers and he agreed and I hitched a ride as an assistant. The Tortoise job got the attention of Shellac and they asked if we would take on a job that would have us working for the whole summer. We decided at that point to change the letterpress thing from a hobby to a business and Matt and I became partners. The Shellac job forced us to find a space and employees and we kept the presses running 16 hours a day 6 days a weeks for about 10 weeks. When it was over, we had some money, but no work (as almost no one had heard of us) and by the time that the work became somewhat steady, Matt had gone on to a steady job that touted such benefits as a steady (or any) paycheck. Thus, I became a small business owner...

What happened with Fireproof Press? Was the decision to quit in late '98 purely a business issue, or a case of yourself and the others involved moving on to different things?

A variety of circumstances conspired to end the Fireproof era. The foundation of which was that running the print shop was hard work, long hours and low pay, but the events that brought it to a head are roughly as follows: I had decided to take some money and invest in new equipment that would let me do die cutting in house and another press that would run certain jobs faster. I was banking on getting the die cutter up and running immediately as it's an easy press to set up and run and I'd be able to start making my money back quickly. Well, the elevator broke in the process of bringing that press up to the shop (though the elevator was rated for twice the weight) and thus I had a bunch of cash tied up in something that I couldn't use. The landlord took a really long time getting the elevator fixed (about four months) during which time I was strapped for cash and carrying big boxes of paper/supplies/packages up and down three flights of stairs. Things were fairly miserable and I stopped paying rent in protest. They sued. I got a job offer. I could have continued, but things were rather ugly at the time. Even if I had managed through it, there would have been a lot of belt tightening for a while and with a family I chose the security of a steady paycheck.

This being chiefly a music fanzine, I guess most of my questions relate to your work with LP and CD covers and/or packaging. Before going any further though, could you give me an idea of the scope of your design/printwork? What other kinds of stuff have you worked on, or produced?

Our niche was of course music packaging, but we made other things as well. Even forgetting about music related bits like the dolls for the Coctails, posters etc. there were other projects. In fact, initially, we did mostly fine art oriented projects. Matt had run a few editions back in Kansas City and we did a few more in Chicago. The first large scale project I ran with Matt was an edition of 4 of Gary Lieb's illustrations that were fairly involved. Wedding invitations were a good money making staple for a while - a nice change from the rock packaging – clean typography and layout. Being friends with Archer I've had the opportunity to work with him on a few Sof' Boy projects and some other pieces of his. Then there are a few in house pieces that we produced - card decks, broadsides and books mostly.

Did your interest in the packaging and presentation of recorded music begin with your former band, The Coctails? It's just that I've read a little about the cloth dolls you created. Did these form part of an actual record release, or were they just novelty items for fans?

The dolls were initially one of those funny ideas that you talk about. We ended up making a batch for the holidays one year and saved a few to take to a show. At first we just put 'em on our merch board to sorta "expand the myth" of the band, but they sold real well and so we kept making them. There were two styles the early, smaller hard-to-make version and the later larger easier to make version (they were all pretty much hand made by the band). We also made pillows for folks we stayed with on the road and Sue Miller of Lounge Ax in Chicago has a sleeping bag. As I've sort of implied, Fireproof happened to me - it wasn't something I set out to do or trained for or schooled for. Design was viewed with some level of disdain among us fine art types (a similar aversion was held for the fine artists by the design students), but I did enjoy printmaking and sculpture and making things, and I was involved in the music scene so it seemed like a good marriage of interests. I do enjoy good design now as much as I do good music or art and the divisions I set down in my youth have largely eroded. So I came at design from the self-taught make something cool angle and was largely inspired by other designs I liked. It could be argued that some of my sculpture and prints were peripherally related to some packaging issues, but that argument comes perilously close to Art School B.S. and so I won't go there.

The Coctails got together at college in Kansas City, right? Could you explain a little about how you all met?

Barry, Mark and I were in the same class at the Kansas City Art Institute and began to play together as freshman - mostly goofing around. In our junior year some friends asked us to play a gallery opening and we decided a "smooth jazz" concept would be fun (1988, so post modern humor was very amusing). Barry had been playing with Archer in Mudhead and asked him if he'd play the show with us. He agreed and within a few practices we had learned some covers and written two or three originals that ended up on our first LP. So we decided to keep playing together and played the art school opening circuit until the following year when we started playing clubs.

How much was the whole Coctails merchandise (dolls, calendars, comic books etc.) a part of what you were about? Was it all a gimmick, just a fun thing to do, or were you making a serious point about your music or image?

You could make several arguments here. Yes it was certainly fun. It also created a larger experience for our shows that took them beyond just four guys playing on stage. It did prove to be a type of gimmick, but mostly in that it seemed to reassure clubs, press etc. that we had it together enough to be fairly professional in our presentation - we got our Lollapalooza gigs partly based on that. I think a lot of people wrote us off as a gimmick band simply based on the dolls and never listened to the music, so it cut both ways. I don't think there was much in the way of pretense there (though, of course, this is a band member talking) in that we weren't thinking "we need these dolls/buttons/comics to make up for our other shortcomings and get a show" - we were just having fun. The attitude may have paralleled Jonathan Richman's act in the seventies playing to punk rock audiences.

Since The Coctails split at the end of '95 you've played with Rachel's, and played on Tsunami's most recent album. Have I missed anything else?

I've played for a few other recording sessions. There was a Delta '72 record, Archer's first album, a Dianogah single and a few others - the sequence of events gets a little fooggy in the late Coctail/early Fireproof days, but I played on a Barbara Manning record, Delta '72 CD and a Kurt Weill tribute record by Ciggy (from the Sugarcubes). After the Rachels' tour in the fall of '96 I realized that touring wasn't as fun anymore when a baby and a business were waiting at home.

Back to the subject of Fireproof Press. The first LP that I recall buying with a Fireproof Press sleeve, is the first Tortoise album back in '94. Was this the first Fireproof Press cover, or am I getting a little mixed up?

That Tortoise full length was the first sleeve we printed (surprisingly, though many Coctails products were printed on the presses, we never made a record sleeve for the band). There was almost a 7" by the band Eliot (which later sort of became Number One Cup), but they called an hour after approving the final artwork, after we had begun running the job, to cancel.

How much work is involved, timewise or otherwise, in the designing and letterpress of an LP or CD sleeve?

It's comparable to any other design process. It's possible to use the same desktop publishing tools used for offset, but you often have to wrestle with them to make them work with letterpress. If you use hand set type or pre-existing plates (metal stamps w/ images or type) then you compose the elements physically rather than digitally and don't have the luxury of infinitely mutable elements that you have on a computer, which has pros and cons. Then there are some constraints of the process itself as far as line screen, trapping tolerances and so on.

Also, how demanding is the hand printing process, both physically and in terms of skill?

Setting up the press for a print run can be either a very easy 5 minute task, a dreary 4 hour task or anywhere in between. There are a few books that I culled some basics from, but I developed a few idiosyncratic ways of doing things largely by trial and error. Some of these were compromises, some developed into new aesthetic tools and some just made things easier. Eventually, I had an arsenal of tricks for the press setup or inks etc. that would address most of the technical issues I'd encounter. Actually running the press takes relatively little skill. When I would train people to run the press, I'd do a few passes with my eyes closed partly to show off and partly to make the big machine seem less threatening. You do need to keep an eye out for problems that can develop on press during a run, so you can't afford to space out for long periods of time and must watch for certain telltale signs of trouble. Standing and hand-feeding a press for 4 or 6 or 8 or 10 or, my personal record (thank you, Stereolab), 22 hour shifts can be fairly brutal. I tend to get a tingly sensation between my shoulder blades that leads to numbness when I work for a while and I'm pretty sure that that's not a good thing.

Presumably, some bands/artists take more of a hands-on approach with the cover/ packaging design process than others. Do you find it easier to work with people who have a very strong, or even a definite idea, of how they want the finished product to appear?... Or is having a free hand in proceedings more satisfying?

Like most things, it depends. Some bands come with great artwork that is sensitive to the process and all I have to do is run the job. That's great as all I have to do is make sure I carry through. Sometimes however a band will come in with a very specific idea of what they want and it is a horror and there is no point in running it on letterpress and it scars the soul to look at it 1000 times as you run the job. I'm generally fairly happy with the design work I do myself, though I suffer from the "everything I do sucks" problem that many of my friends also have. I've had packages that have found some recognition in design circles and that's encouraging. However, most of the time it fell somewhere in between - the band would have an idea, I'd make suggestions, technical or aesthetic, and we'd come up with something that would work. "I trust your judgement" is always nice to hear from a customer.

In POI #1 I asked Jeff Mueller a few questions about his music. I always found the cover artwork for the earlier June Of '44 releases utterly beguiling, and still marvel at the way it really seems to capture the essence of the bands musical and lyrical thrust on these records. Do you think this element of the packaging and presentation of music has been overlooked in recent years?

I think the jewel case is an evil for the most part. Apart from its physical frailty, it isn't a pleasant canvas to work with and it has a veneer of sameness that is hard to escape with any design. For a long time I think designers treated the jewel case like a small LP cover and that really doesn't work. More recently, there have been a wider range of packaging styles to choose from - digipaks etc. – and that has helped and I think that artists have a better grasp on the size and format and are better equipped to overcome the limitations therein. I've seen some great designs that take the jewel cases weaknesses and turn them into strengths. As to connections between the design and the music I think it is uncommon for it to occur as specifically as that. Sometimes there will be a match of band and designer that is particularly sympathetic or the aesthetic of the music might be so indicative of a particular era that the style of the time matches it precisely. More often current styles or traditional ones are applied to a package somewhat arbitrarily or without attention paid to any sort of cohesive whole and you might end up with a cool package that doesn't connect to the music. In those cases, sometimes the artwork is so distinctive or powerful that it comes to be intertwined with the album/band/genre, but not through any particular intent. For June of '44, the answer is that Jeff designs all the covers, he's in the band and his aesthetic sense is sufficiently developed both musically and visually that there is some strong underlying connection and it is fairly rare for even great bands to have enough visual sense that they can escape the trappings of style and get to the point of good design.

Although obviously not reflecting some kind of in-house roster, such as for instance, with Blue Note Records, would you say recordings bearing Fireproof Press sleeves are linked in any way? Is there an attitude common to those bands that regularly chose your printwork for their records?

In the case of those bands that chose Fireproof for the right reasons, I'd say yes. Those folks wanted to establish a continuity of experience for their record which included the packaging and artwork - they felt that every level of the experience was integral and important to the whole. Also, most folks ended up using chipboard because it's cheap. The other attitude that brought bands to our door was the inexplicable "cool factor" which came to be associated with us I think largely due to the "that's-where-Albini-did-it" factor as well as other bands and designs that were notable. These usually ended up being pieces that weren't particularly interesting because there was absolutely no reason for them being printed on a letterpress in the first place.

It struck me the other day, while listening to Shellac, that a parallel could be drawn between their approach to the recording and capture of sound on their records, and the printing methods you used at Fireproof Press… y'know, between analogue recording techniques and printing by hand letterpress. What do you think?

I would never presume to speak for Shellac. So I called Bob Weston and he said "Old School rules." His take was that Fireproof was chosen not because there was any underlying artistic connection, but rather an appreciation for outmoded technologies that still work well. For my part I've always felt that letterpress was a medium where each print had its own identity which made each final package subtly different from all the rest and the each print was a record of the event of plate smashing into paper. There probably could be some connection made between that attitude and the recording methodology of Shellac, but if I went there it'd be more of the art school talk that I've promised to stay away from.

Would you say your design/printwork was "retro"? I'm not keen on that term, but something about the materials and design is certainly redolent of an era when things were packaged with a little more care.

It can be used to create a very authentic "retro" effect because, of course, most things made before the early sixties were printed that way. The Coctails merchandise would be a good example of that. I think that more than that letterpress printing calls attention to the process through which the individual package was created as well as to the package itself. There's a sense of uniqueness to each piece or at least heightened physicality and that can be used to a variety of artistic ends.

Can you tell us a little about what you're doing right now, either musically or in the design field?

Mark Greenberg (Coctails) and I are working on a record of music for our kids and if that turns out well we might release it. Also, I've been playing a lot of banjo. I teach a course called Design Lab at Columbia College which is basically "how to use a computer for design", but my work is leaning more towards the fine art end of things these days though a lot of that is filtered through my Fireproof sensibilities.

Finally, and in time honoured tradition.are you a need-my-breakfast man, or an extra-ten-in-bed man?

Given those choices I'd say need-my-breakfast man in that I like time in the morning to adjust to consciousness, but I'd rather answer need-my-shower man if I'm to be at my best.

Many, many thanks to John. Forgive us, John, for we are but unworthy photocopyists!



 

Posted: Sun - June 20, 2004 at 06:53 AM             |

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