Difficult packaging: the good, the bad and the stupid

[FLORIDA MAN]

[Fire of the Mind]

Exhibit A is a release that was given to me by the creator at a noise festival I played at in Lansing MI. I don't remember his name and i can barely read the handwritten sharpie label on branded cdr. I think it says Buttman?

I think it actually says "butthash," which was supposedly a street name for "jenkem," if you remember that ludicrous moral panic.

I have scans and photos somewhere of a set of my collected work up to that point which I gave to what was then a good friend to whom I have not spoken in years. It was constructed out of an inverted cereal box taped back together inside-out and included one of the heavily decorated detached covers of a dictionary one of our dogs had destroyed. I plan to get back to that level of bullshit when I'm able to burn CDrs again, and definitely whenever I do cassettes. I know a few artists of a similar mindset…

The weirdest in my current collection packaging-wise are probably the hand-printed cardboard sleeve editions I got of some CDs I received in an order from the EAI artist Kevin Sanders some years ago. This is followed by the two recent Sutcliffe No More records which, for the first sixty copies of each record, are packaged in this strange ablative sleeve the consistency of a very thick garbage bag, sealed with a strong adhesive which tears the plastic when you attempt to open it. Seems a bit prankish, which I'm honestly all for given how weird people get about collector culture and owning pristine items—myself included at times, much to my shame.

[BPJ]

Somebody once sent me their release with some chicken bones in the package. I had already brought the mail in and placed it on kitchen table before I noticed the army of ants spilling out from the package. Ants went everywhere.
I was so pissed.

That might be mine. I used to send "One off special editions", like "Sock full of spaghetti edition 1/1", or "Piece of sellotape with dirt on it edition 1/1", or "Lump of meat special edition 1/1". There were definitely chicken bones in several releases. So if it was mine I am sorry.

[¾ dead]

I distinctly remember a special edition of one Bipolar Joe release advertised on NoiseGuide which was to include a partially-eaten, dried-up bowl of pasta. The post even included
a photo of the aforementioned, mildly gut-churning, crusted bowl!

Don't even remember what release it was. That's the funny part. Or maybe the pasta was the release...

[Indeterminacy]

"Sock full of spaghetti edition 1/1"

maybe the pasta was the release...

Clarity please.

[BPJ]

"Sock full of spaghetti edition 1/1"

maybe the pasta was the release...

Clarity please.

I don't know which releases these were, it was always just a random thing. I thought it was funny that people would do exclusive short runs of their fart noises, or put them in unopenable packaging so I wanted to do it in the annoying Bipolar Joe style. I do remember putting spaghetti in a sock a few times, sometimes it was chewed up, or things were added like stuff from a Hoover bag. I sent someone a bag of paint, it was a tied up freezer bag with house paint inside. There was a You Don't Want To Know What's On This Tissue edition, Apple Core Edition, Butter And Glass Shards Edition, some got quite bad and some I never managed to finish because they were long term projects.

[¾ dead]

Here's a more recent example of once-edible packaging...

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https://www.discogs.com/release/3148169 ... hing-Anita

Always ahead of the curve.