Created By: Jonathan Dysart (DJJD)
Original Creation Year: 2006
Year of Re-master: 2010
Song Listing
Side A
Side B
Side C
Side D
Origin of the Album
I was at the time getting tired of making these albums, or at least take some time off on them. I finished a major achievement with DJJD Volume 18 where a bunch of creativity came over me. And then I quickly made DJJD Volume 19, given its inspiration from a VH1 Heavy Metal TV special. I decided that I would close out my collection with my twentieth album and make it my “swan” album. Now in obvious hindsight, I did not stop, but at least took some time off on this project.
With a bunch of leftover ideas from DJJD Volume 18 (and some from DJJD Volume 19), I decided to finish this phase of my CD collection.
Concept and Theme of the Album
This is by far the most complicated concept for an album that I have dealt with at that time. Like I mentioned before, I wanted this to be a “swan” or “goodbye” album and tie it to my weariness and burned out nature with my job. I continued that concept by trying to find anti-work songs, like “Take This Job and Shove It” by Johnny Paycheck (DJJD Volume 9). However, there were not a lot of songs that I could find related to that subject.
Instead of narrowing the concept to just needing to break away from work, I decided to expand it to just breaking up, which I found many more songs related to that. However, I did not want to have typical love break up songs, but break up songs that are more general in meaning as well as have a cynical, darkly comedic, tongue and cheek approach to the subject.
At this time, the song “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley was a big craze, and I loved the song. I downloaded this song right after the DJJD Volume 18 and DJJD Volume 19 projects. I wanted to add this song into this album, so I decided to modify the concept unto another level of including the craziness of life, in particular to my personal craziness of dealing with work and my situation, and how I want to “divorce” from it. This idea of the craziness of life would be a precursor to my personal masterpiece DJJD Volume 29, with the concept that “life is a circus”.
I constructed SIDE A and SIDE B with that concept using the following songs:
· "Mary Jane’s Last Dance by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: A breakup/goodbye song whereby the singer is tired of his situation
· "Crazy by Gnarls Barkley: Dealing with going crazy with his situation
· "You Make Me Sick by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: A dark comedic attack on the person causing him heartache
· "You’re Breakin’ My Heart” by Harry Nilsson: A blunt response to dealing with a breakup
· "One More Minute” by Weird “Al” Yankovic: A dark comedic way of dealing with a breakup
· "Tight Rope” by Leon Russell: Dealing with the craziness of life and relationships
· "Life by the Drop" by Stevie Ray Vaughan: An introspection of dealing with life
I later added “You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, “Razor Face” by Elton John and “Stranded” by Van Morrison in a later version of this album. While not directly related to this concept of mine, the first song dealt with proofing that I can do better while the other songs deal with isolation and neglect.
The first half of the album looked fine, but I got into the same trouble that I had before – no second half. I had songs left from the DJJD Volume 15 [revision], DJJD Volume 18, and DJJD Volume 19 projects that I wanted to use and did not want them left hanging. Then I thought up of another layer of concept to the album. Since this is a “swan” or “goodbye” album, I decided to make this album similar that to the feelings that I or a typical modern-day worker felt about Friday.
On Friday, a modern-day worker who is tired with their job in one level or another (whether it be the job as a whole or tired from the week of work) is trying to get through the morning and afternoon, and get his/her job done, so they can get out and have some form of fun in the evening, whether it be a party, going out with friends or family, etc. They spent a lot of fun that Friday (or the whole weekend), and know that they’re going to have to start it up all again back at work on Monday. In the end, particularly for me, I become more introspective, after the fun time has ended, and how do I need to deal with the Mondays of our lives – how to continue.
Using that analogy, I decided to construct the album in this structure:
SIDE A and SIDE B: Craziness and breakup (feelings of wanting to escape work or the situations in life – i.e. Friday work day)
SIDE C: mainly songs of fun and escapism.
· “Ballroom Blitz” by Sweet: Party/fun time
· “Black Betty” by Ram Jam: Party/fun time
· “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones: Party/fun time
· “Octopus” by Syd Barrett: Escapism
· “Brainville” by The Flaming Lips: Escapism to a better world
SIDE D: Mainly songs of escapism and introspection
· “Kelly Watch The Stars” by Air: Escapism
· “Speed of Life” by David Bowie: Escapism and introspection
· “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses: Handling life with patience
· “Beth” by Kiss: Yearning to back home with loved ones and not be lonely anymore
· “Father and Son” by Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple: Getting advice from a fatherly influence upon dealing with life
· “Amazing” by Aerosmith: Hope in the future who those in dread
Over half of the second half songs came from the projects mentioned earlier. “Misirlou” and “Kelly Watch the Stars”: DJJD Volume 15; “Brainville”, “Octopus”, and “Speed of Life”: DJJD Volume 18; “Patience” and “Beth”: DJJD Volume 19. Personally, "Kelly Watch the Stars" by AIR is the gem of the album. I am not a big fan of Aerosmith, but "Amazing" is, in my opinion, their best song; this song closes the album perfectly.
I don’t know if I pulled it off or not, but for me personally, I did. I wanted to bring closure to my collection that this time, since many of these albums (1 through 19) were either personal in structure or a genre collection of songs.
Concept and the Album Cover
Based upon the concepts mentioned above, the first thing that came to mind was making the album cover look similar that to a typical cubical wall of a desktop modern day American worker, highly inspired by the Mike Judge movie Office Space.
Usually, cubical walls would contain weird or funny pictures, as well as funny “one-liners” or office-oriented jokes. It would also contain Polaroid pictures or notepad stickers/memos dealing with the job. I tried to render something like this on the original 2007 album cover. Even though I liked certain elements of the album, I did not care for the original version, primarily due to the background which did not look like a typical cloth/plastic cubical wall.
When it came to remaster this album, I quickly wanted to revamp this album cover. I finally found a texture picture of a cubical wall, taken ironically from a Microsoft website. From there, I've applied elements that I like from the original one (the cat with the gun, the lions mating, and the guy screaming at the laptop) and combining them with 3-D frames and other elements. I replaced the “No cell phones” sign with just the symbol equivalent since I personally despise the abuse of its use in society.
I've also added my favorite Dilbert wallpaper of Dogbert, waving his wand saying, “Out Out!! You demons of Stupidity!!” I have a small story about this Dilbert picture.
Some years ago, I was working on a client just outside of Peoria for a long time, around eight months straight. I only came home during the weekends. I was very discouraged after the end of that project that my whole optimism with work went down the tubes. This was the time that I discovered Radiohead’s album OK Computer (which dealt with modern day life) and started bad eating habits as well as other personal habits that is still affecting me today.
One day, something both humorous and stupid occurred at the client. The main electronic network man decided to check out the power surge and electrical connections of the computer servers in the computer room, where I and a couple consultants worked in every day. He was doing this, because there were some considerable storms occurring in the previous morning and evenings, knocking out the server as well as my interface build program that ran at night. Not using any of his grey matter at that time, he decided to test the power surge and electronic connection of the main server buy unplugging it during the middle of the day. Because of that, the whole computer network came down, stopping everyone’s work tied to the computer that day.
Since the computer server was an IBM AS/400, instead of a Microsoft Server, it took around two hours to reboot the server and get it running again. This occurred on the client’s Payroll day, where they were entering and processing Payroll checks for that time period. They were obviously upset. We had to work after hours to get back on track with our work and the other department’s data entry and processing.
The next day, we consultants found this Dilbert picture on the internet, printed it out, and placed it in front of the doorway of the computer room and closing the door. I will never forget that day as long as I live.
When remastering the album, I got the idea of the back album cover from the back cover of Paul McCartney and Wing’s Band on the Run. It was supposed to be a desk of a detective, looking at the case documents and pictures of the “Band” fugitives of Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney, and Denny Laine. It also includes a paper clip, a ballpoint pen, coffee, and coffee stains.
I decided to add those elements together for the back-album cover. The album title and song listings would be done on a yellow notepad picture, using a handwriting font downloaded from the internet.
Personally, this album cover is one of the favorites that I've created in my collection.
No comments:
Post a Comment