Another Truckload Of Animals And Prizes

I recently purchased a little scanner, an Epson ES-50. It’s quite tiny, unlike the giant hulking scanning machines of yore. Remember how they emitted bright white light as the works crawled the page, placed face-down on glass? You’d cover the thing and it would do its mysterious work, whirring and clanking. Now this little tiny machine makes almost no sound, emits no light, and efficiently passes a page through producing.. voila! 

I was delighted to find this page recently.  I had it in storage amongst some UpTones merch and whatnot. It’s the drawings Jesse Michaels sent us when we were recording our Skankin’ Foolz Unite! album. The doggie on upper left won the audition, and landed thusly:

This ^ is also a scan, using said spy-scanner. I fancy it a spy-scanner because it’s like some James Bond shit that Q gave him to scan secret documents but I digress. I have not secret documents, nay, but plenty of pages of handwritten lyrics and assorted photos and drawings from friends and sooooo, I like my new scanner spy thingy.

Speaking of exciting top secrets, Shannon Wheeler is drawing a cover for my EP release of I Changed My Mind. I like my homespun cover art for the single – in fact I purchased said spy-scanner precisely for the purpose of making this. I simply printed out the Berkeley Cat Records logo, wrote on it with a Sharpie, and then scanned it.  Voila indeed.

What ever shall we scan next?  I love a new toy.

So, as evidenced by evidence, my attempts at not making records have utterly failed.  I’ll accept this about myself and continue.

A long time ago, a post-UpTones band I had with Ben and Paul and drummer Tom Pope, did a lot of touring on the west coast of these Untied States.  The band was called HOBO, which mystifies me somewhat, but it made sense at the time.  We had a lot of fun gigging and recording an album and.. well we were going to call our second album Another Truckload Of Animals And Prizes. I mean, I wanted to, but the idea never took flight, and the band turned into something else and didn’t make a second album and.. Well, now I am going to make Another Truckload Of Animals And Prizes. I think the phrase was lifted from the side of a circus truck we saw on the road somewhere, but googling about I can’t readily find it. Maybe we made it up?  Anyway, who wouldn’t want another truckload of animals and prizes? I must have it. I must make it. I must and I shall make and have it.

Good morning.

Author: Eric Din

Eric makes songs, records, websites, and little forts for cats to play in. Founder/lifer in The UPTONES, guitarist, songwriter, guitar teacher and music curator, Eric blogs at ericdin.com except when he doesn't.