I waffled for a week as to whether I’d invite Charles Stella to do one of his awesome dub mixes for this song. It is, after all, not in any way Reggae or even Ska, this is a Rock song with a capital R. Can we do dub mixes of Rock? Oh why yes, Catalonia, we can, as evidenced by the result. I like how the EP flows with the single, then the dub, then the instrumental version (which is simply my original mix with the vocals muted).
I similarly waffled about asking Shannon to draw a cover for this one. Because I had absolutely no idea what it might be. And I had a bit of dread about what it could be, and I wouldn’t want to waste Mr. Wheeler’s time. The song is about a rock star on top of the world having a grand time and their fans are happy and they are happy and everything is great. I didn’t want the cover to be a picture of that, exactly. There had to be a twist.
That was a few weeks ago, and Shannon was, at first, similarly stumped as to what to draw. I made it clear – we don’t have to do this one – I have a perfectly good temporary cover and I can just keep that, but if you have an idea….
Well, I’m very glad I asked him, because a few days later, arrives in my inbox: a cat in a top hat smoking a bubble-pipe on top of an apparently flat-ish earth on the shoulders of charming elephants dancing on a mighty turtle. Whaaaat!? I cheered out loud.
On Top Of The World was done, boom. Myles Boisen mastered the audio for my mixes, Charles mastered his mix, I put the pieces together here and voila. A Berkeley Cat Record.
As of today it’s live in aaaaaaall of the streaming services; Here’s a widget with links to a few of the more popular ones:
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/ericdin/on-top-of-the-world-ep
And here it is in our beloved Bandcamp, long may they camp:
Turtles, turtles, all the way down.
