The Hepburns: Something Worth Stealing

Anthony Rochester: Music for Librarians

The Cat Box Quartet: Running Uphill

Cessna: Terminus

The Hepburns: The Last Thing I Saw Before I…

The Hepburns: Deciphering Linear A

Replicant: Kuuki No Soko

Gypsophile vs. Shop: Deux musiciens en crise

The Double Life of Testbild!

18fps: The Soft Rains of Delta Cephei

18fps: The Politics of Disappearance

Nice System: Impractical Guide to the Opposite Sex

Gypsophile: De loin, les choses

those silly catalogue cards from the 3" era

previousnext

Matt Jones claimed this album was written in the aftermath of a brief affair. Presumably it was something worth stealing. The cover photos (by Michaël Korchia) are an homage to Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps and a line I once overheard: “With these cuffs I thee wed.”

It was all imagined? Actually, the dangling handcuff is a more direct quote from the closing shot of The 39 Steps.

Barcode as decorative section divider.

Another Hepburns album, another black cat. And a growing back catalogue of unreleased albums. The bottom three there are still in the RK vaults.

Shortly after this CD was released I learned that in addition to Road Movie (location of master tapes unknown) there was a second lost album recorded in the mid-1990s. Details still unknown.

During British Winters: The original plan for the Pat Grover-narrated celebration of thermal underwear called for a photo of Matthew Jacobson’s straight jacket, folded neatly on a display table in Marc Jacobs. Mr. Jacobson either couldn’t or wouldn’t supply said photo.

As it turned out, due to the vaguaries of song order, there wasn’t space inside the lyric booklet for an illustration next to the song in question anyway. But this fully dressed fellow who adorns the cover of the book definitely looks like he stole something to escape the British winter. Right off the backs of the British working classes, I reckon.

The booklet itself comprises 24 pages of lyrics, song-by-song liner notes, and illustrations. A selection follows.

Geoff’s Cape: Here, I’ve literally given the man a cape. And a cardboard body. And Matt Jones’ head. The moustache did not belong to Matt.

Nice carpeting in this supermarket. We live in an age of wonders.

Fire Red Car: Pure male fantasy. From Matt’s liner note: “The sunny fortnight will be spent burning up country lanes in a race-tuned red car with a sports exhaust, alloy wheels and the suspension lowered to the legal minimum. Flutes and trumpets combine like ketchup and onions on a hot dog sausage.”

My Fellow Cobra: I overlaid the snake bite kit with the instructions because it was a lousy photo.

I obscured the instructions with the photo because one really shouldn’t be consulting Hepburns CDs for outdated first aid treatments.

If I do say so myself, the resulting mess is more than the sum of its parts.

Song for Velma: Retail display circa September 2007 at Phoenix Optical in Oakland.

Pop Artists:
“Hieronymous Bosch
Loved Peter Tosh
But Salvador Dali
Preferred Bob Marley”

That really is an Island Records label on the tree licorice. Wavy line treatment to suggest heat.

Almost Beyond Comprehension: This album ends, not with a train screaming into the darkness of a tunnel, but with a bang.