What Would the Setbacks Do?

Email questions to advice[at]thesetbacks.com

New Album Artwork

July 16th, 2006

Anonymous writes:

Word on the street is that you guys are making a new record. That's awesome news and I'm super stoked to hear the new stuff. I assume you'll be releasing this in the near future, so I thought now would be a good time to offer my input on the topic of album artwork. I found your last EP cover to be highly offensive, so to keep things on the level I'd like to ask you guys if you had thought of any ideas for artwork that would communicate the rock edge of your music while not being too racey. I have some ideas of my own, but I'd like to hear yours first.

By the way, I'm 66 years old with only 6% of my vision remaining. And I live in a trailer park just off Fisher Avenue.

Thanks guys. Take care.

Trevor	Listen ANONYMOUS, picking artwork is a difficult thing to do. This is the image that will forever be associated with the musical children we have given birth to, something you definitely don’t want to take lightly. For our last EP, there was a lot of bad ideas that went around. For some reason, I was the ONLY one in the band who did not want to call it The Passion of the Setbacks and have some sort of mock movie poster as the photo. My vote against was because a pop culture reference like that would forever date our ep, making it irrelevant only 8 months later. Sort of like watching old episodes of the Daily Show. They aren’t as funny when out of context. This time around, my idea is to actually change our name to the Awesome Times Friendship Band. The artwork will be based on a carpet weave that hangs in our practice space to remind us of our love for each other and the music. It is of a Heart with a Rainbow coming out of it. Almost like the heart is flying, leaving a beautiful trail of colours behind it. When I look at it, my jaw slackens, my frown turns upside down, my face completely relaxes, my head tilts slightly to the left, and my feet leave the ground ever so slightly. It makes me feel. So far, it has been an uphill battle pushing this idea to the rest of the band, but I will stick with it.
Steve	A few sub-stellar ideas have been bandied about, but I think my favourite concept so far is to ditch the whole idea of album artwork all together. CDs are a thing of the past and I think it's high time that the Setbacks recognized this fact and made an album that redefined how people listen to music. What I'm proposing is this: special earmuffs with small speakers embedded inside that play our album on an infinite loop with no ability to stop or pause the music. That's right - an infinite loop. What other band would have the peanuts to do that? Not many. Well, maybe a couple... but that's not really important. We haven't discussed the concept beyond this point so I'm just winging it here but I think basically they'll draw their power from a mix of solar panels and positive human energy. That's probably the most cost effective way to do it. We haven't patended the idea yet, or assessed the cost per unit, but I'm pretty sure that it will be competitive with traditional CD manufacturing. If you'd like to beta test our prototype unit, please contact us privately.
Paul	I have this brilliant idea for our album cover. The front cover of the album will be pictures of each of the band members with just underwear on. Then on the back of the album there are little black t-shirts and jeans that you can cut out and put on the guys at the front. There could even be a little shirt for Chris that you could pop the collar on. Who wouldn't like a little cut-out action figure of your favourite band member?
Chris	I'm a firm believer in being as shocking as possible to promote music albums, or books, or any kind of creative outlet to the masses for consumption. It's a competitive and challenging market, and as a result, one needs to be that much more competitive and challenging in order to sell your product. That's why I am a firm believer in using genitals for promotion. Genitals are shocking and exciting. When you see genitals, you are usually prepared to show your own, and/or are enticed to flip out and be sexual. This is in the same realm as being generally excited about non sexual stuff, like records, books, or toys, and this human reaction should be analyzed. Bottom line: I was thinking of putting the band's logo/name on a small earing ball, a la Aeromsith's "Get A Grip" album, with the earing piercing through the cow's teet. This was cool. Anyways, my idea involves a similar thing, only it's a Prince Albert piercing through a man's weiner. The as of not yet decided name of our record would be on the testicles. I think this could work. Haven't run it by the bandmates as of yet, and maybe I should have discussed with them before telling all on the web site, but the truth is I think the idea is just that sound. I'm sure Trevor will have a sarcastic quip to make about it though....last time I had one of these gems, he claimed that the font size I was thinking of using on the man's testicles was,.... how did he put it,..... "irrational". It wasn't irrational.

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