Why There's No Fuzzy CD

I occasionally get asked, mostly by those who know me pretty well, why there hasn't been a physical CD copy of Fuzzy kicked into the world. Oh sure, my shit's out there o'digital running the gamut from iTunes to Lala, but nothing that actually exists. No means by which you could fondle it in your filthy little hands or anything like that. So, if the internet turned off tomorrow it would be like my small little body of work never existed at all. Well, I suppose if you want to be technical, it's already almost like it never existed at all, but that's beside the point.

"So, what's the deal?" You may ask. "Why the hell don't you get off your lazy ass and make us happy by creating a physical CD for those of us who don't feel like flushing our hard earned cash down the rectums of Apple and Amazon?"

The simple answer? CD's cost money, and money is tight.

I'm not going to bitch poverty, because at the end of the day, I'm sitting all right. Not secure or anything, I certainly won't be building that Mini Cooper bumper cart rink I've been toying with anytime soon. But I can stay fed and warm, and am currently typing away on a damn fine laptop with a quality media player by my side, so shit isn't dire on my end. Regardless, the well spring isn't flowing so high that I feel good about tossing money at this. I mean, let's face it, my body of work isn't exactly bringing them in. I don't have the masses clammoring for a piece of my pie, so the incentive for doing this is pretty flimsy.

But, on an equally important scale, I just don't have the artwork for a real CD. There is, of course, the album cover which is featured to your immediate left. And I think it is a damn fine piece of art, but that's all I really have to work with. Yeah, I've discussed concept art with the artist who drew this stuff, and have actually seen a few stencils put together, but I can't move any faster until that shit is done. And since I'm in an intimate relationship with the artist in question, forcing her to move quicker would mean less evening priviledges for me. A sacrifice I'm just not willing to make. I need my evening priviledges damnit.

And while there are a few people I'm close to who have been wanting a CD, and who I feel very much deserve one, the world at large seems to spin just fine without it. So, I haven't been in any real rush to get one out there.

But if there is one problem with not having physical media, it's that nobody takes you seriously. Unless you can stand in front of a camera holding a CD that has your quality work on it, you're not regarded with any more respect than the forty-somethings who have a Dokken cover band on the weekends. Media organizations, blogs, and anyone willing to give you any kind of press is just not going to accept you as anything but asscrack if you don't have a CD to give them. And while there have been some very cool podcasts like SoupyGato and NBT who've been kind enough to give me and my nonsense a little airtime, at the end of the day I'm still quite the ingrown hair on the landscape of the interweb. Which is weird right? You'd think that considering how 2.0 savvy all these sites are claiming to be, that digital distro would be the way to go.

But, rather than take the obvious routes, things have to be complicated. And the paramaters they instill are just ridiculous. I can count numerous music based blogs who I've submitted work to with these ridiculous conditions. They don't want you e-mailing mp3's, instead they want links to webpages. But they can't be any of the pages that other folks know and use on a regular basis. No Myspace pages, no Facebook pages, these have to be custom independent pages. But they can't be real webpages, no they just have to be a page with nothing on it but a link where they can download your material at their leisure. And this is of course assuming that the blog and/or podcast isn't affiliated with some organized setup that requires you to be a member first.

Or I can mail them a CD. And it can't just be some cheapo CD-R with a few url links either. No sir, they want that shit looking polished. And if you've gone through all the time and finance to actually make and mail them a professional looking product, it only means they'll consider checking you out. So, if the fanatically snobby music blogs think your material is crap, that is one bit of time and effort you'll never see again.

Now I can deal with rejection, and I can deal with knowing that there are lots of people who don't dig on the kind of stuf I write, but I'm not going to pay money to be told I suck. The whole "spend money to make money" credo may sound great, but as a functioning organism it's no more effective than the dodo. This is the internet for fuck's sake. Technically, the whole world is listening. And it only takes one pass for people to decide whether they like my stuff or they don't. So, I don't see the point of jumping through hurdles at this juncture. Especially when you consider just how well CD's have been selling lately.

But hell, what do I know? At the end of the day, I may just be half-assing it.