Something strange has started happening. In the last few days, we’ve been getting requests from all over the place for copies of ‘Rambleaway,’ our CD. Now, I’m not complaining when people from Stockholm and San Francisco want to buy a copy of our record, but it’s the frequency with which the requests are coming in. At first, I thought that this was something to do with the English folk revival. We’ve had reports of tracks being played on radio stations in Britain, France and America and were recently contacted by a shanty group in Cornwall saying one of our tracks is a big favourite..
In fact, it seems to be the cover, rather than the disc which is attacting all the attention.
Robert Crumb has done album covers for me in the past, so this time, we though it would be a good idea to ask his wife, Aline, to do the artwork for us. Aline is a witty artist in her own right so we knew that she would come up with something a bit different..
The only problem at the time was that it was done to a deadline, as Mr and Mrs C were off somewhere or other and we needed to get our record out. Aline did the drawing, but as their departure time approached, she still needed to do the lettering. At this point Robert joined in and the album artwork became a collaboration, signed by them both.
We bought the original.
There are a lot of collectors of the works of the Crumb family; Sophie their daughter, who plays with Millie in her other group: Les Sauviettes,* also has a following for her work. My suspicions were aroused the other day, when an order came in from a comic book store in San Francisco. Obviously, my immediate thought was of the guy with the pony-tail from the Simpsons. I imagined him listening to our disc and making sneery comments in an English accent, or perhaps using the disc as a drinks coaster, (for a concoction in a large paper cup), all the while gazing at our caricatures on the wall.
The cover is becoming a collectors item, so, art fans, in a blatant piece of self-publicity, be the first one on the block to own this limited edition work. Who knows, you might like the music too.*
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