I don’t know how I started making stupid 4th-grade level mockups of album covers with my friend Kalin Krohe as the subject. (Some would say “victim”.) Krohe and I (and our mutual friend Pat Adriance) have been exchanging photohacks for years. In fact, Pat did a blockbuster one just the other day:
Kalin has his own flair for making me look like an ass.
I think Kalin made this during the pandemic, a time in which I’d wager I said this exact phrase. I remember one day Coach Steve “Nelly” Nelson brought in quarter pounders from Mickey D’s…..after weeks of ramen noodles and frozen dinners it was like having filet mignon. (I assume anyway…I’ve never had filet mignon.)
But back to photohacks. Now me–I specialize. I make album covers. I’ve done….over 70 of them. And during the pandemickiest months of the pandemic, I found myself doing a lot of creating. It was in the winter of 2020 that I wrote the first version of what I think might be the best radio script I’ve ever written, “11 Oxen For Brother Kalin.” And, around that same time, I made a “coffee table book” of my Kalin album covers. (If it seems like Kalin is a creative inspiration to me, well…I guess I have to credit him for that. And also for saving my life. Boy, I really need to buy him lunch one of these days.)
The pandemic ended, thank God, and life went on. I started writing a lot less in my blog because I could, you know, go outside and do things. But I kept doing Krohe albums. And so I kept doing the coffee table books. And I just finished the 6th of them. Now, when I say “coffee table book” I mean that the layout and design of the document resembles a coffee table book. There is no actual printed book–these are in PDF format. (If you wanted to, you could print them out. I’m not going to do that, but you certainly can.)
Isn’t that neat the way it shows you the cover and the little pages on the side? That’s lovely!
I’ve been sitting here wondering if I could pick one of those 70-plus album covers as my all-time favorite. They are like children, don’t you know. They’re all favorites! But I will award the title to this one:
