Marketing Postminimalism

It's a computer generated result, Kyle. There's a cold number-crunching, data-gathering application behind the service created for profit to analyze names, search function hits, and that's all, I'm sorry. Still, if you're excited, I guess that's not a bad thing.

But I wouldn't walk around thinking there's a living, breathing, thinking composer behind your t-shirts. Only in America, at best.

Interesting too, that the auto-generated "sponsored link" just below the shirts is for Guy Klucevsek!

KG replies: Yeah, that's what made me think there was something to it.

I regret being so negative. Perhaps there is an individual out there honoring the wonderful American traditions we've come to know.

Somehow, someone supporting those rare, rare categories strikes me as beyond possible, so I suppose I may be wrong.

Call me a skeptic. For what it's worth, though, the company who makes those t-shirts makes more than million. You can find Judge Judy, Hayao Miyazaki, Pat Summeral, and many, many more...Direct Connection does seem to have cornered the market.

The upside is that anyone can make those t-shirts with a little elbow grease. There are plenty of websites that let you fill in the blanks and make thongs, hats, mugs, and what-have-you. My brother, a relatively unknown character in the sports media has a supporter who made a page up for him and his coworker.

We could have a street team for postclassic concerts. And I'm considering t-shirts and bumper stickers for my website...the idea came to me a while back.

I know i can sell more T-shirts of Anaphoria than music

As much as Cafepress reminds me of the scene in Spaceballs wherein Mel Brooks displays the Spaceballs licensed toilet paper, flamethrower, towel, et al, I hesitate to call it a marketing machine. Because Cafepress allows the public to create their own t-shirts for a nominal fee, I think it's more similar to DIY punk aesthetic, grown up and reframed for the Information Age.

I have friends who have made, respectively, Xenakis and Ferneyhough t-shirts; it's not so much marketing, I think, as it is how young people display their allegiances in a generation where everything is branded. Corporations unfortunately don't sell a product anymore; rather, they sell a brand name. That being said, I suppose we all have to wear SOMETHING, and I'd much rather wear a Xenakis t-shirt that I made for ten bucks on Cafepress than a fifty dollar t-shirt with an Abercrombie and Fitch logo plastered across it.

I think this is just another instance of rock and roll culture bleeding over into art music. Perhaps this will awaken a knowledge in new music composers that punk and hardcore bands have realized for years: to exist as a sustainable subculture, one needs at least a nominal budget. Merchandise is an easy way for struggling independent artists to recoup a large part of their expenditures directly, and also to promote their name/image and even give like-minded visual artists a chance to uniquely display their talents. Who knows, maybe we'll start seeing merch tables outside new music concerts! I know I'D buy a JLA hoodie ;)

Merchandise is an easy way for struggling independent artists to recoup a large part of their expenditures directly, and also to promote their name/image and even give like-minded visual artists a chance to uniquely display their talents. Who knows, maybe we'll start seeing merch tables outside new music concerts!

Ahem.

coincidentally, this all came up at work, too. someone pointed out a different site (lusory) that has john cage mouse pads and pins, and my boss found that cafepress also has a laura kuhn throw pillow -- that's too exact to be completely random. clearly, someone at these places knows the score, as it were.

YOU WERE WEARING

You were wearing your Edgar Allan Poe printed cotton blouse.
In each divided up square of the blouse was a picture of Edgar Allan Poe.
Your hair was blonde and you were cute. You asked me,
"Do most boys think that most girls are bad?"
I smelled the mould of your seaside resort hotel bedroom
on your hair held in place by a John Greenleaf Whittier clip.
"No," I said, "it's girls who think that boys are bad." Then we read Snowbound together
And ran around in an attic, so that a little of the blue enamel was scraped off my George Washington, Father of His Country, shoes.

Mother was walking in the living room, her Strauss Waltzes comb in her hair.
We waited for a time and then joined her, only to be served tea in cups painted with pictures of Herman Melville
As well as with illustrations from his book Moby-Dick and from his novella, Benito Cereno.
Father came in wearing his Dick Tracy necktie: "How about a drink, everyone?"
I said, "Let's go outside a while." Then we went onto the porch and sat on the Abraham Lincoln swing.
You sat on the eyes, mouth, and beard part, and I sat on the knees.
In the yard across the street we saw a snowman holding a garbage can lid smashed into a likeness of the mad English king, George the Third.

- Kenneth Koch

KG replies: Thank goodness you added the "Kenneth Koch," Samuel. For a minute I thought you had gone stark raving mad.

Oh the horror of unexpected poetry!