"Serenading Songs" was the eventual three volume romantic mix CD collection that started out as one cassette tape that was used as a way to gain cathartic bliss when the teenage angst got too much to handle. From the song "She's got a way" off of Cold Spring Harbor to the latest Billy Joel song "Hey Girl" these songs that play the heart strings were the stuff of inspiration.
Being a music fan extends more than merely enjoying the music and singing along to my favorite Billy Joel tune. I like to creatively express my appreciation and passion for the music that I love.
Upon the subsequent two pages are a number of CD covers I have created.
MIX CD'S
The first set are a number of mix CD's of my favorite seventies music called Cafe' classics. To be honest, in each volume I wanted to capture the essence of "Have A Nice Day Cafe'" at each hour of the night. What music was being played as well as what I thought what music ought to be played at that given moment. The second set of mix CD's are romantic music oriented. These are songs that move me in a certain way in a given year.
ARTIST CD'S
My first set of artist related CD's came out with Billy Joel's Serenading Songs. I started making mix tapes back in the early 80's usually with a girl in my mind, or in my heart for that matter. It was certainly a way of calming the angry wind of my hormones.
Sometimes I stay very program specific in the creation of these CD covers. For example, "Serenading Songs" was done completely in Photoshop except for the logo imports from Illustrator. But other times, I prefer the vector "look" of the cover. I like the challenges and limitations that each program seems to offer.
Future projects include creating the cover for my ELO compilations as well as revamping the cover for the Chicago Serenading Songs CD's. The huge project though would be attempting to add style and art for the 25 CD's for my "Long Time Gone" collection. This is the mix romantic mix CD's for any given year.
For anyone interested, any of these CD covers are available for download on .pdf format at no cost. contact me for details
From the top of my head, here are a number of good names for "Bands" that I have gathered over the years.
Contraband • This was the name of the band that I was part of back in high school.
Shattered Glass • is what we changed our name to after we learned that Contraband was already taken.
EOL • or "End Of Line" is the name of a band that we wanted to use to make a number of CD's involving punctuation ends of sentences. For instance, the first CD would be "period" The second one "exclamation point" etc.
I also wanted to do a Rap album as the name RCSPCS as a spoof of therapy phenom Eminem.