Well, really nobody looks forward to these emails…,
Hello all,
I remain clumsy with my Gmail Groups, so you may not know who I am or you may have already been benevolently bombarded with PledgeMusic updates from my sister. We all feel a little under siege at times with $10-$15 requests to support a friend on the Interweb, but I feel compelled to check in with a small ask, at least until my movie is ready for pre-production in the fall of 2022.
Jen Chapin is at it again. I have heard some of her new tunes and they indeed sound both ‘fresh’ and with the raw energy she started her career with many years ago. So, at the very least, please purchase a $10 download of her upcoming album, Desert or Sea. Personally, the reason I felt compelled to write this email is that I spent $2000 a little more than two years ago and made my own Jen Chapin’s greatest hits CD. I had made a ‘Jen’ mix that I magically never tired of and was particularly good on road trips. In truth, it was not so much a compilation of greatest hits, but more a grouping of songs that I thought she had forgotten and some mixes that I found super pleasant. I added a song I always loved that she had never recorded, ‘The River (Parts 1 & 2)’ and mixed in songs that were almost twenty years old with some new classics that I found underappreciated.
In truth, I was going to make it a homemade arts and crafts project. I hoped to spend about $79 at Kinko’s and teach myself to do a free mastering job with the CD. I was going to do it as a joke and deliver it to Jen as a fake Japanese Import that I had come across, hence the cultural appropriation and the deisgn with Japanese characters. One thing led to another and my pride got in the way and I got a little grandiose with my thinking (shocking). The budget exploded, but also did the quality control. In any case, for Jen’s 45th birthday I did indeed deliver her a few hundred copies of my production. The title All Ragged Memories is taken from her song ‘Simple Things,’ a big-time favorite and a song she wrote for my dear friend Matt Coppola’s movie Fresh Cut Grass.
That’s me with the shovel looking like a spazz, concentrating very hard on a simple task while Jen looks past, relatively unimpressed.
So, I am asking, in a year that everyone is definitely looking to rebuild their CD collections (the LP of the future!), please go to the link below and scroll down to the icon with the All Ragged Memories and pledge $15 to get two albums for the price of one. After you download them, they make great frisbees!
Thanks for listening. If it’s not clear, I get no money from sales of All Ragged Memories. It was a gift and a sunk cost. I just wanted to tell Jen I love her and that when she is on her game she remains one of my favorite songwriters… and to keep fighting the good fight. I still love my mix and haven’t gotten sick of it at all. I stand by it as a great intro to Jen’s music. Please give it a try!
Hope all are having a great summer. Think of it as only half way through. Make August last and add on New York’s best month and my personal favorite, September (!) as a summer month. Trust me. It helps.
Best,
Much love,
Josh