For a long while now, I’ve had a semi-official, disorganized list of our selected musicians occupying the Artists page, but no more:

It has been gussied up.

Go, then, and see the brand new Artists page, complete with the official track order and links to each and every artist’s profile page.

That’s right, profile pages!  For example, here’s joe lisboa’s page.  I’ve reproduced the liner and contact info provided for the physical CD, and added lyrics and a brief paragraph of commentary.  You’ll also find mp3 samples and glorious lo-res thumbnails of each artist’s portrait/liner square from the album booklet art, as drawn by interrobang (who really ought to have a page of his own—it’s on the TODO list).

So take a look!

When we opened up pre-orders back when the project first kicked off, Jessamyn collected a big pile of cash in her Paypal account.  Fastforward a few months—she’s done her duty as trusted and responsible community figure, and it’s time to get ready to spend that money on hookers and blow CD duplication.

So she cuts me a check and puts it in the mail.  And makes me pinky swear to not mistake it for junkmail and throw it out.  I swear.  We re-swear.  Things get sworn.

And a few days later, I get this in the mail.

The post office tore the check in two.  Fantastic.  It’s good to know, though, that the USPS does care, and does sincerely regret.

Fortunately, it was a clean tear.  I called up my bank and asked if it’d be a problem if I deposited a taped-together check.  No problem at all, they said.  Whew!

One of my goals is to get the chain of money-in and money-out summarized and posted in the next week or two.  The capsule review: that $1584.80 is the sum total of pre-orders as of late August (and some seed donations, to be refunded when we’re in the black on sales), less commissions from Paypal (those devils!). 

There are a few more pre-orders that have come in since that check was cut—yay—but even that sum has covered the major costs for duplication (about $1540 for the duplication and for fedexing source materials out to said dupe firm) with a few bucks left over.  Now we just need to buy a few hundred padded mailers and postage, which those overflow bucks and the interim pre-orders will probably cover.  Heck yeah!

So I just got an email. And the email said something exciting. Observe:

Now, that’ll be coming to Portland from Vancouver via ground, so I probably won’t see these things until right about Thanksgiving. Then it’s label, postage, and in the mail for about 130 pre-orders (and growing!), and if all goes well the first of these may actually get to folks before November is quite over.

I cannot express my excitement. I am reduced to handwaving gestures.

Work continues behind the scenes here at meficomp—watch the site for the appearance of an updated Artists page later this week, and the unveiling of genuine artist profile pages for each and every one of our fabulous contributors.

In the mean time, how about some more art?  Yes?  Okay!  Viz the tableau below for a peek (in various resolutions, and in alphabetical rather than meritocratic order) of the liner notes portraits drawn by our own editor, John “interrobang” Ralston.

  

It’s a brand new look for meficomp.com! No more half-broken hand-rolled 1993-era web page architecture—we’re rocking the WordPress now.

Which means, for one thing, a much lower barrier to entry for updates and additions. Which is damned good news for me, because we’re are getting close to the drop date on these CDs, and I’ve got a few things I’d like to add to the site in the next few weeks. Tingle!

Also, note the RSS feed—now, instead of restlessly hitting the site to see if there’s news, you can restlessly hit your favorite feed aggregator instead. Yay!

If anything is broken or otherwise questionable, let me know—as of this writing, the new design has been tested behind the scenes but has only been live for about five minutes.