milestones

 

It's been a long time without a message from me, and I think probably many of you can guess why, and probably feel the same way about all of it. The it's-all-too-much is eating us from the inside out, and for that reason it feels wild to even write this message… BUT. Yes. The world is still on fire and things are sometimes too much to bear. AND YET. I refuse to let them take my joy. And music brings me joy, and I hope it brings you joy too, and for that reason we've decided to take this crazy leap of faith and celebrate the 20th anniversary of Little Films with a reissue of the album on double vinyl.

It feels a bit like a vanity project to re-release an album. The 10-year anniversary of this record came and went without any fanfare in my mind and only a little in my heart; the 20-year anniversary feels so much different. Is it the passing of time? Pure nostalgia?

This album was recorded with the tiniest of budgets, with no label backing, and certainly with no grand plan in mind. I freely admit that I’ve never given myself the grace to approach making music as a job. For years and years I pushed myself as hard as I could, working insanely long hours to book tours and make records while juggling day jobs and side gigs to make ends meet. When people would ask what my job was, my reply of “I’m a musician” was always bashful and always quickly offset by a litany of other things “I did” in order to bolster how the world saw me. I cared too much about what others thought, and often still do.

The idea to re-release this album came about as a bit of a way to solve a problem. This album, along with “Thin Thread” and “Sweetheart Keep Your Chin Up” were recorded with Ice Cream on Mondays (more on ICOM later). The albums were released in the days before streaming took over the scene, and I could never have foreseen that a simple ampersand or plus sign would mean that 2 of those 3 records would simply not appear in my discography online, even though I am the composer, lyricist, and recording artist of record on all three of them, and even though I owned the rights fully and self-released the albums.

I wrote letters, emails, contacted distributors and streaming services ad nauseam, but could not get the needle to budge. “LF” and “SH” — which were published with an ampersand — were permanently stuck under the full artist name of “Vanessa Peters & Ice Cream on Mondays” and therefore did not show up on any of my artist pages.  Weirdly, “TT” got a pass because we titled it with a “+” instead of an “&” and that somehow made a difference, as it seemed to consider Vanessa Peters and Ice Cream on Mondays as 2 separate artists. The height of absurdity.

So as I continued to write and release records, and new listeners began to explore my back catalogue, I was always frustrated by my inability to get those two albums on their radar. They are 2 records that I am enormously proud of, and it has irritated me to no end over the last 15 or so years that I had no way to integrate them into the larger picture. The re-release of this album on Idol Records as a “Vanessa Peters” record is in NO WAY an attempt to remove ICOM from the historical record; in fact it’s the only way I have found to bring them to the foreground by finally being able to include these albums in the discography as a whole.

When we started tossing around the idea of this re-release, I have to admit that I was trepidatious on every possible level. I was nervous about the cost and about whether it was little more than a vanity project. I was also nervous about … my heart. It perhaps sounds silly to say it that way, but I had not listened to these records since VP + ICOM ceased to exist, and I rarely perform any of these songs. This album was written during a time of enormous personal turmoil, followed by a lot of sadness surrounding the band’s breakup, and I had mostly sepulchred these songs away in a memory vault. To be honest I feared that rolling back the stone would open old wounds and poke old bruises and I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea.

Instead the opposite happened. It felt so good to put on the headphones and sit back and listen to the songs come to life again. This album was always intended to be listened as a sort of soundtrack, and the joy of releasing it on vinyl means that it will demand a certain amount of attention from the listener. Manuel’s beautiful harmonies and melodic guitar parts shine much more brightly now, and Alberto’s drums and Juri’s bass parts sit more snugly in the mix, providing a warm cushion without overwhelming it. Rip’s remix brought a sparkle and an analog warmth to the whole album that was lacking the first time around.

Once we had embarked on the remix and realized how good it was sounding, we decided to take the leap from just a simple digital issue all the way to vinyl. And from there, given the time limitations on vinyl (max 22 min/side, really should be less), we had no choice but to release it as a double record. The beauty of that meant opening an album side to some of the songs from “Blackout,” which was released as acoustic EP a few months before “LF.” “Blackout” was a companion album in many ways — I was still trying on the idea of being an artist in a band, and I still performed often as a solo singer/songwriter. As such I still tended to write songs like the title track — 6+ minute ruminating story-songs, arpeggiated acoustic guitar tracks that would have translated poorly into a band setting. Despite the very demo-like nature of these recordings, I love the honest, stripped-down approach that reflects the raw emotion in those songs, which is why we decided to include three of them at the end as bonus tracks. A director's cut, if you will.

So here we are! 
This will just leave "Sweetheart" out in the cold on the streaming platforms, and honestly I don't know what we're going to do about it, because we're fairly certain the original tracks are damaged beyond repair. We're going to see what we can do to save it and bring it into the fold. And of course that's another long record, more double vinyl... eeek. One thing at a time, crazy hamster brain!  For now, ad astra, etc. ;)