2) The New York Times recently ran a half-satirical/half-think piece on something they called ‘The New Old’ = a trend to reissue cool products from the past and the revival of moribund brand names like the new Mini Cooper, Danelectro guitars, Eames furniture, Triumph motorcycles, etc... ”The Museum of Me” is part of this trend. If Post-Modernism was a crunching together of the best bits from past designs, The New Old is reproducing a design in its original, ‘pure’ form... but with modern ‘materials’. In ”The Museum of Me”, the pure ‘design’ is the signature sound of these antique audio formats... think “new wine in old bottles”. If you want to get really theoretical about it, this CD is an exercise in Audio Industrial Design... something I’ll define as soon as I can think up a definition!

3) Two weeks ago, NPR’s Susan Stanberg closed Friday evening’s “All Things Considered” with a piece about a “new recording of Caruso”. It seems a classical record producer had taken wax cylinders of the famous tenor, digitally stripped-off the backing accompaniment and had an orchestra re-record the music. Am I in the zeitgeist or what? My tune "Thinkin’ About Them Girls" on this CD has me on wax cylinder and the other musicians on digital 8-track... a cross-format experiment I did three years ago.

4) I've always been fascinated by the idea of time travel. When I tried my first antique audio recording - "The Bottom of a Workingman’s Beer" on a wire recorder I’d found in a flea market - what went in was modern me... but what came out was a 50-year-old sound... it was as if I had transported myself back to the mid-20th Century!

5) - Or - these are just pretty good rock songs, the project is sequenced like a rock record... it IS a rock record. The antique audio angle is gravy.