Supermarket Fireworks part 16

A very gray day with threats of rain that never quite showed up.  No problem, because I was working indoors today.

First stop was in Belmar today.  Have two things going on there, my next woodcut class is scheduled to start a week from today, and my woodcut show is scheduled to end next Friday.  I can't come in on Fridays, so I guess it would have to come down on Thursday or Saturday, which would involve patching any damage from the picture hooks.  Sounds like something to be worked out next week.  Bigger concern today was the woodcut class.  I asked in the office if I had any students yet and was told that one person had signed up. Not enough to run the class, but it's more than I had last time and we have a week to go.

Grabbed a slice of local pizza and then drove up to Ocean Grove.  Brought more Pixies today, a record company album.  The last new album before the original break up came out in 1991, which has given the record companies time to put out a lot of other music- out takes, live cuts, alternate versions, etc.  The disc I brought from home today collected songs recorded for the BBC.  Success in England generally involves promotion on the BBC, even for American bands.  In the case of the Pixies, they were based in Boston, but originally signed to a British label- 4AD, which had the only releases of the early albums (my copy of the first two albums was a two for one on a single disc issued by the British label and imported as there was not an American distributer yet- now they come as two separate discs) and still got a cut of all subsequent albums.  I don't know what the current state of radio is over there, but in the Beatles early days there was just one legal BBC radio station and it played classical, except for a few short shows of popular music on Saturday mornings.  As an up and coming band, the Beatles needed as many appearances as possible and even had a few shows of just them, performing live in the station studio, regularly through 1965.  (America had its own equivalents, and many jazz, big band, blues, and country musicians all had regular broadcast slots on their way to fame.)  The internet may have changed things, but back in the early 90's, success in England meant going to the BBC studio and performing live songs for playing on the air.  This disc I had today (issued in 1998) collects 15 songs the band recorded from 1988 to 1991.  Some had been issued on 12" EP's in England, or as single B sides in various countries- I had heard and owned a few, but this is the biggest set I know of. And since they were a band that didn't favor a lot of elaborate production on records, their live performances are generally pretty good.  When that disc ended, I went with their last studio album (Trompe le Monde), of which I keep a copy in my Studio library.

On the block I continued where I had left off yesterday. I worked to the left, cutting the rotating rack of sparklers, plus some of the floor and other things surrounding it.  The biggest things left are the bakery section and a lot of floor, plus some of the shelves of pails and other beach stuff.  Assuming the Belmar class happens, it will be good to have something in progress to show the students.  The rack has two signs, one saying "Not for cakes" (a reference to the sparkler cake that can be seen a few inches to the left) and "Hey Kids! Sparklers", a spoof of the Hey Kids Comics rotating racks found in so many supermarkets and drug stores.