A Taste of PPIM Patreon + Weekend Events!

,

UPDATES FROM PATREON:

Sometimes our posts are special and meaningful and very museum-like, and  sometimes it’s interesting back stories full of details you wouldn’t imagine!

This week it was Steve Albini’s cat! If you haven’t joined the Patreon yet, you should! If you needed further convincing, here’s a taste for you featuring this week’s post: 

I think we were way ahead of the internet cat trend.

Our first Invisible newsletters (that were printed, folded and sent in the mail) had a page created by Pam Konkol who worked publicity at Invisible Records back then – at first intended as a ‘send me a pic of your animals’ page, it became a kind of pet graveyard, memorializing friends and fans recently passed pets. William Tucker took absolute delight in defacing Pam’s frightened warning for people to be careful slamming the filing cabinet doors at the old office at 2024 S Wabash Ave. …
 

As the deadline for the first Pigface EP came close, it fell on me to design the 12” cover – somehow, in our contrarian way, there couldn’t be any pigs involved (I think that was at Bill Rieflin’s insistence) – so how about cats?

A pic of one of our cats was high contrasted onto the cover then, I bought a couple of packs of plastic spoons and collaged a bunch together for the back sleeve. Cut and paste, razor blades and glue sticks. At the time, I think everyone assumed the title ‘Spoon Breakfast’ referred to heroin. Some kind of cereal packaging breakfast of champions?

Q: What is this bag of class A narcotics?

A: it’s what’s for breakfast !
 

Actually, Spoon was the name of Chris Connelly’s cat. Breakfast was the name of the Invisible Records office cat – you might have received several grams of his fur in a mail order package back in those days? He would curl up in the half-filled mail order boxes and became such a signature mail order add-on that people were upset when we briefly switched to an outside fulfillment company to efficiently, quickly (and cat-fur-free) ship our orders out. People wanted cat hair in their orders and wanted to make sure Breakfast was ok!

Cats were featured prowling in the ‘Little Sisters’ video, too. (Click Here to Watch that Video)

Is that the end of the Pigface cat connection? Of course not!

As the first album neared completion it needed a name…… GUB!
 

You may think in true Steve Albini fashion, “The title suggests unfinished, unpolished, visceral content with no filter, no cleanup, straight out of the machine. Deliberately rough, anti-corporate, no gloss, full of attitude!” Well, yes, all of that but also…

Gub was the name of Steve Albini’s cat.
 

WEEKEND EVENTS + BEYOND

This weekend, there are some tickets available for (mis)Guided Tours with Martin, Saturday and Sunday. Later this month, Martin will be hopping online to celebrate and talk about the recording of PiL’s Paris au Printemps over the 46th anniversary! January 24th marks the 3st anniversary of Swans The Great Annihilator – which Martin has many items, stories, and background to share!

If you’re bummed you missed the screen printing workshop this past Tuesday, have no fear – we’re having another one in February over Valentine’s weekend!

Stay tuned for more and check out all the current live events available at the link below!