The thought
process was simple: How do I possibly get all of my
tapes, CDs and DVDs on one page without it looking
like a friggin' train wreck? I had struggled with
that for awhile really because the
"Recordings" section of the old site sucked. But
now because of the redo, it was really buggin' me.
Early morning on December 23rd, as I was waking
up, I started thinking about my day off and it occured
to me to just make a mock store like
amazon.com...
"Hell, I bet I
could just piggy-back on their layout. It'd be a great
way to organize everything…"
I NEVER SAW THE SUN THE REST OF THE YEAR.
Seriously, I never
moved. I'm telling you I got the idea and I was off. I
worked every friggin' moment I was awake (with Jess's
hours and my unreasonably long amount of time off
work, I had little else to do), and it kept looking
better and better. A day into it, I looked at the
amazon logo and thought I saw my name. Then it
hit me - Adamazon.com.
How perfect is that? I knew the domain name would be
taken though. Did a check….voila. FRIGGIN' VOILA.
Got the name, made the logo - holy shit how perfect is
this? For once my name comes in PERFECT in this
situation. But the framework
difficulties…whew.
I mean, the amount
of coding that goes into one page of amazon.com is
pretty intense. You can't just copy the code, and
change the pictures. You're basically working from the
ground up. It was much like how I had to do parody
songs at CD101. I didn't have the background tracks. I
had to use the spaces IN BETWEEN THE WORDS to edit and
recreate the whole song, then write it. It was a bear
to say the least. Same here. A song/site from scratch
would defintely be easier.
So once I got all
my projects in, I decided it was best if I just put
placeholders in for projects I know are coming. T3 of
course will be out this year, and it forced me to
choose a title "The Trinitrons 3 - The Band Strikes
Back" - It's gonna be a classic ending to the trilogy,
can't wait. And The Listener Bits CD was done in 1999,
so I figured I should probably get around to finishing
the cover art and have that available so bam, bam, 2
placeholders there…
…well before
you know it I look up and I have 24 projects. 14 CDs,
7 Cassettes, and 3 DVDs. Had no idea I had that much,
because I never took the time to really put it in a
nice, neat package. Man there is some extraordinary
stuff here. The Late Show CDs are absolutely killer. I
just listened to "Late Show Leftovers" the other day
and was laughing my ass off. Not even close to
scraping the barrel. And the CD101 Listener Bits are
some of the best things I've ever done. Each bit with
introductions and music…highest quality for sure.
"Songs From The Journey (Years 1-5)" CD is probably
going to be my favorite as my generation is about as
ADD as anyone and these songs are all only 1-2
minutes. All the songs from the site on a CD in video
and mp3 form. Should be about 40 tracks by the end of
2004. The Complete Boyles mp3 disc which I've actually
already sold - but now will have full cover art and be
linked like a mini-website.
Of course every
page needed its own customer reviews, editorial
reviews, links to mp3s, track listings…I mean -
this is a lot of work for even 1 or 2
projects…but 24? LOL. Ridiculous. Then of course
all the covers! I had to come up with 6 new covers
that I never bothered to make. Cover art is a big
ass deal to me and I wasn't going to half ass it.
These 6 covers alone took nearly 40 hours. Everything
looks so deceptively simple. It just never, ever is.
And for every cover there were always 3 rejected
designs. Ugh. Up first, Complete Boyles
Collection.
I could probably
put that together now in about 20 minutes. This went
through so many incarnations. From a cover with every
cassette cover to just Lester, to just Lester &
Johnny...ugh - never ended. Kept making it too
complicated with just way too much shit. I love this
layout though, it's to the point. Should most likely
be released in the Spring. Click on the covers to go
to their respective sites on Adamazon.com.
Another one
I must've done 5 versions of. I finally just
scrapped everything in frustration. The bottom line
was again, they were all too busy. The story of The
Journey is a simple one. This picture says it all.
Then we had the 2 Listener Bits CDs.
Believe it or not
it took 2 hours to clean that signing board for the
first one. And fellas, trust me if I had a picture of
"Sex @ Speedway" , It would've been there. HEH. But
actually, these are exactly what they should be. Jimbo
and Crazy Food Boy were the 2 biggest contributors to
The Late Show, and by all means should be on the
covers. Fairly simple covers, I avoided the urge to
flood the cover with every bit, and all the pictures
I had...I saved the crazy stuff for the next 2
covers.
This one hurt just
a little. It's been ten years people. TEN YEARS. Whew.
Moving on. I basically took all the outtake photos
from the two shoots, and put them all over the cover
with Unreal on the left, and Tomorrow on the right.
Here's the originals:
Highly
embarrassing, but hey - no computer, just cut and
paste. ("No
Adam, it's the POSE that's embarrasing, not the
cut and paste")
Yeah yeah.
Anyway, those are all letters from my Columbia Records
tapes. Heh. Thank you Billy Joel. The new CD is
basically just a chronoligcal order of all the songs
before "Stronger Than Before". A little bit of
overlapping, but I wanted to show the progression from
"Me & You" in 1992 to "Forever For Now" in 1994.
You truly have to be a FAN to want this CD for sure,
but I hated having the two cassettes on the site as
SOLD OUT, and have no way for anyone to have the
songs. That and the 10 year anniversary made it a
no-brainer: Time for the re-release.
And finally what
has to be the coolest cover I've ever
made:
Folks, that is
badass. That is just bad-ass. I actually wrote about
the concept for the cover in my big "to-do" list
in October of 2000, but I then thought I would have to
manually write labels on a bunch of tupperware and
take pictures. Enter the internet-age. Search for a
picture of leftovers in someone's fridge, have some
fun in photoshop - and voila - it's done. Of course it
took me like 8 hours. I swear man, if you had told me
I would find the picture relatively easy - I'd tell
you I could put all the titles on in about an hour.
NOPE. Just takes forever. But man, the end result
rules.
So when all this
was done, I had this great little site. You couldn't
actually buy anything - but it was fun to look
through...
...but it looked
too good. It went well beyond a nice layout - it
actually made people WANT to buy things. And supplying
an email address or even a PO box to send a check to
was just NOT cool. Looks ghetto. You can't have a site
like this and then do that. So I finally decided, no
matter what the cost - I was going to have this be a
working store. Shopping cart and everything. Allow
people to look around, pick some things - have the
total calculate for you, and allow you to pay with a
check or a credit card - OVER the net. Paypal offers
this to their business class members, so I signed up a
new name to a new checking account and learned all the
coding to get it to work.
This of course is
where all hell broke loose on the web-design end,
because amazon's pages already had all that shit, and
everything was constantly interfering. Nothin' like
trying to buy The Trinitrons DVD and getting Amazon's
Sex & The City. It actually took me one FULL day
to get ONE page to work. I think it was 10 straight
hours troubleshooting until I finally got the cart to
work and then the view cart button didn't work. I got
to the point many times where I was truly about to
give up. Just wasn't worth it when probably 3 people
are gonna buy stuff - but then I'd start clicking
around the site, and it totally inspired me again, so
I kept at it.
The end result is
an amazing, fully functioning promotional tool that
makes everyone's jaw drop when they see it. It has the
exact desired effect on the viewer and if you want
anything, it's like 2 clicks away. Shipping and
handling is cheap as hell, and you can "impulse
support" instantly. Realize though, the actual
financial side of this is a DIIIIIIIIIISTANT second on
"reasons for Adamazon.com".
Sure, I'd like to get rid of all this product I have,
but I want to impress you more. Of course the final
piece of this puzzle is Amazon.com themselves: whether
or not they'll sue me.
Folks, as is the
case with the Trinitrons, if I get a cease and desist
letter from Amazon or Sony I will be the luckiest man
alive. Press releases will go out immediately and I
will begin the campaign of all campaigns. Publicity
will be mine for the asking. Unfortunately, I'm not
even a small fry - I'm the hard crunchy parts at the
bottom of the French fry container. There is no way
these humungous companies are gonna spend their legal
budget to shut down my one-man show, or my site with
15 hits. LOL. It makes no sense. And especially in the
case with Adamazon.com
- it's a parody. I'm not trying to be an e-commerce
site. If I had one product on there that wasn't
promotional for me? Yeah, they'd have a point - but
it's obviously a promotional tool and again - there's
no justification for the money it would take them,
even to have a letter sent…but maaaaaaaan if they
do.
I think I'm
gonna get business cards made up with adamazon.com on
them and get em in the hands of everyone I can find. I
want a buzz about this. I want people showing it to
their friends because of how real it looks. It's just
so well executed. And it's inclusion on the site to me
is just that final slap in the face to anyone who hits
it: "What can't he do?".
And I have to
believe that if I constantly keep hitting people over
the head, that at some point they'll say: "OK, WE GET
IT"…and I will move to the next level. And that's
what it's all about right? Moving forward. And when I
look at the home page of Adamazon.com
I see that progression. For the past 10 years I have
consistently one-upped myself. From one project to the
next, you can see the path. It leads to 4tvs and it
leads to bigger and better things. Radio was obviously
a testing grounds for my comedy, just as the music
career was the testing grounds for my writing and all
roads led to the show I have right now: The
Trinitrons. Mix that with a more mainstream show that
will allow me a broader media spotlight… it
works. I'm there.
And I
am friggin' stoked. I'd say that I'm now
going to kill myself and start hammerin'
out the T3 script - but I need to mentally
chill out for like a week. This was the
most intense 30 day period of my life - no
kidding. My tank is on empty. I feel
like I did 4 months worth of work in
4 weeks. T3 will happen, I just need to
rev up a bit.
Killer
300 man. Woot. And the video
rules. Oh, and it's a 10 second download
so y'all have no excuse.
Adam
PS - oh and uhm
can you please consider buying
some shit?
And uhm, can you write
about some of the shit you've already bought? The
customer review section is pretty barren. As I said
this isn't a financial thing, but you can't imagine
how badly Jess and I need the money right now. So if
there's anything you've ever wanted, please don't
hesitate to use your credit card. Paypal is incredibly
safe and completely free (I pay all your fees).
And again, any words you can write down about the
various products you may already have would be greatly
appreciated. I'll even put a link on the review to
your site or whatever you'd like. Thanks
again.
