Jason and the Monster Problem

B&W mockup and color "final" that I drew at age 6 for a book written by my Mother. Cubist!

Well hey there everyone! Nice to see you, nice to see you.

So I've gotten a lot of really great and supportive emails lamenting the lack of activity (ahem, not to mention *files*) here on Scar Stuff, and while I've done my best to catch up with most of them I figured that it's probably well past time for me to post a somewhat more public explanation regarding my absence/ silence/ total lack of awesomeness/ etc.

The short story is that a while back (after a brief period wherein Blogger had inexplicably frozen the site) I was hit up w/ a "Cease and Desist" demand concerning an OOP file I was sharing, and since I preferred to pay for bandwidth and host things myself (rather than utilizing a file hosting service like Rapidshare or whatever) my provider was hit up as well. After a day or two of reflection this led me to decide that I might as well go ahead and delete the majority of the files here and essentially close up (virtual) shop. To be honest the timing wasn't bad; I was finding spare time in my life to be in short supply and since my original intent wasn't much more than to get the "share ball" rolling (trust me, I succeeded *well* beyond any initial hopes I might have conjured up) as well as connect with other like-minded folks, it all seemed to be something close to kismet.

That said, I wouldn't have traded this experience for anything. While I'd never intended for Halloween records to be my main focus (no, really), before I started up Scar Stuff I can't say that I'd ever found anyone else who cared much about them. When I'd tour the US with one of my bands I'd hit the used record stores to see what kind of weird/ spooky audio they had, and was usually met with a response something akin to "meh". When I'd poke around on line for info (or audio) I'd inevitably come up completely empty handed. Yet as soon as I started posting vintage Halloween records myself the response was instantaneous and overwhelmingly positive; across the board I was met with a highly receptive and enthusiastic audience who were anxious to share tons of fascinating info, memories and experiences around this junk. Whether emailing me directly or using the site comments I honestly received nothing but scads and scads of positive feedback (certainly I never had any trouble w/ "trolls" or anything of the sort), and in the intervening time I've seen my LP rips and cover scans (credited or not, I don't really make a distinction), not to mention dorky *passion* for this stuff spread rapidly all over the world. Not bad!


"Kid Dish Originals" that I drew when I was 5 & 6

Another awesome side effect that I didn't expect: I've scored simply tons of cool stuff thanks to the great folks I met here. Over the duration of Scar Stuff's activity people would send me records (either digitally or physically) on a regular basis, and whenever I managed to aquire some long wished for childhood item (like the Gayle Records "Haunting" 7", the Moon Monster poster, or a 16mm print of the Centron Halloween Safety Film in which I had a role as a kid), I was guaranteed a built-in audience of like-minded folks to share it all with. Very, very cool.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. The files are indeed gone but they were snatched by so many folks that I'd think with a little digging people should be able to scare them up online somewhere. Over the years I've occasionally ripped sets of 4 DVDs composed of the Scar Stuff files which I've given to cool people who have hit me up and are working on like-minded projects. As a kind of final "giving back to the community type" thing (and to show my appreciation for all the great stuff this project has brought me), if some enterprising soul out there wants to set up the infrastructure for a "sharing tree" along these lines I'll be more than happy to kick out the first 10 or so sets. To be honest my organizational skills are horrible when it comes to that kind of thing, but for the 2009 Halloween cycle I'll be happy to kick start what I can. It's really a one-time seasonal offer (as I'm sure I'll find that my intentions rapidly fall behind my situational reality), but don't be shy about cooking it all up if you think you can swing it; sharing has been the whole point.

And again, thanks for all of the emails and kind words everyone; I'm glad to say that I'm doing fine. As for me, these days I'm mostly busy with work and a few other projects I've been tinkering with (a book composed of letters to porn stars, a music documentary that I'm v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y piecing together, some new drone/ psych/ audio nonsense, etc), as well as plain old general life. It's good.

Thanks again, and Happy Halloween everyone!

best,

Jason


Modeling my 1976 "Creature from the Black Lagoon" Halloween Costume