Dalton unearthed a box in his storage shed that was full of tapes that I had recorded and sent to him over the years. He called me and asked if I wanted to have a look. I couldn’t believe that he still had this stuff.

There were some fine gems in there. The music itself wasn’t as interesting as my evolution of packaging over the years.

There were occasions when I barely labelled the tape at all.

The music on this tape, a bootleg of Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughn may have melted the cover… but probably not. I must have been in a hurry. Shame on me. Sometimes I did slightly better and at least used the insert.

This was a bootleg I recorded myself. I didn’t have any song info however, so it went out with this plain cover. Good music, boring cover. Fail.

Sometimes the song list was so lengthy after writing it all down I didn’t feel like writing it all down again and just sent the paper along.

Also weak.

Then came the days of the printer. I used my horrible, but best I had at the time printer to create some covers. Not exceptional work, but considering my software and hardware constraints… all in all not bad.

Witness the Hole Bootleg:

and the Smashing Pumpkins “Virgins” boot:

These were not bad, but some I really did well on. Here is a Smashing Pumpkins with a more colorful splash. I’ve no doubt I got this from a copy of Rolling Stone or Spin or some other magazine I was picking up in those days.

A little sparkle for this copy of White Zombie.

The Cure got a magazine page cover too.

I got it all right on the copy of “David Bowie – Outside” that blew my mind and rekindled my love of Bowie. This was a combination of printer and magazine clipping. Perfection. I had this one on CD. Had to get a copy to Dalton. This was before the days of burning CD’s. At least for me.

This box was magical indeed.

Full of history.

Thanks for keeping them all these years!