An earlier version of this entry resided in this contributor's @eSteemApp draft queue during the month of July, but inexplicably disappeared by the start of August following the client's interface change/rebranding to @Ecency. A partial reconstruction/rewrite from memory, drafted on the stabler JotterPad, follows below. (As time permits, I'll try my best with feedback tickets.)
What's more, this couldn't even go through on Ecency for some reason; perhaps the long text was a hassle? As such, returning to Hive itself to submit it in the nick of time. Once again, dearest apologies.
Apologies to the late Gil Scott-Heron re: the title of this installment. (Because at this point, I can't come up with a better one.)
Over half a year has passed since our last Notebook entry. To quickly recap (as we reopen this feature): Adanson staged their comeback re.BUILD Panhandle concert at Panama City's M.B. Miller on January 25; held a New Year's feast (competing with Mas Domnik back in their island home) during February and early March at Santa Rosa Beach's Celebration Hall; went ahead with their ninth Music Time revue on March 12 at said venue; and had to cancel all future engagements (two re.BUILD editions in Dorian-stricken Abaco and Grand Bahama included) in the wake of COVID-19. (As mentioned before, thank Dr. Anthony Fauci and his maximum mandate of 50 in a crowd--which runs contrary to their live-performance commitments.)
Since the outbreak's U.S. onset, Adanson--along with the folks from Giraudel's Autrison label who were initially meant to pay them a visit, but ultimately stayed put with them in lockdown--has almost barely ventured outside their downtown Panama City apartment base; this contributor can already relate to their plight. (Address will follow as we sign off.) Effectively, in-person contact has been limited to the occasional grocery outing (wherein the standard "physical distancing" and facemasks-first protocol are in effect). Otherwise, it's by the usual means: Their tweet feed, Vimeo Livestream channel, Skype, e-mail, and private P2P/satellite linkage among them, their recent network of outsourcing clients, and Kino Lorber (their new sales partner, standing in for Italy's pandemic-stricken Mediaset).
Meanwhile, things have not gone very well for Autrison's home operations nor their established modus operandi--selling and producing vinyl singles. As mentioned previously, Autrison's Giraudel staff was reduced to a skeleton crew after most of the gang left Dominica to reunite with their old clients in the Panhandle. Things got so lousy in the coming months, the locals had little choice but to accept temporary administration by mid-July. The most recent batch in their catalogue, AN0501-AN0600, went on sale during Memorial Day weekend--but that was it. (The limited stock--and their exclusive availability in the U.S. and Canada for the time being--hardly helped matters.) Autrison is retooling much of their website in response, but keeping the old vinyl-catalogue pages around for historical purposes--all as they switch to digital downloads for the first time in their history as a Bandcamp-only vendor. That, plus the production partnership I'll report on in a while.
TL/DR: Live shows and record stores are so not the ticket in the midst of a pandemic. But, while despair still looms, a glimmer of hope lies deep within Adanson's production servers and Autrison's growing multinational inventory.
Which brings us, first thing, to…
The Nature Island team's oft-delayed visual-album début, Revolution: An Animated Fourth of July, whose post-production wrapped up at 10:30 on Wednesday night, new tunes and all. It's saying a lot that they beat their last deadline (today, August 8) just barely--and much more that almost only a week remains until the premiere of Reflections, a de facto replacement for the traditional weekend get-togethers et al. the original Adanson of Marigot has specialised in for decades. Everything--from the highly lauded Disney+ launches of Hamilton (July 3) and Black Is King (July 31), to the latest West Indies v England test series across the pond, and finally August Monday in the CARICOM realm--preempted their planned dates. Not to mention the George Floyd movement kicked in from coast to coast, undercut their psyche, and made them struggle to get Volume 1 of Reflections out the door earlier on in June.
Even better: Only a mere fortnight before the fireworks did they remember what was coming up on America's calendar--and with that, they all entered breakneck mode for the precious remainder of 2020's first half. Fortunately, the delays became a blessing in disguise, and gave them more time to review potential animation errors, smoothen out the keyframes, and shell out extra for the six licensed Upcomers in this year's go-round. Helps that raccoon cousins Sam and Alfred are already artistically talented. (Back in Marigot, the old Adanson staged--and then remounted--a Fourth of July Gala catering to the U.S. diaspora during summer 2019.)
Not only that, but the special respectively shares a song and style approach with the aforementioned D+ marquee draws: "The Room Where It Happens" (from Hamilton), and of course, the visual-album template (perfected by Black Is King).
On North American broadcast television, several stations will air Revolution as a brokered special, tonight at 7:00 Eastern/6:00 Central: WNBC New York, WUSA Washington, WPVI Philadelphia, WJHG Panama City (complete with live screening party on-campus--limited to the crew and 15 guests), WFTS Tampa/St. Petersburg (this Captain's adopted home), WSB Atlanta, WLS Chicago, KTXA Texas, KCAL Los Angeles, KTVU Oakland/San Francisco, CITY Toronto, and CBMT Montréal. Elsewhere, the Livestream simulcast--and an official Internet Archive upload the following morning--will pick up the slack.
As for Reflections itself: When production began on April 1, Adanson almost named the visual-album series Quarantunes (thanks to a few r/LastFM users), but soon found it too contrived and questionable for marketing purposes. Fortunately, someone in the team already brought up "Reflection", the theme from Disney's Mulan. The choice made a lot of good sense in light of several factors:
- The tale takes place in China, and China's Wuhan (which the film title almost rhymes with) was the source of the novel coronavirus late last year.
- The ongoing plight of Hong Kong's protesters, along with that of the Uyghurs in the mainland (you try mentioning that on Reddit), has turned it into a discreet protest anthem against the CCP and one X. J.P. by transliterated initials.
- Even the pro-China controversy sparked by its remake's lead actress, Liu Yifei, has elevated its relevance. Some are still calling for a boycott in advance of Disney+'s exclusive premiere, overpriced or not, on September 4.
Reflections' first three-part volume is set for August 14-16 (if all goes well)--and at least they're 90% of the way through at this writing, so good news on that front. As mentioned in our duplicate cleanup post, Kino Lorber is distributing worldwide across Vimeo Livestream, Pluto TV, CBS All Access, and the Internet Archive. Reruns will air on select cable outlets now in ViacomCBS' purvey in the weeks ahead.
Production of Revolution and Reflections is credited to the ad hoc KLPC unit, a joint venture among the Adanson Trust, Autrison Records, the governments of Dominica and Bay County in Florida, the ASIFA organisation, Tom Morello's Firebrand music label, and Kino Lorber. Since nothern spring, KLPC has joined forces with an array of overseas outsourcing allies, among them Canada's Nelvana and Mercury Filmworks; William Joyce's Moonbot Studios; Japan's Production I.G., Sunrise, and Toei; Les Armateurs in France; and the U.S.-based Baer Animation company. Production imagery will be placed in the public domain under CC0 and Kopimi, but the audiovisual component's a different story entirely. (Whatever license/waiver was originally attached to each tune also applies for the KLPC take.)
When it comes to Autrison catalogue codes, a reboot of a reboot is in effect--starting today. Before 2020, all Autrison singles bore the "A####" scheme on their front covers; after they met the Panhandle folk, they started anew with "AN####", or the "Autrison New Series". As hinted at above, that didn't last long thanks to the pandemic. Now, as the Nature Islanders switch ove to Internet distribution completely (at least for now), Autrison is about to implement an overhaul: The Revolution compilation, comprising 46 tracks, will go on sale tomorrow as "AVA-4J"--short for "Autrison Visual Album: 4th of July"--while Reflections' companion collections will be labelled "AVA-RF##" (the last two digits are the volume number). All individual tunes in these sets--only the open-source material is available for free download--will carry the "AVA####" identifier. (Starting from the spoken-word intro, Len Spencer's "Advertising Record" [AVA0001], followed by the familiar Smith/Harding tuneup [AVA0002], and the U.S. Navy Band's renditions of the U.S. and Dominican anthems [AVA0003/AVA0004].)
On a related note, no activity from Adanson since MT #9 = no scrobbles on the Adanson Jukebox log at Last.fm. The lockdown has clearly shot down our plans for a highly hoped-for 20,000 milestone by year's end--but the home stretch of our explr.fm world tour (to be covered in the first two volumes of Reflections, no matter what) will make up for it. I may not care much about baseball, but I strongly guess covering all 210 territories will be a home run for both the LFM subreddit and r/DataIsBeautiful. Come tonight's Revolution, the spell will for once be broken. (If we're lucky, 18,000 may be within our reach during Advent/Epiphany--but don't count on 20,000 till next February or something. Someone, somewhere, has to make up for ages-long deficit.) Need I mention the next TD card that gives us the chance to resume Pro-only cleanup?
Almost forgot: Starting next week, we'll be going through our months-long cleanup backlog, ten tunes from every month (since last February) at a time--all on our new master USB. Our good friend, MP3Tag, will randomly select most of what I process; a few relevant picks will be top-priority. Still, that doesn't mean whole batches will automatically hit the Reflections playlists--not by a long shot. Autrison's open-source catalogue is still a bit paltry compared to the years of fully licensed offerings they've got, which currently outnumber the former about four to one. As it stands, audiences will be in for no fewer than 80 royalty-free Upcomers in any given volume, as the Giraudel label does its best to expand that very section till there are as many of those as on the other side of the copyright curtain. (Although the future highlights I've teased in previous regular bulletins will still join the ride, caddy limitations or not.) And of course, there's my new 32 GB SD auxiliary...
- Not only that--GoneMAD will also handle some of the tagging, especially with regards to tunes from the CJK realm. Meaning as soon as I fetch the likes of them, I'll get them into a special folder, carry on from here, and let MP3Tag do the rest as we switch cards. (I hear talk another app, Musicolet, is good for tagging as well; guess we'll have to trade in Vanilla Player for that soon.)
- And, with so many tunes to keep track of--and so many key changes to boot!--guess we'll have to get an inventory going on Android Excel.
In manuscript-related news:
Even though the first 1,000 words of Unspooled #1 (with Alfred, Maurice, and the vagrants) remain up for grabs (any day from now--wait till I take care of Veritas up to step #200), revisiting Disc 2 of the original 2012 Marigot Magic sessions on Box.com sometime last month gave me a new perspective on how Sam's story should go. (As in Samson Dixwell, boy-raccoon wonder and merchandising mascot of said series.) Back during that NaNoWriMo phase, Sam was visiting Marigot for the summer while his uncle Matthew (along with Matthew's adopted son) was shooting a movie in nearby Marie-Galante. Back then, our little pet project ended up being a bunch of imagined music-video vignettes loosely strung together by the thinnest excuse for an excuse plot. Now that I can see a decent narrative before my eyes, eight years later…we may finally have a side story to cousin Alfred's adventure after all! (Only that Matthew was once supposed to have his own counterpart to his nephew's; that much I mentioned in the earliest days of our Google+ era.) As I keep saying in situations like this: Someday…but not today.
As for the series mascot himself? Well, I spent the last few weeks asking around for a requested sketch or portrait at r/furry. So far at press time, three Redditors on the anthro scene have given their takes, with a couple more pending. Haven't seen that much activity on that front since the days of G+; most of what I once received remain in my Takeout archive. (Speaking of Plus contacts, I managed to save a few platform-retirement mementos from various furs during the twilight phase.)
First and best of all: Sam as a Tamagotchi, by an artist who goes by the handles of "ImBriNotBrie" on Twitter and "Praise2Gouda" on Reddit. Tamagotchi, for those in the Americas who missed out of the late '90s fad, is a line of portable interactive toys from Bandai that is still going strong in its native Japan. Adapted to anime several times since its 1996-97 introduction (most notably as a 2009-2014 series produced by OLM, the studio everyone else perennially knows for Pokémon). For those just joining in for the first time here: This is a more or less regular part of my "nightflighting" stints, whereupon I peruse YouTube during select overnights for whatever nostalgic, novelty, and news-relevant highlights are on my mind.
And did I say last time the anime theme will grace the first or second volume of Reflections?
Next in line is a naturally aged Mr. Dixwell, by one "Helodrome". Although Mr. Helodrome's request line was closed when I approached his thread, I nonetheless grabbed a spot for his next go-round. Conversation--and feedback--took place via Y! Mail yesterday.
And to cap off this trio, a B&W line sketch of our so-called "Rockoon" on a guitar (from last month), by r/Zootopia regular "BurningMyBread"; sorry if it's a bit low-res. Asked BMB during June on another request thread, but the wait became so long I promptly forgot about it. Until one random look-see at the start of August, when one of his submissions (at r/FurryArtSchool) caught my eye and looked somehow familiar:
"Is it me, or does this remind me of Unspooled mascot Sam?"
"Yeah, that’s him."
"Oh, really? (I've been waiting for a request like this for a while now, and recently asked around at r/furry.) Where else do you have that?"
"Uh, have what?"
"As in, the pic?"
"Just on Reddit."
"Thanks for the heads-up. Well, see you with my next Marigot Notebook entry soon--and a credit on FA/IB!"
To all three: Thanks for taking notice, enjoy the rest of your summer--and I'll give you a dedication credit in my manuscript someday!
Still pains me that on STM/Hive, anthros are still a hard find--but there's always
. (And me, one of the "followers" ever since ca. 2005-2007--back when Myspace was the only big social name in town. Never really used that, apart from seeing my old Sevton soundtrack lineups rescued from imeem a couple of years after.)
As for fellow Hivers, saying hello to our latest guest, @ChrisInPhuket. (Thanks to my recent "rehive" of his post on Midnight Groovers' "Suffering". For those outside Dominica or its diaspora, the Groovers were a well-remembered "cadence-lypso" group from the 1970s on through the 2000s; selections from their discography, "Suffering" itself included, reside in Autrison's Giraudel archives.
Last but not least, the charity critters-turned-Sunshine State animators can be reached at:
Briarwood Apartments Phase II
o/b/o Kino Lorber Panama City LLC (KLPC)
1002 W 23rd St #400
Panama City, FL
32405
Back in late July, I spent some time researching the best real-world spot imaginable for them on GMaps--and now you know where their apartment complex has been based since March 2019. (But please, don't mail the real-life proprietors expecting someone in fursuits to read up; this is only part of the fictional backstory.)
Thus ending our most ambitious entry in quite some time--and perhaps our longest yet on either here or G+!--but don't expect much (or another) for the next several weeks. Instead, resteems will sporadically take effect. Until then, please take care, stay connected, wipe everything down...and God bless.
All of us, and Mr. Floyd's family.
P.S. And to think I managed to finish up that rewrite just barely!
(2964/MN #409)