I've never worked in the printing industry, so I'm not sure what chemical is responsible for that incredible smell of newly printed CD covers. It sort of smells like clay, or some other pure substance that I wouldn't be too afraid to eat if my life depended on it. That's the smell I'm smelling right now as I flip through my new favourite album by my favourite band, the Rheostatics. As I read along with the songs, trying to learn the words, singing with one headphone slightly off my ear so that I can hear myself a bit I sit with my eyes and ears transfixed on the album. I love the music, and I love singing, and I really love knowing all the songs when I go to see them play, so I'm doing my homework.
To me, that amazing printing smell is a symbol of something new, something finished, an album that has had so many painstaking hours put into it, and now exists in its finished form, perfect and complete in every respect. Sweaty guys in the studio, cold pizza in the control room, miles of tape, stacks of hard disks, replacement guitar strings, broken drum sticks and sore vocal cords out for dinner trying to sooth themselves with something creamy or warm are all gone now. The best glimpses of that process are captured and perfectly mixed and edited and tweaked and placed on the CD. All the drawings, photographs, lyrics and credits have been scanned, proofed, colour corrected and exported to the correct file formats and sent off to the printers. And after so many non-musical processes, plate making, pressing, printing, packaging, distributing, shipping and merchandising, I am finally able to go to the store and pay my $20 and have the creation that has been in the works for months, if not years. And it all sounds so good, and smells so good.
To me, the process of creating an album, or any other mass-produced art form is one of incredible magic. So many details, so much precision, so much care, so many invoices, phone calls and emails, so many weeks waiting for each stage of the process to be complete. And in the end, a beautiful thing that everyone can have for a modest sum of money. Something they can keep forever and enjoy whenever they like. A distributed time capsule of one band's expressions, ideas, feelings and performance efforts, locked into a compact little package forever. It's just so perfect.
