Official Skafish Blog

Welcome to Week 3 of the 7 week Skafish 2009 holiday season giveaway contests:

Week 2 was once again a fantastic success with a lot of entries and here are the Week 2 giveaway contest winners: Cyndy Sarwacinski (US), Marc Versini (France), John Reid (UK), Gareth Williams (UK), and Greg Zagrocki (US). Don’t give up if you haven’t won yet, because there are 5 more contests over these next 5 weeks, so keep your entries coming!

For Week 3, we wave bye-bye to the Skafish holiday jazz CD and press kit prizes, and bring in an extremely rare item for 5 people to win. It is an autographed, promotional CD for the Skafish release, What’s This? 1976-1979.

What makes this a unique collector’s item is the fact that nowadays, most record companies don’t issue special promo CDs anymore. Since I always do everything different than everyone else, I designed a promotional item for What’s This? 1976-1979 that comes in its own CD cover jacket. With modified artwork from the retail CD, it indicates that this is a promotional only product and there is no bar code, so this won’t ever be a for sale item. I only had two thousand three hundred of these manufactured, so having one of these pieces will always be an extremely rare collectible for you to enjoy.

Just like the retail product, this promo CD contains 11 songs, 9 previously unreleased which were recorded over three dates. Session #1 was recorded and mixed on August 26, 1976 and was produced by me. These 4 opening tracks of the CD are the first punk, new wave, alternative, indie, and experimental recordings ever by a Chicago artist. They are the exact tracks that 20th century jazz icon Stan Kenton heard shortly after they were recorded, whereby he immediately referred to me as a genius.

Session #2, which features the next 4 tracks were recorded on October 12, 1977 and mixed on October 17, 1977. They were produced by Robin McBride, who at the time was the head of Midwest & International A&R for Mercury Records. McBride was the Producer and/or served as the Executive Producer for such artists as David Bowie, Dave Brubeck, Kraftwerk, Rush, Tony Bennett and The Ohio Players. Robin witnessed first-hand the frenzy my band and I were causing in the Chicago club scene in 1977 and it was his idea to take us into the studio in hopes of getting Skafish signed to Mercury Records. When executives for the label heard the tapes, they were so shocked and offended that they immediately turned the tapes off and the project was scrapped. Thankfully, the master tapes to this session were accidentally found almost 30 years later.

Session #3, which comprises the next 3 tracks on the CD was originally recorded on July 16, 1978 in my East Chicago, Indiana basement live on a 4-track recorder & completed on August 3, 1978 at Pumpkin Studios in Oak Lawn, Illinois with Grammy award winning engineer Gary Loizzo. This session gave birth to the only previously released tracks from What’s This? 1976-1979, which became the single, Disgracing the Family Name B/W Work Song, initially released in Europe and the UK in November, 1979 by Miles Copeland’s Illegal Records label. As everyone knows, Copeland is one the most legendary figures of all time on the international scene regarding punk, new wave, alternative, indie and experimental music. Miles, who worked with such artists as the Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, The Police and REM, and co-produced the legendary international concert film I was in, Urgh! A Music War, repeatedly proclaimed to anyone within earshot about me, “He’s a fucking genius!”

Besides the 11 songs, I did 5 commentary tracks in late 2006 to set the historical record straight which are also included, making this CD contain 16 total tracks, clocking in at 63:07.

If you love innovation, daring lyrics, music that was and still is ahead of its time — if you get high from music that did and can still shock family, friends, church and state, and you’re interested in how it really all went down back in the day, this is the record for you.

To be eligible to win, here’s all you have to do:

1-Leave a comment with the exact phrase Godfather Skafish in it on www.skafishblog.com.

2-Leave a comment with the exact phrase Godfather Skafish in it on my Facebook pages.

3-Leave a comment with the exact phrase Godfather Skafish in it on my MySpace pages.

4-On Twitter, Tweet this: Win a FREE autographed Skafish PROMO What’s This? CD! http://bit.ly/1ONgAf

You must enter the exact phrase Godfather Skafish to be entered in the contest. You can enter once on each site (up to 4 entries per person for each contest). It’s really that simple!

Every Saturday for the remaining 5 weeks, 5 winners will be randomly picked and notified by email. Then, on each Sunday, a new contest will be announced through December 13, 2009, when the contest concludes. Keep in mind that if you win, you can still enter each of the remaining holiday season giveaway contests.

As I have devoted my life to revolutionizing the world through my art, this record is a testament to that desire, passion, and the uncompromising spirit that makes me who I am – Skafish

November 15th, 2009
Categories: News . Author: Skafish

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