Okay, Jack. I’ve got to hand it to you. Bravo, man; if anything sounds like a more antiquated and foolhardy business decision than stubbornly using analog recording equipment to indiscriminately pump out limited-edition 7-inches and 45s from a brick and mortar store in downtown Nashville USA, it’s publishing giant freaking clunky tree-murderous books. But damned if you don’t nearly always make these ventures work, somehow, someway.
Yup, Third Man Records just announced their intentions to release their very first… book. And it’s a doozy. It’s called Language Lessons: Volume 1, and is being thrust out into the world’s unsuspecting stores on August 5 as a “box set,” featuring “a 321-page hardbound book, two vinyl LP’s, and more.” (Yeah, yeah, there’s vinyl too. It’s Third Man.) But, so, first things first: the book was “co-edited by Chet Weise and Third Man’s own Ben Swank” and is, according to the curiously digital press release I’m now reading, “full of contemporary poetry and prose including over 20 award winning and / or nominated contemporary poets and authors such as Dale Ray Phillips, a Pulitzer Prize nominee in fiction, C.D. Wright, a National Book Award finalist and National Book Critics Circle winner in poetry, and Adrian Matejka, a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry.” Well, okay. Gotta admit that does sound pretty tasty. My Lit Nerd bone is tingling.
As for the vinyl and other bonus stuff, there’s also “two vinyl LPs of jazz, psychedelic-punk, poetry, blues and pop from artists such as William Tyler, Destruction Unit, Ken Vandermark, Sampson Starkweather, and more.” And if you know who more than like two of those people are, god bless you. Oh, and there’s also “5 pieces of frameable broadsides of poems by C.D. Wright, Frank Stanford, Brian Barker, Jake Adam York, and Chet Weise, with original art from former Big Boys guitartist Tim Kerr, one-time Hate illustrator Jim Blanchard, intertwangle-ist folk artist Butch Anthony, and more.”
Overwhelmed by the sheer physicality of all this yet? No? Well, in that case, you’ll be happy to know that the whole thing ALSO comes at you “housed in a hard-case clothbound sleeve.” And you can pre-order the whole shebang now over at the (also curiously-digital) Third Man Books site right the fuck now. Which… you’d probably better do, because it’ll take the pack of mules that’s delivering it at least until around August 5 to get it to your place. Especially with those “framable broadside” things. I don’t know what those are, but they sound heavy.
• Third Man Books: http://thirdmanbooks.com
• Third Man Records: http://www.thirdmanrecords.com
More about: Jack White
