Gonerfest 9 Music Box — Lettered Edition | Jim Camp synaesthesia press Artist’s Box

Description

Gonerfest, the annual music festival hosted by Memphis-based Goner Records, began in 2004 and has since become a staple for fans of garage rock, punk, and alternative music. Attending a Gonerfest is like making a pilgrimage to The Shrine of Indie Bands. In 2012, Gonerfest 9 lit Memphis up. I know. I was there. I jumped a LAX/Memphis Delta flight in September of 2012 with my little Canon point-and-shoot — a PowerShot S95 — wrapped around my neck. Over a couple of days I met new friends, saw some great bands, and made some pictures. And when it was over, I made Music Box. Then, I shared a few boxes with friends and tucked the majority of them away. Until now.

Music Box is a hand-assembled, letterpress artist’s box issued in an edition of 26 lettered copies. Laid-in, among other things, are my 30 favorite photographs from all the bands I saw — from an amazing Oblivions set to NOBUNNY and Chicago’s White Mystery and Texas’s own Bad Sports and Bobby Hussy lighting up his beautiful Strat a-la Hendrix before smashing it to bits — and speaking of bits, Melbourne, Australia’s Bits of Shit just about melted my brain. I printed the box’s wrap-around band and inner ephemera on my good friends Cindy & Gary Iverson’s Vandercook over at Letterpress Central (Cindy also helped design & print the cover): the wraparound band; the Jack Gilbert quote on translucent stock; as well as the found library cards with colophon inserted within…my whole goal here being this is as much an artifact as it is a photo set documenting a lot of great bands that didn’t get the audience they deserve.

And like the best sets, this one doesn’t need an encore.