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REVO | CD-R | 2017 | REVO 083

The Rezillos: A Case Of Rezillomania CD-R [2017]

1. Can’t Stand My Baby [7” Ver.]
2. I Wanna Be Your Man
3. [My Baby Does] Good Sculptures [7” Ver.]
4. Flying Saucer Attack [7” Ver.]
5. Top Of The Pops [7” Ver.]
6. 20,000 Rezillos Under The Sea
7. Destination Venus
8. Mystery Action
9. [My Baby Does] Good Sculptures [Alt. B-side Ver.]
10. Thunderbirds Intro/Destination Venus [Live]
11. Flying Saucer Attack [Live]
12. Twist + Shout [Live]
13. No [BBC Session]
14. It Gets Me [BBC Session]
15. No. 1 Boy [Single Ver.]
16. Out Of This World [Single Ver.]
17. Rosalyn
18. Out Of This World [Glass Mix]
19. Top Of The Pops [Live]
20. Bad Guy Reaction [Live]
21. Yesterday’s Tormentor [Live]
22. Sorry About Tomorrow [XKRY Session]
23. Groovy Room [XKRY Session]
24. Destination Venus [XKRY Session]
25. Tiny Boy [XKRY Session]
26. [My Baby Does]Good Sculptures [XKRY Session]

My initial idea for artwork was to show the band put inside of a “Mars Attacks” trading card that never existed. Something with a caption like “Blasting Their Brains” with Fay and Eugene aggressively blasting their music to a reeling Martian. I quickly did a sketch that looked great, but then the rot set in. For those not aware, the Mars Attacks trading cards from the early 60s was a series that was later turned into the Tim Burton movie of the 90s. The tropes of Mars Attacks and The Rezillos certainly had some serious overlap, so it was a quick idea that seemed to be a good one; just make a “Mars Attacks” card illustrating that premise.

Norm Saunders art

Where it all fell down was that I wanted to do it as a painting in acrylic in the style of Norm Saunders, the original artist. I spent hours sourcing photos of the band to paint from and examples of Saunders mid-century pulp style. It shouldn’t have been difficult to ape his style and put to my ends, but I had not figured on the art supply conundrum. I have an art box filled with acrylic paints dating back almost 40 years. Many, but not all of these relics from my student days have not completely dried up, so it might have happened. Where I fell down was in having a good surface to paint on. All I could scare up without a trip to the art $upply $tore were some unused old comic book backing boards. Big enough to paint on, and probably no larger than what Saunders used back in the day, but those suckers slurped up the paint almost immediately. I was unable to blend the paint for a good look, and buying some gel polymer medium to retard drying was also out of the question.

Annoyed, I relented and went to the iPad for succor. I have a painting app called Procreate that’s quite capable of giving good results, but a few years ago, I did something stupid. I upgraded from version 1 to version 2 since it said it was compatible with my aged iPad2. Technically, it was, but in reality, the limited RAM footprint meant that I was unable to create any digital painting in a reasonably high enough resolution without it crashing the app. Just as well, I wanted to do this by hand anyway. And during all of these months, I had only an hour here or there; not quality time to make a painting. Yet I really wanted to create artwork for this manually. I spend enough time on the computer.

It also bears mentioning that in the intervening years since the Burton film, “Mars Attacks” went from being a geeky cult thing, barely known in the pre-internet era to a widespread megatrend. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting some sort of “Mars Attacks” knockoff. While researching the original cards, I couldn’t fail to realize that I was up to my armpits in “Mars Attacks” pastiche! The first idea to my skull was nothing unique; that was for certain. Adding insult to injury was that when researching photos of The Rezillos, many of the best images were at their website, where the home page slider showed this little number below.

The band had already incorporated Mars Attacks into their stage show

My notion was the most stunningly obvious solution to my design problem, once I opened up my eyes and started researching. Time for a re-think! 

Collect the whole set!

Then it struck me. I could do a trading card of a different sort. The UK edition of “Can’t Stand The Rezillos” had an insert featuring trading cards illustrating all of the song titles. I could do another of those with quick moving pen work, and the nominal title of the collection was going to be “Rezillophilia” but changing that to “A Case Of Rezillomania” let me cast Eugene as a guy [who is not really paranoid… they are out to get him!] being haunted by Sigmund Freud, bedecked in wraparound shades [as were all of the people depicted in the Rezillos trading card art] examining a file on poor Eugene. This guy had the power to commit Eugene, who was looking to make him “Yesterday’s Tormentor” and split this bad scene.

Concept now changed to something that I could create quickly, it only took a few hours to illustrate the cover. I cheated and used Photoshop for the vintage “zipatone“® effects. As if I could buy the stuff, anyway! I had enough of shading film back in the late 70s/early 80s! The booklet had a “report and file folder” look with a conservative brown tweedy texture offset with bright magenta text for stark, raving contrast. I now finally had a cover for the disc, which as I said, had been fully mastered from the end of December. I completed the art during Memorial Day. By June, I finally had REVO 083 manufactured and the next one would not nip at my heels for half a year!

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