Working from the basic ideas I sent to her, Mark's wife Belinda came up with some superb work on the cd cover art. Taking my basic ideas she not only captured the vision I had, she made it a great deal better! The following weekend at the last Shorties recording session, the rest of the guys approved our ideas, and suggested a few minor alterations. We still weren't quite finished by the Sunday morning, so Belinda posted the final information to me later that week. The great rush was due to the fact that in order for the cds to be ready to sell at the UK Monkees Fan Club convention, everything had to be with the manufacturers by the 9th June.
Left: Photographer Chris Shortis chats with Aiden, while Saul signs autographs for adoring fans.
Right: Relaxing after the shoot: Dan, Mark, Chris and Aiden share a laugh.
On Saturday the 6th June, I threw all our various DATS and tapes into my bag, and headed to Reigate to have cd mastered. This is where all the tracks on tons of dats are put onto computer, and levelled out so that they all play at the same volume, and then put onto a master cd in the right order. Well anyway, the chap mastering, a very nice guy named Johnny Elmer, accidentally knocked off the first half a second of 'Girl I knew Somewhere' on the first of 2 (1 for backup) master cds. I pointed this out and when we checked it , he apologized, but we only had time to do 1 more cd. So my backup copy was useless, we had only 1 perfect copy. If it was lost , our whole schedule would be blown. The train back to London was delayed (as usual in UK). I got home five minutes before Saul was due to arrive. We played the CD all the way through to check it, and we cracked open some beers and toasted ourselves, and then our fans. We couldn't quite believe we had a CD. On the Monday I posted the CD, artwork etc using 'Parcelforce guaranteed next day delivery' to the CD manufacturers, and it *didn't get there the next day*. I was prepared to claim my full legal compensation if this meant the CDs didn't reach us on time, but the manufacturers pulled out all the stops and 3 days early the 300 cds were delivered to my door. We had made it.
L to R: Outtake from cover shoot, actual photo used, and the Suitcase cover itself.
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