an artist's intentions

(this years four play label, released 3-20-11)

Please read this post after reading this one and then this one. I was alerted to the second one this morning while I was laying in bed and my phone send me an alert that someone had mentioned me on twitter. The tweet said the second posting was for me!

As you can see, there was quite a bit of controversy over this years label design for upright's annual release of four play. There were some that saw no problem with it, some that thought it objectified women, and finally some like me, who had no problem with it except in thinking that it might have been a misstep from a branding perspective because of the group that might have been offended by it.

While I had plenty to say about the branding aspect, I could see all sides of the issues, and the label wasn't going to keep me from trying to buy a few bottles, so I thought I was pretty much done with the issue. Besides, I've met Ezra a few times and he's a nice guy, and he even did me a big favor in helping me procure a bottle of beer I would have otherwise had no chance of obtaining, so I didn't want to get into it too much.

But then something happened that I just can't ignore. Ezra lives in my neighborhood (I know because of the time I went to his house to grab that beer!) and while on my way to the Hawthorne Hophouse, between his place and the bar, I found a little flash drive on the sidewalk. I picked it up. It didn't have a name or any contact info on it, so I thought I'd see if I could figure out who the owner was by looking at the files on the drive.

There was only one folder: "rejected upright labels", and it contained the following BOMBSHELL, which seems to confirm some of Beervana's reader's suspicions about where Ezra's mind is at when he's making these labels! He even changed the government warnings, I'm not sure how they would have felt about that! Click to see it bigger.

(I guess we know why this one never made it to bottles)

I kid, I kid!