Evolution of a Disque, Part III

Previously, on Operation: Disque Drop…

Allow me to explain…no wait, there is too much. Allow me to sum up. In case you’re just joining us here at Op Drop, here’s a quick bullet-point list of what we’ve covered so far…

• Who Alizée is, who I am, why I’m a fan, and why you should be one, too
• Op Drop’s goals, and why history proves they’re achievable
• What Op Drop actually does to achieve ‘em, and where I got (read: stole) the idea from
• A brief overview of what’s on these disques I’m dropping (and my plea for various parties not to sue me for it)
• A more detailed look at the songs and videos on the disques, and why I felt they should make the cut
• The big reveal of the (rather unspectacular-looking) prototype Mark I Op Drop disques, which were thankfully in rather limited supply
• And finally, after a six-post lead-in, I actually get around to dropping some disques…with mixed results

When we last left our hero (me), I was on my way home from my most daring Op Drop yet, having dropped two disques in plain site in the middle of a busy tourist attraction, with my civilian companions completely unawares. Awash with pride and excitement, I logged onto the forums at Alizée America, where my first disques had directed my intended Alizée converts, certain that at least one of the ten had succeeded in their mission.

Yeah, well…I suppose it’s nice to have dreams. Not only did I not return to enthusiastic posts from brand-new converts, overflowing with gratitude for my part in exposing them to their favorite new artist…but in my disappointment, I also stumbled across an image that hit me like a sucker-punch to the gut, and drove all that pride and excitement right outta me…and replaced it with a sense of jealous humiliation that burned worse than a bad case of genital herpes. (Er…or so I imagine.)

Amateur Night In Dixie

Now before I show you what that image was, let me remind you exactly what I mean when I say that the Mark I disques were ‘rather unspectacular-looking’:

So, yeah…even at the time, I was aware of how cheaply homemade they looked. There was a reason for that: they were cheap and homemade, clumsily fashioned from a bunch of old CDs and paper envelopes that I happened to have lying around the house. But I told myself that was part of their charm…that the sheer ‘Look! I Made This For You!’ quality of them underlined the fact that it was the product of a genuine grassroots fan effort—a product of love, dammit!—and not of some soulless corporate promotional machine.

That argument started to ring a little hollow, even to me, after I saw this:

This is an image of the American sampler CDs that Ben and his crew from Operation LTNY were handing out in Times Square last weekend…which Ben burned, labeled and packaged himself, much as I had with the initial ten Op Drop disques.

Except, y’know…his looked good. Polished. Professional. Mine looked like they’d slapped together by a troupe of retarded girl scouts on a three-day tequila bender. No wonder they weren’t getting a response. Charmingly amateurish or no, I had to ask myself: if I found one of my own disques sitting on a bench in a subway station, would I be motivated to pick it up, take it home, and stick it in my computer? The honest answer: oh, hells no!

Clearly, it was time to go back to the drawing board…

Mark II: Building a Better Mousetrap (On the Cheap)

The problem was, I had limited resources with which to do it. Unlike Op Drop’s patron saints, Batman and Iron Man, I was not a billionaire captain of industry by day, blessed with a vast fortune and a state-of-the-art R&D facilities with which to equip my one-man crusade.

No, I was an unemployed writer faced with the uncomfortable choice of either making rent or eating for the month. The first ten disques had been made for exactly zero dollars, which was about all I could afford. Spending a small fortune on upgrading to semi-professional-looking disques that I was then going to hand out for free was not in the cards.

Or was it? While I might not have Bruce Wayne’s and Tony Stark’s billions or engineering genius, I do have the edge on both of them in at least one way: I live around the corner from a pretty kick-ass Dollar Store…and you’d be amazed at what you can find in a pretty kick-ass Dollar Store.

To wit:

HP Music CD-R 40X/700 MB – 3/$1.00

Either CD-R’s have really lost their cachet with the introduction of DVD-R’s in recent years, or these fell off the back of a truck somewhere, wink-wink. Either way, I scooped up two carousels of 50 (which in hindsight is an odd way to sell them, seeing as how 100 isn’t divisible by 3, but whatever) and didn’t look back. The only drawback to them was that, since they didn’t come with jewel cases or envelopes, I’d have to find a cheap way to package them myself. Fortunately for me, right across the aisle from them was these:

VINYL CD-R CLAMSHELL CASES – 10/$1.00

Admittedly kind of cheap-looking, but they snapped closed and stayed closed surprisingly well, held the CDs snug and still, and were translucent enough that you’d be able to see the disque’s face through them. Dressed up with some decent-looking labels on the front of the disque and the back of the case itself, they might just do OK. And speaking of labels…

SELECTUM BLANK CD/DVD ADHESIVE LABELS – 20 LABELS/$1.00

Again, cheap-looking at first blush—the labels are kinda thin, and are consequently a real bitch to work with—but the adhesive on them is surprisingly strong, holding strong even after being heated up by a spin in my computer’s CD drive. It took some trial and error with Photoshop and my inkjet to get them aligned right, but for five cents a label, it was worth the headache. And in the end, the labels came out looking pretty swanky.

Factoring in the cost of ink—thankfully, I had a few cartridges still on hand—I’d estimate my total outlay to be somewhere between 50 and 60 cents per disque. Not exactly the zero dollars it cost me to make the first ten…but given how much better they were going to look, I was pretty satisfied. And I guarantee you that Bruce Wayne spends at least double that on a freakin’ batarang…

Was it worth it, though? Well, take a look at how they turned out, and you be the judge:

Yeah, yeah, I know…the front of that disque looks awfully familiar. What can I say? It’s the perfect image! And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, y’know…

Outfitted now with a much more polished, professional-looking disque, I set about mass-producing them, on an order tenfold of my initial salvo. But where to drop them that they’d have the greatest impact? The answer showed up in my Thunderbird Inbox just a few days ago…and suddenly I find myself faced with Op Drop’s biggest operation yet…

But more on this—you guessed it—tomorrow…same Lili time, same Lili channel.