The Legacy of this Would-be Music Mogul Lies in Ruins

“It looked as if a tornado had passed through the house, picked up the remnants of Arrow Brown’s strange sordid life, and dumped them in the alley. September 1990: a warm breeze moves through Chicago’s South Side. Brown has been dead only a few weeks, but out behind his two-story greystone at 4114 S. King Drive, his dream is already decomposing. The legacy of this would-be music mogul lies in ruins: his papers torn and scattered, his 45s in a thousand gagged pieces, and all around, spools of master tape reduced to tangles of black ribbon melting in the late summer sun. This was the fate of Brown and his empire: a tiny, illusory kingdom built on a tragic combination of ego, deceit and control."

And it ends:

“Today, the old Bandit house at 4114 S. Martin Luther King Drive is empty and unclaimed. Its ceiling is crumbling, the insides a mass of broken brick and rotting wood. Thieves long ago gutted the place of wiring, pipes, anything of value. But in the front room, where so many used to gather in celebration, sits a single relic. The Baldwin organ, paid off in humble monthly installments, stands alone now amid the ruins of one man’s dream, an empire bathed in dust and silence.”

I have to tip my hat to The Numero Group. Whomever they hire to write their liner notes and copy is a master story teller. It reads like an Elmore Leonard crime novel, but for music. Great stuff! 

This re-release of Eccentric Soul: The Bandit Label story contents: 

• Printed and film laminated slipcase
• 48 page + cover perfect bound book 
• Two printed jackets 
• Three LP’s 

The die cut jacket design has 16 holes that align with the 16 images on the inside sleeve (note to self: this was really hard to accomplish, we won’t do this again!). Granted it’s a great effect, but it’s extremely difficult to execute properly.  Another great release from The Numero Group. N003 retail price is $40.00.

You have to love the pictures inside the book. The ‘70’s style fashion, common to this era, is funky and eye popping!

From The Numero Group’s website:

Half a decade after the release of The Bandit Label, the story we stuffed into our 2000-word, 16-page booklet was feeling woefully incomplete. Survivors and hangers-on from Arrow Brown’s derelict kingdom had stepped forward, and new tracks had been discovered. Our CD package was losing any traction it had gained, and its admirers kept elbowing us re: Bandit’s inevitable return to wax and its native formats. Never close to content with throwing a product together, cut to fill only its hole in the marketplace, the Numero Group—older, wiser, stronger—has instead subjected 003 Eccentric Soul: The Bandit Label to a full-on rebuild, adding stories to the edifice along the way. Our formerly paltry liner notes are now a 20,000-word work of astonishing nonfiction. We’ve de-grimed four dozen new domestic and promotional images, placing them all in an LP-sized '70s-style pulp paperback, cloaked in Eliza Childress’s sumptuous two-panel cover art. The original CD’s 20 tracks get blown out into a whopping 36, spread out across three LPs, one them replicating 1975’s original insanely decorated Magic of the Majestic Arrows long-player.

I think this is going to be a great seller for Numero. And a perfect historical artifact for Chicago's South Side music scene. If you want to develop a music package or book, and need help, please contact us at Integrated Communications Los Angeles.