First look at the Mouthpiece discography

Yesterday I pulled up to my house after coming home from work, to find two boxes sitting on my porch. I had been patiently awaiting the arrival of the actual CD's for the Mouthpiece - "Can't Kill What's Inside" discography and it looked like they had finally arrived. I got my kids out of the car, hopped up to the porch, grabbed the two boxes and pushed my way into the house.

I grabbed a nail and sliced through the tape as quickly as I could. The first box I opened was an un-glued, un-folded, sample LP jacket and an LP lyric sheet. I looked over both quickly and moved on to the second box, which was the CD's. Again I slashed the tape with a nail and the first thing I saw when the box opened was a row of shiny CD case spines. I pulled one out, gazed at the cover, flipped it over, gazed at the back cover, popped it open, checked out the CD, pulled the CD off and looked at the photo underneath, then I carefully pulled out the booklet. Page by page I went through it as if I had never seen it before in my life. I was reading lyrics, checking out the show listings, staring at the photos, soaking it all in. Keep in mind, this is a project that I have been working on for four years. Finally seeing the actual finished product in my hands felt a little surreal. Sure I spent this past year working back and forth with co-designer and former band roadie Ed McKirdy on the layouts and of course we had printed our own mock ups as things progressed, but there's nothing like seeing the actual finished product. All that work, all that time, all that effort, all those late nights sitting in front of my computer, all those drives to the studios, this was the result.

Today I came home to two more boxes from Revelation. A box of LP test pressings and another box with various merch. The first Revelation Mouthpiece shirt design, some stickers and a couple different pins. Again, this was all stuff that Ed and I sat up many late nights, doing screen shares and designing until our eyes went bloodshot. Seeing the shirts in front of me, the stickers, the pins, all for the first time... yeah, it was all worth it.

I think it's finally starting to set in, this project is finished and Mouthpiece now has it's final resting place on Revelation Records. Who would have thought? I know we never did. I remember ordering the Gorilla Biscuits 7", the Side By Side 7" and the Chain Of Strength 7" all from Rev when they came out, I remember ordering a Side By Side and Gorilla Biscuits shirts from them in 1988. Getting those Revelation packages in the mail with that cool Revelation stamp was always something I couldn't wait to see in my mail box. I continued ordering from Revelation so many times over the years, even as recent as the Judge discog on vinyl. Still, the excitement of seeing that package never seems to dull. Now this time around, finding my own bands record in that package... as it was said, "mission accomplished, good job men". -Tim DCXX