Turn My Swag On

The good old days when record companies sent free stuff in the mail

Got a heavy and quite lovely 14″ x 14″ x 3 1/2″ hinged wooden box in the mail from Warners Nashville today with a big “AM” woodcut on the front and vinyl and (sleeveless) CD versions of Ashley Monroe’s Like A Rose (my #2 album of the year) bubble-wrapped inside plus a very soft and comfy feeling long-sleeve black pullover shirt (size M, may or may not be too tight even though I’m 5 5 1/2″, 138 lbs nowadays). Not claiming this is up there with the legendary Busta Rhymes workboots or Faster Pussycat bullwhip of yore, but those were different times, and I’d definitely rank it with the smaller-wooden-boxed ZZ Top “Made In Texas” pecan pie from a decade ago. Not bad at all, as 2013 bribe swag goes.

Honorable mentions (still tucked away in an ebay box as if I’ll ever get around to ebaying anything): Dandy Warhols incense kit, Chemical Brothers mouse pad, Sparks snow globe where their pants fall down. But the Busta Rhymes boots take the all-time cake — They even got my size right, way beyond weird given that I have unusually small feet. I wore them for years; never wrote about him once.

As for the Ashley Monroe box, Lalena points out that it’s CEDAR. She was immediately bummed there was no pecan pie inside, but says it smells extremely good regardless. (I’m anosmic and therefore no help in that department.) She also says the cedar would make more sense, protection-against-moths-wise, if the shirt was wool rather than 50% polyester / 38% cotton / 12% rayon. Strange.

Not really sure how they picked me for the box, but I assume it had something to do with my writing a fairly long positive review of Monroe’s album on spin.com ward the start of the year and the label wanting to remind me of it for top 10 purposes (when, in fact, the album would have made my top 10 swag or no swag, and who knows who’ll see my top 10 anyway? And even if they did I doubt many people would rush out to buy the album.) Not sure how reliable an investment that is, but maybe they figured the swag’s magnificence would also inspire me to post on social media about it, and other critics would read my post, and that would remind them of the album during top 10 season. Who knows what the logic is.

Either way, turns out the shirt was way too tight (not to mention a way girlier cut than I’m accustomed to, though that’s my hangup not theirs) after all. And again, as dimensions revealed above attest, I am not a big guy, even by rock critic standards. Which reminds me of another thing about swag: I’m pretty sure every band shirt I’ve ever been sent free has been Size M (maybe a woman’s M in this case?), which means that almost nobody would be small enough to wear them! What’s that about?

Facebook, 3 December 2013