"The Big K Collection" reissue

Big K Reissue Liner Notes


Here’s some context...

August 4th, 2017

Scranton-Carbondale, PA

2:15 PM EST

...and so there I was, as I got out of my car and looked over at the now shut down Kmart I had gone to every time I made a trip down to Pennsylvania. It felt as if an entire world had been shut down and taken away from me. Of course this was a little over a month after I released the first edition of The Big K Collection, and I had suddenly realized a sort of prophecy had been fulfilled. It wasn’t a crazy one though, the idea that the stores would eventually shut down was something I had dealt with plenty of times, especially as I read the news about how Sears stores (the parent company of Kmart) were closing down and how many Kmart stores were following suit, but here I was now coming face to face with what I knew was going to happen eventually. It still hurt more than I could have ever thought.

Of course the store had officially closed down just 4 days before we got there. To think we missed it by just that much still breaks my heart every time, even though it’s incredibly silly in a way; what had Kmart ever done for me? How does this affect me? Why do I care so much? Settle down with the questions, you!

It started with the Kmart 1989-1992 album by PowerPC ME, which had been released on the Lost Angles label in February of 2016. To think I also put out an album with that same label and am now in the same company of an album that influential on me has obviously been its own reward, and since the first time I heard the opening notes to “Bluelight Specials Going On Now!,” I had spent my time in awe of what beauty this album was; it truly was my first absolute favorite vaporwave album, as silly as it sounds, especially considering I had been consuming these types of sounds for close to two years at that point, but this was the first time I heard an album and TRULY thought “this is my music and these are my people.” Around the time I had started the Princess Commodore 64 project I had jokingly suggested to PowerPC ME that he should name his next album “Kmart 2001: A Shopping Odyssey,” a rather silly reference to the Stanley Kubrick film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Of course he never went and did that, but it gave me some ideas. As I went about my way trying to make this album I found my samples and did my job with what I had. It was pretty cool for what it was but then I looked deeper and saw that an actual sequel, “2010: Odyssey Two” was done along with a third and fourth, but I was a sucker for trilogies and it’s all I needed. Eventually I released “2001”, “2010”, & “2064” over the course of a week. It shaped a lot of things for me in my project’s path, as well as the projection of where I was going to end up over a year later.

I didn’t realize any of that at the time, so there I was, back in reality, and back in PA during that fateful day in August. As I stood around and saw the parking lot and the empty abyss that was the Kmart, I decided to get some pictures taken of me in the cart corral; after all I needed some sort of evidence I was there, right? Well I stood, and posed, and got my pictures taken, and then I was on my way. I looked back at that building for what could have very well been the last time and I drove on back to the Krispy Kreme and Waffle House that was close by. Such a shame to think now how such a beautiful hill with a damn scenic view of Scranton could now lay vacant because of how capitalism works.

A little less than a year later and that moment still stings.

I guess that’s part of why I had to come back and revisit The Big K Collection; to look at the same work of art again at a different point in time, but this time knowing that I had changed as a person as I consumed it, and the art had taken on a whole new meaning. Strange, I suppose, but isn’t that what this is all about? Even after I visited a different one in New Jersey with TVVIN_PINEZ_M4LL a few months later, it still didn’t feel the same... it still didn’t feel real. I guess that’s just part of the dangers of nostalgia.


Vaporwave had a moment with Kmart music around the time these three albums were made and then repackaged onto cassette just a few short months later, and I’m glad I was able to get in on it with my own take on those infamous tapes. Maybe some day when the nostalgia for nostalgia for a simpler time we never really experienced hits a fever pitch I’ll finally release the “3064” LP and let the world hear the final dying breaths of what I experienced on that fateful August day, and what I tried to foolishly recapture a few months later, but for now just tune in and drop out to the sounds of a man just figuring out his sound at a critical time in vaporwave, and an important time in his own career, set to the tune of a moment in time you truly had to be there for.

xoxo
-Princess Commodore 64