Best Packaging Ever?


1190835559I picked up the new CD from Cambridge’s stellar Drug Rug last week. The album is terrific and I highly recommend it. It’s sort of an ultra-infectious hybrid of old timey music seen through a drug haze, and The Beatles seen through a Dr. Dog haze.

Still, the most immediately striking thing about it is the obscenely elaborate packaging. This CD is 29 minutes long, it cost $8 at Newbury Comics, and it comes in a large cardboard box packed with a sticker, a change/drug purse, a poster/liner notes, two art prints on heavy cardboard, three buttons, and the CD. For my money, that gives it the highest packaging-to-minutes-of-music ratio in history. So I contacted the band to see what the story was.

Here’s Drug Rug’s Sarah Cronin, presently out on tour, with an explanation.

The discs with elaborate packaging are a limited run, I think there are only about 50 of them for sale at the two Newbury Comics locations in Harvard Square and on Newbury street. After those sell out, people will get the regular CD; minus the extras.

The idea for all the elements of the packaging came from our buddy George who works for the record label we’re on, Black and Greene Records. I did all of the artwork that you see on each part of the packaging, and pretty much anything that you see related to Drug Rug, (i.e. posters, stickers, buttons, web stuff, boxes, records, cds). We like the idea that people might look at the art and think there are secret codes to be deciphered. They definitely are hidden in there, but we’re not saying what they are.

About the packaging to music ratio: The drawings are what the music dreams about while it’s asleep in its cardboard bed.

Well-said. For those of you who haven’t picked this record up yet, do so. Don’t be dissuaded by the fact that you’re a chump in slow motion who’s going to have to make due with a simple digipak. It’s still completely worth it.

Photo by Carolyn Marsden.