Jackpot Records here in Portland bought some of my 7," 45 rpm singles (released by Ethbo Music of London in 2001 with two songs from my real life and fiction CD from 2000) the other year and asked me to sign them. Tiliqua Records of Tokyo now has a representative, Piotr, living in Portland. Piotr will be working with us and Tiliqua on the artwork and layout for the Human Voices reissue and is also helping get the first Tree People reissue CD into some of the local stores here. Soon after moving to Portland from Japan, Piotr had seen one of those singles at Jackpot and bought one. When I met with him recently, he commented on how cool it was that I signed the record Tree Person in Japanese. I had no idea what he was talking about: I just sign things with my usual signature that has become a small scrall which doesn't look much like English anymore but has no known relation to Japanese. But he insisted it said Tree Person in Japanese, and you can see why.
From a recent e-mail from Piotr: "And finally, as promised, I've attached a JPEG file of a scan of the signature from the single I got at Jackpot, with the Japanese letters below and their English meanings. The signature looks so much like handwritten cursive Japanese, I was convinced!"
