Steve Mykolyn | Songs For A Funeral

Steve Mykolyn

Songs For A Funeral

Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 2019

12" vinyl record, gatefold sleeve

Edition of 144 copies signed and numbered copies

With all of the celebrity deaths in the week between Christmas and New Years (Dorothy Iannone, Pele, Vivienne Westwood, Pope XVI, Barbara Walters, gallerist Ronald Feldman, Modest Mouse drummer Jeremiah Green, etc.), I found myself wondering if it was a genuine phenomenon that more people die at this time of the year, or if it was just the result of an otherwise slow news week, with obituaries dominating the headlines.1

But the statistics bear it out: there is a notable spike in deaths this week each year, and in fact, the most deaths of any day of the year is typically today, January 1st.2

This made me think about Steve Mykolyn's Songs For A Funeral, a work about mortality that ages with the buyer.3 Released in November of 2019, the work is an artists' record in which the cover is as important - possibly more so - than the music inside.4 

Producing the lavish LP - which includes a signed print, poster and guitar plectrum - had been a labour of love for Mykolyn, for over two years. He began working on the piece in 2017, a year that took several of his musical heroes: Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Leon Russell and Prince. 

When an artist you admire dies, it takes a toll. If they die young you are robbed of future output, if they die naturally you are reminded of your own mortality. One might mourn the death of a celebrity as a way to rehearse grieve, a few times removed. 

Mykolyn commissioned illustrator Chad Eaton to produce ninety-six portraits of forty-eight musicians - first alive, and then dead. Eaton works in a woodcut style similar to the influential Mexican political lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada (1852 – 1913), who used skulls, calaveras5, and bones to convey political and cultural critiques.

The gatefold LP sleeve features the portraits tiled four-by-three, on all four sides. Visually, it is not dissimilar to another elaborate LP design: the cover of the Rolling Stones 1978 album Some Girls, which featured band portraits alongside celebrities, using a die-cut design.6 But conceptually, it has more in common with another celebrated album cover - the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, designed by Pop Artist Peter Blake. 

Even if one is disinclined to side with the Paul-Is-Dead conspiracists who view the album cover portrait as a funeral scene7,  the pictured cardboard cut-outs feature actors, authors, musicians, comedians, scientists, politicians and athletes who the band admired. Blake assembled his own list of favourites, as did gallerist Robert Fraser, and Beatles John and Paul. George Harrison suggested six Indian gurus and Ringo was reportedly happy to defer to his bandmates: "Whatever the others say is fine by me."

For his list of favourites, Mykolyn settled on Jimi Hendrix, Nick Cave, Lemmy from Motorhead, Bryan Ferry, David Byrne, Amy Winehouse, Iggy Pop, Ian Curtis from Joy Division, Brian Eno, Joe Strummer, Jay-Z, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Lou Reed, all four Beatles and Yoko, three Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Leon Russell, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, John Cale, Nico, Joey Ramone, David Johansen, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Thom York, Michael Stipe, Beck, Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, and about half a dozen others. 

Regardless of their status at the time of production, the musicians are featured on the cover as their living selves. To view their corresponding 'dead' portraits, the buyer must scratch-off the printed silver coated material (similar to a lottery ticket, see below). 

Mykolyn is the former CCO of ad agency TAXI8, and a partner in the design firm Castor. In 2008, he was co-curator of the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for Architecture. That same year he created and distributed seven thousand coats to the homeless (a New York Times article about the coats can be read, here). In 1997, he wrote and directed El Dia La Noche Y Los Muertos, an award-winning documentary about Mexico's Day of the Dead festival. Songs For A Funeral features music from this film, connecting the Memento Mori9 of the LP to an over 25 year-long investigation into the subject. 

His background in advertising and design serve the work well - everything about Songs For A Funeral  is highly considered: the protective plastic sleeve accommodates the opening of the gatefold (a first in all of my years of record collecting), the printed guitar pick is not an unnecessary flourish - it functions as a tool to scratch away the living portraits. 

Songs For A Funeral  was produced in an edition of 144 copies: 48 on white vinyl, a dead edition of 48 on black vinyl and a ghost edition of 48 on transparent vinyl. I regret buying only one (from the ghost edition) as I might be more inclined to scratch off the deaths as they occur if I had a second, pristine copy. 

1. I don't think Modest Mouse have ever made it to the CNN front page before, for example. 

2. In North America, anyway. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20805014/

3. An obvious personal interest of mine. See this work of mine, for example. 

4. Another shared interest. One of the first exhibitions I curated was of artist designed album covers. And preceding that, I produced this catalogue. 

5. A calavera is a representation of a human skull, mostly edible or decorative, handmade from sugar or clay. They are used in the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead. 

6. Many of them threatened lawsuits: Lucille Ball, Farrah Fawcett, Liza Minnelli (representing Judy Garland, her mother), Raquel Welch, and the estate of Marilyn Monroe all threatened to sue for the use of their likenesses without permission. The record was quickly reissued with the celebrity images removed and the phrase "Pardon our appearance – cover under reconstruction" in their stead. 

7. Sgt Peppers is ground zero for Paul-Is-Dead clues many of them involving the funeral-like cover portrait. For example, the yellow flowers at the bottom right are said to be in the shape of Paul's bass guitar and spell out the name PAUL, followed by a question mark. McCartney is seen wearing what looks like an OPP badge (Ontario Provincial Police, for some reason) but it is purported to actually read OPD (officially pronounced dead), etc. etc. 

8. TAXI is a marketing communications company that was founded in 1992 in Montreal. In 2009, it was awarded Platinum status by Deloitte based on six consecutive years among Canada's 50 Best Managed Companies. The following year, TAXI was named Agency of the Decade by Toronto-based Strategy magazine.

9. Memento Mori is an artistic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death. It's translation from Latin is "remember that you have to die".