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Very good question...
Well, first of all, The Burnt Selena Project has nothing to do with what has often been referred to as "the poopiest colored crayon in the box." It also has nothing to do with a famous Mexican musician, although a latino musician was involved at the origin of The Burnt Selena Project. But these roundabout definitions of what Burnt Selena Projects is-was by explaining what it was-is not doesn't really define it now does it?
Eh...so a brief history is in order, or out of order...The Burnt Selena Project began with a friend named Zeke in 1998 in Ashland, Oregon as a peculiar recording project and a sort of off-shoot from the band Try and Step on Her. The aforementioned band came into their own fame after I left and they all moved to Portland, many have gone onto other awesome music projects form really good bands, i.e., ones you can listen to in public and enjoy not just in a basement in Nebraska I am not exactly certain how I would define it other than "bad" as in "not really listenable" or "maybe some stoned kid in a basement in Nebraska might like it." In any case, we made two recordings. These exist in four-track land out there in home recording ephemera land. Alas, Zeke moved away and except for a myspace message recieved about four years ago, I have not heard from him since then.
I soon realized that I was not really a musician. And with that realization, I knew that previous statements that "I recorded noise" really meant that I was a jack-ass with a keyboard, amp, weird records to sample, access to a drum kit, and a a lot of time on his hands. Also I realized that saying I was a "noise musician" neither made me more appealing to the opposite sex nor popular with my peers, I just was another ass who really didn't know how to properly write songs. The Burnt Selena Project as a recording venture was dead, but hey, the 90s weren't over...and if you live in a college town, what do you do? Create a artsy comic!
Thus Burnt Selena Project series of comics came out. To be honest, I don't remember the first comic or what the point of the first "story was." But Burnt Selena Projects took a new direction with Burnt Selena Projects Presents: Minimalist Crap Volume 1. This was the first of a series of stick figure comics that featured stories about the origin of coffee, acupuncture with a porcupine, selling tie-dye shirts to Amish people, and pop-art haircuts. Not widely circulated, if you find one of these xeroxed, hand-stapled issues, you have found a very random piece of ephemera that will never be really worth anything. In fact, if you need kindling, that might be the best use...ahem. The next phase of The Burnt Selena Project was a series of poetry from works created during 2000-2001. I made a number of these and they were handed out more widely. But print the typewriter was soon to be retired for one more attempt at music
After being asked to being asked to record for by my friend Ian in a lost session known as "German Tequilla," the Burnt Selena Project presented the Anomia Orchestra. This live improv session with spoken word and self-mutilation with hypodermic needles, labeled as a night of "Erotic Polka," essentially confused a lot of people. It contained a chorus of women randomly chanting, "I'm not your baby machine," and a very drunk poet friend of mine who I think had just been dumped who wore a gas mask and harassed any people who stayed to listen to the event. People later told me the event was, "different."
Time moved on...
Burnt Selena Project upped and dragged itself away from Ashland, ended up in upstate New York, educated a bunch of young poets, and then found its way back to Portland and became the overall title for most creative endeavors I take on. For a while when my primary occupation was decorating matchboxes and inhales for income, that was the Burnt Selena Project. Some of the poetry found in the chapbooks were published in more reputable places, and odd letters to President Bush the Lesser were published by McSweeney's online site. So the Burnt Selena Project is a thing...a mass...an entity unknown.
Currently, this is part of the Burnt Selena Project: The Wonderful World of Clutter. And I thank all who have been reading. And while posts about taxidermy, comics, evil monkeys, collections, museums, ephemera, and roadside attractions will still come about, other special things with the Burnt Selena Project will be coming as well.
By request of Ne'er Do Well, The Burnt Selena Project will be doing a presentation in the upcoming future on themes somewhat represented in the Wonderful World of Clutter. The future will also have some features from the past. I hope to resurrect some of the Minimalist Craps from the past so people can experience how bad these stories were. And of course, I am inevitably going to stroll across other oddities and ephemera from here and there and those things will end up here. So yeah...that's about it.
Please keep reading...
Please tell your friends to read...
Please...I crave the attention...
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