Fossil Fuel

But yeah, so there's the irony of it. It actually won the Computer Assisted Design Award of the year, and this fellow who shall remain nameless went and collected the award on my behalf. ~ Andy Partridge

AP: I think the proudest I've been of any compilation art was the 3D box for Fossil Fuel. That actually won a prize. I had to fight like crazy for Virgin to do that because they didn't want to advance us the money. We ended up paying for the fucking thing, so why did they bitch so much? [laughter] They didn't want to advance us the money to make the tooling that made the three dimensional mold for the case. I don't know how many they made in the three dimensional form, I think it was probably about 5,000. Let's say between 2,000 and 5,000. I couldn't honestly tell you how many they did. But I had to fight, fight, fight to get that. And the sick thing was that after it came out I was then notified that it won Computer Assisted Design Award of the year, and the fellow from Virgin who was trying to prevent me from doing it - who I eventually beat out - was going along to the ceremony to collect the award on my behalf.

WL: [laughing] That's nice of him.

AP: This was the person who was trying to prevent me from doing it.

WL: Yeah, and he got up there and I'm sure he was very open about it.

AP: I'm sure he was crying and gushing.

WL: And he said, "I fought Andy tooth and nail. This was all his idea."

AP: [laughing] I'm sure he was up there thanking God and his parents, and crying.

WL: [laughing] See mom, my education paid off!

AP: Yeah, and looking at the award and saying how it looked like his uncle Adolf, that sort of thing. But yeah, so there's the irony of it. It actually won the

Computer Assisted Design Award of the year and this fellow who shall remain nameless went and collected the award on my behalf.

WL: You know, about a year or so ago I had a guy send me a box with four or five different Fossil Fuel cases in different colors.

AP: You're joking.

WL: No. He said that he had worked for the company that had put them together.

AP: You mean the plastics company?

WL: I assume so, yeah. He just said that they had been tested in different colors to see which one worked the best. But I've got it in lime green, neon

red and yellow. I think I've got five of them.

AP: Why the hell did they do that? Because I always wanted it in black. This was maybe Virgin messing around with it again, you see.

WL: Maybe so.

AP: So you have them in different color variations?

WL: Yeah. I'll scan them or something and send you a picture and let you see.

AP: Well, that's individual because I never even knew they did that.

WL: You probably paid for that too.

AP: [laughing] Probably? I'd say certainly!

WL: [laughing] At least I'm getting to reap the benefits of it.

AP: Right. Well, I said "mat black" because I wanted it to look like coal. You know, a kind of coal-like substance. And I asked for this kind of mat black so it basically looked like a sort of coal-y... ammonites are the called?

WL: Yeah.

AP: I think they're called ammonites, aren't they?

WL: The fossil? Yeah.

AP: I remember we bought a load of ammonites and tried to find the best one to make a cast of, but they were all a bit too imperfect. They all had either bits of rock still stuck to them or they were busted, or they were too small or too large. So we actually programmed it. A fellow at Design Clinic programmed it into a computer which then made a fake ammonite in 3D. But I was most proud of that. And then, obviously the long cook's match in trompe l'oeil down the side of the case.

WL: Yeah. That's a great touch.

AP: So you could ignite your coal. You could re-burn the past.

WL: The ammonite reminds me of this little cylinder of stuff you could light and it would burn down. It seems like it was a firework kind of thing. It would burn down and sizzle as it burned.

AP: Oh, you're thinking of indoor fireworks.

WL: Maybe so.

AP: There's some of them that you can light and they burn down. Don't they call it the snake, or something?

WL: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

AP:I think it's basically polystyrene or something. You light it and this black polystyrene spews out.

WL: Something that's really good to breathe inside your house, I'm sure.

AP: Lovely, yeah. The smell never leaves your house - ever. [laughter]