The Creation of SS-008: Infant Politics

Posted by Casey Cole on

The Creation of SS-008
Songs by MXPX - Infant Politics

I was twelve years old when I first heard Life In General. It was 1998, I was on the school bus, and a friend of mine told me I should take it home and listen to it. I had never been exposed to anything like it.

I was seventeen years old when I covered “Christalena” with my band Cowboy Warehouse at a lunch-time pep-rally.

I am now thirty years old, and I still go back and listen to the MXPX discography regularly.

Infant Politics was over a year in the making. It started out in January of 2014 as a broader idea that would incorporate a children’s book telling the story of MXPX breaking down in the Midwest on their way to play a show at the Metro in Chicago. Along the way, the MXPX boys ran into a number of farm animals, and baby chicks attacked Mike (because he’s a Chick Magnet, if you know what I mean). I had contacted Mike Herrera and teamed up with an illustrator named Tom Brading. Tom and I worked aggressively on things for about a month, but being a busy new father, things never came to fruition.

Original illustration by Tom Brading

2014 passed quickly. Sparrow started scooting around on her stomach. Then she started crawling. Then she started running. We baby-proofed the kitchen, and the living room, and every other room in the house.

One day in January of 2015, I cleaned out my e-mail inbox, and I found the correspondence between me and Mike, and I decided to contact him again and finish the release I started 12 months prior. The result is this 10-track album of nostalgia spanning the discography of one of my earliest influences.