Back in the eighties when I was working at Cutler's Records in New Haven, I entered (and won!) a coloring contest for grown-ups. I read about the competition in a national magazine for music retailers. The purpose of the contest was to promote the rock band, the Sea Hags. The ad was accompanied by a blank, coloring book-style of the cover of the Sea Hags album. (The actual album cover artwork, pictured below, was done by Rick Griffin and Dave Heffernan.) The winner of the coloring contest would get to "hang with the Hags" in San Francisco.
For some reason, I took this competition very seriously. Every day after work I would go straight home to work on my coloring project. First, I took a bunch of porous watercolor paper and splattered each sheet with a different color of paint, making sure that the brush strokes were visible. Then I cut the colored pages into tiny mosaics and glued them into place on the coloring sheet. I added some gold leaf flecks, waited for
it to dry, and shipped it off to Chrysalis Records. A couple of weeks later, I got a call from a Chrysalis rep saying that I had won.The prize was a 3 day, all expenses paid trip to San Francisco to see the Hags play at the Fillmore. I brought along my good friend, Kim, who also was with me when I met Bono a few years earlier.
Kim and I had a great time in San Francisco. We rode the cable cars, explored Chinatown, and met lots of really nice, friendly people. On our last night, we went to the Fillmore to see the Sea Hags. After the show, the Chrysalis rep brought us backstage to meet the band. The boys were very sweet, and they even told us that we were pretty. We didn't end up "hanging with the Hags," though; we were too scared.
