[no label]

In the music world, when you have a sneaky promotional title or an acetate or bootleg, in the old days they'd be called 'white label' releases.  Usually because these were extremely lo-fi (or illegal) productions, thrown together and pressed on blank records with white labels with maybe some track information crudely typed out, or an ersatz label logo that someone had made as a rubber stamp.  Nowadays this would be in the form of a burned cd with maybe some notes written on the top in Sharpie.  [Or even more currently, a zip file of minimally-tagged mp3s downloaded from a fileshare site.]  Some of these releases are legitimate, others less so.

I've been thinking about labels lately.  Personal labels can be a source of pride or a source of control, depending on who is using them and why.  I've never been the biggest fan of personal labels, if only because it gives myself and others a way to compartmentalize me.  I include myself here, because it's really easy to label myself with something and then use that as an excuse for my actions.  I often joke that I've got French-Canadian blood in me, so that means I talk far too much about nothing in particular, and flail my arms around while doing so.  But the last thing I want to do is let myself be a tedious chatterbox, let alone have a reason to knock over someone's expensive vase due my lively expressiveness. 

A silly example to be sure, but you get what I mean.