One Hand Clapping RecordsVesper Stilton
A ghostwriter who became a band. Vesper Stilton has written forty-seven autobiographies for money over forty-three years — none bearing his name, all of them in the first person, none of them his. Then he stepped to the microphone and kept right on ghostwriting, one borrowed life per song.
Literary art-song in borrowed first person — spoken-word and chamber-pop that inhabits other lives at the mic the way he inhabited forty-seven autobiographies on the page.
In Other Voices
A discography written entirely in the first person, none of it his.
Whoever He Is This Song
There is one man at the microphone and a different person in every lyric. He authors in ink; the canon is kept in pencil by someone else; the 'I' is always real and never his.
Vesper Stilton
The ghostwriter at the mic — forty-three years of other people's first person, now set to music.
Forty-Seven Lives, None His
Vesper Stilton — born Boris Stiltsky, Brighton Beach, 1958, the name changed in his late twenties because the publishing industry of the early 1980s preferred something without the Slavic edge, which tells you most of what you need to know about that industry and a little about Vesper — has written other people's autobiographies for money for forty-three years. Forty-seven of them, none bearing his name on the cover, the spine, or, in several contractually delicate cases, his memory. All forty-seven are written in the first person. None of them are his.
Vesper Stilton, the band, is what happens when a ghostwriter steps to the microphone and simply keeps ghostwriting — inhabiting a borrowed life per song, in the first person, so completely that you forget there was ever a stranger holding the pen. The 'I' in every lyric is real. It belongs to someone. It is never him. He authors in ink, and the world that holds his work is kept, carefully, in pencil, by another hand entirely.
The Extras
The small stubborn objects and the lyric books — some free, some sold out, some lost. Scarcity is part of the record.
The Unsigned Contract
Forty-seven of these, each ceding his name in exchange for the work. The most autobiographical document he owns is the one that erases him from the byline. He keeps them. He is not sure why.
The Acknowledgements Page
The only place a ghostwriter is ever almost named — and even here he is a 'special thanks,' third from the bottom. A whole book of being nearly mentioned. Out of print, fittingly.
Pull a Thread
Every band on the label is one room of the same house. A few doors out of this one:
Press play and meet someone. It won't be him.