The music card displays a scene in which a guitarist, Stephen Malkmus, has presented his self-titled album to a border guard. The guard says, "Sorry, self-titled albums are not a form of identification, even if the album has your face on it and features your signature guitar playing and is titled Stephen Malkmus."
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Soon after Stephen Malkmus released his self-titled album in February 2001, I introduced a piece of legislation to my elected representative. Well, it was draft legislation. I was a constituent convinced that my legislation should be enacted.
The legislation was an effort to enable artists to use self-titled albums or self-portraits as an acceptable form of legal identification, provided the works contained the necessary personally identifying traits.
In the case of Malkmus' album, the case to use this album as official ID was clear. A photo of him was on the cover, so if he carried it with him to a border agent or to an airport, he would be able to verify that he was the person who was pictured in the album, and the album clearly had his name on it, which is a vital piece of information.
If the border agent had a record player or CD player, they could listen and hear Malkmus' signature guitar work.
The same could also work for artists, if they painted self-portrait and signed it and put their social security number on the back. This could also be an effective means of identification.
Future benefits of this legislation
The legislation also required artists to update their work every five years. In Malkmus' case, this would require him to re-record the album and submit an updated photo for the cover of the album.
That was one of the reasons I submitted the legislation, to encourage artists to re-record their albums years after their initial release. Fans such as myself often enjoy hearing re-recorded tracks, so we can understand and appreciate how the artist has changed and how they'd interpret their older songs.
As far as I can tell, my local representative is still considering the legislation, as I've not been informed of any progress in the past 23 years. Still, I keep my fingers crossed nonstop, which is good for luck but also the cause of nearly all of this website's typos.
