We're in this together

I’ve been receiving emails from people asking about a new tattoo instruction book called Basic Fundamentals Of Modern Tattoo by C.R. Jordan. Unfortunately I haven’t read this book yet but from what I can tell from Amazon’s “search-inside” feature it looks like a winner! It seems very informative and it is very well done.

I also received an email telling about some bickering and personal insults between fans of this book and mine. I haven’t looked at the posts myself and I don’t intend to, I’m not worried about it. We can’t control what people say and do on the Internet and to do so would be taking away people’s freedom of speech. The majority of people take these petty things for what they are. It’s cool that both Mr. Jordan and myself have a following out there that’s willing to fight for us. But lets not forget that we’re in this together, we both belong to the same club. The I-don’t-give-a-fuck-what-anybody-says-club. That’s why we wrote books that help people learn to tattoo. We are well aware that we have created enemies in the tattoo world because of our books so lets not create enemies amongst ourselves. I appreciate my people sticking up for me but it’s not really necessary. If somebody wants to talk shit, let them. We know that for every one who hates us for it, there is someone who loves us for it. And love outweighs hate.

I started tattooing in 1988 and have been tattooing professionally since 1990. I wrote my first book The Art and Science of Modern Tattooing, in 2001 and started selling them from micro print runs of 100 copies. I did this knowing full well I was hanging my ass out there for the self-appointed tattoo police. But I wasn’t alone, there was Joe Benante who wrote Tattooing the Right Way and Huck Spaulding’s well-known classic, Tattooing A to Z. And now we are lucky to have C.R. Jordan’s, Basic Fundamentals Of Modern Tattoo. I would urge apprentices to try to get ALL of these books. With tattooing being such a hush-hush business, any book that shares information is helpful, even the “out of date” classics from a historical perspective, if anything else. But even these old historical books have useful information about tattoo machines and procedures. Remember the tattoo machine and the basic procedures haven’t changed since these books were written. Techniques of cleanliness have, but these are very easy to notice and change to modern standards.

One person might say one book sucks and the other one is better, but books are like movies in which they can’t please everyone. Get them all, read them keep the ones you love on your nightstand and put the ones you dislike on the shelf. I can guarantee you’ll be referring back to ALL of them throughout your career.

erick alayon