Since the World Cup is over and likely won by fucking France or Argentina, (I don’t actually know, we’re still in the quarter finals as I’m writing this, but the way it’s fucking going, we’re looking at another Warriors/Cavaliers NBA championship tradeoff, only it’s every four fucking years, so we get to watch the same two teams face off with each other in the World Cup Final twelve-fucking-years in a row…this is not what I’m day-drinking a month straight for—or it’s England which would be rad!) I’ve had to reorient and try to plug back into the local music scene for my column. (Editor’s note: Well, well… The “unmentioned” Spain gets the cup. Exotic suggests you never use Blazer’s column for sports betting purposes…)
Unfortunately, if you haven’t figured it out from my last piece and the little intro to this one, I’ve pretty much used up all my “going out tank,” going to World Cup matches—mostly at Away Days Brewing.
As such, I don’t have much to go on for jabs at the local scene, since I simply haven’t been to any shows.
Instead, I’ll have to draw from my own failures, and dish out some advice from another aging millennial chasing the impossible dream. I’m talking vinyl. The final upgrade to your merch table. Like with everything else in the DIY music world, you can do this yourself. But is it worth it? Should you spend the ungodly amount for what is essentially a vanity plate? I can’t tell you what to do, but I can lay out the pros and cons of this final stage of your delusion.
Pros: It Looks Cool!
Mediums come and go, but honestly, the 12-inch long playing record is still the template for album art, regardless of what it’s on. The cassette tape and the 8-track may have bucked the trend with their dumb rectangular shit, but that was short-lived. When you go on Spotify (or Apple Music, if you’re an asshole) and look at album artwork, that artwork is always going to be in a square. CDs are even designed to be either the same square shape inside a jewel case or a digipack that looks like a vinyl LP. Album artwork is supposed to look and feel like this, and I’ll fight anyone that says otherwise.
Cons: It’s Expensive…
The first hurdle you’re going to experience when shopping for presses is that it is goddamn expensive. The first time I saw shitty local bands hawking their shitty self-produced LPs for $30, I was in disbelief. Then I started doing the math on my own project’s order. That’s basically what you gotta charge to cover costs, unless you order like a thousand copies, but we both know you’re never going to sell a thousand copies of your shitty, sad, white-boy album. Short orders mean high prices, so unless you get a grant, thems the brakes.
Pros: It Sounds Cool!
We can argue to the end of time as to whether vinyl actually sounds better, and I still won’t concede. Even kicking aside the tired old adage that it’s “warmer,” there’s just the simple fact that your music is being heard through a needle touching grooves in vinyl. Your music has become an actual physical thing. Plus, it forces you to truncate your long list of songs that mostly sound the same to about 40 minutes' worth. A lesson in efficiency and minimalism. Choose the best, and make them shine. Or the least bad, in your average Portland artist’s case.
Cons: It Takes Forever to Make…
It takes nothing to get an album up on Bandcamp or the streaming giants. You can make cassette tapes or CDs at home! With a stack of blanks and some elbow grease, you can crank out as many copies of your crappy album as you and your sucker friends can fit in a weekend. With vinyl, you need to actually order it from a press. And here’s the rub. Due to the CD takeover in the ‘90s and the digital takeover in the ‘00s, many of those presses closed down as demand plummeted. With those presses closing, you also lost a lot of the knowledge base to run them. People retire or die without training the next generation. Thanks to the hipster revival of the late ‘00s, demand has skyrocketed, but the infrastructure simply hasn’t been rebuilt to meet it. On top of that, every time Taylor Swift releases an album, literally every press on the planet is backed up with a bazillion orders for her new collection of songs that sound the same, about some ex. Your tiny little boutique order of 100 copies has to wait. My biggest piece of advice here is to order about a year before you plan to hold the release party. You think I’m joking, but I’m not.
Pros: Your Fans Will Buy It!
Your poor, poor fans can only buy so many T-shirts. I had a previous piece about some other, cheaper merch items you can decorate your table with that aren’t T-shirts. Truth is, the bestest and coolest thing you can have on that table is an actual vinyl fucking record. The five people at your show will buy it. Even though they don’t have a record player. I’m serious. One of the nice things about the hipster vinyl revival of the late ‘00s is that it had nothing to do with the sound of vinyl. It had to do with saying you have something on vinyl. It’s a status symbol. Again, I am not joking. I know people who have entire vinyl collections and nothing to play them on. You’re basically selling fan tokens.
Cons: It’s Heavy…
Good luck on tour. You will need to go on one if you plan on selling the entirety of that short run. Since you only have five fans in Portland, and they already each bought their own copy to make you shut up, you now have to sell the other 95, and your ego can’t handle another poorly attended show at No Fun. You gotta hit the road, and take these boxes of heavy vinyl discs with you. As your out-of-shape ass lugs another heavy box in the blistering sun to the back of your van, you reach an epiphany that this was all just a giant, expensive, ego-stroking mistake. A tear rolls down your sunburned cheek as you realize too late you were better off releasing your album digitally, for free, on Bandcamp.
