Vinyl Collective

I need your thoughts on how we should handle a situation we keep running into at Vinyl Collective. From time to time, we get offered multiple colors of a particular vinyl release and we always try our best to offer them to you since I know some folks like to seek out either all of the color options or particular color options. The problem occurs when the label shrinkwraps the vinyl without stickering it which color option it is. This leaves us in a pinch when we pride ourselves in trying to send the correct colored vinyl to you. Moving forward, we can either: a. open the shrinkwrap so we know which color the record is and offer the individual colors or b. just offer the record without noting which color it is. I lean towards a. but I would like to know your thoughts on this. I value your opinions so please leave your comments.

And if you are a vinyl label reading this, make sure you sticker your shrinkwrap. We started doing so with Limbeck and Fear Before and labels like Second Nature have always been great about labeling their vinyl.

It is with great excitement we bring you a new feature at Vinyl Collective, the Collector of the Month. Through our store, we have come into contact with so many incredible people and as we get to know some of them, we thought hey why not feature a little profile on some of the people who frequent our store. Future Collector of the Month’s will be chosen at random, but if you think you have what it takes to be featured, drop us a line.

This first feature is of Loren Pachuta; Loren has ordered more from us than any other person(disclaimer: this is not a prerequisite to be chosen collector of the month). It isn’t uncommon for her to order all 4 colors of a vinyl release or multiple copies of some really rare title and it isn’t unusual for her to place more than one order in a week. I sent her over some questions and asked her to also send us a photo. Click the link to read more about Loren. Thanks Loren for your support of Vinyl Collective and for taking the time to do this interview. And nice photo (if you can tell, she is holding the Fear Before and Limbeck records we put out!)

If you have any ideas on questions we should ask to make this feature even cooler, add it in the comments.

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For those of you not familiar with my State of the Union posts, from time to time, I write about the many things circling in my head which often involve my small indie label, Suburban Home, my vinyl-only online store/vinyl imprint(Vinyl Collective), my blog site IndieHQ, and life in general. These posts are often very, very long so I don’t blame you if you skip them all together. For those of you who decide to read, there is usually quite a bit of insider information as it pertains to my small endeavors. For whatever that’s worth. Click the link if you feel like reading:

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“If I were Drunk” 4/9/07 5:56 pm 815 area code - Our good buddy Scott Heisel of Alternative Press called to talk about how radical the Fear B4 vinyl looked. He mentions that he is in fact sober(he called our Drunk Dial Hotline), but that he loved the way the record looked and loves the inscription on the record. Good stuff.

One note, the pressing plant actually messed up and the 2nd record was supposed to have the following inscriptions:

Side A - 4 8 15 16 23 42
Side B - Listen to Radiohead

It sucks that they messed that up, but we still love the inscriptions they used.

Thanks Scott for making Drunk Dial history as the only sober drunk dial we have ever posted!

I want to give a big thanks to everyones suggestions to my post asking for ideas for records that have yet to be released. I wanted to give you an update on some of the things I have been working on or will be working on:

1. We are definitely putting out the latest Fear B4 album, “The Always Open Mouth” as a double LP. We are waiting from an ok from management before we start pressing on this which should be in early 2007.
2. We are working on something with Mars Motors for a joint release of the latest Bad Astronaut album which will also be made as a double LP. Word has it that there will be a few bonus songs not on the CD version. Waiting on Jon from Drag the River.
3. I tried to work something out with Equal Vision to do the upcoming Dusten Kensrue, but the label that released their first CD will be doing the vinyl. I hope to have some in stock at Vinyl Collective.
4. The Format Dog Problems - I had emailed their manager right when it came out about doing it on vinyl, but he told me that they were planning to release it on vinyl themselves. I again contacted the manager to see if they were still putting it out themselves, but they never wrote me back.
5. Asian Man Records - I am waiting for Mike Park to adjust to being a daddy before I bug him about trying to do small runs of vinyl for the Lawrence Arms, Screeching Weasel, and maybe Alkaline Trio.
6. Portugal the Man “Waiter: You Vultures” - We are trying to work something out with Fearless to put this out on vinyl. We are awaiting word from the band, but with some luck we will be putting this out.

Other things of note with regards to your comments: Friction will be putting the first Bear Vs Shark out on vinyl; Circa Survive put their own album out on vinyl and you can get them from the road (I hope to offer some at some point); Sabot is putting out the None More Black album out on vinyl; Lucero are putting their latest album out themselves on vinyl; and I am pretty sure all of the Horrorpops records were out at one time on vinyl. We carried some a while back.

Thanks for everyone who added their 2 cents. I have a lot of records I am hoping to put out. If ever you think of anything else, let me know.

One of the things we hope to do with Vinyl Collective is seek out those amazing albums that never saw release on vinyl and try to license it for a limited vinyl pressing. I have a small list of releases that I am going after, but I wanted to see if any of you have any ideas of records we should try to put out. Please keep in note that it has to be a release with a bit of demand as it is really hard to sell a thousand copies of anything on vinyl. I appreciate any of you that decide to leave a comment. You never know, we might actually find some records to put out.

My good buddy, Sean-Micheal from Mammoth Press, emailed me an article about the resurgence of the vinyl format. It is a bit of a fluf piece and mostly focuses on the 7″ format, but anybody willing to spend some time to write about this beloved medium is a-ok in my book. I don’t ever see Vinyl becoming a mainstream success, but I truly believe that Vinyl will be here long after the mp3 is replaced with some other digital format and CDs go the way of the 8 track. Hopefully more press will follow and we will no longer get the question, “They still make vinyl?”.