AlexH.

if you like early Starflyer 59 (or, by extension, Slowdive, MBV, etc.) you should get in on this. Great noisy dream pop album obscured by its Christian rock label ties. 
 
$30 to get the LP, which is a really good price compared to other post-Universal sale T&N releases. Freshly remastered and pressed at Record Industry with new liner notes and everything. They’re also recreating all the artwork including the photography, which should be interesting — regardless of how it turns out I think I’d rather have that than a blown-up CD booklet. 

I love how y'all just believe bands should have been psychic about the vinyl resurgence when signing record deals in the year 2000. Don't defend shitty Ross doing shitty things please.

Really? I feel like this was the peak of their popularity in the CCM world, and Entertaining Angels is one of their biggest hits. 
That said, listening through this once cured me of any desire to buy this, although I did know every word by heart despite not hearing it in probably 15 years.

Really? I feel like this was the peak of their popularity in the CCM world, and Entertaining Angels is one of their biggest hits. 
That said, listening through this once cured me of any desire to buy this, although I did know every word by heart despite not hearing it in probably 15 years.

Talking shit is why the internet exists. It's good.
 
    He ran Suburban Home Records, a low-to-mid-tier punk label. Circa 2006 he founded Vinyl Collective, which consisted of:
A Proboards forum, which through an arcane series of events eventually became this website here A vinyl-only distro – pretty novel at the time as the vinyl revival was just starting to take off. At that point the main punk/hardcore options were basically No Idea and Interpunk and some smaller players, and they had their pluses and minuses but mostly they just carried punk records. Virgil carried all that, plus like, rap reissues and other random stuff, and he'd try to get stuff people asked for, so he was like a one-stop shop. and finally, a vinyl-only label – again, very novel at the time. He pressed vinyl for labels that didn't want to deal with it, including a ton of stuff from Ferret & Red Scare, and big bands like Minus the Bear, Norma Jean, & Portugal the Man. People loved this guy, and the stuff he licensed sold big for the most part. He used his newfound clout to continually expand his operation, growing his distro and putting out a ton of music via Suburban Home. A lot of it was like alt-country/raspy-punk-guy-goes-acoustic type stuff, and I can't imagine any of it holds up at all (I do like the LaGrecia album he put out and I wanna say Stereotyperider was good?) Every release came out on multiple colors, there were limited preorder packages with bottle openers and posters and shit, all the collector gimmicks you can imagine. He started a (frankly pretty great) split 7" series called Under the Influence where bands covered artists who influenced them, and somehow roped in like every artist that was big on Punknews in 2008 to contribute. Some of those singles came out on 3 colors. 
 
In retrospect, the first warning sign that he was stretching himself too thin was probably the Cooperative. He hatched this scheme to get 200 people to chip in 60 bucks as an investment, and that money would be used to license, manufacture, and distribute an album that didn't exist on vinyl. Everyone in the Co-op got a copy of the rare color of the record, and the money from selling the remainder of the pressing would go towards the next release. In theory, a never-ending stream of records for 60 bucks! People were gaga over this idea. Shares in the VC Co-Op sold out in minutes. At least one person had a full-blown meltdown on the message board over the fact that they had missed out on buying a share. Personally I had set an alarm but overslept and missed it by minutes. I was so pissed!
 
There was all sorts of stuff around the voting process and making teams and narrowing down the list that I was not there for, but in the end, the first Co-Op release was The Falcon – God Don't Make No Trash, on a 10". As I recall, it did okay. There were some concerned murmurs as Virgil revealed that the record had cost slightly more than anticipated as 10"s cost more to manufacture, but they were reassured that it wouldn't affect the master plan and everything would be fine. The next release was The Jealous Sound – Kill Them with Kindness, on a double LP. A double LP, surprisingly, also cost more than anticipated, and sales were soft. Next up was A Wilhelm Scream – Mute Print, and a sort of complete discography for Gaslight Anthem side project This Charming Man, both relatively straightforward single LP releases. It should be noted that this all took fffooorrreeevvveeerrr. According to Discogs, the first (and only) 4 releases came out in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. In between each release, 200 people are milling about the message board waiting impatiently for any kind of update on what should theoretically not take 3 years.
 
While this is happening, Virgil's operation is continuing to expand. He's hiring people and moving into bigger spaces, Suburban Home is putting out tons of music, and at some point there are too many plates spinning and things start taking a turn. He sells "VC for Life" memberships where for $1000 you get everything they release, forever. He takes preorders for Volume 2 of Under The Influence, with promised artists including The Gaslight Anthem and Minus the Bear, which never materializes. For most of VC's run, all his releases were pressed through Pirates Press as they were the only place that was doing all the splatters, hazes & splits that he utilized extensively, but at a certain point he switches to a domestic plant. Later the word from the rumor mill is that he was so in debt with Pirates Press that they wouldn't take new orders from him. Virgil starts blowing out inventory under the guise of clearing out space, doing big bundles of LPs and 7"s for dirt cheap.  Labels who were distro-ing with VC start posting threads on the message boards that they've not been getting paid for months. Some of them get deleted, including a legendary one where Tre from Deathwish tells Virgil to answer his email and give him his money, in so many words. People start asking to sell back their shares in the co-op as it becomes clear that it's a sinking ship.
 
While this is all happening, Virgil announces a mother freakin' craft beer tour.
 
In early 2011, the bottom finally falls out and Virgil shutters Vinyl Collective, leaving tons of labels, bands and customers in the lurch. He liquidates everything through eBay and his own store, and disappears for a good while, although according to Discogs, Suburban Home put out a handful of releases between 2011 and 2015. The most valuable asset at that point was the message board, and he sold it(?!?) to ShopRadioCast and Academy Fight Song Records, another label that flamed out spectacularly pretty soon after. And now here we are! Virgil basically lost everything, but he pops up again every few years with an interview in some Colorado alt-weekly about his new business doing promotion for craft distilleries or whatever. He's an ideas guy!
 
It's wild to think that there are people who are regulars here who have no idea about Virgil or Suburban Home. Personally, it was one of the first online communities I was a part of, and although I don't post as regularly anymore, it is comforting to have at least one familiar place that hasn't been swallowed whole by Facebook or Reddit. Long live VC!
 

 

ETR should’ve released it anyways but the “tribute” version with his buddies playing all the songs instead of the originals.

You mean you don't like in-post ads or when an ad pushes content down the page after it's finished loading and you click on something entirely different?

Not sure what or where or how to note this, but for the first time that I can recall, I'm not allowed to use my ad blocker on the site here.  Is that normal or a new thing?  It's definitely never asked me to turn it off for years, and it won't let me access the site now unless i do that. 

Anybody? 

This entire thread feels like a performance art piece to me. 

I hope you mean fall of 2023 because you certainly are not getting that pressed anytime soon.
 
As you have no experience and a plant that is overworked isn't going to bother with a one off project  I would use a broker like pirate press to handle all your needs from lacquer cutting to test press to actual press to jackets. You need a one-stop shop.
 
 

Got my yellow copy over the weekend but I won't be able to listen for a few months due to a move in progress. Still salty that the screen printed gold, the only good looking cover variant and the one that looks closest to the original cover, was an event exclusive.

🎣🥱

😁

I dunno, the main person in the band being a sex offender is a pretty reasonable reason to stop listening and supporting them. 

$18? Should be $15 max to keep things consistent. 

I regret nothing

Who cares this band sucks

I guess not.

Have you considered CDs?

We all really have run out of things to talk about, haven’t we?

I think it's very funny that big labels are now starting to put an eco-friendly marketing spin on the same recycled vinyl option that punk labels have been using to save money for the past, oh, 20 years. I wanna say Ed Sheeran just did the same thing?

if you like early Starflyer 59 (or, by extension, Slowdive, MBV, etc.) you should get in on this. Great noisy dream pop album obscured by its Christian rock label ties. 
 
$30 to get the LP, which is a really good price compared to other post-Universal sale T&N releases. Freshly remastered and pressed at Record Industry with new liner notes and everything. They’re also recreating all the artwork including the photography, which should be interesting — regardless of how it turns out I think I’d rather have that than a blown-up CD booklet. 

It was in the box set, which goes for a bazillion dollars and was executed pretty poorly from top to bottom (thanks Virgil). Both the other records were eventually repressed, so the demand for Bless the Martyr is pretty concentrated at this point.

It was in the box set, which goes for a bazillion dollars and was executed pretty poorly from top to bottom (thanks Virgil). Both the other records were eventually repressed, so the demand for Bless the Martyr is pretty concentrated at this point.

merchnow will be laid to waste