my friend wikipedia tells me that D&D was first published in 1974, so you aren't too old. You also knew what I was referencing, because you said it by name in your comment.
It's actually pretty spot on commentary on the types of shit people get excited about on here. Shitty soundtracks they only care about because they are "limited edition" and reissues of albums that are still sitting in used bins all across the country.
Also, I didn't get the +2 part of the first insult. I understand people don't think it's funny. because it's not. But I didn't get the Pokemon reference or D+D or whatever that is referring to. I am too old I guess.
This week, after decades of egregious neglect, a definitive piece of our American heritage will finally be unearthed and returned to its full, resplendent glory: Kenny Rogers’ 1977 album The Gambler.
At least that’s what Rogers’ publicist would like you to believe. On March 12, The Gambler was given a deluxe reissue on LP, a lavish production that includes remastered sound, 180-gram vinyl, and “restored” artwork. See? The Gambler is like a Van Gogh, a long-lost masterpiece of Western culture that’s being valiantly snatched away from the ravages of time and obscurity.
Only it isn’t. You can still find a perfectly playable vinyl edition of The Gambler for 99 cents at any flea market, thrift store, or garage sale in the land. Barring that, try the nearest Dumpster. If you don’t have a turntable, you can just as easily pick up a used CD (or cassette or 8-track, for that matter). The Gambler, as Rogers’ publicist is proud to point out, has been certified platinum five times over. There are millions upon millions of spare copies floating around the globe, just looking for a home. Or at least a landfill.
Granted, if you want to hear The Gambler that badly, you can simply listen to it on Spotify, Rdio, Sirius, Pandora, YouTube, or the nearest karaoke bar.
I have nothing against The Gambler. I grew up on that record. And I like Kenny Rogers, enough to have given his recent memoir a favorable review. I also love vinyl. At the height of my record-collecting mania a decade ago, I had amassed more than 6,000 LPs. I like vinyl for many of the same reasons I like Kenny Rogers: the nostalgia, the warm sound, the, um, large packaging.
When I saw a press release for the new, deluxe LP reissue of The Gambler, though, the thought hit me: Has the vinyl revival gone too far?
Soon after the turn of the millennium—as the economy was hitting its first post-9/11 slump and the music industry was feeling the squeeze of file-sharing—vinyl hit rock bottom. In 2002 I was just finishing up a 10-year stretch of employment at Wax Trax, a fiercely independent record store in Denver. Wax Trax specializes in vinyl. In the early ’00s, it almost went out of business. Many of its brick-and-mortar brethren across the country didn’t make it. Vinyl sales had seen a steady decline since the introduction of the CD in the ’80s, and it seemed logical that the LP—like so many other formats before it—had finally become obsolete. After all, the 21st century was upon us. What could be less futuristic than a spinning slab of plastic scratching against a needle?
Vinyl, however, did not go gentle into that good night. Crate-digging DJs and producers kept the flame alive, imbuing used vinyl (even beat-up old copies of The Gambler) with the sacred aura of archeological artifacts. This, in turn, sustained demand for new releases on vinyl. Fans of punk, hardcore, and metal—many of them somewhat reactionary by nature, which I know because I am one—also refused to let vinyl slip away. Even indie-rock labels got back into the vinyl game, issuing download codes that could be redeemed by purchasing new LPs by, say, Spoon or Animal Collective. By the time 2010 rolled around, CDs were still declining in sales, but vinyl was on the upswing.
Record Store Day played no small role in that. First “celebrated”—in the same way that Black Friday is celebrated—in April of 2008, the annual event was created as a way to draw attention (and customers) to brick-and-mortar record shops. This was accomplished by offering exclusive, limited-edition vinyl releases. Split 7-inch singles, reissues of out-of-print LPs, and extravagant boxed sets became available for one day only, and only at your friendly neighborhood record store. It didn’t matter that speculators swooped in and bought up as many of these instant rarities as they could, which would then pop up on eBay for exorbitant prices. Neither did it matter that this was a manipulative marketing scheme, plain and simple. If this is what it took to keep vinyl alive, fans convinced themselves, so be it.
Something happened, though. Record Store Day got big. It became an event. Major labels and mega-successful bands—who were in on the “holiday” from the start—began to play a larger and larger part. The grassroots veneer fell away, and it became more transparent: It had always been a way to herd consumers into stores, devised by an industry that keeps clinging to outmoded models of the past rather than learning to innovate and adapt to new technologies.
No one’s twisting anyone’s arm, and I’m not saying people are getting ripped off. But when things like the deluxe Gambler reissue are being timed in anticipation of Record Store Day—this year’s falls on April 20—I can’t help but feel that the vinyl revival has jumped the shark. Even The Onion recently poked fun at the fact that ubiquitous works like Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours—a far better album than The Gambler, to be sure, and one with far more millions of copies in existence—are now being treated like holy objects. It’s a fucking record. Seriously, Rumours? I adore it. But when I worked at Wax Trax, I also used to fill our dollar bins with it. Last time I stopped by, they were still there.
I’ll admit, I don’t buy vinyl anymore. The reason is simple: After 15 years as a rabid, almost religious collector of LPs, I realized I was spending way too much money on it. That realization had hit me many times before, usually when I was trying to scrape together rent money—even as my tiny studio apartment was mostly devoted to groaning record shelves, while my bed and TV were kind of shoved in the corner as an afterthought.
But I realized something else: I just wasn’t an audiophile. Like some people who say they have fibromyalgia or gluten intolerance, far more vinyl collectors think they’re audiophiles than actually are. Owning a decent turntable does not turn your ears into trembling flowers, unable to bear the bitmapped harshness of digital. It began to dawn on me—me, someone who had preached the sanctity of vinyl from my record-store pulpit for so long—that I couldn’t really tell the difference between a 7-inch and an MP3. Or rather, I could tell there was a slight difference, but it wasn’t enough to justify the huge portion of my income that I was spending on vinyl. Not everyone who buys records is an ersatz audiophile; the physicality of records is always cited as a major reason for their continued existence, not to mention the more substantive packaging and artwork. The cover of The Gambler, after all, is pretty damn sweet. But as a collector, I knew when to walk away, and I knew when to run.
That said, I don’t want vinyl to go away. I still applaud the vinyl revival, in theory if not always in practice. There’s a whole new generation of ravenous young record collectors coming of age right now, though, and they’re going to face an even tougher time than I did. Which is a shame. I’m reminded of this passage from Bob Mould’s autobiography, See A Little Light, where he reminisces about record stores in the ’80s and the vital role as human bulletin boards that they played in the music scene:
"Nothing is more telling than when someone pulls that one-square-foot piece of cardboard out of a bin […] If he pulls
20 Jazz Funk Greats
by Throbbing Gristle, you perk up and take interest in what he might pull next. We’d do this dance around the record store with each other, and that was one way to find like-minded people. We don’t do that dance now. Now you read someone’s blog or use a search engine or do social networking."
Or go to a Bob Mould show. But seriously: Record Store Day helps propagate this kind of connection and community, and for that I appreciate it. But dealing with today’s prices, and with so much engineered scarcity, record collectors are at risk of burning out a lot faster than they once did—especially with so many cheaper, more practical listening alternatives constantly beckoning.
Like any other human resource, vinyl collectors are finite. The same goes for vinyl itself. If LP collecting is to survive into the 21st century, it needs to be sustainable. Hell, even on a strictly green level, shouldn’t we be buying—and thereby recycling—all those used copies of The Gambler, rather than pressing hefty new ones on 180 grams of petroleum product? The market bears what it will, true, except for when it won’t. In any case, strip-mining the fans—and, yes, fetishizing vinyl too much—is what might turn the vinyl revival into little more than a gamble.
HOLY SHIT!!! That's my picture! I assure you that is not my ebay auction. I will message the person on ebay and ask them to find a new picture. Not to mention all sets are different so there is no chance what they are selling looks like that. People suck.
Sunday is daylight saving so if you forget to spring forward you will miss the ordering time by an hour. I think we can all agree up front to publicly humiliate and disgrace anyone using the clock setting excuse on Sunday to try to get sympathy. "You gotta know what time it is, boyeeeee" - Flava Flav
OK, finally got the metal covers done.
The metal box has the letter L cut out and the white portion you see is the printed box inside the metal box.
BTW, the metal covers records will be the same colors as the normal press but they are all pressed on 250 gram vinyl unlike the normal press which is 180 gram.
Cheers,
Todd
i didnt mean to offend you in any way, im sorry if you took it that way. i think its great what youre doing and putting it out. they just arent for me. i could have chosen better wording for sure.
You are right. I have never sold out anything I have ever released. The concern that a release won't sell out was something I had in the 90's! Now it's just expected that I will be adding to my pile in the garage. But a chance to put out ANYTHING by the Lillingtons? Especially the album that I fell in love with first AND llistened to 1,000 times in my 1984 Blazer on a tape recorded from the LP. Only a fool would pass that shit up right? I would put out a Lillingtons 8-track, mini disc, laser disc, DAT tape or any other format if they let me! And I put the date on there so I don't have to drag the contest out forever and so the winner doesn't have to wait until the last one sells to win. It would be pretty stupid to have an open ended contest when I don't know who got what number and would have no way to contact winners etc. Some people think a Lillingtons tape is cool and so some people will buy it. I grew up on tapes. I like them despite all their faults.
As a music fan I want as many labels and bands putting out as much stuff as possible at all times. If you don't like it don't buy it, but why shit on people for putting music out there?
You are right. I have never sold out anything I have ever released. The concern that a release won't sell out was something I had in the 90's! Now it's just expected that I will be adding to my pile in the garage. But a chance to put out ANYTHING by the Lillingtons? Especially the album that I fell in love with first AND llistened to 1,000 times in my 1984 Blazer on a tape recorded from the LP. Only a fool would pass that shit up right? I would put out a Lillingtons 8-track, mini disc, laser disc, DAT tape or any other format if they let me! And I put the date on there so I don't have to drag the contest out forever and so the winner doesn't have to wait until the last one sells to win. It would be pretty stupid to have an open ended contest when I don't know who got what number and would have no way to contact winners etc. Some people think a Lillingtons tape is cool and so some people will buy it. I grew up on tapes. I like them despite all their faults.
As a music fan I want as many labels and bands putting out as much stuff as possible at all times. If you don't like it don't buy it, but why shit on people for putting music out there?
Jollyronnie got a reaction from mrrom92 in Linda Ronstadt - Living In The USA Picture Disc
Jollyronnie reacted to imaxcowboyx in Linda Ronstadt - Living In The USA Picture Disc
Jollyronnie got a reaction from monsterrod in Linda Ronstadt - Living In The USA Picture Disc
Jollyronnie got a reaction from EccentricPop in PO: Parasites/Jetty Boys/BraceFace/Outrights 4-way split 7"! Yellow vinyl /200
Jollyronnie got a reaction from rhinosuicide in Lillingtons 6xLP Boxset
Jollyronnie got a reaction from mem in Lillingtons 6xLP Boxset
Jollyronnie got a reaction from BeardlessYouth in PO: Lillingtons - Shit out of Luck Cassette /250
Jollyronnie got a reaction from nothingnatural in PO: Lillingtons - Shit out of Luck Cassette /250