eight1echo

Uh, don't do it? I work in a record store and while it is definitely more profitable that it used to be, I doubt it will last. The industry is pushing so much bullshit product that it is only a matter of time before people realize they are being taken advantage of. The thing that has and will continue to keep my store alive is the few older customers who have been coming in every week for years and years and have been buying music for the sake of the music, not the colour of the vinyl.

Uh, don't do it? I work in a record store and while it is definitely more profitable that it used to be, I doubt it will last. The industry is pushing so much bullshit product that it is only a matter of time before people realize they are being taken advantage of. The thing that has and will continue to keep my store alive is the few older customers who have been coming in every week for years and years and have been buying music for the sake of the music, not the colour of the vinyl.

That Dumb and Dumber GIF pretty much sums it up. They are laughing all the way to the bank as people shell out $40-70 for a 90s movie soundtrack.

Uh, don't do it? I work in a record store and while it is definitely more profitable that it used to be, I doubt it will last. The industry is pushing so much bullshit product that it is only a matter of time before people realize they are being taken advantage of. The thing that has and will continue to keep my store alive is the few older customers who have been coming in every week for years and years and have been buying music for the sake of the music, not the colour of the vinyl.

Uh, don't do it? I work in a record store and while it is definitely more profitable that it used to be, I doubt it will last. The industry is pushing so much bullshit product that it is only a matter of time before people realize they are being taken advantage of. The thing that has and will continue to keep my store alive is the few older customers who have been coming in every week for years and years and have been buying music for the sake of the music, not the colour of the vinyl.

Loving the holiday cheer in here!

I just threw $20 away because I am a cunt. It was awesome.

Plz change title to "Last Annual.."
Thx.

That Dumb and Dumber GIF pretty much sums it up. They are laughing all the way to the bank as people shell out $40-70 for a 90s movie soundtrack.

Uh, don't do it? I work in a record store and while it is definitely more profitable that it used to be, I doubt it will last. The industry is pushing so much bullshit product that it is only a matter of time before people realize they are being taken advantage of. The thing that has and will continue to keep my store alive is the few older customers who have been coming in every week for years and years and have been buying music for the sake of the music, not the colour of the vinyl.

Locking threads regarding SRC is definitely not cool. Being 'tired of hearing about it' or whatever, is not a reason to not let allow people to talk about something that is incredibly relevant to this message board, especially when no line of communication can be opened between the customer and business. The fact is, SRC sucks for a myriad of reasons. Even without the direct affiliation to Mightier than Sword, SRC very literally is MTS part two. SRC is what is bad about the 'vinyl boom'. It's a very weak attempt at cashing in on nostalgia and trends and it's incredibly obvious. This isn't even taking into consideration how little of a shit they give about their customers, which is even worse than being the Wal-Mart of record labels. 
 
No offense to the mods, but please stop doing this. When my company was constantly under scrutiny here no threads were ever locked or deleted, and I never ignored all the negative posts because in the end it I grew from it personally and my business benefited from it greatly. When Mightier Than Sword stole a few hundred thousand dollars from nearly everyone on this message board, threads were not locked or deleted. People needed to know how bad MTS was fucking people over. It shouldn't matter if SRC were naive enough to buy this message board and still completely blow it as a company. You can't get mad about what people are saying when you're giving them a direct line to discuss your business and you're consistently and carelessly fucking things up. 

Uh, don't do it? I work in a record store and while it is definitely more profitable that it used to be, I doubt it will last. The industry is pushing so much bullshit product that it is only a matter of time before people realize they are being taken advantage of. The thing that has and will continue to keep my store alive is the few older customers who have been coming in every week for years and years and have been buying music for the sake of the music, not the colour of the vinyl.

Uh, don't do it? I work in a record store and while it is definitely more profitable that it used to be, I doubt it will last. The industry is pushing so much bullshit product that it is only a matter of time before people realize they are being taken advantage of. The thing that has and will continue to keep my store alive is the few older customers who have been coming in every week for years and years and have been buying music for the sake of the music, not the colour of the vinyl.

Uh, don't do it? I work in a record store and while it is definitely more profitable that it used to be, I doubt it will last. The industry is pushing so much bullshit product that it is only a matter of time before people realize they are being taken advantage of. The thing that has and will continue to keep my store alive is the few older customers who have been coming in every week for years and years and have been buying music for the sake of the music, not the colour of the vinyl.

Uh, don't do it? I work in a record store and while it is definitely more profitable that it used to be, I doubt it will last. The industry is pushing so much bullshit product that it is only a matter of time before people realize they are being taken advantage of. The thing that has and will continue to keep my store alive is the few older customers who have been coming in every week for years and years and have been buying music for the sake of the music, not the colour of the vinyl.

There definitely won't be a lot of tests, although there will be some. It's more so rare colors of stuff that were returned to us for whatever reason, and random stuff we have lying around. I saw a Tigers Jaw flexi, I'll throw a copy of Silo in there, first press colors of Colourmeinkindness, etc. 
 
I know this is less enticing but we will be ebaying a bunch of current tests soon. We have so, so, so, so many of these fucking things at this point, 120 releases x however many tests per record takes up a LOT of room, and as a lot of you know I was in the hospital for 2 months this summer and along with that comes some unfortunate hospital bills (pretty sure without insurance it would have been over a million dollars LOL). So yeah, I know you guys are sick of labels doing that but its going to happen and I think you'll be able to get some good deals on stuff.
 
But yeah if you're in Boston please come hang out with us. If you are coming feel free to let us know what you'd like to see, no guarantees but it would help for sure.

Exactly.
 
And the media didn't help either. They seem to think that the officer had an agenda to go around shooting black people. Funny thing is, there are murders every day in the black and white communities, and usually they are paid no attention to. Unfortunately this was a total black and white thing from the beginning. The entire issue of the police abusing their powers was never mentioned until midway through this fiasco, it was all black vs white. Obama, Holder, Sharpton, all made this a total race issue from the beginning and IMO, those guys are as racist as David Duke and Mark Furhman. It's on both sides and always has been.
 
That sucks because the real issue here is how much power the police have, and how they are able to use it (or abuse it). Do I think the officer had the right to defend himself? Absolutely I do. Do I think in general the police have friends "high up" and have their own "good 'ol boy" system like the government, the mafia and other organizations? Absolutely I do. And that issue was clouded the entire time by race. The race card was played so much by Sharpton and company (and the media) that it was hard to see through the smoke and mirrors to the real issue. And you may not agree, but if you look at Michael Brown's history of run-ins with the law, the actions that day (stealing the cigars, strong-arming the clerk, etc), it was clear that his behavior was terrible. Now that doesn't mean he deserved to die, because we have government officials who do far worse than him and they are never questioned, but if evidence points to him going after the officer's gun and trying to assault him, then the officer is allowed to defend himself. I'm sure if Michael Brown had a gun and someone tried to assault him he'd do the same.
 
But this goes back to Brown's environment too. I don't know much about his mother's past, I don't think she has had any run-ins with the law, other than her being investigated for inciting a riot when she and friends assaulted street vendors selling Brown t-shirts. But that was after Brown died. I know the stepfather has been in jail. It all comes down to how you are raised, what influences are around you, and so forth. By teaching children respect and discipline, and raising them in a proper environment, the chances of success are much higher regarding a child's outlook on life, treating others with respect, etc. I can say this because my family and I grew up dirt poor. And our neighborhood had every type of ethnic demographic possible; whites, blacks, latinos, orientals, you name it. And we all got along. We were all poor but we played games, threw the ball, visited each other's houses, etc. Parents knew the other parents. Everyone was a tight community. And it didn't matter that we all had lousy cars, fences falling down, and my Dad was in-and-out of work (he was a construction worker during the 80's Reganomics era, which was a nightmare for our income bracket). Yet we all stayed together, played together, and everyone was close. But we knew right from wrong. We knew not to carry weapons, or sell drugs, or act like fools. And although the "nice" neighborhoods were miles down the road and our buses would pass through them during the day, we didn't feel we were being cheated or that anybody "kept us down." We made our own choices, our own paths, and nobody blamed anyone else.
 
When I see some of the pics online of Brown holding a gun, strong arming the clerk and so forth, I can't help but grieve for him and the community as a whole, because he seemed to never have a chance. Black or white it doesn't matter, if we glorify the "thug" mentality, then kids will flock to it. Hey, it's cool to carry a gun, it's cool to intimidate others, it's cool to steal, and suddenly you have lost them. And again, color doesn't matter because it can permeate all environments. Although my group of friends and I steered clear of it, we knew many kids of all colors and ages who, in time, would join gangs, get kicked out of school, punch other kids, steal their books, etc. I was picked on and kicked around quite a bit in middle school. I was the only white person in many of my classes and I heard all kinds of racist names shouted at me every day. But it didn't matter because unfortunately I knew other whites who said racist things about the black kids. It seemed that everyone was prejudiced against everyone. And again, it brings me back to the original issue of police power abuse, because it seemed to be swept under the rug because nothing but race, race, race was being discussed, and unfortunately a bigger topic was lost.
 
I have lots of problems with the government, no matter who is in charge. I'm probably one of the few people on here who still believes that Oswald did not kill JFK. I believe in a massive cover-up. Why do I bring that up? Because that one event seemed to change people's views of the government once the Warren Report was released. IMO that led to a landslide of distrust in government and public officials over time, and after that the landslide kept on going, and turned into a major avalanche of distrust. So yes, those in power frighten me and I know we're not all being told the truth. But nobody will discuss that in the media, it's all about color, and color only it seems.
 
We have all been tainted by our experiences. We have all experienced racism no matter what our color is. I wish I knew how to remove it, but it's not that simple. But I do know that destroying buildings, blocking hospitals and so forth is not the way to do it. MLK never advocated violence and I agree with him. And I disagree with everyone on here who says that the burning and looting is justified because of "deep emotional occurrences in the past." If that was the case, then everyone on Earth could loot and burn because all colors were invaded, murdered, sold into slavery, etc. at some point in human history. Destroying the businesses and churches of your local community does no good, especially to those business owners who spent many years developing their businesses and building something from scratch.
 
I'm not sure what the future holds, but the last thing we need is another civil war. Stop griping about color and start uniting against the powers that be, because that is where the real hatred and division is at.

we're going to start making them live at midnight on thursday. it's a lot of releases and we manually have to do them so i'd suggest placing a few orders since we have limited quantities and if there are things you really want they might be sold out while trying to have multiple items in your cart. you can always email orders at topshelfrecords.com to combine orders and we'll refund the cost of shipping when we do that. Thanks!

Way to go, now I am going to have to order a Praise the Sun shirt

Not really buying too many records anymore but this being one of my favourite albums and my 'white whale' for a long time I'll probably end up getting it, especially if it comes with a print like the last two.

Gave this to my girlfriend for her birthday this past Monday (the 3rd)...she only found out about the box set a week or two before her birthday. I knew she was a huge fan and dug through her vinyl and found none of their albums so it was a no-brainer. She had zero indecation that she would be getting this...so when she opened it up her eyes got all big and she pulled a little kid as a Christmas that got a tickle me Elmo that year and kind of looked at me then looked back at it and said "wait....this is sold out everywhere.....this has been sold out for a while?" And then proceeded to just kind of exclaiming "Holy Shit Holy Shit Holy Fucking Shit". So, now that the initial shock has worn off and she's actually spinning these, man, what a well done box set....each LP is gorgeous, the anti-static inner sleeves for each LP, each disc sounds really really fantastic, haven't checked out the book, just the records. Stoked to have this in my house and super stoked at how much she freaked out upon opening it

Man I wish I could go back and experience getting into Bazan/Pedro for the first time again. They have one of the most rewarding discographies. Every album is great for different reasons and like you said there aren't really any skippable songs.

I'll wait to hear the remaster job before I decide if I want this

Available here:
 
http://noyesrecords.limitedrun.com/products/534685-north-of-america-elements-of-an-incomplete-map-2014-reissue
 
 
via Exclaim: