shenanigans

Furthering the shit show that this PO has become. They should have just added a 4th color instead of changing the pressing numbers, wtf....

That is fucking stupid. I just figured it was included since it was $30. Gonna be lots of pissed off people if they seriously just cancel orders and put them back up.

As someone who doesn’t particularly enjoy the company of many others, drive-in style shows would be just fine by me 😂

randomly just received my confirmation email for this from i surrender.. days later lol.
 
better late than never, right?! 

Nice write up @AlexH.. Feels great to think about the good ol' days of this board. My friend Jordan, @monk0nuggets, who brought me here doesn't really post here anymore. The vibe of this board is definitely not the same. Maybe it's the ads I'm constantly drowning in. Maybe it's the fact that I'm not in my twenties anymore with nothing better to do than to sit on these boards all day long. But I just don't browse these threads  the way I used to. Used to feel like everyone was friends. Now you post something even mildly inaccurate, or buy an extra copy of something and seconds later users are jumping down your throat for being a liar, or a flipper, or whatever. Doesn't feel like we're all friends anymore at all. 

And @mitchard if you ever feel shitty about the MTS situation, just know we all got royally fucked and it coulda been worse! I think I personally bought 25 copies of the record? I wanna say they were like $50 cost each. So you do the math on that lol. I was running a mildly successful indie label at the time, focusing on the new wave of pop punk. Had become friends with RJ over the years from being involved with the same scene, touring with and putting records out for the same bands. I had purchased many copies of his other Blink releases up to that point and sold them in my webstore/distro on tour. So buying that many TOYPAJ LPs was nothing out of the norm for our relationship. And the rest was history. Never got any of that money back. Every time I start to feel shitty about it I think of my friends' bands who had thousands of dollars tied up with him between recording bills, merch, records, etc. 

Could be worse my friend. Could always be worse lol. 

Ahhh the good old days

 
I definitely blocked the TOYPAJ ordeal from my memory... what a shit-show that was.

You aren't considering the fact that a good portion probably don't have jackets

I believe ownership of this board went Virgil -> RJ crowder (TOYPAJ fiasco) -> $RC
 
this forum has exclusively been owned by shitlord people/companies. It’s sad. 

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!
 

 

It’s this kind of mentality that allows/justifies morally inept people like RJ of Mighter than sword to do what they do, and steal tons of peoples money with no real repercussions. 

I mean...thats fine but he fucked over a LOT of people in a lot of different ways. There are worse things to be concerned about but it is nice to take 5 seconds to shit on this guy again. Especially on this board.

People will probably be salty until he pays them what he owes them. So it'll probably be forever. 

Virgil had been running around Denver for years as a con man with his get rich schemes. Dude makes me sick everytime I see him somewhere

He’s like a dad who starts a new family every few years instead of going back to his original VC children that he already has and being the vinyl father we deserved when we were young kids in our late 20s.

Euro copies? 

discogs.com

I stopped looking after the GUTG 7" that you can get for $24 shipped.

No one's upset. I just think on a board about records we shouldn't promote predatory record stores. SRC's entire business model is putting things for sale before anyone else and then you may or may not actually receive the item from them. If SRC is getting it, plenty of other places will also. We should support the ones that don't rip people off.

Imagine still not realizing SRCs entire business model is putting records on sale before the artist announces them, but instead thinking it's an advantage of premium pricing because you know first.

Delete that SRC link and put the band/fearless link at the top. Why promote a store that's just going to rip people off?

Do NOT order from SRC 
 
INSTEAD, order directly from the band/label and Get a cool splatter. 
 
https://plainwhitets.fearlessrecords.com/products/plain-white-ts-all-that-we-needed-yellow-splatter-lp/?fbclid=IwAR2L6Bd3PG_oUlbL16EDK9yKWLSbJT6V_2px2r5eyUczIN9EWmHNEftwt9c

Canadian customers and rest of world go to https://dustywax.com US customers go to: http://thousandislandsrecords.limitedrun.com euro customers go to: https://shop.sbam.rocks/ for exclusive euro variant and test presses     Shipping around the End of November

Together Again
150 Pink/Blue Merged with Green/Yellow Splatter
200 Clear cloud with Pink/Blue/Yellow Splatter
300 Marbled Pink   Matters 150 Red/Yellow Merged with Turquoise/White splatter
200 Yellow Milky Marbled with Red/Turquoise/Black splatter
300 Turquoise

I will assault your mother.

Let us know when that screened cover goes for sale

Ordered.

Damn. You got the best one IMO.