AlexH.

Got Feed the Animals yesterday. Sounds great. Packaging is decent considering this is basically a bootleg. Glad to own it. True heads will remember that when Feed the Animals was first released, Baltimore arts collective Wham City was supposedly going to release the vinyl. This week I searched my email to find my tracking number and found this email I sent to them in 2009 asking about it, with a response from Dan Deacon lol

Dang, between the red and the Newbury gold I kinda regretting jumping on the black so fast. It's hard sometimes to talk myself out of chasing all the cool colors even when I know it literally does not matter at all. I'm in a financial position where I'm not banking on the eventual resell value of my collection, and I'm probably never going to sell it anyway, I'm just chasing that infinitesimal dopamine boost that occurs when I pull it out of the sleeve and see pretty color. Dumb brain!

Beyond its status as a meme, I'm completely blanking on 12/18's significance. Someone who was a mod got pissed about something and deleted a bunch of threads? There was an image of a snowplow involved?

Alright, now I want to see a pressing of the Neil Cicierega albums.

The only reason I say that is because I looked back at his posting history and couldn't find anything other than this: And I know he made his own thread, because it's referenced in this thread: But yeah, I remember it being a pretty amazing thread, mostly on the strength of Tre's initial post, something to the effect of "Virgil Dickerson, you owe me several thousand dollars and all the records of mine that you haven't sold. Pick up your fucking phone or I will drive to Colorado and beat your ass". and then everybody just going oh SHIT

Bootlegs are a long and storied tradition as old as records themselves. There will always be shady pressing plants that don't ask questions.

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!

Cool! I'm in for Feed the Animals. All Day always felt a bit like he was on autopilot but Feed the Animals still bangs. The Night Ripper pressing goes for big bucks these days, for anyone on the fence about these.

Never 4get

If you use Facebook in 2020 you deserve every pain and misfortune that it brings

I'll admit to being blown away by those numbers. $1.75 million in merch sales in 2019 is nuts for a band that I would have guessed had peaked with their inclusion on one of those "Punk Goes" compilations. I'll also say that as someone who would love to live in a world where artists are able to subsist solely on their art and don't have to become super-savvy strategic marketing gurus or rely on commodity fetishism to survive, it does bum me out a lot to read an interview with a guy who can say "it really changed the way that the band thinks about merchandise" without throwing up! Bands with more shirt designs than songs fuck off!!!!

Those side splits are weird - is side D really just In a Sweater Poorly Knit? No hidden demo version or anything?

Also I feel like anyone who hung onto some of those Ferret Records releases that Virgil was blowing out during the fall of VC 1.0 has claim to posting in this thread. He was giving them away with each order and selling huge bundles for dirt cheap. I had at least 3 or 4 and sold them eventually for maybe $10-20 thinking I was coming out way ahead, but I looked them up recently and I don’t think any of them go for less than like 40 bucks now, with some in the $100+ range.

Starflyer 59 - Everybody Makes Mistakes for $8 on eBay in ~2008 because the seller didn’t have the band name in the listing. Found it through sheer chance browsing based on other things they had listed. The vinyl was in great condition but the sleeve was pretty beat. Then 2-3 years ago Velvet Blue found some extra sleeves in a box and put them up for sale for a few bucks, so I basically have a mint copy for under $20. It was a $50 record when I bought it and a >$150 record in recent years. I sold the Paper + Plastick pressing of fun’s Aim & Ignite for like $150 which I bought the day it went up for preorder. Not sure I could ever sell a record for more than that even if it was worth more, I think it would stress me out.

Ah he's just been laying low, although he did put out an open letter in the Daily Mail(?) earlier this month with the standard oh I'm sober now, sorry to anyone I may have hurt, I've been working on some new material blah blah blah. And of course he put out the statement without actually attempting to privately make amends with any of the women he did hurt! https://www.stereogum.com/2090466/mandy-moore-karen-elson-response-ryan-adams-apology/news/