On Flipping

Because of some circumstances, I have a lot more free time on my hands lately. I knew the free time would be good for giving me extra "bandwidth," as they say in the corporate world, to put into the business aspects of H Is for Hellgate, it has also surprised me with the gift of being able to enjoy my small record collection. It feels very olde tyme and relaxing to listen to 20 minutes of music, flip the record, and start again.

Last week while listening to Excuse 17's Such Friends Are Dangerous, an out-of-print (I'm pretty sure) vinyl LP I nabbed at Ear Candy Records in Missoula, MT a five years ago, it dawned on me that the subsequent project by Excuse 17's Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney, is also a dead band and, well crap, might the Sleater-Kinney vinyl be out-of-print someday too? I'm a rabid S-K fan, so I decided not to take any chances and purchased the five of their seven records I didn't already own. Of course, I immediately destroyed any sort of real collectability of the records by opening them and having a few good listens, but what's the point of owning something if you can't use it?

I'm not the kind of person who will pontificate on how vinyl is the ooooooonly way to listen to music and how mp3s are destroying humanity. Records are a novelty from the past...it's like driving a car from the 60's - it's a fun historical experience, but it's not any better than driving in a car that can get more than 7 MPG (or any better than an album you can listen to in your car, at the gym, on the John and all from the same device). I had been kicking around the idea of releasing our forthcoming album on vinyl because I feel like it's solid enough to deserve the extra cash it takes to make a record and, at some point in my life, I would like to have my compositions and recordings on a big black disc simply because having something tangible feels like more of a reward for a bunch of hard work than seeing our album artwork on iTunes.

But it's expensive and I would hate to have a box of unsold records sitting my garage if not enough people cared about records to buy them.

Today I received in the mail The Woods and I flipped my shit. I didn't realize it was colored vinyl and, for some reason, a colored recorded makes the whole experience seem so much more exciting. The Woods is a double album, so it was like pulling out two giant hard pieces of confetti! MP3s don't come in tasty colors! And come on, look at that tree on side D!

I'm still undecided on the To Print Vinyl Or Not To Print Vinyl quandary, but damn, it would be cool to listen to my band on a record player.