Speaker 1: A centeral is the protection of my heart radio. So
Speaker 1: Matt and I were talking about bands putting out new
Speaker 1: music on old formats, mainly tape, cassette and vinyl. We
Speaker 1: have a new person who's working at our office named Seth.
Speaker 1: He runs a record company where he specifically will take
Speaker 1: your music and make a vinyl record out of it.
Speaker 1: That's what he does right here, Yeah, Seth. Nicholas Johnson's label,
Speaker 1: Haunted Birthday Records, releases music in a truly unique way,
Speaker 1: utilizing a format which I knew nothing about. This is
Speaker 1: how he explained it to me as we hung out
Speaker 1: in the studio and listen to records you hear from
Speaker 1: us after this track and a little soware it anywhere happy?
Speaker 1: And when you disappeared you gave me quite a fair
Speaker 1: very reppear under the strong light I watch at the
Speaker 1: disco and you'll little where it made me happy when
Speaker 1: you disappeared into the ground, all move and I saw
Speaker 1: and I saw you here ye again when all you
Speaker 1: good that scream under that's what you have bound h
Speaker 1: m hmmmmmm. I saw you ever disco and I know
Speaker 1: that soon I saw out and I'm here down that
Speaker 1: you make for me. Ever, disco wait didn't and I
Speaker 1: saw you come up and to give what I wush
Speaker 1: m h h, I have lost school. Oh that's so
Speaker 1: it will be the world said one. Oh yeah, so
Speaker 1: who who's that? That was a guy named Elias Mason
Speaker 1: and he made that song with his creative partner June York.
Speaker 1: And this was a little A side B side single
Speaker 1: with the swoon on one side and diamonds on the
Speaker 1: b side. So there we go, swoon on one side
Speaker 1: and diamonds on the b side. That was swoon. This
Speaker 1: one was diamonds. This was diamonds the side. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so Seth, just what the heck is it that you do? Exactly?
Speaker 1: Mostly what I do is I run a record label.
Speaker 1: And in today's world we live in two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: running a record label doesn't really mean what it used
Speaker 1: to mean a billion years ago, right, Like, people don't
Speaker 1: need record labels in the same way they used to
Speaker 1: need them back in the sixties, seventies, eighties, even the nineties,
Speaker 1: around around when people could start to self distribute with
Speaker 1: any kind of like reliability of like, hey, I can
Speaker 1: actually just put my album out there, people can actually
Speaker 1: find it and then I can actually make money from it.
Speaker 1: Once that started to happen, I think the world became
Speaker 1: a much better place. But record labels needed another reason
Speaker 1: to exist. So the only reason I could find to
Speaker 1: actually maintain my reason for wanting to have a record
Speaker 1: label and actually making myself be a company was that
Speaker 1: I needed to make sure I could provide something to
Speaker 1: ban something they couldn't get other places. And the thing
Speaker 1: I decided to just because I enjoy it, was to
Speaker 1: start making a very specific kind of vinyl for people
Speaker 1: who want it, and to to to let people have
Speaker 1: this product that I'm making. So I only know a
Speaker 1: little bit about it, Pretend I know nothing about it.
Speaker 1: What what? What is this thing? Specifically? These are lathe
Speaker 1: embossed records. So, um, I'll I'll spell it out in
Speaker 1: a in a very broad sense. Anyone who's listening who
Speaker 1: knows like the depths of all the audiophile stuff will
Speaker 1: correct me on everything. But I'm just going to like
Speaker 1: spell it out in like real simple terms. When it
Speaker 1: comes to creating records, and I'm talking about just like
Speaker 1: like the standard records you're buying a store, like a
Speaker 1: vinyl record. There are basically three ways to make it. Uh.
Speaker 1: The most common way is you you basically stamp them.
Speaker 1: It's like you get to like negatives of the record,
Speaker 1: the negative side a negative side B and think about
Speaker 1: like a like a waffle iron. You know. You just
Speaker 1: like put in this stuff, squish it together, boom outcomes
Speaker 1: your record. Right. That's that's the standard way to do it.
Speaker 1: The other two ways one is called lathe cutting and
Speaker 1: one is called lathe embossing. So you know what a
Speaker 1: lathe is, right, like like like a would shop, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So for our listeners if anyone doesn't know what a
Speaker 1: lathe is, basically, it's just like a rotating tool. That's
Speaker 1: all there is to it. So, um, the way that
Speaker 1: a lathe embosser and a lathe cutter works is that
Speaker 1: there's a record cutting head with a little stylus on
Speaker 1: the bottom that's moving at very precise, very exact, very
Speaker 1: steady speed and like an X axis like across a
Speaker 1: blank record, and the the stylus, the actual like needle
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, is vibrating with the
Speaker 1: music that you're putting into it. And then that is
Speaker 1: either cutting a groove or embossing a groove into this
Speaker 1: piece of plastic, this piece of acetate, the piece of
Speaker 1: polycarbonate or whatever people make stuff out of, um, chocolate, ice, um, cardboard,
Speaker 1: anything you want, Well, I've got it written down here.
Speaker 1: Uh what all can you make a record out of?
Speaker 1: So many? I mean, I mean, to be completely honest, anything.
Speaker 1: The big question is what's going to sound good? You know,
Speaker 1: like I've heard an ice record and it sounds kind
Speaker 1: of garbage? How okay? Well, so when you where did you?
Speaker 1: Where did you hear an ice record? There was a
Speaker 1: band I believe it was the Shout Out Louds. I
Speaker 1: hope I'm getting that correct, but I'm n sure I am.
Speaker 1: And what they did is they made a um to
Speaker 1: release their new single. They released a silicon silicone silicon
Speaker 1: which which one is it rubbery stuff, silicone, silicone or silicon? No,
Speaker 1: silicon Valley, Silicone is the rubber. Yeah, okay, So it
Speaker 1: was a silic. You could do a silicon record, but
Speaker 1: potentially it would be very expensive. Think the silicone was
Speaker 1: for like the almost like uh like an ice tray, okay.
Speaker 1: And so you filled it with water and they recommended
Speaker 1: that you used like a nice like distilled as clear
Speaker 1: as possible water, so you don't get any you know,
Speaker 1: little bumps and stuff, no tap water. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: freeze it and then you put on your record player
Speaker 1: and it's it worked exactly like an ice cube. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what it was. Oh so that again was just
Speaker 1: the negative imprint. Was it only on one side of
Speaker 1: the correct so you would just like sort of like
Speaker 1: it would be like making the B side, I get
Speaker 1: the underside, and it's it's uh, what's the right term
Speaker 1: for that. I mean, it's it's raised I guess in
Speaker 1: the tray in the in the Yeah, exactly inside the mold.
Speaker 1: It would be raised and then you you fill it
Speaker 1: and then the grooves would be there and then you
Speaker 1: would you would pop it onto your record player, regular
Speaker 1: record player. That's the most dangerous part. Yeah, in a
Speaker 1: in a walk in freezer or something. You got to
Speaker 1: be careful what that part I mean, because the it's
Speaker 1: going to start dripping. You gotta play at once and
Speaker 1: get rid of it. But so you you said you
Speaker 1: heard one play, how did it sound? Not very good? Still,
Speaker 1: so it is like that's that's the fun of analog
Speaker 1: music is that it feels like a magic trick, you know,
Speaker 1: like and that's that's kind of like the guy who
Speaker 1: trained me. Um, because, um, there's this guy out in Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 1: His name is Michael Dixon, and he runs a record
Speaker 1: label called Theaptic Records. And spell it because it's a
Speaker 1: weird spelling, p I A p t K. It stands
Speaker 1: for people in a position to know. Oh, okay, we'll
Speaker 1: have to link it. And uh, he's a fantastic dude,
Speaker 1: and he um he trained me everything. Everything I know
Speaker 1: I learned from him basically, other than like the things
Speaker 1: i've you know, gleaned other places. But yeah, that's like
Speaker 1: where I got my machine was from this dude. Whenever
Speaker 1: I need like new eyelas is from my machine, I
Speaker 1: have to like write to him to get them. Like
Speaker 1: he's he's my connection. I want to talk more about
Speaker 1: all the things that records, but let me let me
Speaker 1: back all those So, so there's three kinds of ways
Speaker 1: to make a record, Yes, and yours lathe embossed is
Speaker 1: the embossed. What's the difference between the embossed and the
Speaker 1: other kind of lane? Lathe cut? Yeah, what's the difference
Speaker 1: between the cut and the embossed? Think about a muddy
Speaker 1: field okay, okay, And you are carrying a stick in
Speaker 1: your hand, all right, and you're walking and you're dragging
Speaker 1: the stick behind you in this muddy field. So you're
Speaker 1: not actually getting rid of any of that mud. You're
Speaker 1: just creating a groove from where your stick is dragging.
Speaker 1: So all the I guess excess mud is just kind
Speaker 1: of slightly going out and maybe creating slight ridges along
Speaker 1: the edge. Right, So that's that's embossing. You're not removing
Speaker 1: any material from the actual physical blank record, You're just
Speaker 1: slightly pushing it away. And so every once in a while,
Speaker 1: the fascinating thing about that is that, um, so it
Speaker 1: creates these things that are referred to as horns horns,
Speaker 1: and so what it is is, uh, every once in
Speaker 1: a while on a lathe embossed record, when you drop
Speaker 1: the needle on, it won't land in the groove, it'll
Speaker 1: land on the horns and it'll sound like it's broken
Speaker 1: and terrible. And so that's fun too. So if you
Speaker 1: go to a regular music store and you buy a record,
Speaker 1: it's it's usually a pressed a pressed record, yes, so
Speaker 1: that's pouring what vinyl in or something. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: standard vinyl. I believe it's science word, like you know,
Speaker 1: polyvinyl chloride or something. And um, if you go to
Speaker 1: a factor, you'll see him that come in what are
Speaker 1: called either biscuits or pucks. And it looks just like
Speaker 1: kind of like a little hockey puck, like that shape
Speaker 1: of like soft poly vinyl chloride. I'll pretend and uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks just like a waffle. Wafflemaker just presses it down,
Speaker 1: opens up, pull out your record. And that's the most
Speaker 1: economic way to make a bun shud Begs records. Yes,
Speaker 1: but that's the problem from what you just said, and
Speaker 1: that that also explains why I do this entirely, which
Speaker 1: is if you go to a standard record manufacturer and
Speaker 1: you say, hey, I would like a record made please,
Speaker 1: they go great, and you go I need hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty They go no, no, no, no no. Like the
Speaker 1: cost to make one record in an actual plant right well,
Speaker 1: actually manufacturing the plates and stamping it is so big
Speaker 1: that you can't do it in small batches. You have to. Um,
Speaker 1: most places have a minimum of three d records and
Speaker 1: a weight of about three months to get your records.
Speaker 1: Is it cost to get through hundred records down a
Speaker 1: place like that, a lot, a whole lot like UM.
Speaker 1: In all honesty, are prices per record are actually pretty
Speaker 1: comparable UM because it's actually pretty expensive still to make
Speaker 1: physical records no matter who you are and at what
Speaker 1: level you're doing it, So um our prices are actually
Speaker 1: pretty similar. The differences are that they only have to
Speaker 1: do it once, whereas I if I'm doing since I'm
Speaker 1: using my machine and my plastic and going through the
Speaker 1: through the motions. If someone orders fifteen records from me,
Speaker 1: I'm doing them at one x speed fifteen times to
Speaker 1: take me through this step by step, make er, you know,
Speaker 1: make a record totally in your mind here totally um
Speaker 1: and and this is the way that I do it,
Speaker 1: the lathembossing that way, you got it. That's what you're
Speaker 1: here for. That that's what you're totally. So what I'll
Speaker 1: do is, first I called my plastic manufacturer and I
Speaker 1: order a whole bunch of polycarbonate. Polycarbonate is basically plexiglass.
Speaker 1: It's used for eyeglass lenses, it's used for a bulletproof glass.
Speaker 1: It's used for you know, all that transparent plastic glass substitute.
Speaker 1: That's polycarbonate um. Through trial and error, UM, all of
Speaker 1: the people who have done this over the years have
Speaker 1: discovered that that's what works best for this system is
Speaker 1: because you can do this onto Like I said, almost
Speaker 1: any surface people have done it onto, like picnic plates
Speaker 1: or like just anything, any any surface you can imagine,
Speaker 1: you can do it into it, but it just might
Speaker 1: not sound very good. So poly carbon it is the
Speaker 1: easiest to get, sounds pretty good. And it's also just
Speaker 1: like very um. It's malleable, it's easy to acquire, it's common,
Speaker 1: you know. So I contact my plastics manufacturer and depending
Speaker 1: upon what size I need. If I'm making seven inch
Speaker 1: records a twelve inch records, I'll be like, hey, I
Speaker 1: need um twelve inch records. They come in these like sheets.
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, can you cut these into twelve inch
Speaker 1: squares for me? And they go, sure thing, Zip zip zip.
Speaker 1: I drive out to my place that's O t P.
Speaker 1: You know, in Alpharetta or something, pick up my records
Speaker 1: and then I I'm sorry, pick up my squares of plastic,
Speaker 1: bring them back home. Uh. And then the next step
Speaker 1: is I need to cut them into a circle, because
Speaker 1: a twelve inch square will not fit on a record
Speaker 1: player because the actual sides will run into the edges
Speaker 1: again and again. So I need to cut into a circle.
Speaker 1: So I have a m I believe it's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a router, a circle route or put a circle jig
Speaker 1: on it and cut into a circle. Then I have
Speaker 1: a drill press where I'll drill the hole in the
Speaker 1: middle of the record into it, and then there we are.
Speaker 1: We have a just plane, blank plastic circle. I then
Speaker 1: go to my machine. And these machines are very odd.
Speaker 1: They are um leftovers from the radio era, like and
Speaker 1: I'm talking like nineteen thirties radio era. So um yeah,
Speaker 1: like pretty much all of the lathe the home made
Speaker 1: lathe machines in the world are all about a hundred
Speaker 1: years old at this point at all, because because they're
Speaker 1: all just left over parts, no one manufactures machines for
Speaker 1: this anymore. So most people in this field and in
Speaker 1: this hobby, I suppose UM use a machine called a
Speaker 1: Presto six N that is horribly uninteresting to most people,
Speaker 1: but that is the exact kind. Is that way, you
Speaker 1: have a Prestice sen I'm fancy, so I have a
Speaker 1: Prestoe a d G. So the the there's not much
Speaker 1: of a difference. Um. The only difference is, like mine
Speaker 1: is a pretty big console and it UM is a
Speaker 1: bit more rigid and rugged, so I don't have to
Speaker 1: fiddle with it as much. I can do a lot
Speaker 1: of records with UM some assurance that it will work
Speaker 1: out well, whereas if using a six end you have
Speaker 1: to kind of like check after every single record you
Speaker 1: make to make sure that it's working still, because I
Speaker 1: mean you think about it, like the whole idea of
Speaker 1: records is based on the idea of vibration. So if
Speaker 1: your machine is perpetually vibrating for hours on end, all
Speaker 1: your little adjustments, all of your all of your screws
Speaker 1: that are tightened, everything that needs to be where it is,
Speaker 1: it's just subtly shaking itself out of alignment the whole
Speaker 1: time you're using it. So it's a can be really annoying.
Speaker 1: That seems pretty problematic. Yeah. So so these machines, like
Speaker 1: I said, um, they are old. Um you know because
Speaker 1: old days a radio, right, So we're talking fiber fibmcgee
Speaker 1: and molly, you know, like talking about whom Oh that's
Speaker 1: like an older thirties or forties radio show. Fibbru McGhee
Speaker 1: and Molly. It was Fibbru McGhee and Molly. It was
Speaker 1: very popular back in the day. I totally believe you.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to That reference went right over my head.
Speaker 1: I am coincidentally, also very into old time radio. So
Speaker 1: we can talk about the Great Guilder Sleeve all day.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it. Okay, we're gonna have I'm gonna
Speaker 1: check my references, I guess alright. Anyway, in the days
Speaker 1: of Fibber McGhee and Molly, Yeah, back then, UM, most
Speaker 1: radio shows back then were made to be played once
Speaker 1: and often just done live and then over. They that's it,
Speaker 1: they move on to the next one, because the concept
Speaker 1: of reruns wasn't really a thing yet. So apparently I
Speaker 1: wasn't there. But apparently one of the things that really
Speaker 1: spurned on the whole idea of a rerun was World
Speaker 1: War Two. Because during World War Two, UM, they still
Speaker 1: wanted to have um military radio stations playing like a
Speaker 1: lot of the shows they played here, but they wouldn't
Speaker 1: like broadcast them like the same intervals and same times
Speaker 1: because you know, it's international blah blah blah. So they
Speaker 1: started actually putting things onto records, and they had to
Speaker 1: figure out a way how to do that. So that's
Speaker 1: where these Presto six ends came in. Pretty Much every
Speaker 1: single UM radio station back in the days, let's let's
Speaker 1: say the thirties through the fifties had a Presto record
Speaker 1: maker in their building amongst all their stuff and so
Speaker 1: and same thing with like a weather report or like
Speaker 1: a news bulletin or anything. If you just had to
Speaker 1: have something and then replay it later, that's how you
Speaker 1: did it. And so so that's where these machines came from.
Speaker 1: And one day someone realized, oh man, you know I
Speaker 1: could do something with this, and I UM various people started,
Speaker 1: hobbyists just started developing ways to make this all work.
Speaker 1: So so so anyway, so I go to my machine
Speaker 1: with my new newly made plastic circles, walk up to them,
Speaker 1: and uh, I take my music source. Now, the music
Speaker 1: source can be nearly anything. The way I have my
Speaker 1: system set up in my house is um it's just
Speaker 1: all based on a one inch outlet. So anything that
Speaker 1: can be plugged into a one eighth inch headphone jack
Speaker 1: I can put onto a record and your iPod. Yes,
Speaker 1: exactly my iPod. Uh, both our owners of recurrent owners
Speaker 1: of iPods. Still you have to be I don't have
Speaker 1: the alternative. I don't know what it could be yet. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you you plug it in and um, if
Speaker 1: you're smart, you would probably master it a little bit
Speaker 1: before to make sure you're taking full advantage of everything
Speaker 1: that you're doing. Like I run it through a graphic equalizer,
Speaker 1: and I have a preamp where I can turn things
Speaker 1: up and down and all that kind of stuff. But
Speaker 1: generally someone has sent you. I mean, if you're doing
Speaker 1: work for somebody, somebody has sent you the finished Yes.
Speaker 1: But even then, even so, let's say the song we
Speaker 1: heard earlier, okay, um uh, this person alias Mason would
Speaker 1: have sent me this song and said, here you go,
Speaker 1: here's a song, please put this on a record, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, here's the details. Like great, Um, I still
Speaker 1: have to do this thing where it's Um. So there's
Speaker 1: a thing called the r i a a curve, you know,
Speaker 1: So I have to invert the r i a a
Speaker 1: curve in the equalization. Because the way that we handle
Speaker 1: music now has almost nothing to do with the way
Speaker 1: how we used to handle music in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: through the fifties, because think about things like bass base
Speaker 1: didn't exist back then, you know what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then um also, um, stereo, stereo didn't exist back then. Um,
Speaker 1: there's all these little things that they had no way
Speaker 1: of anticipating. And so um that that's why I I
Speaker 1: specifically make mono lo fi records. That is my thing,
Speaker 1: Like I don't with my machine. I could do hi fi.
Speaker 1: I could do some stereo stuff if I wanted to,
Speaker 1: but it's like no, no, no, no no. My goal
Speaker 1: is to be as attainable as possible to everyone. So therefore,
Speaker 1: like I want it to be simple. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be direct. I wanted to be pure, you know. And
Speaker 1: um so, so that's that's why my my records are
Speaker 1: coming from a hundred year old machine that is creating
Speaker 1: basically the same noises you could hear back then, but
Speaker 1: just being forced through a modern a modern machine kind
Speaker 1: of going through that hundred year old machine. And um
Speaker 1: so yeah, then I I put the machine on lower
Speaker 1: the arm, um, the cutting stylus. You can use a
Speaker 1: lot of different gems basically, Um, I've used um, let's see,
Speaker 1: what's there's so many you can use mostly I use ruby.
Speaker 1: A ruby stylus works the best is it actually made
Speaker 1: out of ruby. It's it's red, it's transparent, it's it's
Speaker 1: a full blown ruby. Um, there's sapphire stylus is too.
Speaker 1: That worked pretty well. Um, I thought gem was I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't realize you meant actual gem.
Speaker 1: I mean actual gem and uh. And then if I
Speaker 1: if I was doing lathe cutting, let's go back to that. Um,
Speaker 1: that field of mud and you're dragging your stick. Now,
Speaker 1: pretend it's a stick, you have a shovel, and you
Speaker 1: are actually removing the dirt and putting it somewhere else,
Speaker 1: removing it, putting it somewhere else. Then you needed diamonds
Speaker 1: stylus for that. And that's that's for the actual cutting.
Speaker 1: And when you're cutting it, you'll actually see a ribbon
Speaker 1: of the acetate because you also have to use acetate
Speaker 1: if you're cutting, and you'll see it coming off. And
Speaker 1: that is the most flammable substance I've ever encountered. Yes,
Speaker 1: because I also have to treat my plastic right before
Speaker 1: I cut. Um, you can do a lot of things.
Speaker 1: You can do turtle wax, you can um me, personally,
Speaker 1: I use light or fluid. I will take a just
Speaker 1: standard barbecue light or fluid squirted on top with like
Speaker 1: a little apothecary bottle, rub it into the plastic to
Speaker 1: start it kind of softens it a little bit, makes
Speaker 1: it a bit more malleable and uh. And that's then
Speaker 1: I put on the needle, play the play the music
Speaker 1: back in real time one x and that's vibrating my
Speaker 1: my needle, my ruby stylus, and it moves across the record,
Speaker 1: and then I put it down, pull it up, pop
Speaker 1: it off. There we are, and so that the first
Speaker 1: one you've just gotten alias is uh mix and you're
Speaker 1: cutting the first the first side of the first record? Correct,
Speaker 1: does that thing come out to be a coaster? Oh? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: the first I'm gonna say, on average, the first two
Speaker 1: or three our coasters because because um it also has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with actually making it sound good too,
Speaker 1: because if you you can make it just come out
Speaker 1: no problem the first time. But not only does every
Speaker 1: machine have like its own kind of like quirks when
Speaker 1: it comes to the machinery, it also has its own
Speaker 1: quirks when it comes down to just like standard, how
Speaker 1: does this sound. Does it sound good? You know, like
Speaker 1: my machine, for example, I know that it's sibilants is
Speaker 1: really hard, like right, I think about my graphic quializer
Speaker 1: in my brain, like right here, I gotta turn this
Speaker 1: down exactly. I'm right, okay exactly, and then um yeah,
Speaker 1: and I I gotta roll off the low end I got.
Speaker 1: There's this just like all these little things that like
Speaker 1: I know my machine needs, and so I can try
Speaker 1: to do those things in advance, but you're not to
Speaker 1: know how it sounds until you cut one and listen
Speaker 1: to it. No matter. So your process is like you
Speaker 1: cut one and then you just you take it off
Speaker 1: and you just sit there and listen to it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Then you say a little less on the ten thousand,
Speaker 1: roll off a little more base, and you just do
Speaker 1: another one. You listen to it, and then once once
Speaker 1: you're in a groove, do you keep listening to them
Speaker 1: one at a time. So let's say I'm done. I
Speaker 1: found like I'm happy with it. I'm like, okay, great,
Speaker 1: I have I have this side. I am happy. This
Speaker 1: is good. Here we go. Um, then I will cut
Speaker 1: one more with those exact settings to make sure that
Speaker 1: like all right, everything is perfectly still doing it again,
Speaker 1: and so I've listened to two in a row. You
Speaker 1: know it's been like, okay, this, this is replicatable. It's working.
Speaker 1: Then I will usually go every few I'll check just
Speaker 1: to make sure that it's still moving, moving forward and
Speaker 1: moving well and nothing's getting in the way, and no
Speaker 1: sound differentials have happened, because you know, this isn't playing
Speaker 1: through a speaker. All I can hear is the subtle
Speaker 1: vibration noises. It's kind of like when you listen to
Speaker 1: a record player that isn't hooked up to speakers, where
Speaker 1: you can still kind of like hear that song, but
Speaker 1: it's just kind of a weird, tinny noise in the background.
Speaker 1: That's more or less what my record machine sounds like
Speaker 1: when it's cutting is just cardureuer harder. That's that's what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. So you have to kind of like,
Speaker 1: I just hope that that sound is actually making it
Speaker 1: all the way through onto the onto the machine itself.
Speaker 1: So yeah, still, every few records, I'll just do a
Speaker 1: quick needle drop just to make sure it's still working. Check.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, that these, Yeah, then I'll just do
Speaker 1: that until the order is fulfilled and um usually like
Speaker 1: like like, my whole thing is to be obtainable. That's
Speaker 1: my whole goal is. I want literally every single person
Speaker 1: who just makes music and wants to put it on
Speaker 1: a record to do it. So that's why I like
Speaker 1: my record label. We don't have any minimums. If someone
Speaker 1: wants to contact me for one record, I got you.
Speaker 1: You will we will do this, you know. And um,
Speaker 1: So the point of doing that is I have to
Speaker 1: make sure that all of my goal are aimed towards
Speaker 1: keeping it as inexpensive as possible, not only for them,
Speaker 1: but for me as well, because if I don't stay
Speaker 1: in business, then they definitely don't get anything. So let's
Speaker 1: say there's a B side, so I've cut the A side.
Speaker 1: Do you sometimes do ones with just an A side? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes a lot of artists. Oh well, actually, here I'll
Speaker 1: hand you one. Here's one. Oops, there we go that one.
Speaker 1: Here you can pull it out. That one's got a
Speaker 1: engraving on one. So this is the actual right, I
Speaker 1: thought this was just like, um, the cover or something. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's so cool. So so yeah, that's got an etching
Speaker 1: on one side of one man shaking another man's hand.
Speaker 1: And it exploding because it came from I believe, an
Speaker 1: old like gag catalog of like selling like you know,
Speaker 1: novelty gags and whatnot. It's like traced out from a yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: traced out from a book. And um so what I
Speaker 1: did is on one side is a song and on
Speaker 1: the other side. And that's that's the thing too. I
Speaker 1: had to just do this again and again and again.
Speaker 1: I took a little um jewel engraver things and it
Speaker 1: just had to draw that, you know, several times until
Speaker 1: it was done. Um so that's one reason for Wait,
Speaker 1: So you cut the record, you had the lathe cut
Speaker 1: the music on one side, and then you by hand
Speaker 1: did this illustration on how many records that one? It
Speaker 1: was definitely in the tens. Um I'm gonna say less
Speaker 1: than fifty, less than fifty, I'll say. And it's it's
Speaker 1: this is a pretty involved like there's like here's a
Speaker 1: couple more cross hatching on the tie and the guy,
Speaker 1: and there's like it's a it's a full cartoon and
Speaker 1: they there's multiple images. This this was a series. Oh
Speaker 1: so so you did a different there were multiple versions
Speaker 1: of each image, but there were also multiple images. So
Speaker 1: this is what like a lady and some cella eating
Speaker 1: some cello, or she's about to, but there's a fly
Speaker 1: on it. I would assume this was an advertisement for
Speaker 1: plastic flies to stick in people's food as a gag.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, that's either mashed potatoes or ice cream.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that could be. And then this
Speaker 1: some like two hands holding cards some kind of trick deck.
Speaker 1: Yes exactly, Oh my gosh. So so yeah, you're really involved.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, no, it's it's a lot of fun
Speaker 1: and and that that's kind of the thing I like
Speaker 1: about it too, is that I'm gonna make an analogy
Speaker 1: for you. You're ready, okay, So back in like the
Speaker 1: old days of um, let's go with art in general,
Speaker 1: large art. Uh. People start off with like cave paintings, right,
Speaker 1: and they're doing their cave painting things, and um, they're
Speaker 1: doing what they can with what they know, and they're
Speaker 1: they're painting their bison, and they're they're they're they're like
Speaker 1: hunters and there's all all all that you've seen cave paintings.
Speaker 1: You know, as they develop, they got closer and closer
Speaker 1: to actually representing what they actually saw. Like the photo
Speaker 1: realism Actually bad choice of words. There were no photos yet,
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean, like the actual like
Speaker 1: representation of what was in real life and what they
Speaker 1: were creating. So when now we're up to like the
Speaker 1: Renaissance naturalism, perhaps, yeah, exactly, It's like people could actually
Speaker 1: paint what they saw now because they had acquired enough
Speaker 1: skills over the age, point, perspective and all those techniques
Speaker 1: and made them made them better and better artists. And
Speaker 1: then the camera was invented, and that's when things got interesting,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Because like as soon as
Speaker 1: the camera was invented, that's when all of the best art,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, started happening. That's when you've got got
Speaker 1: you know, you know, uh, abstract expressionism, that's when you
Speaker 1: got point is. Um, that's when you got all these
Speaker 1: really cool things because you didn't need to be a
Speaker 1: replicator of reality. We had that, so now painters got
Speaker 1: to be whatever they wanted, unlocked everybody just so we're
Speaker 1: all painted the giant canvas and things. Definitely. So so
Speaker 1: I feel that way, um about the records. I do,
Speaker 1: and obviously a very small way, but what I do
Speaker 1: is like so artists will come to me, and they're like, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: why mono and why low Fi. I'm like, well, if
Speaker 1: you want a perfect reproduction of your sound, you've got it.
Speaker 1: You've got a wave file, You've got an MP three
Speaker 1: that will never change. You've got it. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: If if, if you want a perfect replication, we got
Speaker 1: flak lossless all day, you and it and it will
Speaker 1: never degrade. You're You're perfect. If you want something else,
Speaker 1: I got you. I will make an etching onto a
Speaker 1: thing of a lady with a fly in her mashed
Speaker 1: potatoes and put it, put your song on the B side,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's mostly um. My main clients are
Speaker 1: artists that are I don't want to say unpopular, because
Speaker 1: I think most artists are unpopular, Like I think writ
Speaker 1: large if we think about every single artist in every
Speaker 1: single medium throughout the world, like what, maybe one percent
Speaker 1: is popular from each each each genre, Yeah, stretching it exactly.
Speaker 1: So so I really am for everyone else. And it's
Speaker 1: funny because I don't know why people don't target that
Speaker 1: demographic more because most of us are unpopular. Aim for
Speaker 1: the unpopular, you know. So um yeah, my clients are
Speaker 1: a d percent people who are like, wait, you're charging me,
Speaker 1: I need three hundred minimum records in my order. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't have three hundred fans. I can't do that.
Speaker 1: Most of us don't have three hundred fans. That's silly.
Speaker 1: So so that's my audience. My audience is people who
Speaker 1: just they need twenty, they need fifty whatever, and then
Speaker 1: they're going to sell them at their shows while they're touring,
Speaker 1: they're they're going to a record show. They want to
Speaker 1: do things. Actually, I have been getting quite a few, um,
Speaker 1: very personalized records, which is really nice, Like um I've done.
Speaker 1: People will like record their child's first words, like on
Speaker 1: their iPhone, and so then they'll want something special to
Speaker 1: remember that by, because obviously there's gonna their phone's gonna die,
Speaker 1: their SIMCARDI get corrupted, and then that that memory is gone.
Speaker 1: So they'll send me that file and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you put my child's first words onto a record? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Why not? And why not do some really cool packaging
Speaker 1: for it? So let's what's that one look like? The
Speaker 1: first word? The person that sent you the first words?
Speaker 1: What did that record look like? That one? I was
Speaker 1: actually I love that one because um the guy I
Speaker 1: was dealing with. I guess I won't give his name
Speaker 1: just in case he wants it to be a secret.
Speaker 1: But he is a fantastic artist. Um, before all this,
Speaker 1: I don't want to confuse the whole world I came
Speaker 1: into into this realm from um, the world of the
Speaker 1: fine arts and animation, like that's where I've spent all
Speaker 1: of my life. Yeah, it doesn't work so well in
Speaker 1: the audio format, but these records are like incredibly I
Speaker 1: can't believe they're done by hand. But yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know it took a long time. But but that's where
Speaker 1: I come from. So I have a lot of friends
Speaker 1: in the art world. So this this example I'm talking
Speaker 1: about specifically a friend of mine. It was a gift
Speaker 1: for his wife, and um, that good job. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to steal your head totally and so he Um,
Speaker 1: he's already a great artist. So I was like, okay, here,
Speaker 1: I'll decorate the disc for you and then you I'll
Speaker 1: just send you a white blank sleeve so you can
Speaker 1: decorate the outside. And so, um, I think I've got
Speaker 1: one around here somewhere. I did just a simple stamp set. Oh,
Speaker 1: here we go, Here we go. Um, one of our coworkers,
Speaker 1: Andrew Howard. Isn't that band, Oh Spooky Booty and the
Speaker 1: Tombstone goofs? Yes, I can believe that Andrews in that baby.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's great. So I did something kind of
Speaker 1: similar to that for that one, which is just like handstamped,
Speaker 1: real low fi, just just looking real simple. It kind
Speaker 1: of looks like maybe you know a kid did it
Speaker 1: in you know, in class or in their church Sunday
Speaker 1: school Project's smeared a little bit, the wise smeared and Booty?
Speaker 1: Can we play a little bit of this one? Um?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, just play it. I'll
Speaker 1: cut it out. I'm just hear a little bit. Andrew's band?
Speaker 1: Is this new? No? No, this is really this is
Speaker 1: really old and and and. In fact, let's make sure
Speaker 1: this may not even be what we think it is.
Speaker 1: Because one of the things I do often is, um,
Speaker 1: let's say I'm making records for someone, right, Um, I
Speaker 1: make twenty six x that way, if one gets broken
Speaker 1: or corrupted or something, then I was like, phoop, I
Speaker 1: don't have to start all over again. I can just
Speaker 1: give them that extra one and I'll keep the garbage
Speaker 1: one for myself. This might be a garbage one. Okay,
Speaker 1: I kind of hope. I kind of would love to
Speaker 1: hear what the coasters sound like. I was glad that
Speaker 1: we actually got um what was it um that skip?
Speaker 1: When we played the first time we got that one,
Speaker 1: I think we both went like, oh, yeah, it was good.
Speaker 1: So let's see what we got. This one might be
Speaker 1: a coaster. Oh that's great though, that's Andrew Howard. Everybody.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else we got here. Oh, this one
Speaker 1: definitely a coaster. But I know who this is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an artist named Phantom Manner. Oh yeah, it's grooving.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is a total garbage version. It seems
Speaker 1: like the Outfit virus kind of Oh yeah, fascinating, fascinating.
Speaker 1: You're looked through some more of these records? What else?
Speaker 1: What else? What else is? I'll hand you a bunch.
Speaker 1: I know, it's a little hard to summarize because there's
Speaker 1: just like, like, so, this is nit and a lot
Speaker 1: of these are square. These are so what give me
Speaker 1: the specs of this of this? So that is a
Speaker 1: seven inch record. It's seven inches square, and I like
Speaker 1: the square because it holds the shape of the packaging.
Speaker 1: A lot better. So, for example, the one year looking
Speaker 1: at right now, that is a nit record sleeve. And
Speaker 1: so because of that, um like, if you just put
Speaker 1: a circle inside that exact same packaging, it would have
Speaker 1: like these floppy edges, you know. So the the alternative
Speaker 1: to that actually went to hand it to you. You
Speaker 1: could use this as a potholder afterwards, afterwards, but just
Speaker 1: while you're playing the record. I guess. So here you've
Speaker 1: got like a knit twelve inch twelve inch, and so
Speaker 1: twelve inches have to be circular exactly, or else they
Speaker 1: won't fit on a standard record player. But um so
Speaker 1: in that case, I was able to get a little
Speaker 1: interior sleeve to make sure I hold you know, the
Speaker 1: shape of the actual knit thing of a jigs like
Speaker 1: what you would have in a in a normal uh
Speaker 1: thirty three exactly. That's sort of yeah paper insert that
Speaker 1: goes inside of the record sleeve. Yeah. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: the the knit sleeves or something I do simply because
Speaker 1: I like to knit. So that's just something I do.
Speaker 1: And so how do you find to all these things?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I love to make things and
Speaker 1: I love to stay busy. So um yeah, the the
Speaker 1: knit album sleeves are really fun because do you remember
Speaker 1: that Wou Tang album a while ago? Um it was
Speaker 1: this one for a while ago. Where do you remember
Speaker 1: a guy named Martin Screlly, huge jerk. He like yeah,
Speaker 1: he like played up all the heat come up in
Speaker 1: this here's how, here's how. So a long time ago,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, um, I'm gonna say five to six
Speaker 1: years ago, maybe maybe even longer than that. At this point,
Speaker 1: there was um a Wu Tang Clan album called Once
Speaker 1: upon a Time in Shaolin that they made one and
Speaker 1: only one copy of period, And so they made this
Speaker 1: they put it out into the world and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: whoever wants to buy this, then they get to do
Speaker 1: whatever they want with it. Unfortunately, the person that bought
Speaker 1: that album was Martin Screlly. That's what I do remember
Speaker 1: this story. Yes, and so he paid an obscene amount
Speaker 1: of money for it. He's the one and only owner.
Speaker 1: Then he got sent to jail for being a jerk,
Speaker 1: and he drastically and layd the price on AIDS medication. Yes, scumbag. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we don't even need to throw an allegedly in there.
Speaker 1: He is a scumbag and um so yeah, now that
Speaker 1: album is out there in limbo. But anyway, that that
Speaker 1: that example I only bring up because I love making
Speaker 1: one of a kind records, and those knit ones are
Speaker 1: that that like, because I mean, I'll be completely honest
Speaker 1: with you, that that little one, the little seven inch
Speaker 1: knit album, that one is forty hours to just knit
Speaker 1: that sleeve. And so because of that, people don't want
Speaker 1: to pay for that, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: people will buy like one copy tops and and then
Speaker 1: that is kind of the fun of it. Like I
Speaker 1: do these things, probably at least on a quarterly basis,
Speaker 1: called the Haunted Birthday Mystery Record. Oh, I guess I
Speaker 1: haven't said the name of my company. It's Haunted Birthday Records.
Speaker 1: So the Haunted Birthday Mystery Record I make once per
Speaker 1: quarter and I contact some artist and I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put out one and only one copy of
Speaker 1: this album. Ever do you want to contribute to it?
Speaker 1: And artists love to do that, and it's like compilation
Speaker 1: with people on your on your label or pretty much
Speaker 1: anyone anyone I can contact because I don't tell anyone
Speaker 1: who's on it. I don't tell them. I don't I
Speaker 1: honestly mostly give them away. Sometimes I'll sell them, sometimes
Speaker 1: I'll hide them places. You know, there's a thing in
Speaker 1: um in Atlanta, the free Art Fridays thing I've I've
Speaker 1: given them aways for free art Fridays before, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a it's just a complete mystery. I will
Speaker 1: never tell someone who's on it, like there there could
Speaker 1: be just like I'm gonna jump to an extreme to
Speaker 1: prove a point, but there could be a Beyonce single
Speaker 1: that no one's ever heard on one of my Haunted
Speaker 1: Birthday Mystery records. And that's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: And I never say a single on one of your
Speaker 1: I can't tell you. But but that's kind of the
Speaker 1: fun of it is that it could be anyone, and
Speaker 1: I really enjoy doing that. That's something I do probably quarterly,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, just just for kicks. And that's
Speaker 1: That's the other thing that I love about this style
Speaker 1: of record making is that the buy in and this
Speaker 1: stakes are so low that you can just do art
Speaker 1: for art's sake and have fun and make dumb things
Speaker 1: and put them out into the world because who cares.
Speaker 1: You know, if I had to make three hundred copies
Speaker 1: of a mystery record, then like I would put some
Speaker 1: time and energy because it's an investment of resources and
Speaker 1: money to actually put out these three things in the world.
Speaker 1: I need to make sure there's enough of an audience
Speaker 1: for it. I need to make sure that it like
Speaker 1: appeals to enough people to make sure I'm blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. If I'm only making one copy, it
Speaker 1: could literally just be farts for like, you know, five
Speaker 1: minutes on each side, and who cares? Have you done
Speaker 1: any like sort of large runs, longer runs of which
Speaker 1: whis maybe the biggest one that you've done, um, I'd say,
Speaker 1: or in the in the hundreds. Once people reach three hundred,
Speaker 1: that's when I tell them, I'm like, hey, I'm very
Speaker 1: willing to do this for you, but since you're making
Speaker 1: this many, you can just contact a regular It's going
Speaker 1: to be cost effective at that point exactly breakthrough and
Speaker 1: also and also time effective too because you have to
Speaker 1: go and still do everything go one one at a time.
Speaker 1: So so so yeah, I would say the biggest orders I've
Speaker 1: ever done have been in the hundreds, and then like, yeah,
Speaker 1: what Once people ask me to do like a five
Speaker 1: run for them, I'm like, are you sure? Here's here's
Speaker 1: what I would recommend. But I can do this if
Speaker 1: you want me to do your discs, so I call
Speaker 1: them discs, but they're not necessarily disc Do your records?
Speaker 1: Are they all playback at the same speed? Or they
Speaker 1: all seventy eight or thirty threes? Or I can do
Speaker 1: I can do it for three different speeds. I I
Speaker 1: can do thirty threes, forty five, and seventy eight. Um,
Speaker 1: but I usually do thirty three and a third simply
Speaker 1: because I want to fit as much content onto each
Speaker 1: record as possible. But yeah, I can, I can. I
Speaker 1: can do any of them. Why don't you play something else?
Speaker 1: Give me another? Give me another example of something? Here?
Speaker 1: Do you want to do? You want to hear some uh,
Speaker 1: let's see some local like a local electronic artist. Or
Speaker 1: you want to hear a California punk band California punk uh,
Speaker 1: local electronics? This both sound good? Play a yeah? UM?
Speaker 1: So here I'll start with local artists. This is a
Speaker 1: woman named Puma Shock. She is absolutely one of my
Speaker 1: favorite musicians. Um. She has this amazing project that she's
Speaker 1: working on right now called high Score. And what it
Speaker 1: is is that she takes um a video game and
Speaker 1: she plays it on mute, okay, and then she imagined
Speaker 1: she plays it like she's got the controller. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: And so she's playing the video game on mute, and
Speaker 1: she imagines what she thinks that game sounds like, and
Speaker 1: so then she will write the music and basically replace
Speaker 1: it in her mind. So I have that here. This
Speaker 1: is from a this is from a video game called
Speaker 1: Golf Story, and this is this is what Puma Shock
Speaker 1: thinks that music would have sounded like if she would
Speaker 1: have unmuted her television. Yeah to Puma Shock, hire her
Speaker 1: for your next video game composition project. This fantastic. Isn't
Speaker 1: that great? No, she she's fantastic both as a human
Speaker 1: being and as a musician and as Yeah, that second
Speaker 1: track was called Hungry Hearts Diner. So that was the
Speaker 1: second game that was on that one where. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: Golf Story and then Hungry Heart Steiner. I have to
Speaker 1: imagine that that music was way more fantastic than the
Speaker 1: music that was in the Gulf. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know really, but golf doesn't really strike me as
Speaker 1: having necessarily all that evocative of music. You're you're dead right,
Speaker 1: and and that's that that to me is the fun
Speaker 1: of this too, is like anything you want, just do it,
Speaker 1: just do it. You know, I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: It's so much fun. But we were saying, well, the
Speaker 1: music was playing, I was well, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: the difference between I think about this a bit in
Speaker 1: my own life, the difference between listening to a record
Speaker 1: or what it was like when really that was what
Speaker 1: there was to listen to. You know, I grew up
Speaker 1: in a in the air where there was CDs, you know,
Speaker 1: my first music and CDs and some stuff on tape
Speaker 1: cassette too, like I had a walkman when I was
Speaker 1: a little kid, you know, And obviously now have a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of digital things that I can just click
Speaker 1: on and you know, come instantly to my ears. Uh,
Speaker 1: plenty of other things that I have to scround for
Speaker 1: it too. So but you know, I was listen. We
Speaker 1: were listening to what some old long, pain fluid songs together,
Speaker 1: my wife and I and just like, you know, don't
Speaker 1: skip to the next track, just listen to the whole side,
Speaker 1: and then when it's done, you gotta walk over and
Speaker 1: flip it over. Just the experience of it listening to
Speaker 1: it is is different I guess I think a big
Speaker 1: part of it is there is a feeling of commitment.
Speaker 1: It's you saying, I'm intentionally doing this. I am setting
Speaker 1: aside some time, I am physically standing up, I am
Speaker 1: moving this, I am dedicating my energy to this, And
Speaker 1: like you said, it makes it harder to skip, it
Speaker 1: makes it harder to ignore, you know. And I actually
Speaker 1: I feel that way about streaming music in general. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm by no means putting it down. Anyone who extreme music.
Speaker 1: I know it is the main format for everyone these days,
Speaker 1: but personally, I've never liked streaming music because it feels
Speaker 1: too disposable for me to give it enough attention. So
Speaker 1: if I go to a store and I buy a record,
Speaker 1: I know that I have paid for this, I'm bringing
Speaker 1: it home, I'm putting it down on a record player,
Speaker 1: I'm playing it, and I give it that amount of attention.
Speaker 1: You know. I've I've had to make decisions. I've had
Speaker 1: to decide what record I wanted to buy. I've had
Speaker 1: to And when I say record, I also mean CDs.
Speaker 1: I still buy CDs all the time too, And there's
Speaker 1: a commitment there that makes me give it as much
Speaker 1: attention and as much I guess dedication as it requires
Speaker 1: of me, as compared with when I stream something, it
Speaker 1: just kind of happens at me. And whether I do
Speaker 1: anything or not, it's just going to keep going or
Speaker 1: stopping or whatever. It means nothing, just dip into that continuum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and which is fine. I'm not putting it down. I
Speaker 1: just know that for me personally, I pay more attention
Speaker 1: to an album and to music in general, if I've
Speaker 1: made any kind of small commitment to it, any kind
Speaker 1: you know, if I've just bought in a little bit,
Speaker 1: I'm paying attention. That relationship that we have with media
Speaker 1: I think has changed a lot in really the last
Speaker 1: ten years or so. I mean, Netflix, Spotify, the other
Speaker 1: ones exactly the other one. But like in the early
Speaker 1: days of digital music or you know, when when the
Speaker 1: EMP three first came around the iPod, it was still
Speaker 1: about um having keeping archiving, you know, I own this thing.
Speaker 1: And now it's much more like, oh, I pay a
Speaker 1: service for you know, I pay a fee for this
Speaker 1: service to maintain my music collection for me. And I
Speaker 1: don't like it. It doesn't like it. Don't like it
Speaker 1: at all. And let me tell you what one of
Speaker 1: the pros of that is for me is that I
Speaker 1: have a kind of big personal library at home of
Speaker 1: all kinds of things that I some of which I've
Speaker 1: will never ever part with, in some of which I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do with, but I can't part with,
Speaker 1: you know, tapes, films, videos, things that are family historically significant,
Speaker 1: things that I just haven't had the time to go through. Um,
Speaker 1: I just got rid of every CD I owned. I've
Speaker 1: kept all my tapes, I kept all of my There's
Speaker 1: two CDs that are on my desk right now that
Speaker 1: I don't know are in any other format, Like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if they're online. Um, I could rip them
Speaker 1: and then have them in a but I but you
Speaker 1: have to maintain that file, so I have to know
Speaker 1: where the file lives, as opposed to if it's on like.
Speaker 1: But Spotify surely doesn't have everything. And the thing that
Speaker 1: I hate most about Spotify is that it's in flux,
Speaker 1: that that that you may not notice it. But there
Speaker 1: are albums that you'll listen to one week and then
Speaker 1: the next week you go back to listen to again
Speaker 1: and it's gone. Right. They're working out that licensing, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's very complicated for the people that are in
Speaker 1: the legal department at Spotify. Absolutely, And so that's that's
Speaker 1: one of the saddest things to me. Like, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a perfect example. That is a movie based which
Speaker 1: is uh Peewee's Big Holiday. See that movie? Gosh, I
Speaker 1: wanted to say yes immediately, but I can't remember anything
Speaker 1: about it. Um, that's this one where he is going
Speaker 1: to Joe Magnanello's birthday. Yes, yes, I watched it. I
Speaker 1: watched it shortly after it came out. And he loves
Speaker 1: like rupier, barrel candy in it a lot and all
Speaker 1: all that. Anyway, there there's a lot of distinct in
Speaker 1: my memory. Is the original one from the eighties, Oh, definitely,
Speaker 1: that one is King of the Crop. That one's amazing.
Speaker 1: But I love that new one just because I love
Speaker 1: Paul Rubens. Was very It was very good. And the
Speaker 1: thing about it is is, yes, I've had a Netflix, um,
Speaker 1: you know, account for who knows how long. It's got
Speaker 1: to be like close to a decade at this point,
Speaker 1: you know. But what if I don't someday, what if
Speaker 1: they decide they want to take that movie off there,
Speaker 1: then I can't watch this movie. I love why because
Speaker 1: they say so. And in the old days we're talking
Speaker 1: pre VHS days, that was the way it was, and
Speaker 1: then we all got used to this world of no,
Speaker 1: if I want to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit, I
Speaker 1: can watch it whenever I want, because I own that
Speaker 1: VHS because I've taped it off the TV and was carefully,
Speaker 1: carefully paused it every time a commercial came on. And
Speaker 1: and so so that being the case, the fact that
Speaker 1: the world's trying to take that away from us. I
Speaker 1: know that in some regards, it's it's helpful. In some regards,
Speaker 1: it is like this thing of like, oh, we're don't worry,
Speaker 1: We're gonna save your shelf space. You don't need to
Speaker 1: be your own personal curator anymore. But I think there
Speaker 1: is an ulterior motive, which is money. And is that
Speaker 1: ulterior I mean, I think that that's clearly the motive behind,
Speaker 1: you know, the the VHS days, the Spotify days, everything
Speaker 1: in between, the things before. Yeah. Yeah, and it's but
Speaker 1: it just makes me a little sad that, like, I
Speaker 1: can't watch that Pee Wee Herman movie whenever I want.
Speaker 1: I can only watch it when I have access to Netflix,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's that's sad to me. I do
Speaker 1: think something like, like I consume most of my new music,
Speaker 1: I consume a lot of old music from like places
Speaker 1: like archive dot org, YouTube, but like band Camp, Oh
Speaker 1: totally all damn it. I love band camp so much.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's the best music platform of the
Speaker 1: past twenty years period. I can stumble. I can just
Speaker 1: go click a couple of things categories and just stumble
Speaker 1: on random albums, pick albums based on the cover that
Speaker 1: people put on there, which is not even recover really.
Speaker 1: We call it I'm coloring it a cover, but it's
Speaker 1: just an image that's sitting in a square on a
Speaker 1: page album exactly. But I can in in a way
Speaker 1: that I can't do in any other format, Like I
Speaker 1: can't stumble. If you just click next video and YouTube,
Speaker 1: you get stuff that you don't want to see. You
Speaker 1: can't unseee can't on here. In band Camp, I end
Speaker 1: up hearing things that I would never hear anywhere else, definitely,
Speaker 1: And I do think that in some way that's you know,
Speaker 1: is you know, owe something to to the digital revolution,
Speaker 1: to this idea of but there's the twofold thing on
Speaker 1: band camp to where it's like, hey, I've got my
Speaker 1: album streaming here and it's free and you can listen
Speaker 1: to it whenever you want. You could buy it and
Speaker 1: it goes most of it goes directly to the artist,
Speaker 1: or I maybe have a thing that I put on
Speaker 1: tape cassette or on vinyl or some other I've got
Speaker 1: a friend that does things on real to real, hand made,
Speaker 1: real to reel, So that's great. But no, I think
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. And also one of my favorite features about
Speaker 1: band camp that you were just talking about, like the
Speaker 1: discover ability of band camp is if you go to
Speaker 1: the home page, um, they'll have this thing downe at
Speaker 1: the bottom showing in real time what people are buying,
Speaker 1: so like little things what pop up, like just like
Speaker 1: a little albums like this just was bought in Denmark
Speaker 1: for eight euros, This was just bought in Japan for
Speaker 1: this much, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And if you just see
Speaker 1: this stream of albums passing by your eyes and you
Speaker 1: can just click on one and go what's this click
Speaker 1: and you just see and it just reminds me of
Speaker 1: being in a record store and seeing like a the
Speaker 1: employee recommendations or seeing like we're just listening to the
Speaker 1: stuff they're playing on the on the on the speakers
Speaker 1: in there, and it's just nice like that, that sense
Speaker 1: of discoverability I think is really valuable. And I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I love band Camp. I think they are they are.
Speaker 1: I know that they have a plenty of acclaim. I
Speaker 1: think they are perpetually underrated only because they deserve all
Speaker 1: the acclaim they need to be for artists too, I mean,
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what the deal is, but the cut
Speaker 1: is better, as I understand, than something makes Spotify. No,
Speaker 1: my record labels on on band Camp, and so I
Speaker 1: know exactly what the cut is. It's very little. It's
Speaker 1: very little. They take like pennies. It's it's nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's something you'll never even notice. And I like also,
Speaker 1: um like sometimes like you know, you're listening like a
Speaker 1: favor Wave of album for instance, and you're like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what part of the world is came from.
Speaker 1: I can't tell is this Japanese? Does it matter? I
Speaker 1: have in the past year released two albums from two
Speaker 1: completely different bands that both claim falsely that they are
Speaker 1: from a small town in Greenland, and you just don't
Speaker 1: know where they're from. Oh I know where actually, I
Speaker 1: I personally know where they're from because I worked with
Speaker 1: them both. But but the fact that two completely separate
Speaker 1: bands both on band camp claim that they are from
Speaker 1: the same town. It's called Nuke and I can't spell it,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it's written in Greenlandic. But um uh, that
Speaker 1: that that's claimed they are from the same small town
Speaker 1: in Greenland makes me just so happy and just it's
Speaker 1: just so strange to me. And they're very different genres,
Speaker 1: they're very different everything. What one is like a pop
Speaker 1: punk band and one is like a complete noise experimental band.
Speaker 1: And they both are like, yeah, yeah, that's where we're from.
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, no, you're not. But that's so cool
Speaker 1: because you could be from anywhere, you could be anyone,
Speaker 1: you know. I think a lot of my you know,
Speaker 1: personal music education for a long time was very much
Speaker 1: based on like English language music, you know, music that
Speaker 1: was in characters that I can understand. And I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps you had to do a little bit
Speaker 1: more work to get outside of that bubble before. And
Speaker 1: it's becoming easier to sort of see through to the
Speaker 1: other side. Yeah, and I really hope. I I don't
Speaker 1: know people. I'm sure people do whatever is people do,
Speaker 1: but I really hope people are taking advantage of that. Um.
Speaker 1: I use my wife as a barometer for what is
Speaker 1: actually reaching the world, because like she's very good that
Speaker 1: at having her pulse on what's happening in the world.
Speaker 1: A little more in touch and you're just in the
Speaker 1: other room over your lace. Yeah, I have a similar
Speaker 1: relationship in my life. Yeah. And and so quite often
Speaker 1: if there's something I'm really enjoying, I'll say to my wife, hey,
Speaker 1: do people actually know this or is this just me?
Speaker 1: And she'll let me know if like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is a very popular thing or no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no one's ever heard of this, And that happened last night.
Speaker 1: Speaking of foreign language music, have you ever listened to
Speaker 1: a woman named Rosaliah. She's the best. She's a pop
Speaker 1: star out of Spain, and I mean pop star straightforward,
Speaker 1: Like she's incredibly good at what she does. But it's
Speaker 1: just pop music, just playing straight pop music. But I've
Speaker 1: seen to my wife, I'm like, clearly she's super popular, right,
Speaker 1: and she's like no, I'm like why she she sings
Speaker 1: in Spanish, I'm like, what what different? Oh, you know
Speaker 1: it maybe so sad? It was just like that. That's
Speaker 1: the that's the barrier. I can never times feel I
Speaker 1: very often feel put upon by lyrics. Yes, um, I
Speaker 1: you know I also subscribe a bit too. I don't
Speaker 1: have to go to for in this. But like John Cages,
Speaker 1: you know, school of thought that music doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be about expressing, you know, expressing anything. Really, it can
Speaker 1: just be fun to listen to. It can just be
Speaker 1: you can just you can just listen, yes, without necessarily
Speaker 1: like having to have someone's feelings put upon you or
Speaker 1: or their message. And I do feel like if I
Speaker 1: am going to listen to lyrical music, music with vocals,
Speaker 1: it's sometimes really nice when it's like said icelandic it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter matter. Um. There was this you know, the
Speaker 1: band as gur Ross of course, yeah, that they had
Speaker 1: this one song whose sings not exclusively in Iceland. There's
Speaker 1: a there's Alantic right, yes, they're they're made up language
Speaker 1: of hope landic. Um, they released this one song. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, Oh, it was a while ago now, I've
Speaker 1: gotta be at least a decade where they were like
Speaker 1: it's our first English language song. Check it out and
Speaker 1: they played it and I listened to it. I was
Speaker 1: really excited. I was like, it sounds like the rest,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like it doesn't matter. I
Speaker 1: remember that, I remember reading about that. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: during the GOBALTI book like era, which I think was
Speaker 1: a great era. I agree, I agree, I agree. I
Speaker 1: believe that z Uh married an American guy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um let's see their their group. His name is
Speaker 1: Alex Alex Summer. I want to say, because they have
Speaker 1: a band called yon Zi and Alex and they're very
Speaker 1: very good. Yeah yeah, maybe a little bit more upbeat figures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll also um look into Alex Summer's brother is also
Speaker 1: an amazing musician. Well yeah yeah, but yeah also good.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, we maybe got off track a little bit.
Speaker 1: Definitely records, so you cut all the roast records on
Speaker 1: your now let me you know, let me ask you,
Speaker 1: is is business booming? Does? My business always has inquiries?
Speaker 1: Literally every single day I have a new email from somebody.
Speaker 1: But a lot of it is people just kind of exploring.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't really know what's happening with
Speaker 1: both what I'm doing and just music writ large. So like,
Speaker 1: for example, I would say, on a daily basis, daily,
Speaker 1: no close to daily, I get an email from someone going, hey,
Speaker 1: will you make me a record? I'm like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: what you need And they're like, well, I want this
Speaker 1: Eagles song on one side and I want this Madonna
Speaker 1: song on the other side. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, copyright, copyright.
Speaker 1: I can't do that for you, of course not. You know, like,
Speaker 1: why would why would you want that? Exactly? I've heard
Speaker 1: a couple of things. One is, um, if they own
Speaker 1: their own personal jukeboxes in their own homes, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Yeah. And then the other reason I
Speaker 1: have heard from DJs where if there's if they are
Speaker 1: a vinyl only DJ, that makes sense and they want
Speaker 1: to keep that going here in DJ you should be
Speaker 1: got to shuffle your disks, I mean, but and then um, gosh,
Speaker 1: there was one other reason. Oh, and then I think
Speaker 1: people who are literally just getting into vinyl for the
Speaker 1: first time and they're just curious, they know what they
Speaker 1: like and maybe it's a gift for someone. Could it
Speaker 1: could be lots of reason, But every time I obviously
Speaker 1: say no, because I like, no, no, The copyright law.
Speaker 1: That's very illegal putting Madonna on it, not unless you're
Speaker 1: unless your name is Madonna. I'm not putting Madonna on
Speaker 1: a record for you. I'm very very sorry. So so
Speaker 1: things like that come up a lot um. I'll also
Speaker 1: get a lot of people that again, because vinyl has
Speaker 1: had a resurgence, i'd say in the past decade, you know,
Speaker 1: so a lot of people are wanting to just do
Speaker 1: something with it, but they don't really understand it. So like,
Speaker 1: for example, on a seven inch record, I can put
Speaker 1: about five minutes on each side, five minutes of audio.
Speaker 1: So someone will be like, oh, hey, can I put
Speaker 1: this song on on this record? And they'll send me like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's say a seven minute song, Like, oh, actually, no,
Speaker 1: we can't put this on a seven inch. I can
Speaker 1: put this on a ten inch or a twelve inch
Speaker 1: for you, but I can only put five minutes on
Speaker 1: a on a seven inch record. And they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: can't we just make it fit. It's like, ah, like
Speaker 1: it's literally space. It's like literally space and time, Like
Speaker 1: it's we can't. We literally cannot. If you yeah, if
Speaker 1: you don't, um, I suppose if you maybe if you
Speaker 1: didn't grow up with it. You just really haven't thought
Speaker 1: about you even thought about the Literal Record, the Literal Grooves,
Speaker 1: the thirty three and the third revolutions per minutes, like
Speaker 1: you don't if you don't think about it as a
Speaker 1: because because definitely I get a lot of kids to
Speaker 1: kids who are brand new to this world and which
Speaker 1: I think is so cool. Absolutely absolutely that makes me
Speaker 1: very very happy and and it's it's so great. Like
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things in the world to do
Speaker 1: is putting out um an EP for a band where
Speaker 1: their entire EP fits on a seven inch. That makes
Speaker 1: me so happy, like like young like punk bands today,
Speaker 1: that makes me so happy. Where it's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: you kids, you're doing it. Good for you, you know,
Speaker 1: And um, it's fun too. Are having a Millennials are
Speaker 1: tracking down turntables exactly good. It's very good, it is,
Speaker 1: and and most most people get it. I would say
Speaker 1: I only get angry people who are mad at me
Speaker 1: for not making hi fi records maybe once a month.
Speaker 1: But it's so easy to get high fire records exactly. No. No,
Speaker 1: My my my stance is very very simple. It's that
Speaker 1: if you want to high fire record, you can get it.
Speaker 1: And if you want something that sounds exactly like the
Speaker 1: digital file, you got the digital file like it's it
Speaker 1: goes back to that camera and painting metaphor. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not doing that. I'm making something else. I'm
Speaker 1: making a a side path, a side route, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to have it, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not insisting that everyone listens to low five Motto
Speaker 1: records that were handmade. That's that's that'd be silly. But
Speaker 1: if you want it, I got it for you. I
Speaker 1: want I want to right now. Why don't you play
Speaker 1: me the last one that you got queued up here?
Speaker 1: You got it, you got it. I got the label
Speaker 1: on this one. This is a band called Undercover Monsters
Speaker 1: and this is their EP called Trash Friends and Great Names. Guys.
Speaker 1: They contacted me and they're just like the logo of
Speaker 1: the band isn't this font? Can you write that on
Speaker 1: eight of the records? And like, of course that's all
Speaker 1: you do. You just cut just cut in the name
Speaker 1: in cursive. Yeah, I just I just got my little
Speaker 1: etching tool and one record at a time. But it's fun.
Speaker 1: That is certainly not something you can call just anyone
Speaker 1: to do for you. No, No, but it's it's I
Speaker 1: like art, like art for art's sake, and I like
Speaker 1: making things, and so if other people want to do
Speaker 1: those things, I'm here for them, you know. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a band called Undercover Monsters. Trash friends and
Speaker 1: then make a just you know, some fun party pop
Speaker 1: punk tik kind of stuff. Truys start from the beginning.
Speaker 1: It's fun. Get some good fully in here. Floy We
Speaker 1: like somebody. We don't goss, We don't we like some
Speaker 1: im I saw. We don't mind nobody because we're just
Speaker 1: kids to rock the mic pride when we run the
Speaker 1: mic right, rock the mic frind s. It's all because
Speaker 1: of me. I'm feeling side and food now then you're gone.
Speaker 1: It's ready dead me. I really love yes, so how
Speaker 1: much you neverver No, because you took my truck to
Speaker 1: wed frock me Slunday night. We like somebody with outcast
Speaker 1: I we talk about that nobody cause were there some
Speaker 1: kids and rock the mic right and we run the
Speaker 1: mike right and rock them like fry Monday, not even.
Speaker 1: We like to fight, don't goss summer. We don't by
Speaker 1: nobody because we do some kids to rock the mike Rick,
Speaker 1: we ruck the bike, rack the rock the right right.
Speaker 1: Why don't you give me some way we can break
Speaker 1: it down. The market's way that and there give me that. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can give you all my love, said dad, Donkey Doggy.
Speaker 1: Can't you see sometimes you brikes his him and times
Speaker 1: I just stop all you tassy wags, Tommy Donty scary
Speaker 1: kids and rock the mic Prime when Prime rock the pipe, Riddy,
Speaker 1: don't cos body cut the kids and rock them like bright.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so you can probably get a lot of
Speaker 1: punk songs on a twelve inch yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Um a lot of times. I've done a lot of
Speaker 1: um single sided punk twelve inch gps. There's been a
Speaker 1: lot of that, and uh and it's fun. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. I mean, like if art is actually
Speaker 1: this is a big thing in my life in general.
Speaker 1: I really, really really am happy that becoming a musician
Speaker 1: is no longer a get rich quick scheme because remember,
Speaker 1: like back in I'm gonna say the late nineties into
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's probably probably longer ago people wanted
Speaker 1: to become quote unquote rock stars or pop stars or
Speaker 1: musicians in general because it was a get rich quick scheme.
Speaker 1: It was like, Oh, that's how I'll make a lot
Speaker 1: of money, I'll become a musician. Well, that sort of
Speaker 1: ties in timeline wise with like particular kind of commodification
Speaker 1: of artists you think of, like the boy band era,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And not too long after that,
Speaker 1: that's when napster kicked in and all these other things
Speaker 1: kicked in, which made it's not so easy to make
Speaker 1: money from music, and so a lot of people who
Speaker 1: were only in it for the money they went away.
Speaker 1: And I love that because it means that anyone who's
Speaker 1: still doing it, they do it because they love it,
Speaker 1: and those are the best people in the world. I agree, Seth,
Speaker 1: Tell me tell the listening public where they can find
Speaker 1: more about your record label. Um, I would say the
Speaker 1: best place to find me is you go to Haunted
Speaker 1: Birthday dot com. That's the that's the main place, and
Speaker 1: then you can go from there to find the social
Speaker 1: media sites, etcetera, etcetera. Actually, I suppose, since we're talking
Speaker 1: so much about what these things look like, a really
Speaker 1: good place to go would be to my Instagram page,
Speaker 1: which would be at Haunted Birthday, And there's a great
Speaker 1: couple of videos that you've done of this process, because
Speaker 1: describing it and seeing it are death are definitely different things.
Speaker 1: So I will I will include a link to that
Speaker 1: in an easy to find place, because I mean, like
Speaker 1: the the the interesting thing about this process, like I've
Speaker 1: been saying, is a lot of its education, like just
Speaker 1: letting people know what it is that I'm even doing,
Speaker 1: you know, and um, so that that's why I made
Speaker 1: these videos. I have learned a lot today about exactly
Speaker 1: how this works. So I surely have a lot more questions.
Speaker 1: I think most of my questions might be the kind
Speaker 1: that would bore people. That's understandable. But I want to
Speaker 1: talk more about that curve off. Mike, You and I
Speaker 1: can talk all day about all the really boring stuff
Speaker 1: about like groove depth and the r I a acres. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, think about like the depths of the depth
Speaker 1: of sound. That is the difference between a traditional like
Speaker 1: hundred eighty gram record and me just pushing a ruby
Speaker 1: as hard as I can into a piece of plastic,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like the depth of sound
Speaker 1: you can get from a quote unquote real record is
Speaker 1: so much deeper. But that's that's that's that's that trade off.
Speaker 1: It's that, well, do you have three fans and a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of money or do you need two copies?
Speaker 1: And you can do whatever you want? And it's it's
Speaker 1: a trade off. You do whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1: You got one more thing to play us? Play us
Speaker 1: out here? Um maybe giant stack of handmade records. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it all depends on who I have the
Speaker 1: rights from. Let's see here. Oh no, I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and say thanks a lot for coming in and doing
Speaker 1: this absolutely, and thank you to the artists also that
Speaker 1: I contacted to say, hey, do you mind if we
Speaker 1: play your music on the show today? Thank you to
Speaker 1: them for allowing us to play their music publicly. That's
Speaker 1: very nice of them. Thanks artists. Let's go someplace where
Speaker 1: no one knows times you could play in town Gate
Speaker 1: and shall blow. I may be in the crab, but
Speaker 1: I'm only with you. I know, we just meant And
Speaker 1: then's okay. I got phot of n St again, which
Speaker 1: to day I can't keep seeing r one girl to
Speaker 1: see ship stand So the new kids, so keep pretty
Speaker 1: down a show, no ang fight the children of the
Speaker 1: night and time to be prag don't be this, led
Speaker 1: by all of the dentists, even the one to post
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, I'd like the dark one but me
Speaker 1: like like Sati sends to the evil Tachists, like child
Speaker 1: Sah sends him to it. So shock me to find
Speaker 1: the night and child Tops, led by all of the dead,
Speaker 1: is given best Yeah. Thanks to Elias Mason in June York,
Speaker 1: Puma Shock and Undercover Monsters for letting us play their music.
Speaker 1: The eye, his ears, hands and brain behind Haunted Birthday
Speaker 1: Records is Seth Nicholas Johnson. See this process in action
Speaker 1: and get your own record produced at Haunted Birthday dot
Speaker 1: com and follow up on everything you heard here at
Speaker 1: a fem dot show. For more podcasts from i Heeart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.