Drag City

yeah well spotted, anyone who knows me knows i never owned any records by smog or palace or scott walker in the 1st place.

fuck hipgnosis & roger dean yeah!

hoorah to drag city for getting my pre-ordered vinyl copy of the excellent new bill callahan album to me a week before the scheduled release date

boo to drag city for not providing digital downloads with vinyl purchases. i don't understand why labels wouldn't do this as standard these days

you make me wish i'd pre-ordered. i'm seeing him in a week or two in a record store and thought about buying it to get signed. i don't do that or anything, just, how else will i have stories for my grandchildren involving someone so laconic?

lp is slow burningly lovely anyway. i think all thoughts are prey to some beast is good enough to sit in the distance/the well/truth serum spot each record seems to have.

oh they also sent me a nice poster promoting the album, though i don't really know what to do with it

i think they do supply digital copies for those purchasing vinyl in some cases. i believe they call it "ultraload" or something.

i decided a minute ago that i like drag city, not just because of all the music but because they actually have a mystique.

I don't know if they still do it, but they used to have really neat alternate artwork on their promo cd's. I contemplated collecting it at one point...

There was an early comp they (or maybe Ajax?) was going to put out called "Hey Dan K." which after a quick googling shows had Cannanes and M0unt@1n G0@ts songs on it.

http://www.amazon.com/Hey-Dan-Koretzky-Various-Artists/dp/B000005NGW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1268195446&sr=1-1

Like the random ESP Summer biography that appears below it.

I don't know if they still do it, but they used to have really neat alternate artwork on their promo cd's.

The posters too -- Smog's Knock Knock:

http://i9.ebayimg.com/08/i/001/3c/89/1242_12.JPG

ha, never seen that before but that's Dan Osborn of DC in the Dr's uni

boo to drag city for not providing digital downloads with vinyl purchases. i don't understand why labels wouldn't do this as standard these days

They still don't do this, which seems insane to me. Is it some kind of principle thing with them?

yeah, it does seem kind of stubborn. i'd be more likely to buy a record w/ mp3 downloads.

i don't thnik it's principle since they sell mp3s.
love going over to the drag city site to see what they're up to: right now a portuguese guitar player and pete shelley electronic records. such a cool label.

and a new collection of alan lomax scottish field recordings!

the carlos parreda thing is pretty great, wasn't familiar w/ that dude before.

aren't those scottish recordings kinda 'lomax-esque'? i thought they were new, collected by ali roberts, sorta following in the footsteps. may be wrong

nah, they're actually Lomax recordings, complied by Alasdair Roberts, I believe.

*compiled*

aw okay, that's neat, i misunderstood. really had roberts down for the roam around scotland recording strangers type.

He (Ali Roberts) asked me if I knew of any good swimming holes when he was in town playing a show.
Charming guy. I really should pick up one of his records. Recommendations? I had the first Appendix Out ages ago.

Amber Gatherers might be the best intro? Really wonderful record.

Thanks! I spotted some of his records at a shop in the newly acquired used bins.
My list is getting long again.

http://www.dragcity.com/news/499

why are drag city calling things gay, is it bc they are a label for the ironic youth

bc of the rainbow colored ribbon iirc

lol @ them apologizing for having an artist performing at lincoln center: "No this thing is actually cool, really, let me explain it to you in vaguely grad-studentesque terms so you'll see why."

I thought about buying tickets to that show but it sold out. My first thought when I saw it was "I guess we're getting old."

it is v poor you are meant to just do the thing you do without making the world a tiny amount shittier, why ironically say gay or make a (i guess innocuous but guess what they forefit critical restraint) hiv joke in yr copy

the bill callahan letter is great though

Do you think that Dan & Dan were lucky or talented to identify their core roster talent like Neil, Jennifer, Malkmus, Callahan, Berman, Oldham, Jim O, etc. fairly early in their infancy and (for the most part) these artists are still kicking strong 20-25 years later?

it's always a bit of both isn't it

i think the fact that the drag city folks have pretty unerring taste has something to do with it

almost unerring, i should say

back in the mid 1990s i would have had no idea this label would last so long and put out so much great stuff, both new music and reissues

has a lot to do with their ethos too, they just seem really respectful of their artists and they are competent and even-keeled. i'm speaking a little out of ignorance but anytime i read an interview with one of their musicians they all seem pretty happy to have DC as their label. i mean bill callahan sings "DC 450" at the end of apocalypse and if he hated the label i doubt he'd do that.

i think they have really varied and solid taste, and choose artists who have room to grow -- beyond that, keeping their scope pretty small and not doing anything financially stupid/risky has led to long-term success.
i <3 drag city!

they are so reliable. but also never boring.

I forget way too easily that a large number of my favorite albums released since the inception of Drag City were released by Drag City. Like probably half of my top 20 from the past 25 years.

There should be a gallery show of their albums and ephemera.

At the risk of sounding a little crass, it has built among the strongest "brands" of any indie label, and I think that's because they're really clear-eyed about both their taste and their purpose. You never get the sense that they're thinking "We're releasing this because we took the cultural temperature and the kids will like it"

Yeah. Them and like Merge

Merge a little less so obv.

merge is a great label, but i'd say they rely a little more on bands that have proven themselves on even smaller labels (i read a lot more "x signs to merge" than "x signs to drag city" stories), and the breadth of their signings is a little less diverse than drag city.

They got in right before the IPO!

So, uh, I'm guessing these guys are about to give up on the CD format completely. It's been tapering as an option on their releases for the past couple years, but now it seems like a CD release is the exception rather than the rule. The New Bums album is vinyl only and the just announced Peacers album is vinyl and cassette only. Not surprised, I guess, just bummed. Weird that cassettes must be hitting higher sales numbers for them though.

yeah that’s a drag (hahah). Kinda surprised they’ve held out this long. I still think CDs might be cool again in 20 years or something if we still have an energy grid and stuff.

I mean, I think it depends on the genre and labels, really. Seems like a lot of jazz and prog stuff is still getting heavily released in the CD format and it still seems to be strong for the deluxe reissue world, but who knows. I don't think it'll ever go away completely, just become more of a niche thing. I mean, I know Numero Group gave up on them (which makes me extra sad knowing that Husker Du may now never see a decent, proper release on that format).

It bums me out... don’t people listen to albums in the car (and want better sound than an streaming over Bluetooth)?

I do! I mean, I still buy CDs all the time. I have some vinyl, but it's expensive as shit for a lot of titles compared to CDs, a lot of labels stopped giving download codes, pressing issues, pressing delays meaning the vinyl can sometimes come months later, I spend a lot of time away from a record player, etc. I like vinyl, but CD is still the most functional for me.

I'm really curious about the economics regarding cassettes these days though, is there really that much of a market that labels would pick that over CD as lower quantity second physical media option?

And, lol, at the risk of this becoming my own personal physical format blog, I would be curious to know if it would ever be possible/economically feasible to expand that Bandcamp vinyl pressing on demand thing to CDs as well.

cassette sales doubled in 2020 fwiw:

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-55476419

Amazing that Drag City avoided streaming for so long only to abandon CDs shortly after embracing streaming.

Thanks sleeve, wonder how the US figures compare. I know cassettes keep a pretty decent following for metal, experimental and noise bands, but it just seems so weird for cassettes to be where manufacturing dollars are spent at this point in time. But, I guess that's why I don't run a label.

Is there a corresponding jump in sales of tape-decks?

Amazing that Drag City avoided streaming for so long only to abandon CDs shortly after embracing streaming.

Haha. Yes! I have a huge number of Drag City CDs precisely because they were shunning streaming. It was an effective strategy. No more Drag City CDs would mean 100.00% streaming their new releases here. I'm not about to become an olde worlde analogue format fetishist.

It bums me out... don’t people listen to albums in the car (and want better sound than an streaming over Bluetooth)?

― one of the only artist who is genuine (morrisp), Thursday, January 21, 2021 3:39 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

finding a new car these days with a CD player factory installed is turning non-existent. cars are turning to that point where you need a discman to hook into the AUX to get that satisfaction, a sorta pre-CD players in cars era.

That’s interesting, it’s been standard in our last few leased vehicles (most recent is a 2019).

my 2018 subaru doesn't have a cd player, i only even thought to look a couple weeks ago!

It would skip like crazy careening over all those rugged trails and dry stream beds!

https://i.imgur.com/fkwePBI.jpg

Those sun visors were great... if you wanted to scratch the shit out of your CDs.

What is God? Records about – curated by someone in particular? (I tried searching for info, but just found some similarly-named labels.)

Ty Segall I think?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ty_Segall#GOD?_Records

Don't seem to have a thread on them so I'll toss it in here, but the new Wand live album is fantastic. In a more just world, they'd have at least half of that rabid King Gizz fanbase.

Really can't wrap my head around which releases these guys decide to put on CD and which they don't.

Recent albums by Wand, Bill Callahan and Dirty Three did, but not for Papa M, Tashi Dorji and the upcoming Geologist record. I'm sure they have data on which "big" records make it worthwhile, but I find the inconsistency kind of annoying.

maybe they leave it up to the artists?

Possible too!

"maybe they leave it up to the artists?"

Correct answer.