Royal Trux : Classic or Dud ?

How many copies of Bleach did Nirvana sell before they were signed to DGC?

40k acc. to SubPop

https://web.archive.org/web/20110606040005/http://www.subpop.com/channel/blog/20_year_old_bleach

...and iirc, Nevermind initially shipped 50k (all without "Endless Nameless")

I really don't think those Royal Trux numbers could possibly be correct.

where is sic when we need him? surely he would have input here

any truxters here ever tried decrypting the song arrangements of Kool Down Wheels or Yin Jim? I'm a big Infinitives nerd and those songs bog my mind. No clue if there's like an obscured structure behind the haze or if it's intentionally drunk.

They are correct. Via Soundscan. Just US though, not international.

Amor and Language is just over 600.
Run On just over 1300.

Palace did 20-30K on their biggest, topping out at 29-32K with There Is No One... and Days In the Wake.

Maybe it's real! it is really strange to scroll through a bunch of Royal Trux tracks on Youtube and see about 100 views. It is crazy to think about the roster of early Drag City! I mean I guess it's not crazy, lots of labels started obtuse and stayed obtuse and just never became what Drag City became I guess

So did sales of Palace and Pavement CDs effectively subsidize the cost of releasing stuff that only sold a few hundred copies?

Man, I haven't thought about Decimation Boulevard in forever. That was indeed an interesting record.

I've brought this up on a few threads, but iirc it took 25 years for Never Mind the Bollocks to go platinum in the US. 25 years, for one of the most iconic, written-about bands and (major label!) albums of all time! I can only imagine what Big Star has sold, or Eno records, or the VU., or the Ramones, etc.

I don't really know how to type this in any tone that isn't an Eeyore voice but... I don't think that is what the future has in store for Royal Trux

Now I’m wondering how many copies were sold of the REALLY obscure-seeming records that I love.

@morisp - ask!

So many of these records (Decimation Blvd. included) got played daily for months at the warehouse that I worked at back then that they all seemed like big hits to me. I hated a lot of them at the time, but now they're warm memories. haha Color me as surprised as anyone else with the low numbers!

Even Crunt (3.6K) was almost as popular as Royal Trux!
All those Didjits records back then sold 1-3K.
Looks like their popularity was most similar to Gastr Del Sol, who sold between 3-10K.

oops - morrisp

Yeah it’s always fascinating to see sales figures for bands like this.

I think part of the thing that makes RT sales seem lower than you might think is how divisive they were/are. Like despite how much thy were written & talked about, even among the niche group of people who know them, doesn’t mean that they all actually them (& like them enough to buy records, at that)

*”they all actually like them”, that is

Mr. Raffles — how about:

Kissyfur, Frambuesa (Starlight Furniture Co., 1995)
Chevy Heston, S/T (Cherrydisc, 1994)
Lync, These Are Not Fall Colors (K Records, 1994)

Btw, were most small record stores truly participating in SoundScan by the mid-‘90s? Could there be a whole strata of mom & pop, college-town sales not being captured by these numbers? Just curious...

Other weird ones... Laughingstock looks like superstar sales compared to this, at +60K, while Bark Psychosis Hex sold 1/10th as well. Laughingstock even beat At Action Park by 10K... I'd bet that Shellac was in the lead there until at least the least 90s though. At least going by the record stores I was working at.

"Btw, were most small record stores truly participating in SoundScan by the mid-‘90s? Could there be a whole strata of mom & pop, college-town sales not being captured by these numbers? Just curious..."

100%. Soundscan was only ever an approximation. Since not everybody reported, certain stores would be weighted differently in the hopes that would get things closer to the actual number. Again though, the numbers certainly tell a tale in relation to other artists.

Kissyfur - around 100
CH - over 150
Lync - 3500 or so

The Frogs - It's Only Right and Natural to Starjob all did 5-10K.

So did sales of Palace and Pavement CDs effectively subsidize the cost of releasing stuff that only sold a few hundred copies?

yes! but the original idea as told to me by an early proto-Pavement band member was "they just want to sign bands they think are cool" (re: the two Dans) - so really they just lucked out with Pavement and later Palace.

Someone said on another ILM thread that the 2 Dans were prescient in fostering artists who continue to make music today (Callahan, Jen Trux, Neil Trux, Malkmus, Oldham, Berman(?), Mantis (jk)...)

fwiw re Soundscan figures, this from an article from 1995:

Shalett makes one important concession: certain very small indie releases, albums that sell in the 15,000 to 20,000 range, might not get fairly counted in the system. "Something very, very street--like a rap record sold out of barbershops--we're not going to count fully, and we never will be able to." This may be why an album like Operation Ivy, from the Berkeley indie label Lookout (the original home of Green Day), has sold, according to Lookout's Molly Neuman, 100,000 copies over the last four years, while SoundScan has it down for only 5,000. Tiny labels that sell a disproportionate number of vinyl records, that don't use bar codes, or that do business by mail order escape SoundScan's radar as well.

also Never Mind The Bollocks took 15 years to go platinum not 25

from a UK perspective i saw royal trux play a little while after cats and dogs came out and they half filled the upstairs room in a pub

At the same time fugazi or pavement could fill the local 850 capacity venue. thee headcoats, make up, jsbx or lois maffeo could fill the pub room i saw royal trux in. palace brothers on their first uk tour probably 2/3 filled a similar room

royal trux stunk when i saw them live. i don't mean they played bad i mean they literally smelled like they hadn't bathed for a month

xpost 15 years, 25 years ... it took a while!

I wonder how stuff like, say, Labradford sold on Kranky? I assume Deerhunter is their top-seller? What does/did a band like Low sell?

This news simultaneously makes no sense and makes total sense (inasmuch as I don't know anyone irl who likes or listens to Trux who didn't have the band foisted upon them by me).

(And I was under the mistaken impression that they were terrible for quite a long time.)

royal trux stunk when i saw them live. i don't mean they played bad i mean they literally smelled like they hadn't bathed for a month

LOL

I saw Trux fill good-sized clubs.

Of all the bands of that era, Trux are the one I currently like the least. I honestly think my wearing-out on them was this seemingly arbitrary canonization of Twin Infinitives, which is a bad, bad, bad album. Maybe the worst album. It’s the aural equivalent of Harmony Korine making Gummo, and while Gummo was being edited, Harmony turned on a camcorder and spent a week kicking it around the parking lot of the editing suite, and called the resultant footage “More Gummo”

Never understood the Twin Infinitives pedestal. Pretty much everything they released subsequently blows it clear out of the water.

Or at least from Cats and Dogs on. Not crazy about the second s/t, either, myself.

I saw Trux fill good-sized clubs.

In New York, Chicago, San Francisco or L.A.?

Yes, two of those cities.

I don’t get the “Gummo” comparison at all...

idk I've felt like Gummo and early Royal Trux share an aesthetic thesis is all

I saw Pavement with Royal Trux in a (sold-out) 600-ish(?) capacity club at the height of both bands' live popularity (Wowee-Zowee/Brighten The Corners + Thank You/Sweet Sixteen):

https://i.imgur.com/Xzfqw22.jpg

You could move around pretty freely during the show, I took some great pics of Jen/Neil that I can't find anymore. It was about 90F+ in the club and Jen was wearing a puffy Raiders snow parka with matching Raiders snow beanie with a big pom-pom on top.

Not sure how to account for my fondness for Twin Infinitives. It’s certainly unique. I like it sonically.

yeah I'm a fan as well, there are some good tunes in there (i.e. side 4, and 'Chances Are The Comets') and as you note the sound is unique

I also think Twin Infinitives is a cool/unique album... and I'm particularly fond of the posthumous Trux release Hand of Glory, which draws from the same recordings.

heyyyy i was at the hollywood palace pavement / trux show. fun times. wasn't really familiar with royal trux and they were scary!

Pink x Trux

After several listens, "White Stuff" has gone from 'surprisingly decent comeback album' to 'top 5 material'

xp Pretty "funny" how the promo shot is just Jessica & AP.

Also, I admit that White Stuff is somewhat better than I initially took it to be... It's still a self-derivative retread with thin songwriting, but other "reunited" bands have done worse, I guess.

Hmm ok

http://larecord.com/interviews/2019/11/15/royal-trux-jennifer-herrema-interview-jed-maheu

Wow, a lot of interesting stuff in there... thanx for posting.

(Btw, Jay — Arthur Nights in 2006 was the coolest festival ever, I really enjoyed it!)

great interview!

The guy mentioned not by name in the first long paragraph sounds awfully like a stylist I used to work with who dabbles in some label stuff...

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