Pressing Issue
The other day, I spent some time down in the basement, organizing my shit. I’ve been needing to do a proper inventory of Buck 65-related stuff. I’ll never complete that mission. I accept that. There’s too much stuff. The most daunting part is the tapes of my old radio shows going back to 1989 or so. I think I recorded every show I ever did on CKDU - the campus station at Dalhousie University in Halifax. There are hundreds of tapes. How the hell am I ever going to properly process all of that? Thing is, I know there’s much treasure to be found there. Maybe when I’m old…
Step one in the inventory process was going through my vinyl archives. There’s a lot of stuff! I’m proud to say that most of the stuff I’ve ever done has been pressed to vinyl. But not everything. There are a few things that have never been pressed for a variety of reasons. I’ve considered re-pressing a few things. Let’s talk vinyl.
Game Tight. My first album has never been pressed to wax (cassette only) but it has been discussed. It’s a bit unclear to me whether or not I own the rights to this album. I don’t think I could act alone on this one. If it’s ever pressed, I think murderecords will have to be the ones to do it. I really have no idea if there would be much interest in such a thing. No one ever really asks me about it.
Weirdo Magnet. The original version has way too much material to make a vinyl pressing make sense in my mind. It would probably have to be triple or quadruple vinyl, which would be very expensive to do. And I’m not sure there’s enough strong material or interest to warrant it.
Language Arts. This is one of the ones I’d most love to see pressed. I own the master. It’s a personal favorite. It could be done. I would just have to find the right fit which isn’t easy. I trust people less and less these days.
Psoriasis (Sebutones). Discussions have been had. I’d love to see this happen. It’s near the top of my list.
50/50 Where It Counts (Sebutones). I looked into this a few years ago. I love this album but it’s too damn long. It would be so hard to make it work on vinyl. It would require a lot of editing and a new mix and master. It could happen one day but it would be a ton of work. First, I’d need to do a digital transfer of all the studio tracks (from ADAT!) and that’s a daunting task. It’s a bit of a back-breaker. I hope I can find the strength one day.
Vertex. A very small vinyl run was done ten years ago or so. I’ve been asked a few times since then to do another pressing but I’m not really interested. Not right now. Maybe never. I found a stash of test presses the other day. And by the way - the copies with handmade covers? Only two left.
Man Overboard. Of course, this album was pressed on vinyl by Anticon back in ’99 or 2000 or whatever it was. And it’s a bit of a notorious story (in my mind anyway). I was never sent a test pressing, which was a huge mistake because the song about my mother was cut off and I would never have approved that. That song is the centerpiece of the album. Part of me would like to do a repress that gets it right. Again, I’d have to find the right fit. Long shot it will ever happen. I’m not sure how many copies were pressed. I’m guessing 1,000 max. Less than 500 people have it according to discogs. But of course, not everyone has their collection catalogued on discogs. People ask me for copies all the time. I only have two left. Copies pop up online once in a while.
Square. There’s a flaw in the existing pressing. Due to some glitch, every copy (or at least most of them) skips in the song “Phil” (Square One). Bit of a bummer but not enough for me to feel an urgent need to re-press. The vinyl didn’t sell well when Square first came out. They’ve mostly dried up at this point. There are three different pressings: Canada, Germany and Europe. The German press has pink labels. Those are the rarest. I only have three or four copies left myself and only one with the pink labels.
Secret House Against The World. This is the only album I did for Warner that wasn’t pressed to vinyl. I don’t own the master (yet - I hope to one day), so I don’t have the rights to have it pressed now, even though I’d kinda like to do a small run. It’ll probably never happen though.
Dirtywork. It’s only five songs so I imagine it would have to be a 10”. That would be kinda cool. Wouldn’t mind seeing that happen one day.
Dirtbike (1-4). None of these albums have been committed to any physical format. I’m so-so on the idea of vinyl. If I had to pick one to press, I’m not sure which it would be. Maybe the first one? I don’t know.
The Last Dig (Double Nice). I’d love to see this pressed on vinyl in a small run one day - like, 100 copies or something like that. Probably #1 on the list of things I’d like to see pressed. Hopefully one day. I like this album a lot. I feel it’s kinda slept on.
14K Gold. 14 lathe cuts were done. I’d like to leave it at that.
There are straggler songs scattered around that I’m quite fond of that would be cool to have on vinyl whether they were pressed as 7” singles or bundled as a compilation. I’m thinking of songs like “Highway 101” and “Last Of The V8 Interceptors” and “Bad Santa” and “The New Sammy Sosa”. Stuff like that.
As you can probably tell, I prefer to do limited quantities of my stuff on vinyl. I want the records to be special. I guess that’s the collector in me. It would bum me out to see unloved copies of my stuff in every thrift shop. Truth is, I rarely see my stuff out there in the wild. It makes me feel weird when I do. Sometimes if I see one of my records for sale, I buy it. I feel like it’s suffering if it’s collecting dust in a shop. In Japan, they call that “mono no aware”.
If I was smart, I’d start my own little imprint one day. I suppose I should look into that. I have friends who’ve done it. I could ask them for know-how and advice. I suppose I should give that idea some serious thought.
Perhaps more than my stuff on vinyl, I get asked about the weird little tour-only projects I sold on cassette or CDr. I don’t think I’ve done quite as good a job archiving that stuff. I think I’ll tackle the cassettes in the next phase of my inventory. I’ll let you know how that goes.
By the way, I was listening to King Of Drums for the first time in a while the other day and afterwards, a voice in my head said, “greatest comeback in hip hop history”. I wouldn’t say I actually believe that but it did get me wondering: what is the greatest comeback in hip hop history? I feel like we don’t have a lot of those stories. Some would say that once you fall off, there’s no coming back. Arguably, that applies to me too.
Until the next.