What do you give a vinyl fan who has everything? Maybe one of these ultra-weird LPs
Global News
Into collecting vinyl but tired of chasing the same old stuff? Alan Cross has some solutions — and some of them are kinda gross. Proceed carefully.
Last weekend, I spent a couple of hours at the semi-annual Downtown Record Show in Toronto. I brought along my usual amount of gambling money, $200, and started digging through the crates and boxes looking for … I don’t know, really. Treasure? Something I didn’t know I needed? A lost record from my youth?
After two hours, I gave up, discouraged. I’d bought two things: a Nick Drake compilation (I’m really trying to up my game when it comes to British folk of the 1970s) and a six-CD set of jazz recordings compiled by the Smithsonian (another weak spot for me). Nothing else I saw really sparked any kind of joy.
Maybe I have too many records already (about 7,000, if you must ask). Maybe the thrill of the chase has worn off. Or maybe I just need some new goals when it comes to collecting. Rather than looking for the same-old, same-old, perhaps I should start searching for more weird and extreme stuff.
I’m not talking about another whacko Leonard Nimoy album (he recorded more than a few like The Two Sides of Leonard Mimoy or Japanese ultra-noise from Merzbow. (You can hear a sample of Merzbow on YouTube, and no, nothing is wrong with your device.) No, I mean something extremely specialized, very rare, and highly personal. Let’s call them “DNA records.”
You can add whatever you want into the polyvinyl chloride used to create a record. There are also ways to press specific substances in the vinyl or into the space between two slabs of PVC.
Take, for example, the brand-new release from Fall Out Boy. Earlier this month, they unveiled a special limited edition of their album, So Much (for) Stardust that they call “Crynyl.” The PVC used in the manufacture of these 50 records contains the actual tears from each of the band members (Crynyl/vinyl. Geddit?) Yes, really emo tears for (as the band says) “maximum emotional fidelity.”
When they went on sale for US$99, they disappeared immediately. I haven’t seen any show up for sale on Discogs.com or eBay yet, but it’s only a matter of time. And when a copy does appear, it’ll have a price tag of well beyond the original price. It was created to be a valuable collectible.
This got me thinking: It’s a record with actual band DNA included. Are there more albums like that out there?
