Vinyl Me Please's 1996 fixation ... 1997 coming soon?

This year, the Vinyl Me Please record club has featured four different titles from 1996 as Selections of the Month: Beck's Odelay, Fugees' The Score, Weezer's Pinkerton, and Nada Surf's High/Low. This is a quarter of their output for the year! I think they've decided that late Generation X and early Millennials are their primary audience.

What 1997 titles do you think we may see from them? I personally think Erykah Badu's Baduizm is a slam-dunk, knowing VMP's tastes....

 

baduizm would be great. isn't it about to get a standard 2xLP release? my original copy sounds great, and was super cheap, but is as bare-bones as they come.

 

Although it wasn't a selection of the month, they also had Rage Against The Machine's Evil Empire as an exclusive.

1997 had some major releases like:

Radiohead - OK Computer
The Verve - Urban Hymns
Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever, Amen
Pavement - Brighten The Corners
Supergrass - In It For The Money

 

Radiohead's OK Computer, Blink 182- Dude Ranch, Biggie's Life After Death, Puff Daddy's I'll Be Missing You was a huge in clubs...

 

If they select Erykah Badu I'll have to write them a strongly worded e-letter. Or at least, that would be the first selection I'd skip. I already paid them over $40 for one record I'll never play (the Fugees) and that's quite enough!

Spiritualized would be a good one though - a nice double set on, say, clear-purple splatter vinyl...

 

I thought Mobile Fidelity just did Pinkerton.

 

yep. and the VMP release used the MOFI cut.

 

I was pretty thrilled to see that in the dead wax when I got mine, cuz I'd been on the fence about buying the MOFI anyway. It does sound about as good as it's possible for Pinkerton to sound. I recall accusing that album of having been recorded on a boombox under a blanket in a closet when it came out. It was a marked contrast to the blue album.

 

Aw man, next month's selection is even worse than Erykah Badu!

 

I'm thrilled about the Nina Simone. Last month's (The Books) was the first time I've used the trade option. Auditioned it via YouTube and bleah.

 

Shame, that. Sure hope you have it a good shot, as I think The Books is one of the most unique acts of the oughts.

I'm swapping Nina for the Big Bill Broonzy, only because I already have a first of Sings the Blues.

 

I am not normally a fan of that genre but Baduizm is an exception. Nice way to test your bass capabilities out too.

 

Well if on gimmicky blue vinyl maybe.

 

Isn't that a shame? One of the essential Nina LPs with the original sleeve and label design spoiled by being a tacky looking blue vinyl. It cheapens it for me.

 

It's in print on black vinyl. Part of what this club is about is colored vinyl variants.

 

Oh, that's not so bad. I didn't know that. I do like coloured vinyl when it's done well, but not on 60s or earlier albums for some reason.

 

I signed up for Odelay and was thrilled about The Books being the next record of the month. And I'm also thrilled by the Nina Simone. I think they're knocking it out of the park.

 

I'll admit, the RCA label looks odd with that shade of blue, but it's complementary to the cover, so I see why they chose it.

 

The Nina Simone record says 'remastered from the original analog tapes', so there's that..

 

There are currently reissues from Speaker's Corner and 4MWB in print for this Nina Simone album. Any idea which cut VMP will be using for their release?

 

They are doing their own cut. From one of the forums over there: "I met with Sony Legacy earlier in the year and said we really wanted to dig through the Nina catalog and see if there was a good fit for a late fall/early winter feature. As I was digging through options I kept coming back to the song "Real, Real" as one of the most incredible songs and realized ...Sings the Blues was an incredible album start to finish. After much listening/debating by the team we settled on the title and proposed the reissue to Sony who agreed. We had them dig the original analog tapes (another reason we picked this album...we had access to the tapes) of their vault, sent them off to Sterling Sound and had the entire album remastered."

 

Is this the first time they've commissioned their own remaster?

 

They've definitely done others. I believe The Books, Big Bill Broonzy, and maybe Four Tet were commissioned by them.

Edit: also Wells Fargo, since they basically commisined the creation of the whole album.

 

Gotta give them credit. They're definitely not an old fashioned record the month club, thank goodness.

 

Thanks for the info! That's really fascinating that they had their own master commissioned. Glad to hear they used analog tapes, too. I was a member of VMP for a while, but I'm re-joining this month the Nina Simone release. They are definitely a cut above most record clubs, and it's exciting to see that vinyl record clubs still exist.