Another very full day of record label business.

I changed cell phones the other day after buying the new iPhone 3G, and when I checked my old phone I noticed I had a missed call from the Chapel Hill screen-printing place where I’m printing Logic Problem t-shirts. After getting sent to their answering machine twice I finally made it through to them, when I found out that the two people handling my order have gone on vacation for the entire week, so I guess no Logic Problem shirts this week. I mentioned in my last post that I like to deal locally, but this company is really doing their best to fuck that up. When I placed the order 2 weeks ago I asked if I could get the shirts in time for our show with Sex/Vid even though it was 7 days away and their quoted turnaround time is 10 days, but when I asked the guy on the phone he just kept repeating the mantra “turnaround time is 10 to 14 days.” Now I found out that they’re on vacation this entire week, which they clearly avoided telling me on purpose. I thought I’d use the place where (so it seems) Chapel Hill indie bands get their stuff printed, but those people are just royal assholes.

Spent part of the morning packing up orders, mostly from Amazon.com, where I’m selling my CD collection, partly to finance my new iPhone but I guess once that’s paid off I’ll funnel that money into the label. About 5 minutes after I finished packing orders and put all my shipping supplies away another order came in… you’d be surprised how often this happens. I was excited to see that it was from the ebay store, but it was just for a Double Negative 7″. I have a feeling I could trade those 7″s for human limbs and people would gladly rip off their fingers and hand them over to me.

I also spent part of the morning (probably too much) laboring over the description of the Logic Problem 7″. Judging by some of the descriptions out there, it seems like other labels don’t put much time into this aspect of the release, but I always find it very stressful. You’d be surprised how often that description will get replicated in other distros and stores, and even how many reviewers will refer to it when they write about the record. I’m always balancing like 10 things in these descriptions… trying to seem excited without being pushily self-promoting, trying to say what the record sounds like without lumping it in with soon-to-die trends or implying that it’s generic, and trying to give an indication of who will like it without being too verbose or obscure in my references. It’s a fine art for sure and one I have hardly mastered.

Sometime this afternoon I chucked doing any work on my actual job out the window and decided it would be way more fun to put together all 500 Logic Problem 7″s, which I did in a few hours while listening to records and chatting with Kelly. I’ve always liked the mind-wandering time provided by these simple repetitive tasks, but I wish I had a better table on which to assemble records because my back is extremely sore after putting together records all day.

After assembling all of the Logic Problem stuff I decided to pack up some of the orders I had been holding while I waited for more Koro 7″ covers to arrive. However, about 2 orders in I noticed that I was down to less than 10 copies of the Double Negative 7″, which is going to cause at least one of those orders to be held for even longer. I knew that I was low and had already ordered a restock of the Double Negative, but I didn’t think I was that close to running out completely. I emailed the pressing plant and they said they’d shipped 450 copies yesterday so hopefully they’ll be here early next week, but I find the whole situation very frustrating. With my limited cashflow, keeping popular records in print is always a juggling act… you can’t order more records until you’ve sold the ones you got, and one unpopular or heavily delayed record can disrupt that process very easily. Money wasn’t an issue with ordering the Double Negative repress, but it might mean the Devour 12″ will be pushed back a week or two while I build up money from the webstore and try to squeeze checks out of the distributors who owe me money.

To-do list for this weekend: somehow squeeze all of the newly-assembled records into my storage space, make some progress on the Devour artwork and CD master, and update my lists for promo copies (which is pretty out of date) and distributors and other labels with whom I trade (which is absurdly and perhaps hopelessly out of date).

Hours spent on the label today: about 9

Today was a pretty heavy label day. Since the Devour test presses came in yesterday I went to the copy shop to print the test press covers, and while I was there I did the lyric sheets for the Logic Problem record. This turned out to be a rather frustrating experience. I use a local copy shop because I like to support local businesses whenever possible, but sometimes I guess they just have different priorities than I do. I ran the 300 LP inserts very quickly since they were on the self-serve copy machine, but the Devour stuff took forever. Instead of making foldover paper covers like I usually do for test presses, I decided to basically make a bunch of cheap stickers and use them to decorate the plain white DJ jacket that the test presses came in. I had all the stickers printed on one 8.5×11 sheet, but the guy took forever to locate the sticker paper, then to find a copy machine that would run the sticker paper, then fiddling with the settings on the copy machine so that the image would print without melting the glue. I was in the shop for nearly an hour, though I suppose it was nice to chat with the owner’s WWII-veteran father-in-law who was killing time in the shop. I’m sure that this entire process would have been far, far quicker if I’d gone to Kinko’s, but I guess I should see these things as benefits rather than drawbacks to dealing local.

I finally got home an hour later than expected and starving for some lunch, but there were a shitload of boxes on my side porch so I decided to crack them open. Woohoo! Logic Problem EP covers, which look absolutely awesome, Logic Problem vinyl and more covers for the Koro 7″. I have several outstanding orders for the Koro record so it’s great to get those back in, but clearly the Logic Problem stuff is the focus of my attention, especially since I now have all the parts in stock, making the record officially “out!”

After wolfing down some panzanella leftovers from last night I got to work stickering the Devour jackets while watching an episode of The Colbert Report on hulu.com. I must say that the jackets look pretty darn good.

Later this evening I had about 45 minutes to kill before band practice, so I spent it entering CDs into the Sorry State Records ebay store. I really don’t like ebay because of the ridiculous fees they charge, but I have about four boxes of CDs that I just can’t seem to get rid of… no one buys CDs from my webstore. So, with minimal effort I listed them all on ebay and hopefully they’ll sell sooner or later and I’ll recoup at least part of the money I spent acquiring these useless pieces of plastic.

Had Devour practice from 11PM until about 1AM and while we were all feeling a little lethargic, everyone was STOKED on the test presses. I’m pretty sure that it’s the first time Cody and Dave have been on vinyl, so they were excited, as were 7″ vets Jamie and Matt. I tried to get in touch with Seth and Cam from LP since that 7″ is their first appearance on vinyl as well, but Cam is in the mountains somewhere visiting friends and decompressing. However, Seth drove out to Raleigh to pick up some copies and he seemed way stoked.

All in all, today was one of those days when running a record label is really a blast. I’ve been working on the LP and Devour records for months now, and I’m just starting to see all of my ideas and creativity reach some tangible form that I can present to the outside world and say “I did this.” Very cool.

Hours spent on the label today: about 4