I often hear from bands, “We love vinyl but we don’t have vinyl just yet...” which is understandable. Enter the little internet wonder that is Kickstarter, and bands can pass the virtual hat and make that goal a bit of a reality.
We’ll endeavor to assist bands and artists with their Kickstarters and vinyl pursuits by helping to get the word out there, but before you flood our in-boxes with notes and solicitations and overload our front desk with generous bribes and home baked goods—we first need to believe in you.
We believe in Alexandra & The Starlight Band.
“When I was little, I remember sitting with my Dad in front of the record player staring at the cover of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and being completely mesmerized.
Later, when I moved out of home at 17 and started my first punk band, my Dad gave me (or I stole, depends on who’s telling the story) my parents’ collection of vinyl LPs and 45s—Elvis Costello, Rolling Stones, Funkadelic, Queen…and as my record collection grew from there, I knew one day I had to make a vinyl record of my own that could live amongst the tall spines of my rock ‘n’ roll heroes.
Fast forward to today and I have finally wrapped up recording my first EP on which I have written all of the music by myself. Each song is incredibly personal, chronicling my life over the past couple years; the emotional highs and lows of loving, losing, living, and going from dark to light. They reflect my obsession with ’70s soul and secular testifyin’ a-la Otis Redding and Al Green, the electric voices of powerful female rock stars from days gone by—from Janis to Tina Turner, and the glamour, nostalgia, and outrageousness of glam rock, fashion, Bowie, and beyond.
So, when it came time to press this, I knew I had to pull out all the stops and create something completely over the top!
Riffing off a pair of crazy rainbow rhinestone covered shoes I made for the album cover shoot and frequently wear live, I decided on rainbow glitter embedded within clear vinyl to complement the cover design my friend and designer Colin Graham had created.
But was it possible? I’d never seen it made before. After searching for weeks, I finally discovered a company that could create my wild glam rock record dream.
To the best of our knowledge, this record has never been created before.
The closest thing, apparently, was a one color silver glitter on black vinyl for Mariah Carey. (On a side note, did I just out-sparkle Mariah Carey?)
The process of creating each one of these records is pretty incredible: while the record is still in a hot, moldable stage, the record will be sprinkled with various rainbow glitter colors completely by hand. So each and every record is unique, like some kind of crazy glam rock rainbow snowflake.
To play off the special nature of the record, I am doing a limited edition pressing of just 250 copies, hand-numbered in metallic ink. Each copy will also come with a special insert pull out poster as well!
As you can imagine, making such a custom, handmade object with all the bells and whistles is incredibly pricey- so I launched a Kickstarter to offset some of the costs:
Alexandra Starlight Kickstarter
I set a low goal for myself as I wasn’t sure what the market for such craziness was, but surprisingly I met that low goal within just the first couple weeks! I have now raised my goal to $5,000, which will cover most of the costs of production for the records and CDs.
If you love collectable vinyl and like what you hear, please make a pledge and help create this crazy little dream!”
—Alexandra Starlight
Catch Alexandra & The Starlight Band live at Harvard & Stone on December 20th!
