“The Holy Modal Rounders, myself and Steve Weber, recorded our first album the day before Kennedy got shot.”
“Of course, it was a vinyl record. But our label, Prestige, was not strongly connected to us, as we had been signed by Paul Rothchild, who quit and moved to Elektra two weeks after he signed us. This lack of a strong connection is perhaps the reason Prestige decided to use super cheap vinyl to press our album.
I knew the first pressings looked a little weird—the records seemed to be a little thicker than normal. But within months I started hearing purchasers say their records were wearing out, and the music couldn’t be heard anymore. My inquiries to the label were ignored. Has anyone out there had a similar shoddy vinyl experience?
Anyway, the record started selling at a decent pace, and subsequent pressings were made with normal non-crappy vinyl. The album, released in 1964, is in fact still in print, but now of course it’s a CD. As labels swallowed labels, it been on four imprints over 56 years, and counting.
I asked them how many copies had been sold. I was told they don’t have any records going back that far. Oh well.
—Peter Stampfel
Peter Stampfel’s 20th Century—a 100 song collection cited in our own Best of 2020’s Box Sets—arrives in stores on February 5, 2021 via Louisiana Red Hot Records.
