If there’s one reunion that has this town (and the internet) abuzz, it’s the sold out Dismemberment Plan reunion shows taking place this month. Handpicked by the ‘Plan to open the 9:30 Club show this coming Sunday night are our guests for the week, Office of Future Plans whose debut release—a sweet ol’ vinyl 7″—comes funded by the fans.
The band’s cellist, Gordon Withers kicks off our week together with said 7″s backstory:
“Office of Future Plans decided to make our first release a 7″ single. Even some vinyl lovers might dismiss the 7″ as impractical or outdated, but we love the medium and its rich history. Putting out a 7″ feels like a very punk rock thing to do, and self-releasing it, even moreso. And we’re thrilled that vinyl is enjoying such a renaissance in the past few years – we’re happy to now be a part of that.
However, when we started adding up the costs of producing a 7″, from manufacturing and mastering to printing full-color folders, it quickly became apparent that we couldn’t pay for it ourselves. I suggested we set up a Kickstarter site to take pre-orders. I self-funded the vinyl for my last solo album through Kickstarter in 2009, so I was pretty sure this would succeed too. However, the whole band has been blown away by the response – we passed the funding goal in only 4 days.
In nearly every conversation I have with musicians about using Kickstarter, we always end up saying “imagine what the punk/hardcore scene in the 80s/90s would have been like if Kickstarter had been around.” Think about how many more recordings we would have of great long-lost bands! Imagine how much more vinyl would have been produced, how many more fans would have gotten involved, and how much richer the historical legacy of the period might have been. Of course, we all love the classic record labels that shaped that era, but they all had limited resources, as did most of the bands. It is amazing to us that in 2011, sites like Kickstarter and Bandcamp exist to enable truly direct fan-funding of artists’ projects.
In a nutshell, it is truly a thrill to be able to self-release on vinyl. We’re so happy to have the fans involved in the process, and to be doing so in the lead-up to our show with The Dismemberment Plan next Sunday (who, incidentally, are reuniting around the vinyl re-release of their classic alum Emergency and I). If you had told any of us five years ago that all of this would happen, we would have probably stared at you blankly. But here we are, in the middle of a golden age of fan-funded vinyl releases. Let’s hope it lasts.”
