Monday Night Vinyl Notes: Arcade Fire, Dust Bunnies, 120 Minutes

I was pleased to see that the Arcade Fire did some things very right with the vinyl release of Neon Bible. I talked earlier about how the practice of putting an album on four sides of vinyl is tiresome when it could easily fit on three. The difference is between flipping the record every two to three songs or flipping it every four to five songs. The Arcade Fire launched into bold territory and released Neon Bible onto three sides of vinyl, with a etching on the fourth side. This is what everyone should be doing! The one exception is if you are Of Montreal and you decide to put four bonus tracks on the vinyl version of Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? Well, hell, alright then, you go ahead and use four sides. Otherwise three is plenty.

The other thing the Arcade Fire and Merge Records, their label, got right is they offered a free download of the album if you purchased the vinyl. So if you bought the Arcade Fire on vinyl, inside there was a coupon with a serial number that allowed you to download the album off of Merge’s website. Not as cool as including the full CD with the album, as Interpol did with Our Love To Admire, but still it’s pretty nice to have the download, which was in 192 Kbps MP3 format. Oh, don’t forget to keep the shrink-wrap the record came in until you download because you’ll need the barcode number to download and the barcode is only on a sticker on the shrink-wrap – it’s not actually printed on the album. I threw the shrink-wrap away, but Merge kindly obliged by emailing the barcode number to me.

In other news, dust bunnies are disconcerting. Especially the ones that gather up beneath the needle on the record. I usually keep my records fairly clean of dust and debris. But every great once in a while, I’ll play a record that is a bit dusty. And it can be sometimes that the visual inspection, if not done closely, will not show great evidence of a dusty record.

Anyway, there was a dust bunny on the needle tonight. I had played Goldfrapp, and then I had put Interpol on the table. At that point, someone called. As I talked on the phone, I noticed a bit of distortion as the first song played. It sort of registered, but I didn’t anything of it. Then “No I in Threesome” played, and my ears hurt. The tinny distortion was too much to take. I lifted the needle off the record and quickly saw the dust bunny. It happens so rarely that it’s not the first thing I think of. It’s mostly “Who has been scratching my records?!” But it’s a problem easily solved. Basically, it’s just an argument for keeping records clean.

Finally, the last thing I wanted to share tonight is this fantastic video linkage blog over on a site called Tumblr. I’m not as adept in all the permutations of social networking to know what distinction Tumblr offers over other sites, but there’s a fantastic blog(?) that someone is keeping called 120 Minutes. It’s basically embedded links to tons and tons and tons of YouTube videos of classic ’80s alternative that may or may not have been shown on the MTV series 120 Minutes. Unfortunately there’s only five videos per page, but there’s page after page of ’80s video goodness. I’ve been spending entirely too much time checking it out – tons of great stuff to be had, ranging from Primus to the Smiths to Siouxsie & The Banshees and many, many more.