Citizens!
By now you’ve probably heard that Vinyl Nation completed its run on Monday, Nov. 30. Since Aug. 28, we’ve been screening our film virtually through partnerships with more than 100 movie theatres and record stores in 35 states. But all good things have to wrap up at some point, the movie’s gotta end and the record’s gotta go back in the sleeve when you hit the dead wax. Around 90 days is about how long movies stick around in this bizarro world of Covid-mandated virtual cinema we find ourselves in and that there’s our 90.
We wanted to let you know how it went, what to expect next, and just how much we can thank you (answer to that last one: a lot).
Track 1: How It Went
We don’t have exact numbers on how many tickets we are selling as many of our theatres report sales at staggered times. But for a movie like us, where all the promo work had to be done by the two of us with your support and given how much else America had to think about this fall, we’re pretty happy.
Some highlights:
Reviews: Our film received strong reviews and write-ups from from The Houston Chronicle, The Detroit News, the Boston Globe, Baltimore Magazine, and the Chicago Reader. NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour named our movie as something “that’s making us happy” on Sept. 4. And we’re still sitting pretty at a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. On that note, the more customer ratings and reviews our movie receives on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, Letterboxd, the more people know about it. You mind rating Vinyl Nation and perhaps posting a sentence or two review at one of these places if you’ve got something to say?
Radio, podcasts and all that: We were really fortunate to be invited to many of our favorite podcasts including Maximum Fun’s Heat Rocks, Talkin Rock with Meltdown, and even the official Record Store Day Podcast. We also made some new friends behind the music podcast mics. Ya’ll gotta listen to the Crossing the Streams podcast, the Infectious Grooves podcast and Turntable Talk if you love music half as much as we think you do.
Film festivals: Our little movie got into seven film festivals this fall and kept company with an amazing group of filmmakers and festival folk at the MINT Film Festival (Billings, Montana), the Tallgrass Film Festival (Wichita, Kansas), the Monadnock Film Festival (Keene, New Hampshire) and the SLO International Film Festival (San Luis Obispo, California).
New friends: We met so many record store owners, music journalists, musicians and just plain record fans these last four months. That’s really the best thing of them all that happened.
Track 2: The Future
A few things we got brewin’:
DVD release: We’re already looking into having Vinyl Nation available on DVD (we hope) by Record Store Day 2021, April or thereabouts. If Chris has his druthers, the film will be available on Blu-ray as well for the collectors out there.
Soundtrack? We’d love to release a soundtrack on vinyl (of course) for the movie, but we’ve no idea how complicated that is (we’re guessing very). So no promises here but we’re going to at least look into it!
Theatres: Since everything about Vinyl Nation has been backwards already (i.e. we were available at home before we were ever shown in a movie theatre), we sure would like to show our movie in an actual theatre, particularly in cities and towns that have been so good to us already. When it is safe for all of us to meet in person, we hope we can bring our film to a theatre near you!
Track 3: Vinyl Vocabulary: “Gatefold”
The term “gatefold” has (usually) come to mean “a record jacket in two halves that folds at the middle like a book. Well, turns out the term “gatefold” comes from bookbinding and ACTUALLY refers to paper or papers folded in threes and standing up (so the two folds resemble the two halves of a gate). What we call a gatefold in terms of a record jacket, a bookbinder would actually call a “four-page single fold.”
Whatcha think about that?
Side 2:
Track 5: Record Stores in the Movies: Some of Our Favorite Moments
No one has ever worked at a record store like Empire Records in the eponymous 1995 film and no one ever will because it doesn’t exist. Working at a record store, as all the stores who appear in Vinyl Nation will testify to, is not dancing around the joint with your friends, but hard, steady, only occasionally sexy and glamorous work. But this scene of the staff rocking out to the AC/DC classic “If You Want Blood (You Got It)” reminds of how infectious and fun the fantasy is.
Track 6: Great Music Writing
We are obsessed with great writing about music, and each newsletter, we try to share a few choice examples with you.
A breakdown of the pun-iest album cover ever. Pitchfork’s look at the increasing influence of West African pop music on global pop itself. “The Addictive Joy of Watching Someone Listen to Phil Collins.” How lo-fi hip-hop became one of our fastest growing subgenres. This New Yorker profile of 87-year-old-and-still-going-strong Willie Nelson. This here rundown of the 20 biggest artists on Spotify this year. Spoiler: It’s not whom you would think. Discog’s Ultimate Fantasy Gift Guide for Record Collectors will leave you drooling. If you don’t pass out first. And let’s not forget it’s time for “Best Albums of the Year” lists.
Also: Our friend Danyel Smith’s essay “Sade Saves: Liner Notes from a Lifelong Soundtrack” which she wrote for NPR Music is one of the best pieces of journalism we’ve read this year, music or otherwise.
Track 7: Playlist
Every Vinyl Nation newsletter features a Spotify playlist. Because we can’t imagine being able to thank each of you enough, we thought the theme here should be songs that say thank you.
Enjoy. Thank you all so very much.
Track 8: Up Next, Immediately
We’ll still be updating our Facebook page and our Instagram account with delicious vinyl factoids, facts and figures. You can always find us there, where the beat never slows down or stops.
In 33 and 45,
Kevin (smokler@gmail.com) & Chris (cbboone@hotmail.com)