Record Collectors are Pretentious Assholes Feature

A Viceland.com Blog post.

So sang Poison Idea. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m into records as much as the next geeky dude who gets excited about a rainbow-splatter Bathtub Shitter lathe cut 5” that’s limited to 3 copies worldwide (I just made that record up but how cool would that be eh?). Sometimes however things get just a little crazy in the weird world of vinyl obsessives.

So, I got an e-mail earlier from a wonderful West-Coast mail order record shop letting me know that as a valued, regular customer I could put in an advanced order for one of the copies of the new version of Altar, the Sunn O))/Boris collaboration, that they may or may not be getting in soon.

Ok, pre-ordering something that’s going to be popular is not all that weird. What is pretty off the wall is that this is (at my most conservative estimate) the 5th version of this record to be released in under a year. I couldn’t help but cackle thinking that the kind of people that would buy this Japanese-only triple-vinyl pack with new O’Malley and Fangsatan (Atsuo from Boris to his ma) artwork and a new track featuring Drone’s comeback cover boy Dylan Carlson would most likely own ALL of those other versions.

Before you ask this re-re-re-re-re-release is limited to 1000 worldwide so it obviously sold out on pre-order. Duh, what did you expect? The words ‘limited’, ‘O’Malley’ and ‘Japan-only’ are like tantalising rocks just out of reach of a fiending crack-head for these guys.

Have I mentioned yet that these records are selling at $140 EACH? So these cats look to be bringing in $140,000 selling dudes something they already own. It’s like that bit in Lock Stock where they try and sell Rory Breaker’s own skunk back to him at twice it’s worth. Except this record won’t get you stoned. Maybe Poison Idea were right after all.