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Last weekend, I spent a few hours on the semi-annual Downtown Record Show in Toronto. I introduced alongside my standard quantity of playing cash, $200, and began digging by the crates and packing containers searching for … I don’t know, actually. Treasure? Something I didn’t know I wanted? A misplaced file from my youth?
After two hours, I gave up, discouraged. I’d purchased two issues: a Nick Drake compilation (I’m actually making an attempt to up my sport relating to British people of the Nineteen Seventies) and a six-CD set of jazz recordings compiled by the Smithsonian (one other weak spot for me). Nothing else I noticed actually sparked any type of pleasure.
Maybe I’ve too many data already (about 7,000, in case you should ask). Maybe the fun of the chase has worn off. Or possibly I simply want some new targets relating to amassing. Rather than searching for the same-old, same-old, maybe I ought to begin looking for extra bizarre and excessive stuff.
I’m not speaking about one other whacko Leonard Nimoy album (he recorded various like The Two Sides of Leonard Mimoy or Japanese ultra-noise from Merzbow. (You can hear a pattern of Merzbow on YouTube, and no, nothing is incorrect together with your gadget.) No, I imply one thing extraordinarily specialised, very uncommon, and extremely private. Let’s name them “DNA records.”
You can add no matter you need into the polyvinyl chloride used to create a file. There are additionally methods to press particular substances within the vinyl or into the house between two slabs of PVC.
Take, for instance, the brand-new launch from Fall Out Boy. Earlier this month, they unveiled a particular restricted version of their album, So Much (for) Stardust that they name “Crynyl.” The PVC used within the manufacture of those 50 data incorporates the precise tears from every of the band members (Crynyl/vinyl. Geddit?) Yes, actually emo tears for (because the band says) “maximum emotional fidelity.”
When they went on sale for US$99, they disappeared instantly. I haven’t seen any present up on the market on Discogs.com or eBay but, but it surely’s solely a matter of time. And when a duplicate does seem, it’ll have a price ticket of nicely past the unique worth. It was created to be a useful collectible.
This obtained me considering: It’s a file with precise band DNA included. Are there extra albums like that on the market?
Yes. Yes, there are. Here are some data I’m considering for my new most-wanted file checklist.
When I used to be a child, I used to be fascinated when all of the members of KISS dropped a few of their blood into the purple ink for a comic book e-book they have been creating with Marvel. Fast-forward to 2012, when Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips — a band well-known for being somewhat bent — satisfied Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Nick Cave, Erykah Badu, and Ke$sha to contribute a pattern of their blood for one of many editions of their Record Store Day launch, Heady Fwends.
Those blood samples have been sandwiched between two slabs of vinyl and the band bought 10 of them to “interested rich Flaming Lips people” for a beginning worth of US$2,500 (plus $200 delivery). The cash went to the Oklahoma Humane Society.
I simply checked Discogs.com to see if any copies have been out there. There’s one — for $16,320.
Even extra excessive was Meredith Graves, vocalist of a band known as Perfect Pussy. Three hundred copies of a 2014 album entitled Say Yes for Love had Meredith’s blood pressed into the vinyl. (Stereogum.com has extra particulars in case you dare want to know.) Compared to the Lips’ album, this one is a bit more inexpensive with a present going worth of $133.
A brilliant-gross file from a jazz band
Met Eohippus, a jazz combo from Denver. Blood? Boring. They blended their vinyl with urine. And hair from … someplace. 100 copies of a 7-inch entitled Get Your Hair Wet with Pee have been made with copies now buying and selling for round $100.
I’ll move.
Remember the rampaging Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters? When it got here time to launch a Thirtieth-anniversary version of the soundtrack in 2014, Legacy Records packaged the vinyl in a sleeve that smelled of, sure, marshmallows.
Chances are that the sweet odour has lengthy dissipated within the decade because it got here out — except you discover one nonetheless within the shrink wrap. The information worth is round $30.
A intentionally smelly file
A gaggle known as Drunk & Horny issued a 7-inch single with scratch and sniff playing cards. The A-side was known as Poop Songs, so you’ll be able to in all probability think about what we’re coping with right here.
Maybe that’s why copies could be had for lower than $3.00.
Somehow, the band Emperor Yes obtained their bands on fragments of an asteroid that hit the planet someday within the sixteenth century. Those bits have been floor into mud and baked into the vinyl of a file entitled An Island Called Earth.
A duplicate of this meteorite-infused file could be yours for round $300.
Perhaps the densest and most sturdy of all storage media is human DNA. Think about it: These strands of protein should retailer all of the directions to make a human being with a minimal variety of errors. Although experiments with DNA storage return to no less than 1999, it wasn’t till ETH Zurich in Switzerland found out a option to retailer the digital audio of an album in the identical kind as genetic info, 920,000 quick strands poured into 5,000 glass beads. Those beads are then saved in water and theoretically could be archived for lots of and even hundreds of years.
There have been just a few circumstances the place music has been transformed to DNA. Back in 2015, the Keutzer Quartet participated in an experiment the place a few of their music was transformed to DNA. The following yr, Microsoft demonstrated how a music video — on this case, This Too Shall Pass from OK Go — could possibly be saved this manner. They later labored with boffins at UCLA to show their tune Hungry Ghosts into DNA’s A, C, G, and T bases.
I’m most within the DNA model of Massive Attack’s 1998 album, Mezzanine, the primary full album to be transformed to this format. If any copies have been ever made out there on the market, I’ve by no means discovered one.
Some years in the past, an organization known as Andvinyly started providing a service that pressed data out of a cherished one’s created stays. The audio for the file could possibly be absolutely anything the deceased or the household needs it to be: the dearly departed singing or talking are standard selections.
Most are one- and two-off creations and whereas uncommon, in all probability aren’t that fascinating to non-relatives and pals.
Then once more, you by no means know what you’ll discover at a storage sale.
Alan Cross is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a commentator for Global News.
Subscribe to Alan’s Ongoing History of New Music Podcast now on Apple Podcast or Google Play
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