Ever get that shit eatin' grin after you have made a great decision? Sure ya have. C'mon, we are all guilty of it and for me personally, I couldn't wipe that smile off my face for a few hours tonite thinking on who we are getting our vinyl records distributed through now.
Earlier this year we inked a deal with Traffic Ent. out of the Boston area. They are primarily known for their hip hop and electronic music, but are growing the rock, punk and underground country roster. I have the utmost confidence in their sales and overall investment in Rusty Knuckles as a label to bring us into their network.
Great work fellas and awesome feature in the New York Times. Huge shout out to Lou, Adam and Jimmy White for making all of this happen.
Link to the article on the New York Times
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| Article about Traffic Entertainment, who is our vinyl distributor |
"MALDEN, MASS. — In a large — but not quite large enough — warehouse here
earlier this month, a young man was shrink-wrapping a set of chess
pieces by hand. On the other side of the room, another young man was
taking those packages and placing them, along with four vinyl LPs, a
sticker sheet and a booklet, into a larger box, creating a somewhat
ornate treatment for a deluxe edition of “Liquid Swords,” the 1995 debut
album by Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA.
That album went gold in its day but is better remembered as a favorite
of connoisseurs. Now some of those same connoisseurs are the minds and
hands behind the record label Get On Down, which since 2010 has
primarily specialized in deluxe reissues of hip-hop albums, and which
has been slowly redefining the role and shape of the reissue in the
digital age.
The reissue market, more than the market for new music, tests what it
means to be a fan and consumer of music when music itself has declining
value — look hard enough, and almost any album one might want exists
online, either legally and cheap, or illegally and free.
Given that, a traditional reissue campaign — cramming together
previously available material in bulk, and selling it at a premium to
die-hards — seems conceptually dead in the water. A logical response to
that is to unearth previously unheard material and sell that, but Get On
Down takes a different approach.
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| A reissue of MF Doom’s “Operation: Doomsday,” including a lunchbox and trading cards. |
“We’re trying to make that emotional connection,” said Matt Welch, one
of the label’s owners, in his office at the warehouse. Music, he
insists, still has real worth — just maybe not the same kind it’s always
had. “The energy, the connection associated to that music, that imagery
has such a value that can be projected onto myriad different things,”
he continued. “And it’s all still coming from this thing that’s
supposedly losing value. We see it as the value’s still there, it just
has to be applied to something different.”
What that’s meant is a series of totemic items that begin with a classic
hip-hop album, but turn into full souvenir/fetish item experiences,
made either for Get On Down or in partnership with another label. For MF
Doom’s “Operation: Doomsday,” there was a lunchbox with trading cards.
For Raekwon’s “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...,” there was a piano lacquer
box atop which rested a copy of the album on cassette, colloquially
known as the Purple Tape. Nas and Ghostface Killah received gold-disc
treatment, and the Pharcyde got an elaborate record box including 7-inch
singles from its first album. For Ol’ Dirty Bastard, there was a
wallet; for the Fat Boys, a pizza box.
“Me and you know it as a music box set,” Mr. Welch said. “A 20-year-old kid sees it as a life style thing.”
But also the hip-hop audience is aging into maturity and craves shelf
items that speak to their passions. For each of these projects, the
music is at the center but is perhaps not the raison d’être. “If there
wasn’t any music on the Raekwon cassette, how long would it be before
anyone noticed?” Mr. Welch wondered.
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| A Get On Down Record Store Day exclusive featuring two flexi-discs with
old-school rap songs that use the Roland TR-909 drum machine. |
Get On Down is owned by Mr. Welch, Joe Mansfield and Adam DeFalco. (The
three also own Traffic, a distributor that shares the warehouse and that
does robust business in vinyl.) The label has become something of a
home for refugees from Boston’s hip-hop scene — Mr. Mansfield produced
the first album by Ed O.G. and da Bulldogs, and George Andrinopoulos,
the label’s general manager, is better known as the D.J. and producer
7L, who’s released music with the rappers Inspectah Deck and Esoteric
(He also released an excellent rarities mixtape with Mr. Welch several
years ago.)
Most contemporary specialty reissue houses like the Numero Group or
Now-Again excavate and lavish attention on unloved, often unknown
corners of music history. Sometimes Get On Down — which makes limited
quantities of its issuings — focuses on rarities, but primarily it’s
interested in repackaging moments. Mr. Welch likened the projects to
Criterion Collection DVDs, or limited edition sneaker releases, retail
experiences that energize a dedicated and passionate fan base. Mr.
Mansfield said the company is planning expansions into music-themed
merchandise.
Even though Get On Down often releases items with little advance warning
— the label is fiercely secretive about future projects — they
frequently sell out quickly. (Some items are sold at retail, some are
sold exclusively on the label’s Web site, getondown.com.)
The model is still relatively untested, meaning that even pricing
strategies haven’t been fully codified. One afternoon early this month,
several employees were gathered around a computer in the warehouse
trying to divine the magic price for the deluxe version of “Twelve
Reasons to Die,” a collaboration between Ghostface Killah and Adrian
Younge, which was limited to 100 copies. $124.98? $149.98? A more
concise version of the set — limited to 400 copies — was already locked
in at $59.98, but the topline was anyone’s guess. They settled on
$139.98, thinking that would ensure healthy demand for both sets, though
a couple of hours later, when Mr. Welch checked the first sales
numbers, as many people had bought the expensive one as the cheaper one.
Get On Down’s coming projects include the GZA chess box, which is one of
the label’s special products made for Record Store Day (on Saturday), a
marketing initiative that aims to keep fans of music going into stores,
and keep stores that sell music in business; a box set of the
independent hip-hop group Non Phixion; and a coffee-table book about
drum machines by Mr. Mansfield. There are also several other projects in
various stages of completion, as the label is beginning to field calls
from a wider range of artists looking for what Mr. Welch calls “the
Cadillac treatment.”
“The litmus test for any release is, ‘Would we buy this or not?’ ” Mr.
Welch said. “We’re kind of creating the ultimate fan experience for
ourselves, like, ‘How dope would it be if we could...?’ And then we try
to do that.”"
