[Jandek] Corwood's 1000 Minimum Order

GB nocontact at arkhonia.co.uk
Fri May 13 06:34:22 PDT 2011


On 13/05/2011 05:57, Jason Henn wrote:

> Who would have possibly had the foresight to hoard that many
> copies of the early Jandek albums?

This is an interesting point - and maybe, *if* somebody had paid for a repress 
(that they therefore own outright), would they hoard them, or would they sell 
them or give them away? When I was buying up all the Jandek vinyl on ebay a good 
few years ago (I had some money at the time), certain albums seemed to turn up 
again and again, and go for low average prices (20GBP sometimes):  Somebody in 
The Snow, Lost Cause, Twelfth Apostle, the later vinyl; whereas early-to-mid 
albums went for much more (and I was beaten in various auctions cos prices got 
way too high), and seemed much less common. Which made me wonder whether there 
were more copies in circulation of these later releases.

No way to really confirm this (popsike has archived sales listings with quite 
variable prices), pricing thing was a general observation at the time rather 
than any rule of thumb. My understanding (on the basis of accumulated Jandek 
lore) was that Ready For The House was 1000-copy pressing, and all the later 
albums were 300, but I have no immediate corroboration for this information.

But, *if* repressed, and *if* the albums were recut rather than just 
manufactured from the same plates (two hypotheticals there, but a plausible 
supposition in the light of the CD rerelease revisions and variations), the 
hand-etched matrix number would have some differences...which, in this alternate 
timeline, would then mean trying to compare/collate runouts amongst owners of 
different copies of the same album...

 > Which prompts the question, if
> you ordered 1000 copies of Ready for the House in 1993, would that have forced
> Corwood to create an alternate back cover crediting the album to Jandek?

I would say almost certainly - and as such a thing doesn't appear to exist, it's 
probably safe to assume that at least Ready For The House was not repressed 
under these terms. However, the copy I have was still shrinksealed, but *seemed* 
much 'newer' than later similarly-sealed purchases - different label font as 
well, thinner card, more flexible vinyl, very quiet cut, but presumably the same 
pressing plant due to the matrix ID with the LH- prefix (up to You Walk Alone, 
when it changed to AIH-, and except Twelfth Apostle, which was LIH-)...I've 
never seen or heard another copy up close to compare, but I took it on trust as 
an original because I assumed there was never a repress. Hmmm...

> Of all
> the time machine moments I've had as a record collector, this is probably the
> most intense retro-desire I have ever felt.

I'm glad someone else has time-travel record collector fantasies!

Sorry for going on; thinking out loud.

Gavin



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