Record collectors are scum. They do not support or patronise artists. Record collectors are not listeners. They are Parasites. Leeches. Predators. Vultures.
I wrote and recorded these tracks in 1997, in a basement 4-track studio in the Hudson Valley of NYS. I wrote and recorded hundreds of tracks like these between 1984 and 2009. I copied them onto various cassette tapes and later CDRs that I made myself. This stuff was only ever distributed amongst a tight circle of bandmates, friends, zinesters and indie radio DJs, it was never properly released.
Little did I know that when I decided to press a few of these tracks onto vinyl in 2006, that 20 years later it would cause me such a bloody headache.
Prior to the internet, the paradigm for unsigned artists was to self-release stuff and get it reviewed in zines, and if you toured, sell it at shows. Yes, it would get re-sold in used record shops. Yes, the people who had it would re-sell it in their used vinyl newsletters. Even at the beginning of the internet, all the no-name unsigned shit was being re-sold on bulletin boards and chat groups. Fast forward to the early days of eBay, and its all being sold again there. BUT none of that stuff tried to mimic an actual record shop or record label. Until Discogs came along.
Discogs is the most pernicious piece of shit to ever come down the pipe. An army of unpaid volunteers, scraping up anything they can get their hands on, regardless of how private, amateur or unknown, and uploading it WITHOUT CONSENT, INFRINGING COPYRIGHTS IN THE PROCESS, into a database which makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year, a database that shares NOTHING, NOT A CENT, with either the individuals whose copyrights were infringed, nor with the idiotic army of volunteer uploaders who commit the infringement. AND the guy who owns and runs the database, the guy making the hundreds of millions, Kevin Lewandowski, REFUSES to remove anything from the database when you ask him. He is a parasite and his website is a piece of shit.
OK, LISTEN UP DISCOGS DIMWITS! PAY ATTENTION DISCOGS DIPSHITS! Since y'all so freaking anal, let's get the facts straight: THERE IS NO BAND CALLED VELVEETA HEARTBREAK. IN FACT, THERE IS NO BAND AT ALL. When you're doing your anal retentive discogs crap, the artist is MICHAEL J. BOWMAN. Got it? Good. Now go fuck yourself.
These discogs sellers have tin ears, can't get their facts straight, and don't know shit about anything, let alone music. None of the people on Discogs flogging my old single actually bought one from me back in the day. They aren't trying to support artists or create an online music encyclopedia. THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE A BUCK OFF STUFF THAT DOESN'T BELONG TO THEM. They are glorified baseball card collectors. And it seems like most of them are failing miserably, not surprised. Good. Fuck off and die.
Since these parasites have crawled out of the collector scum swamp onto my patch and misrepresented my work, let's set the record straight, with a little trip down memory lane. Like I said, these songs were originally written and recorded in 1997. In my basement. By me. Playing everything. Drums, guitar, bass, casio and vocals. Pure DIY, Lo-Fi indie rock. ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION DISCOGS DICKHEADS? It's not punk, you fucking douchebags.
The track on side 1, "I Shot The Invisible Man", first appeared on a cassette I made in 1997 called "C'mon Slacker". There were various versions of that cassette, some have the Invisible Man on them, some don't. PSA for DUMBSHIT DISCOGS: I wasn't signed to a record label, was I? So there's no official cassettes, is there. These are my own handmade dubs, given out to friends. Of which YOU ARE NOT ONE.
A review of my 1997 cassette "C'mon Slacker" in a 1998 edition of Tape Op magazine, where the reviewer refers to the track "I Shot The Invisible Man"
The version of "I Shot The Invisible Man" that I pressed up in 2006 is a re-edit. I tacked a bit of a song called "Losing the War with Myself" onto the end of it. So, that means the vinyl version is different than any tape, CDR or mp3 version I ever released. SO IF YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE SCUMBAGS WHO RIPS MY VINYL SINGLE AND PUTS THE MP3 ON THE INTERNET, YOU ARE NOT ONLY ON MY PERMANENT SHITLIST FOREVER, BUT I WILL SEND TAKEDOWN NOTICES IN A HEARTBEAT. You may have the right to list my single and re-sell it, but you do not possess the right to make copies of it and distribute them, in any way shape or form, on dropbox or anywhere else on the Internet. ONLY I POSSESS THAT RIGHT AND DON'T YOU FUCKING FORGET IT. So don't be a scumbag, and everything will be ok.
Side two of my single is an amalgam of two versions of one song. The song, "Secret Beach Boys Fans", is one I wrote using a method I often employed back then. Open a zine, and start singing whatever is on the page. In this case, it was a copy of the K.D. Schmitz zine "Ten Thousand Things". Karl, who is a friend, was writing about a phone conversation he'd had about the death of Carl Wilson. After I'd come up with my acoustic song snippet, I went back down the basement and recorded a full-on backing track, for which I'd intended to sing over. But I liked it the way it was, so I didn't. Anyways, back in the late '90s, these two versions never appeared on the same cassette or CDR together. Only on the vinyl SLFR-001 single did they finally tie the knot and live unhappily ever after.
The label of the now infamous SLFR-001 single. Why is it 33rpm? Why is it called Velveeta Heartbreak when it's not called that? And why aren't the song titles or artists credited on the label? Why are there people in the world who give a shit about such things? Why, why, why, when they are supposed to be giving tens of thousands of dollars to the musicians who make these records? Because people are shit.
Fast forward to 2006, and I've sent the newly re-edited tracks to someplace in Nashville, TN (I was in Brooklyn, NY) to be pressed up. Did I order 1,000, like I said on the original sleeve? Or was it 2,500 like I think it was, because I got a price break at the higher quantity. Anyways, it doesn't matter, because later in 2015 when I became homeless, the whole remaining pile of 2,000+ singles went into the back of a NYC DOS truck.
The original sleeve, which I created myself and made copies of at my local Kinkos. The records come back from the pressing plant in a plain white dust sleeve. I had to sit there and stuff my Kinkos covers and the records into the plastic sleeves, purchased seperately mind you. As you can imagine it's a fucking expensive PITA to make your own single. If I was lucky I made maybe 200 of these. Definitely no more than 250.
OK DISCOGS DOUCHEBAGS, HEADS UP! What follows are photos of other sleeves I made when I ran out of the originals and was too poor and/or lazy to go back to Kinkos. NOTE: There were other improvised sleeves not pictured here, some of which were one-offs. The vinyl inside, however, remains the same regardless of the sleeve art. THERE ARE NO DIFFERENT VINYL VERSIONS.
Once the records were good to go, I gave them away to friends and bandmates, sent them to indie radio DJs and to underground zinesters. I even gave away copies on the street corner in Brooklyn, or tacked them up to the many plywood walls of the many condo sites going up at that time. In 2006 there were little to no paper zines left, most were being run as blogs on the internet. Below are some of the reviews from 2006:
The single got good reviews, as you see, and was played on the four or five good college radio stations of 2006. WFMU DJ Evan Funk Davies even called it his #2 single of the year!
Now that you know about the different cover sleeves, IMHO, if I were you, I'd hold out for an original cover, not the super cheapo one I did that looks like this:
Back to Gallerymjb Homepage/Main Menu
© Michael J Bowman - All Rights Reserved
