Buys & Receipt: TAD, Ekko Astral
Record Room: Sunday, 2/9 (Game day)
To whom it may interest,
Albums shouldn’t stay sealed, but I’ve made an exception.
About three weeks ago I received a dangerous wantlist notification from Discogs letting me know that a copy of TAD’s Jack Pepsi EP, a four-track disc released in 1991 via Sub Pop, was available to purchase from an independent seller apparently desperate to offload their wares. The front cover of the Jack Pepsi EP is a spoofed take on Pepsi’s brand that features TAD’s name designed to reflect the look of the logo. Corporations being people and all, you’d think that they’d have possessed a sense of humor, but such was not the case: the soda giant wound up suing TAD because nothing screams “America!!!!” more than a litigious money-backed and well-established corporate powerhouse attempting to kneecap an independent noise rock band from the Pacific Northwest. With shipping, I paid $22, which I thought was a bargain. Better still, the CD was in mint condition, still tightly bound in shrink-wrap.
Maybe 5 days go by and the CD shows up in the mail. I tore open the package and realized that I hadn’t read the seller’s description in full. Not only is Jack Pepsi still in the shrink-wrap, but it’s also encased in a blister pack CD longbox. It even has a $6.99 price tag.
For those who don’t know, the longbox was the primary packaging option for CDs from the mid-80s till 1993 when they were officially phased out. As CDs gained popularity, eventually becoming the go-to format for music consumers for years, record store owners were left with the quandary for how to best repurpose the display racks they had which were already designed to display 12” LPs. The immediate solution was to house CDs in a 12” vertical box which was tall enough to keep the product visible and slim enough to double the capacity of the LP slots. Longboxes were also bulky, which likely proved difficult for shoplifters to lift CDs without getting caught.
With acquaintances of shared music-leaning interests, I’ve been having a running conversation around the treatment of music-as-artifact, a discussion that was started off by a company that “slabs” music, thereby encasing the media in a plastic brick which is meant to help the CD, vinyl LP, or cassette retain its monetary value. Being one whose life was irrevocably altered by the music I discovered and enjoyed as a teenager, one who was starving for an identity and in search of commonality with similarly-minded people my age, I couldn’t imagine having spent what little money I could scrape together in those financially-lean years on music just so I could keep it stored with intent to one day be able to supplement my retirement by selling off a collection of mint CDs from the 90s. Music is meant to engage with, either via live setting or however else we choose to experience it.
That said, I am able to recognize when an item’s history needs to be preserved. Jack Pepsi itself could not be considered a potentially lucrative financial asset. It’s good music housed in a cardboard sleeve with a front cover that angered a corporation. But, the fact that it’s been untouched by air since it was trapped in this archaic packaging well over thirty years ago means that there is some merit to leaving it alone. Were it not for the longbox, I would’ve had this CD spinning moments after extracting it from the envelope.
As of this writing, my tape deck is still broken and I’ve yet to replace it. With that in mind, my decision to purchase Ekko Astral’s excellent 2024 album pink balloons on cassette could be justifiably seen as a stupid one. I did, though, buy the tape through Bandcamp so I at least have full access to the digital tracks. The cassette itself is “gamecube blue” with an obi strip. Once I’m able to play cassettes again, I’ll be sure to keep the obi strip intact.
Ekko Astral is currently signed to Topshelf Records, who were nice enough to send a promo cassette featuring other acts from their roster.
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
