Anatomy of a release

My band is poor. Because of this we have to come up with new and inventive ways to put out our music. We're on the web...Along with everyone else. You can even download Pistolero songs from I Tunes now. This is all fine and well but in an age where you can use GarageBand to record your album at home and get a thousand discs pressed for about $1000 we were looking for something to set us apart from the rest of the heard. We wanted to have a product that people could identify with. Something that took time and effort to make and you could feel the love behind it. A little mushy I know, but we really wanted to the Y back in DIY (y=yourself).
Here follows the way we decided to do that.

We're poor, I think I said that, so we had to go with materials/skills that we that we can get for free or do ourselves. So I made up the cover from an old picture of some friends playing around.
I then sent the file down to our friend Rod. Rod works at Sign a Rama. They make things out of vinyl. He and co worker Jamie rasterized/posterized the file to make the detail...Well a little less detail-y. Then cut the picture out of long sheets of scrap vinyl. This is what that looks like.


While all this vinyl work was being done I went up to see the folks at Tape Warehouse (a god send for people that need blank media a lot). There I bought 250 of these little white cardboard sleeves and 250 white inkjet printable CD-Rs.


The band got together to do what is known as 'weeding'. You have to pull all of the little pieces of vinyl that are not going to be in the final product out. Before 'weeding' the pieces look like black pieces of vinyl with lines drawn in them. After weeding was finished, Rod got busy cutting out the sheets into individual pieces. These then have to be laid upon our little cardboard sleeves and the backing paper pulled off.


Remember while I was at Tape warehouse that I bought CD-Rs. Well, I happen to own a disc duplicator. So I threw the discs in the Bravo and proceeded to write 250 copies. Then I designed the disc label and had it printed on the disc once they were authored.


Back down to the sign shop where Rod was waiting with the finished packaging...


and Presto we have 250 new EPs to sell the kids, give to magazines and radio stations and possibly...Just maybe a label or two. All told we invested Just over $100 (and a little help from our friends) and we have and EP that is unlike any other that you'll see out today.
And the music is not bad either.


The Kissing Bandit EP will only be available at shows for the time being, so come out and support you local Pistolero. Each disc is numbered, just like ART.
I hope you enjoyed the lesson.