Vinyl File: Talking vinyl with Var Thelin of No Idea Records

You're the lucky reader of the sixth edition of the Punknews.org Vinyl File. This column aims to keep you informed with upcoming releases as well as spotlighting interesting releases, your favorite band's own collections and labels with an history of vinyl releases worth talking about. As always, Vinyl File is brought to you by Ben Conoley.
This week's Vinyl File Spotlight features an interview with Var Thelin, who via his label No Idea Records and the associated mail order is single handedly responsible for a good portion of the records lining our shelves. Also below you'll find a list of some great upcoming vinyl releases from bands like the Donnas, Turbonegro, Two Gallants, the Casualties and more.

Click Read More for the full article.

VINYL FILE SPOTLIGHT

Tell us a little bit about your label and what you do.

That's a really good question. Me personally, I'm 37 I have been doing zines and records since 1985 and pretty much records exclusively since about 1996 on, so that makes it about 22 years. I got into that stuff early on obviously, and from there just kind of followed it where it went and ended up where I am now, even though that's kind of a transitory thing. I do graphic design and that's my main role in a lot of respects. Sometimes that's nothing more than overseeing art and sometimes it's literally building it from cut and paste on up, which I like best. That's what I do, and I kind of oversee the label beyond that. I don't know how else to put it, I run a record label with the help of several other people. But if you want to know more about myself, I graduated high school in 1987 and did not go to college, I just took a couple of jobs instead. In 1994 I quit my job and did this full time, I didn't have a salary but I had saved up a little money and started this figuring I would have to have a part-time job, but somehow I ended up never having to get one. But it was just one bedroom in a group house for long time. Gainesville rent was pretty low back then, it wasn't hard to squeeze by. By 1996 things had exploded and we rolled from there.

Were you into vinyl at all before you started No Idea?

Oh yeah, definitely. CDs weren't prevalent before then, really. So that's all that there was besides tapes. With friends of mine, we would check out bands and everyone would end up sharing it. Every week or two one of us would get a record. And we'd read fanzines ferociously. But from 83-84 on it was a culmination; as we became exposed to more stuff, it was always records.

When CDs did become more popular and people started to talk about vinyl being phased out, did you ever consider dropping the format?

Not really, but there was a point in the last three or four years, after the war/occupation had been going for a little while and petroleum prices had been going up, and vinyl and CDs are made out of petroleum so prices started going up and up, especially for vinyl since it's such a material thing. So there was a point where it was hard. You know, we're trying to do albums for bands that not a lot of people know on LP and CD and it was rough. We thought, 'what are we going to do, do we have to pick a format?' We had some that came out on record, some on both. Had we stopped doing vinyl it would have been a huge mistake. Vinyl is what we're all about. I don't mean that in a contrite way, but Matt who runs mail order is into records and Jennifer worked in a record store and her experience is all 7 inches. Pretty much everyone has records, knows them, or has an affinity for them. Most of us are active record listeners and buyers, it's just what we do. It's not like this is a niche for us.

What is it about vinyl that is so appealing to you?

It's been said a zillion times in different ways, but it's a very physical format. It's imposing, it's not casual. The artwork is a little more stimulating. It's not behind a big sheet of plastic, it's right there and it's larger for the most part. You take it out, look on the grooves, it spins, It's more interactive, you're doing something. The sound is physically being produced. People who are young now, it just clicks for them. I use the lose term 'aesthetic' and I don't use it in a pretentious way, but there is one that clicks with people.
I have put out several releases on both formats, and sometimes when we get the test pressings back for the records, we listen to it and like it so much that we send the CDs to get re-mastered to sound more like the record. There's something about the way it presses to that format that magic happens and maybe it's scientifically tangible, more technical than I can put it. I'm not saying that every CD sounds worse, but vinyl is just better. But if you want to listen to something that has a lot of low end and is super heavy, like sludge, where they are down-tuning the guitar so much, the low end you are picking up on CD is going to have a hard time transferring to vinyl. Super low-end and super high-end treble has a hard time. If you have a 50 minute CD, it's not going to sound as good as a half an hour on one side of a record. The grooves are coming together. But a lot of times you can't get around how it sounds and that's cool. But really it just comes back to a preference - do you want to wear white t-shirts more than black ones? What kind of shoes do you wear? I prefer to think there's something more magic about it. When you get into the art aesthetic, you can put in whatever you want to on the records themselves. Major labels were doing picture disc CDs, but who cares, it's a medium where you're printing it on the CD anyways, but who cares if it's black and white or color? Nobody is going to care. But with an LP, having the single or the double or the green or black version, there's something there. It's a feeling that it all ties together, and it comes more full circle on vinyl than it does on CD.

I'm glad you mention that because I wanted to ask you about No Idea's tendency to press records on a ton of different colors, especially when they are re-pressed, but sometimes you'll also have a number of colors in one pressing.

It's just is what it is. It goes back to the very first LP we did. When we went beyond just making 7"s in relatively small runs when we were doing a two color print and hand-folding the budget photocopied covers. That's the beauty of 7"s, you can make most of it locally. When we started doing LPs, we were doing it professionally. We had the option to say 'let's do it on color, let's have fun and do it how we want and what we'd want to have ourselves.' The very first record we ever pressed (a Doldrums 7") inside our fanzine, they said we could do color; we asked for 200 blue, 200 red, 100 green and 1,500 black and they said 'whatever you want.' I did it because I might not ever make a record again. The idea was not, 'Ok, all these colors are going to be collectable and we're going to create a frenzy,' and with that record I don't think did.
But later on, when we got back to making LPs, the first Hot Water Music Fuel for the Hate Game record was one of the first handfuls of LPs we did. The plant let us do these perverse vinyl combinations, and we did them in such low runs not because there was huge demand and we were going to make money, but we were going to make 1000 records and that might be it, so shit dude, if we can do 100 that are cow spotted and 100 split color, then shit dude, I want to see what that looks like. We had those for a long time, like a year. One color we only sold locally for the hell of it and it didn't catch on for a long time. We couldn't do 1,000 crazy colors, so we did 100.
As far as the way we do it more recently, any record that takes off demands that we press it so may times and we'll do it on a different colors. We're just trying to keep ourselves interested and have some fun. That's why we would do all these different colors and not do it all the same. Sometimes that transfers into collectibility. Some people like a band and want every single color of it. That's cool, if somebody is stoked about it they have a direct way to get all the variations as they come out and not pay extra. It's not that bad. People who come in 2007 and want to collect Against Me! records, I pity them because there are like 800 pressings and when we press them I just ask for 1000 on whatever, and sometimes we get 50 of one color and 100 of another and I try to remind people who get obsessed not to get too obsessed because the sixth pressing might have 20 on blue and the ninth might have 100 on blue. I'm not responsible for your disappointment. Sometimes we order things and have more control, but I think there was a Less Than Jake record, Goodbye Blue & White, where an older pressing was on white and we did 100 more and they were supposed to be on blue, but they were on white.
If a record comes out and it's something I like and is on black and colored, I'm going to try to get the colored, but I don't record collect anywhere near like I use to. I don't consider myself a record collector, but there are certain things I will chase. I didn't even know about the new Ergs album until it was gone and dude, I do want to have that and of course I want to have the gold, it would match the artwork. It was cool, but I'm not going to chase it down and spend $60. I don't knock people that do. There are certain holy grails that you always want, though. The first pressing of Cleanse the Bacteria comp came with an extra record and poster and stuff and it's stupid because when it came out I was around and I knew I could order it and I didn't because a week after it came out I'd just see it in a record store, and now whenever I see it, it goes for $300 or more. But I already have the record and the bonus songs are probably on other records and it's not that crucial. I'm a little more of a tweaker about some of the Against Me! stuff. I actively get a copy of each of their records on color, including all the 7"s they are doing now, I'll hold out until I find the colored one. That's one thing I am pointed about. I lost track of Less Than Jake years ago and said 'fuck it, I get what I get.' Earlier on I was pretty obsessed with local music and I had to have a copy of all of it.

Less Than Jake is another tough band to collect.

Less Than Jake is another good example, they have records I put out and didn't even know about them. They put out cereal boxes with records. I didn't even see it and I put it out! My impression was they made a bunch and sold them on their website in 45 minutes or something.

Did you have a hand in their other interesting pieces such as the pizza box?

The pizza box, yeah, as well as the cheese and the birthday cake ones where at some point after they came out - one of the band members showed up and said 'I saved you a copy.' Thank god, because I was going to be really steamed If they didn't - It's a god damned Swiss-cheese record! And that was around the time that I knew I got most of what had happened. And there are a couple more. I think Hello Rockview is a great record. It came out on picture disc, but I never saw it. If I want it on vinyl I want the record, not the 7" box set, even though I do have a beat up juke box and if I ever do find a way to get it running I will put those records in it, but until that day comes I will never listen to it.

How often do you stumble across a bunch of copies of a really rare record?

Every now and again. For example, the Fifth Hour Hero Not Revenge, Just a Vicious Crush LP, we only pressed it one time, and every couple months, I think it's only been out a year, but we'll get a return from somebody and there will be 18 and we're thinking 'how did we get these back?' We put them up on the site and they sell almost immediately. It's cool because we can't plan on it. They are sort of an in between band where a lot of people know about them but not everyone who should know does. It's not like an Against Me! record that we got back, we'd sell them immediately. With Fifth Hour Hero people will notice over a week
I do find stuff like that sometimes, but it's not where you go in the warehouse and see a box of the first pressing of a record - that doesn't happen. The weirdest story was with a Fuel For the Hate Game record. Chris Wollard came out to our old warehouse and didn't have anything to do. I said, 'shit dude, you can put together the last box of the Fuel Record.' There were 100 left. He came back and said 'dude - what's up with this?' It was black and white split, it was not cow spotted at all. I said 'is there just one?' 'No dude there's a box of them.' It was weird, it was the last box of 50 and every one was exactly the same. It's weird, it's your band, how would it be the very last box we opened? That's very strange. Instead of being one of the other colors, it's that. It might have been a mix up on the order sheet - it created one of our pseudo legendary records. I don't even know how we talked our plant into doing them, they are difficult to print. Only two plants in the world do it. I'm the prick that saved five of them. That was one of the things, for some reason I saved five of every color of the first pressing. I just took them and stuck them in a box and I opened it later and along the way Chuck would pop up and say 'I gave all my records away can I have another now?' I think that's how most of them disappeared.
We won't do this, but it's one of those things people could do, I can just go and press an entire pressing that way. That's the fragility of record collecting. There was a period in the late '80s when some labels were pushing that angle and it was happening more. That's why we like to move from color to color. Hopefully you like to hang on to it. We do have some records, there is the Trapdoor Fucking Exit record with seven or eight on blue and all the rest of them were egg yolk yellow. What's even weirder is we had them shipped to the band in Sweden and they said 'What's up with the blue ones?' We didn't have any and they mailed us some back. What's weird is that we didn't specify the color but it came back yellow and blue, and the art is yellow, blue and black. Too bad not that many people care. It's an amazing 7", but do people care? No! The band is stoked, people in Sweden are stoked and I am stoked.
I have sold stuff on EBay in the past, but I don't have time anymore. I used to think there was a stigma that if you sold stuff on EBay there was something wrong with that. It wasn't my opinion, but it was a sense I got. It wasn't anyone I knew, just some loudmouth. Nobody would write me with a valid argument, just someone would bitch on a message board. Every now and again I would do it, but I have a website and a means of selling stuff. That's why we have one. If I am going to sell something, I will, public be damned. I'm not going to beat around the bush, my theory was that if I am going to put something up for sale I am going to sell it, not give EBay a cut. I don't really keep up with it. Every now and again I would be cleaning out my office and start to realize that I have boxes and boxes of test pressings, so I would start pulling them out, reading the matrix and tracking it. At some point, I had to get rid of that shit. People don't buy it all that often, but where was a time where a couple of records we did for Hot Water Music, when they were on Epitaph we did like 25 test pressings because we thought it was a big deal. We'd send 10 or 15 to the label -'here you have all these people you want to hook up.' We'd give the band extra to give the people who recorded it, so we got rid of 25 just giving them away and gave them to everyone in the office - 8 or 9 people. But one of those records, there was some flaw in it and they made it twice so we ended up with 25 more, and we had already given them all away so we had this box. What do you do with them? You can probably EBay one for $100 or more, but you still have the rest, so why not list them for an in between price. In the next six months we won't have any of that stuff until we do a new record. We could be total douche bags and call up the pressing plant to make 500 on black with blank labels, but nah. But there are people like Billy Hamilton that know more about our records than I do and they'll start drilling me about the matrixes on different pressings on the same record. And I know some of the earlier Hot Water Music's would fuck up a lot and some of them the needle went bad when they were cutting it and there was a hum. I can't remember, but Fuel was cut three times before the final got pressed. So there were five or eight every time. It's funny stuff, you know. Now that I'm thinking there's a Clairmel album where the CD has a 10 minute song at the end and the vinyl wasn't supposed to have it, but when they cut the master it was on there, so there were eight test pressings with it. I just pulled it out and looked at it and knew it was wrong and smashed it, so now there are seven.

What do you think it says about you as a label when bands like Against Me! And Hot water Music go back to you to do vinyl even after signing on to a larger label?

With Against Me! that didn't happen, well we did a couple of 7"s. I never did any other Less Than Jake albums after they left except Goodbye Blue and White. I would have done every one of them, but they have their own way of doing it. As far as Hot Water Music goes, they are the only band that has done that consistently. You'd have to talk to them about it, but I did have a conversation with Chris where he brought it up while talking about something different. When they went to Epitaph to talk about doing records, they decided it was important to them to keep doing vinyl with us. I didn't go to them and say 'It has to be important to you.' They said 'We have this relationship with other people and it's important and they have to be a part of what we do.' It's wonderful, the relationship we have had with that band. From now until the end of time we won't have a relationship like that with another band. They are so committed as people.
It's a crazy thing that Hot Water Music do for people. For people that were really into it at the time, they have never faded. Maybe they don't go to shows as much or aren't as involved in the scene as much, but they are still important to them. When I have my ultimate record library and go to the Hot Water Music section and put my hand on that 3 inches of spines and say I pressed every record on vinyl, when I realized it was a possibility and that we can get to that point, I emailed Dirk from Doghouse and told him we were one away, and he said go for it. Years ago that might not have happened. I was excited. The only thing is the Leatherface split and that's still in print, and BYO won't ever let it go out of print. But they did agree that if I ever wanted to do some perverse 15 LP box set I can put those songs on there. It's a pretty exciting thing.
They'll play again some day, somewhere, and I don't think it'll be soon and it won't be what people expect, but it'll happen. I feel they will play again in a pure sense for the right reasons. I can step up and say that because they have surprised me over the years enough that I can stand behind that. You're not going to say 'fuck that' or 'why did they do that?' You're just going to say 'that's cool,' or 'wow, I wish I was there.' I told them - 'dudes if you ever get back together, even for a day, and you play in a garage and you are the only people there and you're feeling it, you should write a song and put out a 7" and don't tell anyone. Slip it under the radar. If it feels right and you can write a song, write a song. Don't rehearse for four months and go on tour. But I have to say I am not foreshadowing at all, and there isn't anything planned.

Will we ever see Whiskey & Co music released on vinyl?

It is something that a lot of people have talked about but didn't when it was written. It went over nicely and the fact that they recorded again was nice. A lot of people had the same idea and said we should put both LPs on record, but it's too long. One is almost 30 minutes and you don't want that on one side. If we weren't working on any projects around a period we will squeeze it in there, we'd like to see it happen but the timing is a little goofy now. We didn't expect they'd ever tour, but they got offered and accepted a tour with Lucero. It's a dream come fucking true. They would never tour unless it was with Lucero. Can they all get off work? Who knows - but they did it, they said 'fuck it' and they're doing it. It's exciting, they've never been an active band. I don't know if they went on their own tour if people would go, but if anyone ever was going to like them, it would be people who were going to see Lucero. It was the same with Small Brown Bike opening for Hot Water Music, the right bands at the exact right time. Kids just freaked out, things like that just happen - it could be like that with Lucero. It might happen sooner or later and again, as I mentioned it earlier I am really thankful that we're so busy, but how can I fit in another thing? It's about balancing all this stuff.

Is there anything you have on the go that you want to mention?

There is a fair amount of stuff in the works and stuff we're trying to pull off before the fest. A new Draft 7", an Off With Their Head/4 Letter Word split, a new Off With Their Heads album, This is My Fist/Fifth Hour Hero split, a new Defiance, Ohio, The Tim Version, North Lincoln is here today to start recording, Planes Mistaken for Stars was asking about their collection coming out before the Fest, but I don' t know how we'd do that.

Looking back over the last 22 years, what are some highlights in what you've released?

Here's a list of 25 things. Some are landmarks, some are just things that stick with me, and some are recent and/or not even released yet… stuff that is freaking me out right now. This list changes weekly, monthly, even daily.

THE PUNKNEWS.ORG VINYL FILE

There isn't a whole lot to report about in vinyl news this week, but that may be because after talking to Var from No Idea for an 90 minutes, there was no time left to look around. Regardless, here's some stuff you may want to keep an eye out for.

Eyeball Records will be releasing
The Number 12 Looks Like You'
's
Mongrel
 in October.

Deathwish Records recently put up some clear Converge/Agoraphobic Nosebleed splits that sold out in super wicked fast - surprise, surprise. They also recently posted represses of the Petitioning Forever 2xLP that were leftover from their tour. They'll be gone soon, no doubt.

Suburban Home Records will be releasing
Every Time I Die
's new record, The Big Dirty though their Vinyl Collective imprint. Last year the label released a box set featuring the band's first three albums.
The
Unseen
's new record,
Internal Salvation
 is out on Hellcat this week.
Bitzcore is releasing
Turbonegro
's Retox in September.


The Donnas
 will be pressing their new album, Bitchin' on vinyl via their own record label, Purple Feather Records. It's the band's first album since leaving Atlantic Records.
WEA will be ensuring that the new
Rilo Kiley
 album, Under the Blacklight will be out on vinyl.


Animal Collective
's Animal Jam is set to be released via Domino Records, so check it.

Saddle Creek will continue to treat their vinyl fans right with
Two Gallants
' self-title album due out in late September.
Any
Casualties
 fans out their might want to make note that their Made In NYC live album will be released as a double LP and will come with a 60 minute DVD, presumably with live footage. You can thank Side One Dummy for that.