Vinyl Me Please Anthology

blissfullychaotic said:
Great points, I wasn't meaning to come off as this is something they just threw together and more of a do we go big now and announce 6 as dead and 7 as herbie, and went with dead because of the larger following.

Makes sense that with more people being home and spending less on other forms of entertainment vinyl would be going up, I mean I sure as hell bought a lot more than I was planning on.

It will be interesting to see how this goes and if this pricing point sticks around
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I don’t know if I’m more baffled by the price or the pressing amount. It’s crazy to go from 1,000 copies of anthology that don’t sell out and then think that the right move is to make it 7,500 and raise the price by $150 during a global pandemic hah. I really think this would have sold out this week priced at $300 and limited to 2k pressings. I would have bought it. The idea that they think they will sell 3 million in Dead records at this point is ignorant at best and arrogant and completely out of touch at worst. The pricing is something Lucille Bluth would think up.

Part of me thinks this price tag won’t stick around and they are milking having the Dead Head fan base as a built in buyer. I’d be really surprised if Herbie is $450 list price for 8 albums.

As for what I think you said earlier about VMP caring about the money, of course they do. It’s all about the bottom line now. They have investors. People think they were working up to having an IPO at some point. I wouldn’t be shocked if that’s their end goal, or for some other company to buy them out. It’s purely about money now which is why they have amped up their shady tactics. It’s why I quit my membership. I’m not rooting for them to fail at al either. If they got their shit together it would be great still. But with them still selling a ton of product and having a lot of members and people sticking by them despite the poor service, they probably don’t see much of a need to change.

Them cornering the international market is the smartest thing they ever did business-wise. It’s still way cheaper for people to order through them internationally than it is to order from elsewhere.
 
MikeH said:
Haha I have a friend that the story of your brother reminds me of (sort of). We call my friend Hot Take Kyle. He makes broad generalizations especially with pop culture/music, without ever knowing much about the topic. He said he absolutely hated Drake, which, fair enough. Not even 2 minutes later I see him dancing along to a song and he asked us who it was and of course it was Drake. This happens with him all the time haha.

I can definitely see how people think they won’t like Grateful Dead having only listened to one era or one album of theirs (or never having listened to it). But I’ve been in a 60’s/70’s rock listening mood lately and going through Neil Young’s catalogue. He’s another guy I was but unsure of how to approach with such a huge repertoire and number of live albums but people on here have helped point me in the right direction and I’m enjoying it thoroughly. Someone posted the Day of the Dead box set the other day as part of the May Challenge thread and I’ve been loving it. Thought the Dead would be another band to tackle after Neil and enjoying that too so far. Now I have a ton of recommendations from y’all and am excited to dig in more. I’m a bit relieved that The VMP box is so far out of reach for me. I can curate by own box of sorts and buy a mix of a few studio albums and live albums after taking the time to listen to everything.
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I used to know this one guy way back in the day, who was fucking terrible. He loved the Dead, but was an elitist hippie kid. Last I heard, he was some sort of cornball DJ. I remember he came over to a friends house where I had moved in and taken over his old room. This was probably like 1999, so it wasn't really "cool" for him to like rap music, at the time -- it was all Dead, Phish, and SCI boots where they play Old & In The Way Songs. Probably also Bela Fleck, etc. Meanwhile, we were bumping a lot of Rawkus shit in our house along with dubbing show bootlegs.

Anyway... this dude comes over and tries to lecture us about how rap music sucks, other than maybe A Tribe Called Quest. That's what's acceptable. Those guys are the exception, but he wasn't down with the wack shit we were playing in our own home. We were listening to Midnight Marauders.
 
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Mather said:
Just looking at the details on this. Chris Bellman did all the Rhino Remasters from 2011 at BG Mastering, which is the same thing this box set is advertising... are we to assume these are simply those same masters? But pressed at QRP instead of RTI?
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I was thinking the same thing. Really lays bare how much of an insane price gouge they put on it. They should be the same price as the Rhinos. Add a little for the box sure, but if Rhino did it, it would probably be cheaper than buying them all single.
 
dhodo said:
I was thinking the same thing. Really lays bare how much of an insane price gouge they put on it. They should be the same price as the Rhinos. Add a little for the box sure, but if Rhino did it, it would probably be cheaper than buying them all single.
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According to what I can find Bellman did the Rhino Remasters of the first four albums in the set, and has never done any of the second four. So I would ASSUME the first four are existing Rhino masters. BUT totally guessing here.
 
Mather said:
According to what I can find Bellman did the Rhino Remasters of the first four albums in the set, and has never done any of the second four. So I would ASSUME the first four are existing Rhino masters. BUT totally guessing here.
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That makes sense because Without A Net hasn't been touched since 1990 (and by the way, it is not AAA, it was recorded digitally IIRC) and the others were reissued at different times than the first four in the set.
 
Mather said:
According to what I can find Bellman did the Rhino Remasters of the first four albums in the set, and has never done any of the second four. So I would ASSUME the first four are existing Rhino masters. BUT totally guessing here.
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Wouldn't be surprised if it is similar to the Zamrock anthology and that note about CB only applies to some. If I were buying this for $450, I'd want some confirmation of who cut each one and the source. Would be nice if anyone could have enough confidence in them to take them at their word.
 
dhodo said:
Wouldn't be surprised if it is similar to the Zamrock anthology and that note about CB only applies to some. If I were buying this for $450, I'd want some confirmation of who cut each one and the source. Would be nice if anyone could have enough confidence in them to take them at their word.
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Well apparently (I didn't see it) there was a you tube video of Bellman mastering one of them and referring to the box set so he's likely doing new ones of some of them, again, my guess being the final four that he's never done before (to my knowledge).
 
dhodo said:
Wouldn't be surprised if it is similar to the Zamrock anthology and that note about CB only applies to some. If I were buying this for $450, I'd want some confirmation of who cut each one and the source. Would be nice if anyone could have enough confidence in them to take them at their word.
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The site says all are AAA except for Without A Net since it was recorded digitally. With Zamrock it seemed like a lazy copy and paste situation from all of the other anthologies so far. They could be lying about the Dead box too...it’s also disingenuous to make it seem like these are new remasters...

FWIW, VMP isn’t the only place being shady about these details. Some of the ELO reissues in the past few years said something like “sources from the original analogue masters” but people found out later that they were actually digitally sourced from analogue masters and cut with the digital remaster.
 
MikeH said:
FWIW, VMP isn’t the only place being shady about these details. Some of the ELO reissues in the past few years said something like “sources from the original analogue masters” but people found out later that they were actually digitally sourced from analogue masters and cut with the digital remaster.
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Oh, I know, that's gone on forever. That's why I prefer it to be crystal clear. If VMP wants to price their products like AP, they need to give a lot more details on source and cutting info IMO.
 
MikeH said:
It says all 8 were done by Bellman, so if the last 4 weren’t originally done by him, they are now it seems.
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Yep, my point was... I want to know if the first 4 albums are simply represses of the inexpensive RTI pressed Rhino 2011ish albums that Bellman already mastered.
 
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