This is the first LP release for Bad Hair Life. Call it LN-003. The work began on this during the late summer of 2009 and was completed two weeks before Christmas. This was a pressing of 1000 LPs on standard weight vinyl. There are 900 black vinyl and 100 clear vinyl with black injected into the mix. The records were pressed at A&R Record and Tape Manufacturing in Dallas, Texas. They did a fantastic job and were very helpful. I was lucky enough to get a tour of their pressing plant when I drove up to pick up the vinyl. I can not recommend them enough! The mastering was done by Prarie Cat Mastering in Belvidere, Illinois. This was another service I will use again.
I chose to use poly-lined paper sleeves for the inners. I bought these from Bags Unlimited and had them shipped to the pressing plant. I buy a lot of old records from thrift stores, and have always liked the way you can read the center labels through the plastic middles. Strange I suppose, but this was my way to pay homage to all of the forgotten records in junk stores everywhere.
The jackets and inserts were made at Imprint Indie Printing in North Venice, Florida. I had gone into this whole project wanting to use the tip-on jackets, but the cost was more than I could chew. My dilemma was making sure the wholesale price was low enough. I used the 20 pt. weighted paper and had a matte UV finish applied. The jackets came out very nice indeed. During this time, I had some trouble with the colors in the artwork I sent and had no way of correcting it, since I have no graphics software nor experience with it. Fortunately, the folks at Imprint very generously made the correction I needed and the printing began. I learned during this time that the jackets are actually assembled in Montreal, Canada. After a fast trip from Canada, the jackets arrived at my house on a day that we had about 7 inches of snow...very rare for the Houston area.
Now I hate shipping! I tried Fed Ex first. The person working at my local Fed Ex location was not very interested in helping me out. The rate she quoted me was $435 for each box and the lowest rate she could offer was $345 per box if I waited three weeks to send them. I had packed about 50 LPs into each box and had four boxes to send. The boxes each weighed in at about 35 lbs. I decided to try the USPS, since I had a feeling that I would be paying customs taxes after the shipping costs. I wound up sending two boxes international priority, each for $129.
Here is the tricky part: I kept waiting for the band to receive the boxes. Then, two days shy of four weeks, I got notice that the records were in Denmark. The Danish customs wanted 1281 DKK for each box. So, this was another $500! With these two boxes, I had included the pressing plant information on each box. I decided to leave the pressing plant information out of the third parcel and simply indicate on the customs form a value of $5.00 for each record. I had no problems this time. My belief is that the customs officials charged me about 20% of the total pressing on each of the first two boxes because they read the pressing plant information and taxed the entire quantity twice without giving it any thought. But, who the hell really knows? It could be a simple matter of who was on duty at the time.
I knew that sending the records would be expensive, but I never knew what to expect with the customs...still don't. Regardless, I am very happy with this record and believe it is the responsibility of this label, myself, to make sure the bands receive their records.
I hope this information about shipping is helpful to someone who reads this and has not dealt with it before. The customs tax is the tricky part because it is hard to tell what the cost will be. I would recommend doubling your shipping estimate to account for customs. With the addition of shipping and customs, the cost of this release is somewhere between a purely domestic record and an import. Maybe I could call it an export.
I can't complain. I am doing what I want to do and that is the number one thing. The band is great, the record is great, and I am proud of the work we did on this.
Anyone with advice on international shipping, please feel free to give it. I am always happy to hear peoples ideas.
10-4.
