Enjoy The Experience is the largest collection of American private press vinyl ever amassed and presented, featuring over one thousand record-cover reproductions from 1958-1992. Edited by Johan Kugelberg, who has previously put together books on the Velvet Underground, Norwegian Black Metal, and the visual culture of Paris' May 1968 uprising, this meticulously and lovingly assembled book pays tribute to all of the religious fanatics, smarmy lounge acts, wholesome family groups, high-school marching bands, funk and disco copycats, aspiring cult leaders, and costumed enigmas who believed in their music enough to record and release it on their own dime.
Enjoy The Experience begins when the custom-pressed American record plant came into existence and ends, largely, with the birth of the CD. As such, it is a snapshot of America in the second half of the twentieth century and tracks a forceful American cultural experience that stands in juxtaposition to the mainstream even as its creators attempted to infiltrate it.
Hardcover, 512 pages, removable OBI ribbon, comes with download card for a compilation of music.
Some praise for Enjoy The Experience:
“Enjoy The Experience is a jaw dropping look at the All Time Hit Parade of Rejection. The thousands of self-produced albums you never heard of are scholarly researched with shameless awe and delightful respect. This isn’t a depressing book, it’s a catalogue raisonné of joyful failure.”
— John Waters
— Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker
— Andrew WK