New in Stock: ENJOY THE EXPERIENCE: HOMEMADE RECORDS 1958-1992

  
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

“The albums memorialized here aren’t from a better time or a more passionate place — the internet is full of evidence that the beautiful, iterative spirit of humans is hardly dead. But there is a specific light shining through the detritus of all the missions noted here: Once upon a time, it was really difficult to release your own album. The time and focus necessary to make one of these things was part of a ritual act. Reaching even the most distant shore of the mainstream was about devotion as much as ambition. Salute the sweat.”

— Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker

“By far the partiest book I’ve ever seen that exclusively focuses on music, albums, and people you might not otherwise have ever encountered!”

— Andrew WK