“My relationship with vinyl is a weird one… the first record I really owned was a record that I pressed.”
“By the time I was born my parents had donated all of their vinyl to a local library (how lovely of them) and my father was determined to have THE BEST sounding stereo system that he could blast Steely Dan or the soundtrack from Back to the Future on. The audio components were probably flecked with graphite, like everything in the 80’s was. My first real “punk” friend was named Tim. He had a record player in his room and he’d blast Operation Ivy in the morning before school when he had to do his chores. I didn’t know how to operate a record player and when he’d tell me to put on whatever I wanted, I would get nervous about the needle and the arm and the spinny thing—so I just would play Operation Ivy over and over again. They were one of my favorite bands when I was 15, but this bordered on obsessive.
Sometime after meeting Tim and becoming completely obsessed with everything musical, the idea of starting a record label entered my mind. This was 1996, and all young bands put out 7”s… not CDs. So after I swallowed the vomit pooling in my throat and asked a band to be on my label, I began the task of pressing my first record. I didn’t dare tell anyone that I had never really PLAYED a record before. In fact, I think this might be the first time I’m telling anyone this, ever. Way to spill the beans on a first date, eh?
I went to the library and checked out a book on vinyl to officially read up on the task at hand. Once I understood the mechanics of how it worked I asked some of the older (and much cooler) label-wielding people in the South Florida Scene where I should press my vinyl. The decision was unanimous: United in Nashville. The only question left to answer was what color would my first record be? It mattered as much back then as it does now, and my ambitious 16-year-old brain thought: GOLD. Gold. Yes, it would be gold. It’ll be glorious. May your first record be a gold record…
I sent the DAT off via Fedex and waited. And waited. And waited. And alas, the test pressings came! I rushed over to my friend Tim’s house to use his record player to blast my impending audiological future. By this time, he had still not caught on that I had no idea how to maneuver a record player. But I had been studying, watching. I don’t know why it made me so nervous. I was just always so scared that I would scratch someone’s record and ruin it forever. I suppose it was the fear of failed permanence.
Whatever it was—my first test pressing got me over it. I walked right up to that ancient machine, put the black 7” down, maneuvered the arm just right, and out came glorious music. I’m still not sure to this day if I was more excited that I got the record player to work, or if it was playing music that was on my record label. Probably both. Tim and I danced around his room, filled with the joy that I had somehow created music that would be heard by the world. It was a surreal feeling.
Since then I’ve collected hundreds of records, and pressed maybe a dozen more, but none are more dear to me than my first release. Which, by the way, when it arrived was not gold… it was yellow. Like, pee-pee yellow. I loved it all the same.”
—Amy Fleisher Madden
Amy Fleisher Madden’s A Million Miles is an intense coming of age story told within the backdrop of the burgeoning indie/emo music scene of the late ’90s. This story takes place from the view of tour manager Maddy Traeger and her favorite band, Crimson + Clover. A Million Miles goes into its second edition on May 4, 2015 with Foreward by Wesley Eisold (Cold Cave, American Nightmare).
Amy will read from her book this Thursday, 5/7 at Word in Brooklyn.
