BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — Local record collector Sarah Rodriguez is elated that an LP she ordered a year in advance arrived to her by mail an astounding five months after its official release date, several audiophiles report.
“When my WarReemer vinyl arrived five months after it was released, and not 14 months like the last record I bought from Cleaver Records, I was totally stoked,” Rodriguez explained. “Though I was actually a little nervous to open it to be honest. I thought, ‘this could only possibly be a random anthrax attack or some sorta flat C4 explosive that’ll take out my entire block as soon as I open it.’ It was, in fact, my copy of ‘Excaliburt N’ Ernie.’ I’m glad they finally got their shit together over there.”
Victor Essex, owner and founder of Cleaver Records, says his label is stepping up its game in order to combat its shipping issues.
“We had applied every standard tactic in existence to get our customers’ pre-orders to them in a timely fashion, including everything from using hyper-intelligent exotic rare birds, plain old stupid boring birds such as carrier pigeons, and even using MH–6 Little Bird attack helicopters to hand deliver each order,” Essex stated. “Oddly enough, after abandoning birds altogether in exchange for traditional shipping methods like USPS, we’ve cut down our average delivery time from 2 years to 7 months after the release date. That’s why our unpaid interns get paid the big experience!”
Vinyl pressing plant operator Dennis Shillberg claims there’s more than just poor label management that can be blamed for some delays.
“You can blame record labels for late deliveries all you want, hell, you can even blame someone like me at the pressing plant. Someone who has a bachelor’s degree in English, but is instead a nobody button-pusher turning piles of goo into the 5th colored variant of a Taylor Swift record that will inevitably never hit a turntable,” Shillberg continued. “But I think it ultimately falls on the buyer who is just soooo eager to have their precious vinyl they have to order months in advance. Get Spotify like a real person. You’re not special. Fuck, I hate my job.”
At press time, Sarah Rodriguez claimed the WarReemer pre-order she anticipated so much was actually a factory defective LP that contained OMC’s “How Bizarre.”