VINYLTHON BLOG#2: 2.28.2019
By Rob Quicke, Vinylthon founder.
So, this is the week that we really go for it.
We are sending out a press release to the radio industry Tuesday morning and seeing who will join us for this event from the commercial side. Fingers crossed! We’ll know more next week if we have managed to connect with stations…
Over the last month we have been working hard to put together an unprecedented project for us – an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, hand-crafted – ZINE!
The whole idea came from our Board member Tim Craig, who has been interested in the retro music scene for some time. He came up with the idea that we put together a modest zine for Vinylthon, with content that’s all about vinyl. Tim would also be the Editor of the zine.
And so we put together a zine full of articles and art and even poetry! But the amazing part of the zine is really the cover. Tim really wanted to do something special. So, we contacted award-winning artist Aaron Conley to see if he was game, and up for designing something special for us.
To be honest, our brief to Aaron was minimal to say the least! I think we basically asked him to do something “cool and with vinyl records in.” His initial pencil sketches came back and immediately intrigued us.
We were presented with a space monkey playing records!
Considering we really did not give Aaron much of a brief, we thought the concept was awesome. A space monkey DJ playing records in zero gravity. Plus, he also had one eye. What the hell could be cooler than that?
We also had no idea how it would look fully fleshed out and then with color added. We were impressed enough just by the black and white sketches.
Over the next week or so, the idea really started to come together. When we saw the full black and white concept we were excited. There’s a lot going on in the picture, it’s rich with detail. Check out all the vinyl records in there like Bowie, Gorillaz, and Pink Floyd!
It was Tim who insisted in a 11 X 17-inch wrap-around cover. The artwork is too good to just be one portrait page. We are going to get some posters made as well, because the final artwork turned out to be glorious!
Added to this we have articles on Dave Mustaine, Darlene Love and lots of vinyl-related content and we have a 20-page zine that is very interesting and crafted with passion from front cover to back cover! We also made sure to list the first 100 participating radio stations in it as well. I really hope people like it. We are only getting 100 printed, so they are a limited-edition print!
More importantly, I hope people enjoy reading it. There’s some very personal writing in there. I am deeply proud of the fact that we, rather quickly, came up with the content and got the zine to the printers in time for our table at the upcoming IBS conference in NYC this weekend. Stop by and grab a copy!
You can also order a copy online here in our shop.
More next week.
