I love my broken record

Almost a year ago I bought this from Discogs for two dollars intending to rip it with a handmedown Numark P01-USB turntable with a clumsy metal needle. I have acquaintances - not close friends - in the hobby of ripping and archiving these 90s emo and indie things, and sometimes I feel territorial about what records there might be left. I've non-commitedly assisted hunts for missing hardcore records before: there's a YouTube upload on someone's channel of one of my dubious rips I sent them, also from a five dollar Discogs purchase. I've mailed cassettes to an increasingly distant friend in Wauwatosa, WI for ripping. I have a small order of other vinyl records I should rip, but have been forgotten during a period where I didn't have the equiment for even a really ramshackle, shit rip like that. I should learn by now that I'm not that esoteric and should accept myself as a mere curator of what else arises - a nice way of saying that I upload other people's music to YouTube with the innocent intention of "sharing" it. I don't have the resources for this hobby.

Curatorship (and my "curation") is a dangerous role if you're not careful about presenting music in some kind of context. I'm not qualified. In large part due to a disembodiment of music in the form of internet-circulated .mp3 rips, I know little about the music I claim to love. I make the excuse that a lack of physicality is the sole reason. It's hard to bother. I'm trying my best at all times.

I'm still a little scared I'm being dishonest about that reason, but trying to come up with a presentable rip of this little two-dollar artifact - whose condition is worsening in the process - reassured me I was right. It's the first thing I've held in my hands that's encouraged me to write about it with this amount of presentation and care. This first blog post isn't about the two bands whose music features (so much for "context", again). It's a little closer to being about these two songs and the label that distributed the record, but the focus of this post - the only thing I have any qualification to talk about - is my two-dollar record, edition 393 of 1000, and the way it is too unsalvageably warped for archival. Attached (in the future, if I bother cleaning them) will be an .mp3 rip of each side, though this is only to share or "archive" its precious physical condition. This ripping process creates recordings of a fundamentally other kind. And as yet - I hope it stays this way - I still know the music embossed into this item belongs to it, and not to some trickster phantasm of the soul that wants to shove itself out and "express myself".

I asked nacuot for help understanding it, and he taught me how to read the runout inscriptions to find the manufacturer of a record.

(This is the line which parts this article. Before it is the part where I am the subject and I make my apologies, and after is the more innocent part that's really about the record. This is a significant enough change, in my opinion, that a divisor is needed to protect the latter part from the immaturity and worry of the former. Also, I'm listening to Supreme Dicks while writing right now, which just feels of significance to mention.)

The cover is made from the corner of a FedEx envelope taped together on one side, with the designs for each side printed on thin paper and glued along the edges - both about the weight and texture of a magazine page.

String Tricks' design was falling off, so I glued it back on (before getting a better-framed picture).

The lyrics insert is double-sided.

The opposite side of this insert is blank.

Rich Thrush is one hell of a name.

This appears to be the only Electric Field Dance release known online. I can't find the Crimezine either, or any mention of it.

The runout inscriptions read U-44756 M-A and U-44756 M-B, respectively. This means the record was manufactured by United Record Pressing.

It's tricky to photograph the warp of a record. I did my best. You can see it's quite worn out.

Here's the record as played on video:

I like the appearance of the String Tricks label as it turns around.