BONUS WTF Rarities - United Record Pressing Factory Tour from 2013
Marc:Here's what this is.
Marc:I was down in Nashville, and I went to the United Record Pressing Factory in Tennessee.
Marc:This is a place that's been pressing vinyl for all labels, for all reasons, for a long time.
Marc:They've been around for years.
Marc:They make records.
Marc:They make vinyl records.
Marc:Now, the guy in charge down there of publicity and outreach, the hipster presence down there, is a guy named Jay Millar.
Marc:And I met with him and he took me through the factory and we talked about vinyl and we talked about why vinyl is good.
Marc:Basically, if you're a record collector or you're just a vinyl head, there's some very cool stuff here about how records are made.
Marc:And if you're a person that doesn't quite get the whole vinyl thing, this will help you understand why it appeals to a lot of people like me and why there's been a resurgence of vinyl records in recent years.
Marc:And also...
Marc:It was just really fucking cool to see records pressed and to see the machines that pressed the records that we grew up with.
Marc:I mean, these are old machines.
Marc:Not unlike a guitar in the sense that when you see a guitar that belonged to somebody and it was a guitar that you know made the music that you grew up with.
Marc:There was something about these old record pressing machines where I'm like...
Marc:Probably this machine had a very big part in defining my personality, my sense of self, my ideas of what I like, you know, what moved me.
Marc:These machines, these record pressing machines.
Marc:It was fascinating.
Marc:So I hope you enjoy this little chat with Jay Millar down at United Record Pressing Plant.
Music.
Marc:So Jay, what's your last name?
Marc:Millar.
Marc:Jay Millar from United Record Pressing.
Marc:I'm at a record pressing plant.
Guest:You were in the largest record pressing plant in the country.
Marc:Really?
Marc:This is it?
Guest:This is it.
Guest:Chances are most of the records that are in your collection, including the one with your picture on it, were pressed in this building.
Guest:You guys pressed that?
Guest:We did.
Guest:I've got it set aside so when we walk you through, we're going to make you take a picture with it.
Marc:Okay, no, I can definitely do that.
Marc:So I've come into this vinyl thing.
Marc:I'm old enough to have bought vinyl when I was a kid.
Marc:Are you?
Marc:You don't look like you.
Guest:I am.
Guest:I did go through all the formats.
Guest:You did?
Guest:And like a lot of us, got away from the format and went back to the format.
Marc:But well, that's one way to look at it.
Marc:But there was really we were sold on the idea that there was no reason to hold on to that.
Marc:These cumbersome records, which I held on to about 300 from high school.
Marc:And I always I tried to have a turntable whenever possible, because I sort of remember vinyl coming back a bit, probably in 2000 and what?
Marc:Two or three?
Guest:Yeah, that sounds right.
Marc:Right?
Marc:I mean, all the CDs were out, but I remember my first ex-wife buying me a turntable, so I must have kind of had an inkling of it.
Marc:I wanted to listen to records.
Marc:Why do you think they're coming back so heavy now?
Guest:Well, I mean, my personal thing, and I think it's a common one, is like I was unloading everything.
Guest:When I first got my first MP3 player, my iPod, I was living in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:walls full of cds basically the whole library effect and i started just kind of looking at it and going do i need this do i want this what am i gonna and i came to the realization i'm like well i like the library aspect i like walking and looking at the spines and picking out what cd i want right i want the liner notes i want the artwork and i want the best sound quality i can get at home and it was like the little light bulb went off and i'm like well those are all things i like better with vinyl right
Guest:These are never going to leave my house.
Guest:I don't need the discs to be compact anymore.
Guest:So I started selling all the CDs, keeping them on my iPhone or iPod at the time, and using all the money from selling the CDs to start rebuilding my vinyl collection.
Guest:And I think there's a lot of people who are doing that.
Guest:One is sort of the peak of the sound quality and the tactile aspect of it, and the other is sort of the peak of convenience.
Guest:You can't run with a record very well.
Marc:But that's weird, too, because when I put all my CDs onto the computer, I kept all the art.
Marc:I carefully undid the jewel boxes, and I kept all that shit.
Marc:I haven't looked at any of that shit.
Marc:Once I put my CDs, I put them all into books.
Marc:I haven't looked at any of them since I put them on the hard drive.
Marc:But the truth of the matter is...
Marc:is that I believe vinyl sounds better.
Marc:And there are some people that argue with it.
Marc:Well, there are these blind studies that show that people can't really tell the difference.
Marc:I don't fucking care about blind studies.
Marc:When I put a record on and watch the needle hit and hear that first pop and then just sit down and listen to a whole side of an album, it fucking sounds better to me.
Guest:Yeah, and it's the experience.
Guest:I mean, if you go to the movie theater, you know, a lot of them are still running film too, an analog medium.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that might have the occasional crackle.
Guest:There might be a hair on the film.
Guest:It has that human aspect.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And these days, yeah, you can probably get a better picture at home with your HDTV, but we all still enjoy that analog medium, that experience.
Guest:It's kind of, you know, going to the theater is putting the film in the foreground, and I think listening to a record is putting the music in the foreground.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Quite honestly, I went out and bought some tube amp, and it's pretty good.
Marc:I got some pretty good speakers.
Marc:But listening to records now, even the records that I had when I was a kid, it sounds completely different because everybody was listening to records on garbage.
Marc:Most people, you had okay stereo.
Marc:But now for not a fortune, you can get a really fucking good stereo.
Marc:And I hear stuff that I never heard before.
Marc:I hear the way it was supposed to be mixed.
Marc:I hear the way that it was laid out.
Marc:I didn't feel like I was hearing that when I was listening to digital of any kind.
Marc:Is that possible?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you're definitely getting, you know, depending how it was cut, how it was mastered, you're definitely getting, you know, more content.
Guest:But I think a lot of what you're hearing, too, is that the, you know, what the record can contain sound-wise is closer to what your ear can actually hear.
Guest:The CD can go beyond that, which is where, you know, you get sort of this sterile sound with it at times as well.
Guest:And I think with some of these blind tests and things, I think, you know, it's awesome to hear that you've got a great system.
Guest:I think the problem now, too many people don't.
Guest:A lot of people are buying these $150 USB plug-in systems with no counterbalance, plastic tone arm, all these things.
Guest:It's a shame.
Guest:Everybody's got to start somewhere, but it's going to be a real eye-opener when they actually hear their collection on a better turntable when they're starting with those things.
Marc:Right.
Marc:There's a difference between the fashion of listening to records and actually appreciating what vinyl offers.
Marc:Like it's one thing, like everyone's listening to records, I'm going to get a USB record player.
Marc:You're not going to get the experience.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how is the music on a record?
Marc:What is the magic?
Marc:How does that work?
Guest:Well, what you're doing is you're actually, the easiest way I was able to get my head around it personally, until I heard this one story, I couldn't get a grasp on it.
Guest:And the story was talking to somebody who actually cuts wax cylinders, you know, which is essentially the precursor to the record.
Guest:Like the Edison wax.
Guest:Yeah, it's like the size of your soda can.
Guest:And it rolls like a barrel and the grooves go around essentially sort of the side of the soda can.
Guest:And those were done, you know, there was no electricity in the playback on those.
Guest:It was all just like a gramophone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, the, the guy, this was at some weird like Americana festival fair or something, but they were, you know, both playing them back where it was a crank style thing where it just kind of, you know, the, you'd crank up the machine and it would spin the cylinder and, and the needle just rode in that, you know,
Guest:In the groove of the cylinder, and it was amplified out through a cone, a lot like your gramophone.
Guest:And then when they were recording them, they were recording them without any electricity either.
Guest:And it was the exact sort of opposite.
Guest:Basically, the guy would come up with his banjo and...
Guest:He'd pick at the banjo and kind of sing into this cone, and that cone would take all the sound that was coming, and it would create... There was a needle at the end of that cone, and it would cause a vibration in that needle.
Guest:And that vibration, that needle was essentially cutting the shape of that sound wave into that cylinder, and it was just replicating the shape of the sound wave.
Guest:So then when you played it back, it would again recreate...
Guest:um that sound wave and like i know with the original when it was originally done because i've nerded out on this and kind of read about it initially they weren't even trying to reproduce sound they thought that they could it was almost like trying to write music they were like well if we they were starting with sheets of paper and they're like well we'll we'll get this um this needle to
Guest:show us what the sound wave looks like for this music, and then we'll be able to recreate the music from that sound wave.
Guest:And they had no idea when they went back.
Guest:They're like, oh, wait, we can hear this.
Guest:Like, we actually just recorded this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:So there's no magnet involved or anything like that?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, there is now because now everything's gone to to trying to amplify it.
Guest:So but that's the simplest form.
Guest:I mean, you could you could cut a record into a sheet of paper, you know, with a with a, you know, a funnel and a needle if you wanted to.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Sound like crap.
Guest:But I mean, it could it could retain and reproduce sound.
Guest:But, you know, what we're doing now, so in terms of actually, you know, our day to day is not all that different from that.
Guest:You know, it starts with a cutting lathe, which looks just like a big industrial turntable.
Guest:And it's taking whatever you send to it.
Guest:It could be the microphone.
Guest:It could be, you know, in a perfect world, the reel to reel.
Guest:It could be a cassette tape, could be CD computer, whatever you're sending to it.
Guest:And it is taking that sound and transmitting that sound to that cutter, which again, still kind of looks like the same needle on your record player, but it's actually cutting that groove into the lacquer.
Guest:And the lacquer is kind of looks like a bigger record.
Guest:It's,
Guest:Like for a 12-inch, it'd be a 14-inch lacquer.
Guest:It's just a sheet of aluminum coated in a lacquer coating, which is where the name comes from.
Guest:And it's just a little softer than a record.
Guest:And they're cutting the grooves, and they're just listening to it and following their notes.
Guest:And it's just as simple as when there's the break between songs.
Guest:They're hitting a little button that puts in that spiral so you know it's there, so you know where the track breaks are.
Guest:And then we take that, and we...
Guest:electro plate it which is same basic process you're doing for making handlebars car bumpers things like that it's basically like chrome plating yeah um and we make a series of inverse copies so that we can go back and make uh you know backups and things but essentially you know we're making a backwards uh
Guest:You know, as opposed to grooves, it's ridges.
Guest:We're making a backwards copy of the lacquer or a backwards copy of your record that'll be used to then press those grooves into the hot vinyl and make a record.
Guest:Hot vinyl.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Hot wax.
Guest:It comes in as pellets.
Guest:I probably got some around here somewhere.
Guest:That's kind of regrind there, you can tell, because it's shards.
Guest:That is not virgin material there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Decorated on my desk here.
Guest:But the...
Guest:The pellets get heated about 250 degrees and then squeeze like a tube of toothpaste into a metal cup that forms sort of the biscuit shape.
Marc:Oh, this is it?
Marc:This is the goop?
Guest:That is it there.
Guest:So that is the biscuit.
Guest:And most people don't realize that the labels are applied at that point.
Guest:So the label is on the record before even the grooves or the music are on the record.
Guest:So there's no adhesive holding the label on there.
Guest:It's just that the vinyl's that hot that the paper is sticking to the vinyl.
Guest:So the biscuit's about 250 degrees with the label above and below like a little sandwich.
Guest:It gets brought into the machine.
Guest:And the stampers come together, 6,000 pounds of pressure, slowly just pressing the grooves into that biscuit.
Guest:And it looks like a Play-Doh fun factory as the hot vinyl kind of oozes out the edges.
Guest:And then that gets trimmed off and you've got a record.
Marc:So everybody's recording here.
Marc:What's the history of this place?
Marc:It's been around for how long?
Guest:This place, well, the company's been around since 1949.
Guest:Originally opened as Southern Plastics.
Guest:We've been in this building since 1962.
Guest:The first Beatles 7-inch in America was pressed in this building.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:It was back when they were on VJ prior to signing to Capitol.
Guest:Most of the old Motown, Sun, and Stax stuff was pressed in this building.
Guest:Really?
Guest:The first Stax singles?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And also the Sun stuff was all done here?
Guest:Not all.
Guest:At that time, because vinyl was king, vinyl was it, they were pressing things in multiple plants, but we were certainly one of the multiple.
Marc:Wow, so this was it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:This is a very important part of music history here.
Guest:We think so.
Guest:And the craziness is the stuff upstairs, because the...
Guest:You know, the party room, there's been, there was a signing party in that room for a 16-year-old Hank Williams Jr.
Guest:There's been parties for the Supremes, Cowsills, Smokey Robinson, Wayne Newton at 16 years of age as well.
Guest:And it's all still kind of decorated the same, but then just beyond the party room,
Guest:is an apartment the um when they had this building built um united or then under the name southern plastics they changed the name in the 70s um when they first opened in this building their uh two biggest clients were motown and vj who had predominantly black artists and black executives and
Guest:And there wasn't a hotel in Nashville that would accept those individuals due to the color of their skin.
Guest:So they created what we now honor and call the Motown suite so that they'd have a safe place to stay.
Guest:And it pretty much looks identical to how it did.
Guest:Most of the furniture is original.
Guest:Some period stuff trickled in, but there's a living room and kitchen, bathroom, bedroom.
Guest:And a lot of people stayed there.
Guest:The
Guest:They didn't get the cultural significance of what they were doing at the time.
Guest:So there's no logbook of exactly who.
Guest:But there's some people who are working on a documentary on it.
Guest:And they were able to at least confirm Barry Gordy, founder of Motown, definitely stayed there.
Guest:As all that comes together, hopefully he's going to provide us with a nice list of who all stayed there.
Guest:But either way, we're pretty proud of it and the history of that.
Marc:Oh, that's cool.
Guest:But then, yeah, today we're still... Now we're doing... Then they were just doing 7-inch.
Guest:Now we do 7-inch, 10-inch, 12-inch.
Guest:We've even done weird 8-inch, 13-inch records, 5-inch records.
Guest:But, yeah, we're probably...
Guest:probably today represent like 30 to 40 percent of the new vinyl in the market who are your biggest artists jack white um jack obviously is is a huge one for us just thinking of um you know some of the bigger stuff i mean the the adele record is one that runs all the time the mumford and sons records running all the time um
Guest:i don't know phoenix taylor swift we've we've done i mean artist wise we've done you know stones u2 um i mean you name it to be honest it it'd kind of be easier to just kind of go through stuff we haven't because over time i mean practically you name it stones albums like it were pressed here some of them
Guest:A lot of them.
Guest:Not the original, because we weren't doing, at least not at this location, we were just doing 7-inch records.
Guest:But, like, you know, we've done, what, Exile is one we frequently run.
Guest:You did the new re-release Exile.
Guest:Yeah, the re-release Exile.
Guest:But there's, I mean, it's kind of infinite.
Guest:So this is interesting.
Marc:This is sort of the unsexy source of...
Marc:We think it's sexy.
Marc:No, no, but you know what I mean.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:Even your logo on some level, it's groovy and vinyl is cool again.
Marc:But we just think of the record.
Marc:We think of the record company.
Marc:We think of the record executives.
Marc:This is really kind of the practical side of manufacturing in the music business.
Marc:It's not the label.
Marc:It doesn't have the label personality.
Marc:It doesn't have the other artists.
Marc:This is just where everybody's sort of like, we need the raw goods.
Marc:We need the vinyl.
Marc:We need the record.
Marc:And you guys make that for any number of people.
Guest:Well, exactly.
Guest:We made the soundtrack to your show.
Guest:And you didn't know, right?
Guest:I'm guessing.
Guest:I think they might have told me, but I didn't really put it together.
Guest:That's right, because we put some photos of it, I think, when it was on press on our Facebook.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We're excited about it.
Marc:Yeah, it's very exciting.
Guest:But yeah, we, um, I mean, our, we do practically everything that's, you know, comes out through universal, um, you know, anything that comes out through Sony, you know, obviously third man, Jack's label, a lot of the, you know, beggars, matador, merge stuff.
Guest:Um, you know, some stuff for drag city, uh, you know, a lot of, I mean, just countless amounts, uh, how much have you seen the demand increase in,
Guest:It's, I mean, it's gone up quite a bit, but what's interesting is it's sort of been a shift because a lot of people think, like, we would have gone out of business in, like, the 90s, but everybody kind of overlooks that that was kind of the boom time for the 12-inch single, kind of the wiki-wiki DJ kids, you know, everybody, you know, we needed to ship, you know, two to every, you know, birthday party DJ, dance club, roller rink, radio station, and record store across the country, so, like,
Guest:picking just easy numbers, like maybe today we'll get 50 orders of 1,000 records, but then maybe we'd get an order of 50,000 Jay-Z 12-inch singles.
Guest:And it was just a different thing.
Guest:So the numbers were still really strong, but what we're getting now is just a massive increase
Guest:in the LPs.
Guest:The 12-inch single has shrunk tremendously because a lot of people are doing that digitally.
Guest:I'm sure that'll be cyclical and it'll be cool again to bring your records to DJ.
Marc:You're saying that really the record-pressing business has not ever really taken ahead.
Guest:No, it's always been busy.
Guest:But yeah, right now we're running 24 hours a day, six days a week.
Guest:And, you know, we periodically add in that seventh to keep up.
Guest:And it's just it's just constantly slammed.
Guest:I mean, we're manufacturing like 30 to 40,000 records a day.
Guest:and we're currently working on expanding our capacity.
Guest:We have additional presses we're looking to get online.
Guest:We've kind of figured out the spacing of where we're going to get them, and it's booming and growing.
Guest:And people say it's a fad, but it's a fad that's been going on for well over 10 years.
Guest:It's kind of hard to call that a fad.
Marc:I think they just call it a fad because they're all stunned that all of a sudden people...
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Depending on what the record is.
Guest:Depending on what it is.
Guest:I mean, there's some that that just kill me.
Guest:I mean, there's a just off the top of my head, there's a PJ Harvey record I had just for my label days that I mean, at one point, I probably had a box of 100 of them in my office.
Guest:And you know, they all got given away.
Guest:There was a point I sold off all my vinyl and that one in particular, if I were to buy it back today, it'd be like 200 bucks.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, because it's out of print at the moment.
Guest:But that's about as high as they go, really.
Marc:I mean, that's a pretty pricey record.
Guest:True, true.
Guest:I mean, some go, I mean, for the real limited stuff, I mean, that's where, you know, the third man stuff gets crazy, too, is because they'll, you know, do something that's limited to 100 records on this color, only 200 of that.
Guest:Or you can only get it on this color if you were at the show and bought it at the show.
Guest:And those things, I mean, those will go for 1,000 and stuff.
Guest:But obviously, that's a completely different world.
Marc:They'll go for a thousand now.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Those will go a thousand like right out of the gate.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So Jack has made liquid filled records.
Marc:That is correct.
Marc:How do you even press a liquid filled record?
Guest:Well, Liquid Filled Record is, it's kind of where manufacturing meets craft work.
Guest:And that was a group of people, like, it was a lot of manual, you know, it was almost like we built little kits and then we had teams of people sort of assembling these kits to make them so that, you know, so that they could hold water and...
Guest:And hopefully hold water as long as they could.
Guest:So even when he put those out, they came out with little stickers that said something like, once you leave this building, all guarantees are off.
Guest:I don't know if this thing's going to leak, if this thing's going to... But he just really wanted to make those, so we just kind of figured out whatever way we could do.
Guest:It's almost like two records sort of...
Guest:sort of glued together, creating a pocket inside to hold the liquid.
Marc:Okay, so you can see the liquid moving around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, is that the rarest record you ever made?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, there's been, I mean, in terms of rarest records we've made, I mean, there was one we did only one of that Jack either is going to or has sent into space.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know the full story on that one, but there was one that they had it metal-plated and sent into space.
Guest:The weird one I'd mentioned was the one that United not necessarily did, or United did not do, because I'd get in trouble for probably talking.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Since United, because they didn't know this was happening.
Guest:I'm interested.
Guest:Wayne Coyne had us, Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips had us do blood filled records or asked if we could do blood filled records.
Guest:Of course he did.
Guest:And upon telling him no, he continued to, you know, to ask and insist.
Guest:And I'm kind of the sucker that helped him do it.
Guest:But yeah, we made...
Guest:When I say we, it's not United, but he and I made about 15 records that were filled with blood.
Guest:Human blood.
Guest:Human blood from people who contributed to the record.
Guest:So it was anyone from Chris Martin from Coldplay, Erykah Badu, the guys from Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros, Yoko Ono.
Guest:Kesha, I mean, you name it, just a whole lot of... Everybody donated blood for this.
Guest:I don't believe everybody, but pretty close.
Guest:I think they had trouble getting Nick Cave's blood, but I know there were a few they were missing, but basically just about everybody who contributed...
Guest:you know, in one way or another to the project, contributed blood.
Marc:And they'd just send the blood.
Marc:Or he'd go, he'd say, who took the blood?
Guest:Well, as it was told to me, and Wayne was kind of complaining about some people who were a little tough to get it from and was saying he was sending nurses to shows so that they could do it, you know, on the up and up as much as possible.
Guest:and kind of collect these things but then so yeah he he came to my house we ended up because we couldn't you know united wouldn't do it and nobody else really would so we ended up literally doing these things in in my kitchen and he came with a cooler filled with vials of blood and he was uh texting me hey you know i i need your address uh you know i we're we're gonna fedex you edward sharpen the magnetic zero's blood not sure that's legal but
Guest:But, yeah, it was – and then we're basically just kind of making little blood cocktails.
Guest:Were they 45s or 7 inches?
Guest:It was a 12-inch double LP record.
Guest:So each one was two – Filled with blood.
Guest:Filled with blood.
Marc:How many are there out there?
Guest:There –
Guest:It's less than 15.
Guest:I want to say it was like 11.
Guest:And he ended up, in a very surprising bit of generosity, he actually gave me a set.
Guest:And I do have a set in my collection.
Guest:But he ended up selling, it was like 10 or 11, just for charity.
Guest:And they went for $2,500 a piece, all going to charity.
Marc:The blood that cannot be used, though.
Guest:Yeah, and he ended up sealing them all in sort of glass blocks or sort of plexiglass things, so they became almost like display items.
Guest:So the people who paid it got kind of a different limited edition version of the record, and then they had the one that they could keep on display.
Guest:But my copy, and I think Jack White got a set too, because...
Guest:when he was by here he went and you know he brought him here to show everybody and then he went and brought him there and i think he gave a set to jack as well and if i'm not mistaken i think uh jack and i may have the only ones that are actually playable you know because they're not sealed in those blocks which wow yeah it's it's it's a weird one and one of mine is coagulating now it's getting a little strange yeah
Marc:Cloudy blood in the record.
Guest:Yeah, it's kind of gotten a little black-ish in one of them.
Guest:Yeah, kind of starting to solidify a little.
Guest:And it looks like the bottom of a meat tray.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:Am I being descriptive enough for you?
Marc:That's a rare record there.
Marc:That's a special record.
Marc:All right, let's take a walk around.
Marc:All right.
Marc:It's the sound of manufacturing.
Marc:40,000 records a day, right?
Guest:That's correct.
Marc:Hey, what's up?
Guest:Hey.
Guest:How you doing?
Guest:Good, how are you?
Guest:Good.
Guest:So when we go into the room...
Guest:The initial area we're going to be in is typically set up just for doing test pressing.
Guest:So basically when we go through the processes we explained of making the record, we make about 10 or 20 test records.
Guest:And we've got a guy whose full-time job it is to just sit and listen to those records and make sure they're good enough to send to the customer.
Marc:Do you ever think about consolidating the jobs and having the guy who works in the machine shop just listen to the records?
Guest:I don't think they could pay enough attention to it.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:There's a lot of overlap.
Guest:We have one person who's listening just to check for copyright content, making sure they're not trying to press Thriller or doing a chock full of samples from your show or whatever.
Guest:And then somebody else is listening just for quality.
Guest:And it'd be nice to consolidate it, but I think they just really need to focus on it.
Marc:Well, you don't want to get fucked legally.
Marc:People just packing up records, putting them in sleeves, putting them in the record boxes.
Guest:The fluorescent orange super chunk record.
Marc:The super chunk fluorescent orange record coming off a press.
Marc:I love that it feels like real manufacturing being done by real people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because it is.
Guest:In America.
Guest:It's rare American manufacturing.
Marc:Great.
Marc:That's unbelievable.
Marc:I feel like it's a bakery.
Marc:I feel like I'm witnessing the baking of something.
Marc:Something amazing.
Marc:They're the records.
Marc:They're beautiful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can go right to turntable.
Guest:I get to listen to them in my office when they're fresh.
Guest:Still hot.
Yeah.
Guest:This one is fun.
Marc:This is something... Now, if you were to tell me that records sound better when they're still warm, I would think you're out of your mind.
Guest:No, they smell better when they're still warm, though.
Marc:It's like a bakery.
Marc:That'd be hilarious.
Marc:If you get them when they're still a little hot, that's when they sound the best.
Guest:Put them in the oven for a few seconds before...
Guest:So this thing is something we actually concocted ourselves.
Guest:We believe it is the only press in existence, because we've built it, that will take from two different color sources and create a split color record.
Guest:So it's half one color, half another, like your black and white cookie.
Guest:You know, you can do half black, half white.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And basically, any other manufacturing plant that does these is going to have to manually cut those biscuits in half and put the pieces back together.
Guest:But this is another Jack White thank you, where for the first Dead Weather record, he wanted, I think it was his second LP, I think it was a double LP, and he wanted the second to be half white, half yellow, and he wanted them all to be that way.
Guest:So he wanted it bad enough.
Guest:We wanted to do it for him.
Guest:So we created a press that could do it in an automated fashion.
Guest:And we believe it's the only press in existence that'll do it.
Marc:Desire and engineering.
Marc:That's innovation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay, ma'am.
Marc:Well, this is great.
Marc:And I appreciate it.
Marc:Thanks a lot, Jay.
Marc:My pleasure.
Marc:Pretty cool, right, premium people?
Marc:Pretty cool.
Marc:I'll try to give you more of this stuff.
Marc:You deserve it.
Marc:All right, I'll talk to you later.
Marc:Okay?
All right.