Featured Essay: Sebadoh and My First Vinyl Purchase

by Ryan Pak

I bought my first record in 1996. I was a teen, living in suburban San Diego with my parents, and all my siblings had moved out of the house by then. I grew up with a record player in the house. My father purchased it as part of an entertainment system package before I was out of diapers. I don’t remember ever seeing any records that belonged to him in the house, but my older siblings definitely made use of the record player throughout the 80s until they moved out of the house. One of my siblings even bought me a He-Man storybook that came with a 7” audio record. It was destroyed, so unfortunately I can’t share pictures of it. I rarely used the turntable because I was terrified of scratching someone else’s records, since I destroyed the only one that I could claim as mine and wouldn’t be able to pay to replace anything.

1996 was also freshman year of high school, so I wasn’t old enough to apply for a job. To build my music collection, I had to do odd jobs for my neighbors, and THEN, I had to beg my parents to take me to the record store. Ironically, in 1996, local record stores didn’t actually carry many records outside of a couple of crates full of 7” singles from local bands. It would’ve been laughable in the 90s to think that a big retailer like Target would eventually stock vinyl, let alone chain record stores like Tower Records, The Wherehouse, or Sam Goody. This meant I had to find a different means to acquire my records, and that method was mail order*.

I found catalogs for Touch & Go Records and Sub Pop records in the CD cases of albums that I was buying, realizing that there was so much more music out there. These “new” bands that I thought I was discovering on 120 Minutes often had a back catalog of albums and singles that I had never heard of and a lot of these bands came from broken up pieces of other great bands. As a teen, I didn’t really think about how bands didn’t always find success on the first (or second or third) try.

One specific band that I had fallen in love with was Sebadoh, Lou Barlow’s post-Dinosaur Jr (at the time) band. I had a lot of feelings as a teen and so did Lou, and Sebadoh’s sound on 1994’s Bakesale was just the right amount of familiar and different for a kid who was exploring their own taste in music after the death of Kurt Cobain. After playing their album, Bakesale, on endless repeat, I found out that Sebadoh would be releasing their follow up in the summer of 1996, and in advance of their new album, Harmacy, they would be releasing a mail order only 7” for the song, “Prince-S”.

I most likely learned about this news from hammering the Sub Pop Records website in its infancy on the daily. But since this was 1996, when Sub Pop said the record was only available via mail order, they meant it. There was no online store! I had to send my order, postage paid, to Seattle, hoping that the quarters that I had shoved in the envelope would not tear a hole and leak out before arriving in the Sub Pop mail room. Then a real human being would have to count my combination of dollar bills and coins and read my messy handwriting before processing my order. It took weeks between sending my order and receiving the record with no confirmation that they had received my mail or a tracking number in between. I remember checking the mail every day after school to see if there was a package for me. Day after day, there was nothing. It was complete agony.

Luckily, the check (or in this case, cash) cleared, and my record didn’t get lost in the mail on the way back. I tore through the cardboard packaging and immediately put the record on, quickly learning the difference between playing a 7” at 33rpm vs 45rpm. There were 2 songs on the A-Side and 3 on the B-Side. I had no idea who The Residents were but I enjoyed the Sebadoh covers of their songs. I had waited weeks for less than 10 minutes of music, but it was awesome! I was hooked. Unfortunate interns at Touch & Go, Matador, and Spin Art Records would also have to deal with my gaggle of dollars and coins.

In 2013, Sebadoh would return with a new studio album, Defend Yourself. Before the album’s release, Lou Barlow did a solo performance at a small record shop in Los Angeles that I attended with a friend and my girlfriend at the time, who ended up becoming my wife. Even though no meet and greet was announced, I brought my 7” of “Prince-S” with me as well as the other Sebadoh records that I had picked up over the years, hoping to have Lou autograph at least one of them by the end of the night. Luckily, Lou stuck around after the performance and was more than happy to sign my records. When he saw “Prince-s”, he looked a bit stunned, and commented that he had almost forgotten about it since he hadn’t seen a copy of it in years. That comment made me realize how long ago it actually was. It had been 17 years since the record arrived at my parents’ house in San Diego, it was older than I was when I ordered it. It was a full circle moment.

If you had told my teenage self that I would still have the “Prince-S” 7” and that it would be signed by Lou Barlow after meeting him, I’m sure my past self would be ecstatic about my future. I never planned on getting my 1st record signed, because I never really thought that it was possible. I’d continue to surprise myself throughout adulthood through different projects like my podcast (Lou has been a guest!).

Even though that first purchase was incredibly stressful, I’d continue to utilize snail mail to buy CDs and records until technology would make mail order obsolete at the end of the 90s. In addition to online stores, records started showing up more in physical stores as I graduated college, and became an adult with a fulltime job. While the Towers and Sam Goodys of the world went out of business, I found great stores like Amoeba Music and Fingerprints. Record Store Day became a thing. My favorite bands started re-releasing albums that they may have not released on vinyl the first time around. My collection grew quickly.

When I moved into my first condo, my dad gave me his record player. I still use it to this very day, and unlike that He-Man record I was given as a kid, “Prince-S” plays just fine.

*When I mention mail order, people often mistake that with the BMG or Columbia Record House 13 CDs from a penny if you pay a stupid amount of money for 1 CD club that seemed to be advertised in every magazine

Ryan Pak co-hosts the podcast, Soundtrack Your Life, which releases episodes on the 2nd and 4th Monday of the month. Ryan has over 200 records in his collection. To go along with his podcast, he has focussed on collecting soundtrack vinyl, since a lot of older soundtracks are not available on digital platforms.

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