There will be Enjoy The Experience exhibits and events in New York City (Milk Gallery), Paris (Colette), London (Rough Trade) and Los Angeles (Amoeba Records).
| May 31st | Rough Trade East, London |
| June 5th – June 22nd | Colette Paris |
| July 9th – July 23rd | Milk Gallery NYC |
(SHIPS IN 6-8 WEEKS)
“Enjoy The Experience is a jaw dropping look at the All Time Hit Parade of Rejection. The thousands of self-produced albums you never heard of are scholarly researched with shameless awe and delightful respect. This isn’t a depressing book, it’s a catalogue raisonné of joyful failure.”
— John Waters
“The recordings collected here are artifacts of a media universe that no longer exists. They were created, against very high odds, in a world in which both the means of production and the means of distribution were held as near-complete monopolies by the ‘record’ industry.”
— William Gibson
“The albums memorialized here aren’t from a better time or a more passionate place — the internet is full of evidence that the beautiful, iterative spirit of humans is hardly dead. But there is a specific light shining through the detritus of all the missions noted here: Once upon a time, it was really difficult to release your own album. The time and focus necessary to make one of these things was part of a ritual act. Reaching even the most distant shore of the mainstream was about devotion as much as ambition. Salute the sweat.”
— Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker
“By far the partiest book I’ve ever seen that exclusively focuses on music, albums, and people you might not otherwise have ever encountered!”
— Andrew WK
“These discs are a magnificent collection of lost sounds. Organ-fronted orchestras that make you wish Washington Phillips had gone electric; a few songs imaginable as hits which still never neared any chart, western yodels that somehow become confrontations with other dimensions a la Dormmamu, bouncy numbers reveling in the forthcoming, blood-soaked apocalypse, lounge singers appearing each night at ever-more Nabokovian Holiday Inns.”
— Jack Womack
“When the Music and the People are as Real as Rainbows; this is how the Rainbows SING SING SING!”
— David Tibet
“Featuring the best (and worst) music that was too good for major label backing, Enjoy The Experience is a hilarious and obsessively passionate collection of vanity and insanity from the depths of human creativity.”
— John Zorn
Enjoy The Experience: Homemade Records 1958-1992 is the inaugural 2013 offering from Sinecure Books.
Hardcover, 512 pages, removable OBI ribbon, comes with download card.
The slipcase, fold-out poster, and clear vinyl Century Records 7″ on how to make your own record, are exclusively available to customers who purchase the book directly from Sinecure. This version is not available in stores.
About the Book
Enjoy The Experience is the largest collection of American private press vinyl ever amassed and presented, featuring over one thousand cover reproductions from 1958-1992. It is the seventh major book release by Johan Kugelberg, the author and editor behind The Velvet Underground: New York Art, Born In The Bronx and Punk: An Aesthetic (Rizzoli), True Norwegian Black Metal (Vice), Brad Pitt’s Dog (Zero Books) and Beauty Is In The Street: A Visual Record of the May ’68 Paris Uprising (Four Corners).
The subjects of Enjoy The Experience range from Lesbian Folk singers to Psychedelic Disco bands; Awkward Teen Pop combos to Pizza Parlor Organists; Religious Cult Leaders to Swank Sinatra Imitators. But this is not a novelty freak show: also profiled and discussed are some of the most highly regarded rock, soul, jazz, funk and singer/songwriter albums from the latter half of the twentieth century. From the awkward-yet-talented to the genius-yet-bizarre, one thing unites all musicians presented here: they sincerely hoped to become stars, they committed themselves to record, and they left themselves vulnerable to an industry not understanding of nuance, not appreciative of character.
Enjoy The Experience begins when the custom pressed American record plant came into existence and ends, largely, with the birth of the CD. As such, it is a snapshot of America in the second half of the twentieth century and manages to collate a bevy of tales and albums released by the brave souls who took the plunge and committed their musical vision to wax in the fifty states between the years of 1958 and 1992. Enjoy The Experience details a forceful American cultural experience that stands in juxtaposition to the mainstream even as its creators attempted to infiltrate it.
Enjoy The Experience includes an introduction by editor Johan Kugelberg, a lengthy overview by legendary rare record dealer Paul Major, along with commentaries, hundreds of reviews and over fifty biographies by noted enthusiasts and collectors like Gregg Turkington, Will Louviere, Brandan Kearney, Geoffrey Weiss, Jack Streitman, Eothen Alapatt, Rich Haupt and Mike Ascherman. It is presented as a hard cover visual catalogue, highlighting the graphic elements of the LPs and comes with a download card for twenty of the greatest private press songs culled from the book.
(SHIPS IN 6-8 WEEKS)
Here are some quotes about Enjoy The Experience:
BBC 6. JARVIS COCKER’S SUNDAY SERVICE
“It’s a mindblower….I certainly did enjoy the experience. It’s a fantastic read and also a fantastic listen.”
EGOTRIPLAND.COM
“For anyone with an interest in outsider music culture, this is essential stuff.”
ESQUIRE (UK)
“An affectionate overview …of the musically-inclined but record-labelly-declined.”
FRANK 151
“Brilliantly crafted.”
THE GUARDIAN
“A collective aura of strangeness.”
MOJO
“The world’s mightiest collections of private press album art brought together in a handsome tome.”
THE OST SHOW (RESONANCE FM)
“A magical mystery detour to the USA…this fine book celebrates the music, life, art and history of musicians who made their own records.”
SPIN.COM
“Sumptuous… editors Johan Kugelberg, Michael P. Daley, and Paul Major have collected more than 1,000 of the wildest, weirdest, sweetest, and coolest vanity vinyl covers.”
TIME OUT NY.COM
“Idiosyncratic, touching sincere and occasionally brilliant.”
VICE.COM
“Plumbing the depths of many obsessed collectors’ archives (including their own), editors Michael P. Daley and Johan Kugelberg pulled the best of the very best records.”