Up till not too long ago, Native H’s breakout sophomore album As Good As Useless was extraordinarily arduous to come back by on vinyl, going for upwards of $200 on secondary markets. This 12 months marks As Good As Useless‘s thirtieth anniversary, so it is primed for a reissue; earlier this month, the Lengthy Island-based boutique document label Get pleasure from The Journey introduced that they had been doing simply that. Native H, nonetheless, say they’d no concept that Get pleasure from The Journey had plans to reissue As Good As Useless.
“Nicely, that is information to us,” the Native H Instagram account commented beneath Get pleasure from The Journey’s social media announcement of the reissue. “Particularly since we had been within the technique of buying the rights from the label for our personal official reissue. However — y’know — who the fuck are we, proper?” Loads of followers have been coming to Native H’s protection within the feedback.
Native H initially launched As Good As Useless with Island Data, which a number of years afterwards was acquired by Common. Common now owns the rights to As Good As Useless, and Native H stated they had been in talks with the corporate about placing out their very own reissue of the album. In the meantime, Get pleasure from The Journey — whose founder Ross Shotland says they “have a working relationship with Common” — noticed the chance to reissue As Good As Useless for its thirtieth anniversary and went for it.
Shotland additionally advised Vanyaland that, as a “courtesy,” Get pleasure from The Journey DMed Native H final 12 months by way of social media to allow them to know concerning the reissue, as a result of the label could not discover any formal contact data for the band. (Native H’s official web site, Vanyaland factors out, has had an in depth contact web page for years.)
“I’m not right here to beat up on a small label, however it’s a little annoying that they’re enjoying the sufferer card,” Native H’s Scott Lucas advised Vanyaland. “Their protection is that they tried to get in contact with us concerning the reissue final 12 months. How did they struggle? They despatched us a message by way of Fb Messenger. However once more – is that this how folks do enterprise? Who the fuck makes use of Fb Messenger as a professional approach to get in contact with somebody over enterprise issues? Have they by no means heard of Google? It takes three seconds.”
Native H are nonetheless going by means of with their very own As Good As Useless reissue, and as Lucas tells it, it’s going to most likely prove quite a bit higher than Get pleasure from The Journey’s. Lucas suspects that the As Good As Useless grasp recordings had been destroyed within the 2008 Common warehouse hearth; he says that when the band reissued the album in 2016, “it was mainly a urgent of the CD onto vinyl that includes art work that was scanned from a CD booklet,” as a result of Common could not find the masters. It looks like Get pleasure from The Journey’s reissue will likely be one thing of comparable high quality, which is a bummer, contemplating their repute of placing out under-the-radar reissues and their distribution cope with the respected and acclaimed Mild In The Attic.
“So, what we’ve completed with our reissue is go to the unique artist and attempt to faithfully recreate the unique art work, which isn’t straightforward,” Lucas added. “We additionally went to our favourite mastering engineer Dan Coutant, who delivered a considerate and respectful remaster that may sound nice on vinyl. And it does sound nice. We do not know what this unauthorized model seems like. Definitely, it wasn’t accredited by us.”
Get pleasure from The Journey’s As Good As Useless reissue is at present on sale for $35.99, however contemplating the circumstances, Shotland says it’s going to be a one-time urgent. Given the additional work Native H are placing into their very own reissue, an official launch date is not obtainable but, however the band say they will have “extra particulars quickly.”
