Hosted by AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer and featuring Chad Kassem (Acoustic Sounds/Analogue Productions/Quality Record Pressing), Josh Bizar (Music Direct/Mobile Fidelity), Cameron Schaefer (Vinyl Me, Please) and Jay Millar (Sundazed), this lively panel discussion features vinyl industry pioneers specializing in high quality all-analog reissues, a newcomer who built a successful subscription service and a spokesperson for an eclectic label that began reissuing on vinyl at a time when the industry declared the format dead "oddball" and obscure artists along with many well known ones.
At last month's "Making Vinyl" conference in Detroit Keynote speaker Steven Van Zandt chose not to present a formal address. Instead, he sat down with music journalist Gary Graff to talk about his relationship with vinyl records and especially his TeachRock (teachrock.org) organization that provides to schools free of charge music educational resources.
On Monday afternoon at Making Vinyl 2018 AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer moderated a vinyl mastering panel featuring some well-known lacquer cutting engineers: Scott Hull—Masterdisk, Clint Holley—Well Made Music, and Jeff Powell—Take Out Vinyl (MIA Mandy Parnell—Black Lagoon Studios, who was forced to remain in the UK so she could finish up a Bjork project). Welcome to 1979's Lori Hines "sat in".
At Making Vinyl 2018, the "Women in Vinyl" panel produced a wide-ranging discussion that mostly stuck to business and occasionally dealt with being a woman in the business world generally and the music business specifically. The first panelist to speak provoked the audience with a spirited defense of the compact disc (you youngsters look that up) and from there the back and forth generated a well focused perspective on the business of vinyl from a female point of view. And yes 'Women in Vinyl'" does sound like a John Waters movie.
After brief opening ceremonies at "Making Vinyl" event in Detroit October 1st and 2nd, co-founder/organizer Larry Jaffee introduced Record Store Day founder Michael Kurtz who moderated a fascinating panel intended to explain "why and how nearly 750,000 records were sold last April 21st in the U.S." and more interestingly how these releases were chosen, manufactured and distributed.
The second edition of "Making Vinyl" was an even greater success than last year's, which was plenty good. Following Record Store Day founder Michael Kurtz's panel "Record Store Day 11 Years Later", AnalogPlanet.com editor Michael Fremer ran "New Vinyl Plants Fire Up the Presses", which you can watch here. (Photo: Discogs sandwich of Jeffrey Smith and Sean Cannon).