Enjoy the Experience: Homemade Records, 1958 - 1992

“A jaw-dropping look at the All Time Hit Parade of Rejection” - John Waters

“Best-ever gateway to the infinitely peculiar multiverse of self-published phonograph records” - William Gibson

An exhibit of vinyl drawn from Enjoy The Experience, the book that Larry Clark calls “The Greatest Coffee Table Book Ever Made.”

The Milk Gallery exhibition featured live performances and DJ sets during its duration. A special needle-drop listening station allowed visitors to select and hear records from the book.

From the 1950s through the arrival of the CD in the early 1990s, small record pressing plants across the US helped thousands of musicians capture on vinyl the sounds they heard in their heads.

Often the only audience for their records proved to be friends and family; sometimes they never made it out of unopened boxes in the artist’s garage. This never discouraged all these pizza parlor organists, funk bands aspiring to become the JBs, high school bands performing all of Jesus Christ Superstar, cult leaders who never found the right cult, jazz bands inspired to forge a new stream, these artists committed themselves to vinyl, even though they were rejected by an industry not understanding of the weird and splendidly bizarre. The records showcased in the Enjoy The Experience book and exhibit are funkier, more psychedelic, more idiosyncratic and more emotionally rewarding than the mainstream music products of the same era.

The graphics are often insanely amazing: confusing, crazy, howlingly funny but always providing a true sense of the human hand present. They’ve got that homemade vibe that we constantly crave in these screen-saturated days.

Enjoy The Experience is a snapshot of America in the second half of the 20th century, telling the stories of brave souls who took the plunge and committed their musical vision to wax.

A free download card featuring amazing artists from Enjoy The Experience is included with the book. In addition, Sinecure and Now-Again Records are presenting a companion double LP and CD anthology released alongside the book.

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.”

ESQUIRE (UK)
“An affectionate overview …of the musically-inclined but record-labelly-declined.”

THE GUARDIAN
“A collective aura of strangeness.”

MOJO
“The world’s mightiest collections of private press album art brought together in a handsome tome.”

JONNY TRUNK, 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.”