The Get Up Kids’ Matt Pryor on vinyl

tguk_landscape_color_final_72dpiBack in December, I interviewed Get Up Kids’ frontman Matt Pryor for a feature in the Pitch. That feature ran in last week’s issue, and turned out really well. However, there were portions of the conversation that really didn’t fit into the article or go with the angle I was pursuing.

However, as the first Get Up Kids full-length in nearly seven years, There Are Rules, comes out tomorrow, I felt it’d be nice to share this part of the interview, wherein Pryor discusses the band’s approach to vinyl releases.

I know the original plans for There Are Rules had been to put it out as a series of EPs. What changed that?

A cost-benefit analysis. It was going to cost us more to make them and it was going to cost fans more to buy them. After putting out that first one [Simple Science], we realized that people, especially the media – and I think probably the fan, too – don’t take EPs as seriously as they do albums. I think we’re eventually moving toward a singles culture in the music industry, but I don’t think we’re there yet. At least not in indie rock. I think we’re there for hip-hop and pop music, but we’re definitely not there for what we do. Which is fine, you know?

It’s either the two-song 7-inch or the full release, and anything in between is seen as kind of a toss-off?

No, I think it’s that there’s a full release, and anything else is a promotional item. But, we’re doing a 7-inch for this record, and those things are important to us as music fans and collectors and whatnot, so we’ll continue to do them.

You guys got your start releasing 7-inches. How many did you release before you put out a full length-proper?

Three. We put out a 7-inch ourselves, and then Doghouse put out our 7-inch, and this label out of Florida called Contrast – I don’t think it exists anymore – put out one, and those two 7-inches became our first EP, which was on Doghouse. Does that make sense?

Would you consider yourself in the collector nerd realm? I know Simple Science came out on four different colors.

At least. There were two different colors of a 10-inch version of it, too. I am not as much of a collector as I used to be, because I’ve got mouths to feed, you know? But that’s something we’ve always done, and tried to do. On A Wire came out on a picture disc and 180-gram vinyl, and there’s always been lots of colors of stuff. So, now that we’re in complete control of everything, we just take it to the nth degree, ’cause we just think they’re cool.

You can pick up the Get Up Kids’ new album on CD via the Amazon link above, or grab it on vinyl from their store at Blue Collar Distro, along with the “Automatic” 7-inch.