NOFX Want New Album to Be Used as a 'Coaster'

Posted on May 8th 2009 12:00PM by Dan Reilly
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Many record labels probably wouldn't advertise the fact that they have a huge inventory of unsold CD's. For NOFX frontman Fat Mike, that very situation at the label he owns, Fat Wreck Chords, inspired the title of his band's latest album, 'Coaster.' "We have all these old albums that we can't seem to get rid of," Mike tells Spinner. "It was our inside joke that we had a warehouse full of a million coasters."

In a bid to sell some of that backlog, Fat Wreck recently announced that all of its albums will be sold in stores for under $10, most for less than $8. "Record stores have their markup and will make the same amount of money," Mike says. "We make less than half of what we used to but we think it's more important that the bands sell more records." The inspiration for this came when Mike was visiting a Virgin Megastore's "everything must go" sale and walked out with a stack of DVD's for less than $10 each. "I thought, 'People might just buy your product just because it's got a fair price,'" he says. "We're betting that punk fans will support indie bands and labels like they always have."

While people may think that this move is a reflection of the current economic misery, Mike begs to differ. "The record industry has had this economy for four years now," he says. "It's a bad scene all around. I think the chain stores are going to fold, but I'm hoping there's still enough interest to keep all the indie stores alive."

As for the decision to name the latest NOFX album after this problem, Mike says it came from a meeting. "We were stuck in the studio with no album title and I had just written the song 'One Million Coasters' when somebody suggested it," he says. "We figured we might as well sell this record as a coaster, since we'll probably sell just as many. Then we added music, so that's a bonus." But has he actually tried putting the CD under a drink? "Yeah, and the condensation goes right through to the table," he says. "It doesn't absorb very well, so we failed on that front."

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