The Golden Era of American Independent Noise Rock (GEAINR) was the early to mid 1990s and the GEAINR Golden Format (GEAINRGF) was the 7”. At the time, putting out a 7” was a potentially quick and cheap way for a band to get people interested in their music or maybe to keep appetites whetted between full-length releases. (Today, 7”s are about the least cost-effective way to release music.)
Two decades later and the format’s minuses are obvious. The sound quality ranges from okay to downright awful; things really scrape the bottom of audio fidelity when you cram 6 ½ minutes of amp-torturing mayhem onto a piece of vinyl that can barely handle 3. As far as artistic statements, a pair of sub-4 minute jams and slapped together artwork don’t do much to convey the overall idea of the band. And – by far most importantly –few have the time and patience to hover over a record player swapping out songs every few minutes as the jackets and plastic and inner sleeves pile up.
The minuses don’t really matter, though, because 7” records are cool. They feel good in the hand and their brevity gives a feeling of special-ness to the short blasts they deliver. Even the totally quiet, blown-out sound of an Amphetamine Reptile picture disc 7” (they had a whole series of them and they were nearly all really bad) makes you want to say “this sounds so raw and good” instead of the more accurate “there are at least three different types of unintentional distortion I can identify here.” A vinyl record can be a wonderfully accurate way to reproduce music with full range detail. That doesn’t happen with 7”s.
