Up until recently, Local H's breakout sophomore album As Good As Dead was extremely hard to come by on vinyl, going for upwards of $200 on secondary markets. This year marks As Good As Dead's 30th anniversary, so it's primed for a reissue; earlier this month, the Long Island-based boutique record label Enjoy The Ride announced that they were doing just that. Local H, however, say they had no idea that Enjoy The Ride had plans to reissue As Good As Dead.
"Well, this is news to us," the Local H Instagram account commented under Enjoy The Ride's social media announcement of the reissue. "Especially since we were in the process of acquiring the rights from the label for our own official reissue. But — y’know — who the fuck are we, right?" Plenty of fans have been coming to Local H's defense the he comments.
Local H initially released As Good As Dead with Island Records, which a few years afterwards was acquired by Universal. Universal now owns the rights to As Good As Dead, and Local H said they were in talks with the company about putting out their own reissue of the album. Meanwhile, Enjoy The Ride — whose founder Ross Shotland says they "have a working relationship with Universal" — saw the opportunity to reissue As Good As Dead for its 30th anniversary and went for it.
Shotland also told Vanyaland that, as a "courtesy," Enjoy The Ride DMed Local H last year via social media to let them know about the reissue, because the label couldn't find any formal contact information for the band. (Local H's official website, Vanyaland points out, has had a detailed contact page for years.)
"I’m not here to beat up on a small label, but it is a little annoying that they’re playing the victim card,” Local H's Scott Lucas told Vanyaland. “Their defense is that they tried to get in touch with us about the reissue last year. How did they try? They sent us a message via Facebook Messenger. But again – is this how people do business? Who the fuck uses Facebook Messenger as a legitimate way to get in touch with someone over business matters? Have they never heard of Google? It takes three seconds."
Local H are still going through with their own As Good As Dead reissue, and as Lucas tells it, it'll probably turn out a lot better than Enjoy The Ride's. Lucas suspects that the As Good As Dead master recordings were destroyed in the 2008 Universal warehouse fire; he says that when the band reissued the album in 2016, "it was basically a pressing of the CD onto vinyl featuring artwork that was scanned from a CD booklet," because Universal couldn't locate the masters. It seems like Enjoy The Ride's reissue will be something of similar quality, which is a bummer, considering their reputation of putting out under-the-radar reissues and their distribution deal with the reputable and acclaimed Light In The Attic.
"So, what we’ve done with our reissue is go to the original artist and try to faithfully recreate the original artwork, which is not easy," Lucas added. "We also went to our favorite mastering engineer Dan Coutant, who delivered a thoughtful and respectful remaster that would sound great on vinyl. And it does sound great. We have no idea what this unauthorized version sounds like. Certainly, it wasn’t approved by us."
Enjoy The Ride's As Good As Dead reissue is currently on sale for $35.99, but considering the circumstances, Shotland says it'll be a one-time pressing. Given the extra work Local H are putting into their own reissue, an official release date isn't available yet, but the band say they'll have "more details soon."
