Wooing
Daydream Time Machine 7-inch single
scum stats: doesn’t appear to be limited, but I’ve been wrong before
Lead singer/guitarist of Wooing, Rachel Trachtenburg, was the 9-year-old drummer in the Trachtenburg Family Slide Show Players a lifetime ago.
I first became aware of TFSP in early 2003 when I caught their performance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. The song “Look at Me” cut straight through to my heart, equal parts quirky, sincere and clever.
The band’s MO was to take slides found at garage sales and thrift stores and use the images from those slides to compose songs to tell invented stories about what they depict. All while projecting those slides in concert.
It felt like one of the most beautiful, purely American things I had ever encountered.
I saw the band perform later that year at SXSW and struck up a convo with Jason, the song-writer and piano player (and Rachel’s father) about the possibility of putting out a record on my newly-started label Cass Records.
He seemed somewhat bothered at the moment. I felt I was out-of-my-league, that he was just being polite. The band came through Detroit later that year and when folks were LAUGHING at the band I felt offended.
This was something sweet and charming and innocent and the crowd seemed to only be viewing it as a comedy routine. I was mad.
(FYI, mom Tina Pina handled the projection duties and played no instruments)
Anyway, I put on the hard sell, told the band the two songs I wanted to put out (“Look at Me” and “Don’t You Know What I Mean”), told them the studio to record at (NY Head) and even gave them the directive to NOT record the song with a piano (eck) but to use Jason’s trusty tour Casio, as that was part of what had drawn me to the band.
My offensive actually took hold. Jason agreed to do the record. At the ripe age of twenty this was my first-ever “win” in regards to convincing a band to do a record that really had no reason to want to do one with me. I actually hadn’t put out any records on my own yet at that point, but I didn’t tell him that!
Rachel had one request, and that was to have the record pressed on pink vinyl. I happily obliged.
Fifteen years later, having worked on over 600 releases, the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players single and the fuck-all number of copies it sold is still one of my prouder moments in the record business.
TFPS would later play in Detroit in 2004 and Rachel and Meg White would realize they have the same birthday, I would give the band some slides found in the attic at Jack White’s newly-purchased house (where the Stripes would record “Get Behind Me Satan”) and I gave them a bolt of fabric (possibly wall-paper) as the band was actively collecting material from fans to use to make their own stage apparel.
They stayed at my mom’s house that trip. Years later they would stay at the local Hare Krishna temple in Detroit because they’d found out they could eat free vegetarian meals there. To me, that was some HARDCORE, in-depth touring knowledge. I could never ride that hard.
Wooing sounds nothing like TFSP. That’s fine by me. Rachel is an adult now, does part time modeling and generally seems to be on top of her shit.
It’s refreshing to see someone who’s been in “the biz” from such an early age to have a solid head on their shoulders. Gives me hope.
“Tear World” reminds me of “To Keep Me” by that dog. That’s a good thing. Quiet/loud dynamics with 90’s era fuzz flourishes.
“In Colour” rides on airy atmospherics before giving way to lush soundscapes of guitar-led pyrotechnics. It sizzles.
“Two Can Keep a Secret” is sweet and twangy before EXPLOSIVE guitar stabs splatter across the horizon.
This shit is good. You should like it. Even Rachel’s note with the single is perfect
“Hey Ben!!
I hope life is going great (drawing of a flower)
enjoy the 7” :)
oxox Rachel”
If you’re just crazy enough, you should check out the Trachtenburg Family single. I still think it holds up all these years after. There’s copies on Discogs cheap, I’ve still got ‘em at www.cassrecords.com too if my daughters haven’t used ‘em all for frisbees yet. Or if you’ve made it this far down and can post a semi-coherent, insightful comment, I’ll probably just send one to you.
Killing the chat is probably the stupidiest idea they got , they should make an underwearhead vault package next time too … As far as the chat will be online only when staff member are there , THEY ARE NEVER THERE… Ben come once a year , and Jack is probably the lamest guy on a chat : hey , whos with me , have you seen johnny depp guitar? , need to go , bye.
This was probably the best feature of the platinium subscription and there was a thight community behind it. If we need to revive it by ourself , I strongly consider to stop my platinium subscription as a double gatefold album with a couple of inserts doesn’t worth the 95$ (CAD) I need to pay for that.
Also, I really like the redesign.
It doesn’t look like anyone uses the hashtag #VaultChat on twitter. Maybe that’s the place to geek out on garage sale finds, concerts, new releases. ? I know, social media is exhausting and can be unpleasant, but you can avoid everything un-music with “mute” and “block” and such. I dunno. Just a thought.
I’m new here, and I agree that the chat room was really antiquainted. I know a newbie shouldn’t necessarily speak up or offer an opinion, but I enjoyed feeling like the vault was a community. I hope y’all can keep hanging out. And thanks for welcoming me into the flock or swarm or school or murder or whatever a group of vaulters is called. I appreciate all of you! I haven’t experienced anything but positivity and good stuff.
its like we already found an other way , I can contact mark and tell him about the idea , I think gmail chat would be mainstream enough for every1. Why in hell did they kill the chat?!?
Pug if you know how to setup that I can help , let’s make the phoenix revive !
@runofthemill, @elduderino still has it.
@PugFace … I’m hurt. p.s. Where’s my shirt?
RIP Vault Chat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQpL5ZLQHyw
It would have been nice to have some warning that chat was going away. There are many people like @Thurbert, @Stl_Ben, @DonTazeMeBro, @Steve_Vice, @markpetz and pretty much everyone that isn’t @runofthemill that maybe we could have set something else up going foward. A discord chat, a gmail chat, or something similar. Unfortunately, there is no way to get ahold of these faceless entities that I proudly refer to as friends. There wasn’t no need to know each others names, email address or any other way of contact because this was a forum where we all knew where to find each other. No more sharing new bandcamp links with each other, no more linking to hot new releases or deep discounts of records we should (but don’t) know about. It’s all gone and now I have no friends.
Hey Third Man I want to apologize for my “colorful” comment regarding the loss of vault chat as I have known to understand it over the last 4 years. The phone call I got from you guys today, I’m gonna be honest I had nasty flashbacks to being in the principles office in 7th grade. I guess I didn’t fully grasp that there are “children” on this website, I have four kids so I will be careful to watch my mouth in the future, assuming this post doesn’t get me banned. I will say that clearly you haven’t read some of my previous posts because there was plenty of “colorful commentary” in those, in fact they were ones that had me winning Ben’s record of the week contest twice. Thanks again for the 7inch and the SLEEP split color vinyl Ben, I cherish them both. I wasn’t directing my “colorful commentary” at any specific individual or “bullying anyone” I was just expressing my frustration with what appears to be a limiting of functionality that a lot of us have come to really enjoy. I will say that whomever I spoke to was polite although the “chat room is really 90’s and outdated” comment was strange to me, seeing as I would guess that the majority of your client demographic grew up in the 90’s. Either way, it’s your company you can choose to do what you like, but understand that there is a solid group of us that really enjoyed interacting and discussing music and Third Man vault chat gave us a forum to do that, so I think it’s really unfortunate that just because you don’t want to spend the time regulating it and banishing those that don’t have the mental capacity to just talk to people, that everyone else loses out. I think it’s great that there will still be opportunities to have conversations with Ben or Jack but believe it or not, some of us like interacting and conversing with everyday fans who are just like us, we like talking about music, the show we went too, the albums we collect, the bands we like and I think it is really unfortunate that you have decided to remove that. I have been a fan of all that you guys do for a very long time, drove my family with four daughters from Minnesota to Nashville over spring break just to visit, the lady’s at the front counter gave all my girls free lunch boxes and all my girls sang and recorded songs in the record booth, we stayed in a junky trailer park and it was one of the best trips we have had. I don’t agree with this decision at all, and I am going to say I am 100% certain that I am not alone. Whomever called me, I hope you are reading this, I was literally in shock when you called and sitting outside my sixth graders orientation for her first day of middle school, I wish I would have been able to pull it together enough to verbalize some of this over the phone. Again, I sincerely apologize for how I expressed my frustration, should have been a little more highbrow about it, honestly it sort of came off the cuff when I jumped online to chat with some friends that I have made over the last 4 years. That’s it.
The website has been going downhill for a while. There used to be free downloads for members, you could view past vault packages and chat freely with other members on the board. Don’t get why things keep going away rather than added.