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Ryan Gosling is the key figure to one of the more legendary lore stories from the Numero Vault. An early Numero collecto...
10/23/2025

Ryan Gosling is the key figure to one of the more legendary lore stories from the Numero Vault. An early Numero collector, his suggestion to include Penny & The Quarters demo "You and Me" in cult classic Blue Valentine was the beginning of an epic journey for a track that nearly never was. We didn't know who the original artist was until a couple of collectors happen to bring up the story over dinner in Italy with an American who just happened to have a mom that dabbled in the Ohio Soul scene around that time.

Sometime in the early 1970s, Nannie "Penny" Sharpe (nee Coulter) and 3 of her brothers (The Quarters) cut a few demos at Clem Price's Harmonic Sounds studio in Columbus, Ohio. The tapes were promptly filed away and never given a second. Upon Clem's passing in the mid 2000s, these demo tapes made their way to his estate sale and eventually moved through a few hands including Dante Carfagna and eventually to Numero Group. It came out on the Prix compilation in the bonus demos section and at first only appealed to the deeper more obsessive soul music devotees. Once it aired in Blue Valentine, the song began to catapult - everyone wanted a slice and eventually appeared in countless other movies, TV shows, commercials, cover version tributes on YouTube, etc...

But after that dinner in Italy, Penny's daughter Jayma called her to share her hunch. A few email link exchanges later and the mystery had been solved. Penny had been traced. Our own Rob Sevier shared “It was exciting to resolve the mystery. It started as a throwaway in a catalog we thought was pretty cool. The song was charming, so we included it on the CD. And against all odds, we were proven correct long after it was released. The act of releasing the music aids in the discovery. Bringing the lost to light is a beautiful thing."

Penny added that she couldn't agree more. “Just last Sunday, my preacher’s sermon was that your blessings will come in unexpected forms. I know that’s right.”

If you'd like to read more, we have expanded liner notes included in the Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label and the Penny & The Quarters & Friends LP Compilation.

Sequoia Spotlight: Too many songs for a 7" but not enough for an LP? It may be a cursed format but Bells On Trike certai...
10/22/2025

Sequoia Spotlight: Too many songs for a 7" but not enough for an LP? It may be a cursed format but Bells On Trike certainly delivered with their Ride Em' Cowboy! debut 10", the lone released document from their ~3 year existence. "That was the time - A band could exist for two years, tour the country, put out a record, and then just wipe their hands and walk away.”

The Richmond, Virginia punk scene always had a heavier tint. From Pen Rollings’ proto-math outfits Breadwinner and Honor Role, to the crunchy and anthemic Askance, Hose.Got.Cable’s proggy hardcore, and Avail’s aggressive, energetic take on the D.C. sound, metal’s murk was never far off. “Stuff felt a little performative in Richmond at the time,” Bells On Trike bassist John Harrison said. “There wasn’t much of wearing your heart on your sleeve.”

Virginia Commonwealth University dropout and Plan 9 Records employee Marty “Violence” Key was a central connector in an underground that stretched from the horrorcore of Gwar to the poli-punk of Inquisition. When not slinging records, Key could be found playing bass in Lookout!’s (Young) Pioneers and Headhunter’s Lion Tamer at The Broad Street Band Mall — a makeshift colony of rehearsal rooms located in an old toy factory. In a $35-per-month, un-air-conditioned, top-floor space, Bells On Trike tooled around with something more delicate, even as their techno-obsessed neighbor blew through the thin plaster walls. “You just had to play louder to be able to hear yourself,” Harrison recalled.

With the 10-inch set in motion, a new batch of songs emerged, evolving and stretching their emocore sound toward its logical indie-rock conclusion. In anticipation of their self-titled 10-inch’s arrival, the band booked an ill-fated 1997 summer tour with South, hastily assembling various handmade covers to sell to the five people in attendance every night. A final arrangement — aptly titled Funeral Box after the boombox it was recorded on — captured the ambition and complexity of Bells On Trike’s trajectory, but the songs were shelved when the band disbanded in early 1998.

The full 10" is available for streaming - should we drop these unreleased tracks?

That was fun. Here's the whole set of hand screened editions. We set out to do 6. It was actually way more work and much...
10/21/2025

That was fun. Here's the whole set of hand screened editions. We set out to do 6. It was actually way more work and much more expensive than anticipated but this set is now one of my favorite sections in my Numero library.

I'd propose another run, Season 2 if you all are in to it. Would need to figure out the next 6 bands like ASAP. Share suggestions and I'll present the top 6 to the top brass.

Numero co-founder Ken Shipley dragged Julie Doiron, Land of Talk, Mike Feuerstack, and Dany Placard into a cozy Montreal...
10/20/2025

Numero co-founder Ken Shipley dragged Julie Doiron, Land of Talk, Mike Feuerstack, and Dany Placard into a cozy Montreal studio this fall. Magic poured out. Stream “Where The Road Goes From Two Lanes Down To One” everywhere, now.

While Blondie was busy tracking a cover of The Paragon’s “Tide Is High” for 1980’s Autoamerican, a pair of NYC-by -way-o...
10/18/2025

While Blondie was busy tracking a cover of The Paragon’s “Tide Is High” for 1980’s Autoamerican, a pair of NYC-by -way-of-Bloomington, Indiana upstarts were making their own no wave reggae song. “Chris and Debbie,” appeared on the Social Climbers’ 1981 3x7” on Gulcher, “Tide is High” was Blondie’s third #1 hit. Pretty wide canyon between, and yet, a connection persists, as Numero has recently added the Social Climbers complete recordings to our ever expanding universe of forgotten sounds while our Blondie box set is nearly out of print. To commemorate (?) both, we’ve dug a few never-published Shig Igeda shots from the ‘chive and paired them with Gulcher’s OG run for levity. Time is a flat circle, after all.

Name another record label that lets its adopted alley cats into the warehouse to lay around on $1000 private press count...
10/17/2025

Name another record label that lets its adopted alley cats into the warehouse to lay around on $1000 private press country folk records. Just another seed planted in Numero Private Mind Garden ready to sprout today in your home stereo system. A swindly taste of Cosmic Americana for the boxcar bound.

Operating out of a suite in the Roanoke, Virginia Ramada Inn, Tiffin Music Enterprises International was but one of hundreds of gray-market record companies offering dubious services to Nashville aspirants. Cut in three days in 1975, 20-year-old Firebaugh wrote and played every bummed-out note, save a forgotten pedal steel-man. 50th anniversary edition remaster and debut reissue, this one is not meant to last...

10/16/2025

If you are still in your 20s, do us all a favor and record a quick album over a weekend, press it up and then forget it. Imagine finding out this is what your mom was doing 50 years ago. "I leap into the moving sun, I feel the heat but I won't burn, I'll use the light for my return."

Kathy Heideman cuts a Private Press Cosmic American Future Grail and then just peaced out to regular life. She was commissioned to play and sing the album meant as a songwriting demo for Dia Joyce mostly sat uncirculated, undistributed and unheard. Joyce decided at some point that she didn't like the thing and by her own account burned the master tapes and disposed of most of the small vinyl run.

But time has a strange way of unfolding: Around 2007 the band Vetiver's Andy Cabic found a copy of the album in a San Francisco thrift store, and a year later 2008, Kathy Heideman's rendition of Dia Joyce's "Sleep a Million Years" got a new performance by Vetiver with vocals by UK folk-psych legend Vashti Bunyan for the band's Thing of the Past covers album. Around this time, Future Numero Group A&R Douglas Mcgowan got to know Joyce shortly before she passed in 2010, setting the stage for a 2013 Numero Group reissue of Move With Love, revealing yet another lost folk masterwork for a new generation of listeners.

But we didn't track down Kathy until several years later in 2019 when Mcgowan asked Jackie Shane social media manager and San Jose resident Mark Christopher to take a look at early 70s San Jose white pages that a series of clues emerged which quickly led to a Kat James living in Utah. The former Ms. Heideman had mostly forgotten about the record, and surprised to learn the record had taken on a new life in the internet age.

As their divergent paths indicate Heideman and Joyce made for an unlikely pair. Joyce went on to live a genderfluid life with partner Julie, tinkering with odd children's toy concepts and animal rights activism. Heideman continued singing country music, playing in bars using the name James. She never incorporated the Move With Love songbook in her sets, but now takes great pleasure in asking her Alexa to pull up the album to stream when friends visit.

Anyone out there have any Shroomunion photos we could see? Trying to beat off the AI-conspirators in advance here but ho...
10/15/2025

Anyone out there have any Shroomunion photos we could see? Trying to beat off the AI-conspirators in advance here but how do you put it together when you have so little? A plague on any Numero project is the unfortunate combination of great music and no photos. A record is, after all, more than music. But when a band exists for a year and were barely documented by the mere hundreds of people that saw them. and two of the members have died... well, it makes the process difficult, if not some times impossible. In the case of Shroomunion (and their predecessor Driftwood), we currently possess nine images depicting their existence, including two taken by our co-founder Ken Shipley [slide 3]. There are a couple flyers, and the records of course [slide 6], but not much other evidence has yet turned up about this crucial, blink-and-you-missed-them riot-emo unit. Any one out there holding any Shroomunion related gear? Does anyone know how to get in touch with the Mark Rodgers Society?

2 new Dü EPs and a new shirt celebrating their insane run on Europe almost exactly 40 years ago to the day. The band was...
10/14/2025

2 new Dü EPs and a new shirt celebrating their insane run on Europe almost exactly 40 years ago to the day. The band was nearly feral when they turned up in London that September. After spending February, March, May, and June on the road, Hüsker Dü went all-in on a month-long run around a very disconnected Europe in support of their second album of 1985: Flip Your Wig.

The mayhem can be heard on our year-spanning live recordings box set Hüsker Dü: The Miracle Year, but those looking to slip deeper into the nostalgia—and a sturdy Comfort Colors tee—can pick up this replica of their Fall '85 Euro run on cotton candy blue. Printed in a single run, this shirt will be made to order with the solicitation window closing on Monday October 20, 2025 so don't snooze and don't sneeze.

Who’s seeing A-cast today at 305pm at BFF? Thinking we’d be there with our carts and racks, we pressed up a stunning rep...
10/12/2025

Who’s seeing A-cast today at 305pm at BFF? Thinking we’d be there with our carts and racks, we pressed up a stunning reproduction of the band’s 2003 debut for Tiger Style and planned to sell an edition of 100 at the fest. Plans shifted, we sold out of the entire pressing before Friday’s street date, and now none of us are in the front row baking in the Vegas sun. Who should we get booked for next year tho…

Post rock was so big at the end of the last century that it briefly caused a national xylophone shortage. Enter Gainesvi...
10/11/2025

Post rock was so big at the end of the last century that it briefly caused a national xylophone shortage. Enter Gainesville, Florida’s Mercury Program, who heard Tortoise’s “Ry Cooder” and dreamt of a mechanical island paradise. From The Vapors of Gasoline—their 2000 album for Tiger Style—was hardly a sophomore slump, its ten cerebral and dissonant jams coyly answering the never-asked query: What if new age and post-hardcore bought a house in the suburbs? Our 25th anniversary remaster (released yesterday) reveals the genius of an overlooked triumph in startlingly vibrant detail, providing atmospheric color for erstwhile reptile and periodic table fans alike. Might have to press A Data Learn The Language next…

10/10/2025

Another treacherous week of de-AI sloppify battling the shareholder value data centers that is the modern entertainment industry. So here's a bunch of pre 90s non emo records we unearthed, restored and remastered with our fleshy fingers, ears and eyes. Real humans, please tap in and prove our existence. Do any of you like any of these songs?

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