LOOK: Minus The Bear Unveil First EP/LP Reissues, Offer Free Tracks (FILTER Premiere)
By Staff on September 22, 2011
As you may already know, the indie-alt outfit Minus The Bear will be embarking on a 10-year anniversary tour where they will be performing their 2002 debut full-length, Highly Refined Pirates, in full. Today we get to bring you the news that they will also be reissuing their first EP and LP.
Suicide Squeeze will be reissuing both MTB's debut EP, This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic, and their debut full-length, Highly Refined Pirates, on limited edition vinyl and cassette (yes cassette, as in what you probably have MC Hammer's Please Hammer, Don't Hurt Em' on).
The EP has never been released on vinyl before and their debut LP, which has been out of print for three years, has also never been available on vinyl. Both reissues have been remastered for vinyl by Bernie Grundman (Carol King's Tapestry, Steely Dan's Aja, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Prince's Purple Rain, and Dr. Dre's The Chronic).
Here are the quantities and formats that the reissues will be available in:
The vinyl will be available beyond the ltd. ed. runs, but not as 180 gram.
The cassettes will not be repressed.
Vinyl
This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic first pressing =1,000 (black 180 gram), 1,000 (clear)
Highly Refined Pirates first repress = 1,000 (black 180 gram), 1,000 (translucent blue)
Cassette
This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic = 300 copies (Kelly Green cassette shell)
Highly Refined Pirates = 300 copies (Pepsi Blue cassette shell)
Below, you can grab yourself two of the remastered tunes, "Hey, Wanna Throw Up? Get Me Naked," from the debut EP and "Monkey!!! Knife!!! Fight!!!" from the debut LP.
We also got the guys to answer a few questions about their reissues and the upcoming tour. You can read those and see all of their tour dates, including a very special performance for Macy's, below!
The reissues of This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic and Highly Refined Pirates arrive on October 4 via Suicide Squeeze and you can pre-order yours right here.
Minus The Bear, "Hey, Wanna Throw Up? Get Me Naked" by FILTER Magazine
Minus The Bear, "Monkey!!! Knife!!! Fight!!!" by FILTER Magazine
It's been almost a decade since your debut EP, This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic, and first full length, Highly Refined Pirates were released, how do you think your music has evolved since then?
The evolution of the band has been a product of living together on the road and creating new music as we all grow as people and musicians for the last ten years. Hopefully the evolution has retained the spark of the first batch of songs while still maintaing a sense of growth with the new material.
Many artists these days release their work via vinyl and cassette format, in part because of it's aesthetic quality and also because it's more difficult to make copies of, what does it mean to you to release your first EP and album via this method?
Opening up a vinyl release and looking through the art work/liner notes is often times an important part of experiencing an album. You just don't get the same feeling with MP3's and to an extent CD's. I'm not saying one way is better than the other, it's just different. Sequencing songs is an important part of an album and it can kind of be lost in the digital format as well. There is also the old debate of analog vs. digital. At any rate we hope people will appreciate the whole package.
What makes these two specific works special, to be remastered, other than them being your first work? How are these newly remastered albums better or different from the original ones?
When we originally had the records mastered we frankly didn't think much about how it would translate to vinyl vs a digital release. Since we never released "This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic" on vinyl and "Highly Refined Pirates" had been out of print for years, we saw the upcoming 10 year mark as a perfect opportunity to revisit the releases and give them a proper mastering dedicated to making the vinyl sound better.
Both records were remastered by Bernie Grundman, how was it like working with him? What does the remastering process entail?
We weren't in the studio when it was remastered but from past experience it's kind of like that scene in Fantasia where Mickey Mouse is conjuring all sorts of crazy shit up...somehow it makes music sound the way it should.
Will you only be performing ...Pirates, or will you also be playing songs from other albums? Throughout your tours, you have performed multiple times songs from ...Pirates, what led you to focus just on this album, and perform it in its entirety in this tour?
We are going to tackle all of HRP a good chunk of TIWIKABG and flesh out the set with a sprinkling of the rest of our history and maybe even a new song or two. There are a bunch of songs we've hardly, if ever, played. With the vinyl re-release it was a good time to play a full album back to back, which is something we've never done.
What are you looking forward to on this tour? What are your expectations of it, and how do you perceive performing ...Pirates in its entirety will be like?
This will be the longest set on tour we've ever played and we hope folks will enjoy taking a look back through the years with us. Playing all of the songs in context of the record will be fun. It won't be without it's own set of challenges so it'll keep us on our toes, but it'll be rewarding all the same.
What do you hope to get out of this tour, now that it's been a decade since you formed MTB?
We are constantly amazed by the love and support of our fans and the fact that they've kept us on the road for the last ten years. Hopefully we can put on the best MTB show they've seen to date. Until the next time we come through...
Tour Dates:
September
24 Seattle, WA @ Macy's Junior Department, 1601 Third Avenue @2pm
October
4 Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory
5 Salt Lake City, UT @ In the Venue
6 Denver, CO @ The Summit Music Hall
7 Lawrence, KS @ Granada Theater
8 Milwaukee, WI @ The Rave II (Downstairs)
10 Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater
11 Chicago, IL @ Metro
12 Detroit, MI @ St. Andrews Hall
13 Buffalo, NY @ Town Ballroom
14 Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Smalls Theatre
15 Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
16 Boston, MA @ Royal NightClub
18 New York, NY @ Webster Hall
20 Richmond, VA @ The National
21 Raleigh, NC @ Lincoln Theatre
22 Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
23 New Orleans, LA @ House of Blues
24 Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live - Ballroom
25 Dallas, TX @ Granada Theatre
26 Austin, TX @ La Zona Rosa
28 Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
29 Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre
30 Las Vegas, NV @ House of Blues
31 Silver Lake, CA @ he Satellite
November
1 Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour
2 San Diego, CA @ SOMA
3 Pomona, CA @ Glass House
7 Sacramento, CA @ Aces of Spades
8 Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
11 Seattle, WA @ Showbox at the Market