Beloved Never Records Family,

I will not add another jeremiad about the state of the world to your bandwidth. Like you, we have suffered setbacks and inconveniences, austerity, and isolation. Like you, we are outraged by racial injustice and inequality and the divisiveness of our age. It is enough to stifle creative impulse, to find ourselves trapped in a feedback loop of negativity.

The truth is, aside from being unemployed, I feel immeasurably lucky. My son is a perpetual joy machine, my wife a constant source of humor and good nature. My family is healthy. I also have Never Records and its regenerative soundtrack. I have your sounds to bolster me when I falter.

It's been 10 years since this all began, 10 or so cities, and 1000's of artists. I never thought I'd be doing this for a decade, it seemed like a one-off art project, but I felt so inspired by you that now I think I'll do this for the rest of my life.

Send me your apocalypse anthems, your reflections on this now infamous time. It could be a song, a poem, or a sound. At the height of the pandemic the distant sounds of ambulances in New York was a constant reminder of the sick and the dead. I know many of you do not traffic in the didactic. I'm not asking for anything that you are not willing to give, but I am asking for a measure of what we are all going through. If its a cheery pop song so be it, but I ask you is this how you will mark this time 10 years from now? a hundred years from now? Your sounds are testimony. How will you testify?

Now I know many of you have songs recorded that you'd like on vinyl. This is not the time for duplication, this is the time for creation! Record on a cassette and send me the tape! Record with me live over the internet! If you don't have a way to record reach out to me and together we'll figure out a way! And of course if you are in New York come to my studio, my sanctuary, and we'll record and cut live!

Special thanks to Suzie Kim for setting up this website, this couldn't have happened without her, and thanks to Spencer James and Mark Cranford for their generous donations to help pay for record shipping.

-Ted Riederer

NEVER RECORDS / Apocalypse Anthems October 23 - December 13, 2020

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