Scorpio

Scorpio!
Is the vinyl distributor Scorpio the same as legendary nineties bootlegger Scorpio? Are the Scorpio reissues even vaguely legit? Mfd by Rhino some say. Not that that means anything, necessarily.

Scorpio started reissuing/booting Yazoo titles. the early years of Blind Willie McTell, and the memphis comp "Frank Stokes' Dream." They've done many good records over the years. I have a lot of their Sun Ra Saturn repressings. What do you think about Scorpio?

i...like scorpio. i don't really know the full story. they have been doing it forever though. i find it hard to believe that their major label reissues are bootlegs. all that epic and capitol psych? there's no way it could be. james brown. VU. and they sound/look good too. if i ever start selling new vinyl i will totally load up on their reissues. so cheap. great deal. my brother said that when he worked at record world in our hometown in the late 70's/early 80's he was always excited to get boxes of cut-outs from scorpio cuz they had the craziest cheap stuff.

maybe their notorious past is in the past? maybe they were mafia? i have no idea.

from princeton record exchange webpage:

Scorpio Music Distributors has been wholesaling music since 1969, and for the last 16 years has grown to become the largest reissuer and distributor of Vinyl LP's. If you are in the business of selling vinyl and do not buy from them, you are missing out on profits and in these times in our industry that is not something to miss.

Scorpio can e-mail you catalogs by genre, such as R&B, Rap/Hip-Hop, Jazz, Rock, Latin, etc. with customized catalogs on CD, LP, Cassette, DVD, VHS, etc. For further information, contact Steven S. Parelman, 6xx-8xx-60xx,
scorpio✧✧✧@a✧✧.c✧✧

Scorpio IS great for record stores. totally affordable stuff. And great titles too! Like, all the BYG Actuel free jazz stuff, tons of Sun Ra, tons of Blue Note, and yeah, major label psych and classic shit. As a distributor they're also a great source for SST, also cheap and great sellers.

yeah its a win/win if you buy from them.

when i do new vinyl its just gonna be old stuff. new old stuff. you could have a really nice new section with just stuff from scorpio. but i'm not ready yet. still working on my infrastructure!

I think it's so weird that they're doing Yazoo titles now.

You can stock a great reissue selection with Scorpio titles, it's true.

i started buying them in the 90's. kak. gandalf. etc.

Yeah, two classics. I don't think the Kak has been in print for a while. My first copy of the United States of America record was a Scorpio press.

first time i heard the Gentle Soul LP was a scorpio job as well.

i just found out about the yazoo reissues the other day -- ethan @ all day records says theyre gonna do 20 titles. something about the scorpio thing feels weird to me, but im not sure why. i havent heard about them having horrible sound or anything! the sleeves ive seen look good! i guess it's strange that they keep the label info the same on the sleeve? like somehow, although it is a little off-putting to see a 4 MEN W BEARDS label on the back of a funkadelic record, at least you know it's not an original? with scorpio stuff, it makes liking original copies harder. maybe thats a good thing, though!

they would use new epic labels for stuff like kak or whatever. not the vintage labels.

wait was kak epic? anyway you could tell by the labels. and the covers were shiny. new.

yeah, the kak issue used an 80s Epic label deisgn instead of the yellow label... and yeah, it's pretty easy to tell a scorpio issue from an o.g.

whats the difference bw these three scenarios:

1.) 4 MEN WITH BEARDS reissues a funkadelic record with their own label/name on it, and WESTBOUND's label/name is nowhere to be found.
2.) SCORPIO reissues a funkadelic record with an updated version of the WESTBOUND label, and SCORPIO's label/name is nowhere to be found.
3.) WESTBOUND reissues a funkadelic record with an updated version of their own label.

like, who gets paid? who has the RIGHTS? etc?

its all i really wanted out of life was for someone to put out $$$ records for cheap. and do a decent job. i rilly don't need heavy vinyl limited crap. i'll buy a zillion ten dollar reissues. i won't buy them if they are 20 or more. which is the sad thing cuz a lot of stores carry the fancier colored vinyl/heavy vinyl scorpio reissues instead of the budget versions. which is why i still don't have all the mainstream reissues. cuz i never see cheap copies. i should just have my brother buy me the normal ones. he buys from them, i think.

i dunno, you can license almost anything if you have the money.

some stuff i think is funny like a fancy reissue that actually costs more than a nice original copy of an album. which is probably true of some of the p-funk records. and westbound vinyl could be kinda crappy at times. so maybe it makes sense to buy a great keeper copy. i bought all the p-funk reissues that came out in the late-80's. british, i think? they sounded great. probably better than the originals in some cases. (though westbound stuff can also sound godly. don't get me wrong. just gotta find the right copy.)

I've got a bunch of this stuff. Eugene McDaniels, Morgen, KAK...the crappy video game store in town that tries to pass itself off as a record shop used to special order Scorpio stuff when you asked them to. Then my buddy quit and they stopped doing that.

A Gift From Euphoria is one of my fave Scorpio titles.