Alberti Records of California has closed its doors after 55 years as a vinyl manufacturer. Although I've covered four states since first dealing with Alberti in 1993, fate had me living a mere half hour down the freeway by the time they'd called it quits. The final announcement was made by mail. Being the closest label-owner made me the first to receive the letter, and the bearer of bad news to other anxious label-owners. We had been given exactly one week to clear out. After next week there will be no here at all [sic?], the doors will be locked and the keys to the company will be turned over to our lawyer, read the impenetrably bleak announcement. After that point anything remaining here will be sent to the dump. "No here"? The dump?? That sounded hopeless indeed. A lot of record labels started emailing me. I suddenly found myself popular.
    When I and Andy and Andy's van arrived at their plant in Monterey Park on the 18th, I was armed with a mandate to retrieve all parts for nearly every Vermiform, Kill Rock Stars, 5RC, Punk In My Vitamins and Paralogy record pressed in the nineties, over 180 titles. I also packed; a clipboard, detailed notes on every release by name and catalog number, magic markers, liability waivers (removing our right to sue in case of injury on their now-uninsured premises), a bottle of Bushmills whiskey, a red Christmas bow and two pairs of wollen winter gloves unearthed from the pre-California section of my closet. Ebullition Records owner Kent McClard greeted me at the door with a hearty handshake. The last time I'd seen him was 8 years ago, and I'd placed my first call to Alberti from his living room.
   The whisky & xmas bow were for plant manager Frank Scalla. My 8-year phone relationship with Frank had left me anxious over meeting the man in person. Mordam employees had described him as "an old hippy". I'd pictured him more like the late actor Jack Nance in his "Blue Velvet" role, gruff beyond gruff. It was a little jarring to see the place in person. For all the rumor surrounding Alberti, I don't know a single label owner who's ever set foot in the place. Kent admitted this was his first time at the plant (while on tour three years ago, I'd made arrangements to "swing by".... I'd heard later that my last minute no-show had actually been considered as rude an offense as the $500 bill I'd temporarily stiffed them for). Frank appeared. His Wilfred Brimleyish mustache surpassed all expectations. Following him was Bill Alberti, the middle-aged and mannerly grandson of the company's founder. We made our introductions and ceremoniously signed the waivers. "Any injuries around here?" one of us asked in half-mock nervousness. "Welllll.... let's see," Frank said, stroking that incredible mustache. It was like seeing a famous radio DJ in the flesh. "One guy got three fingers crushed in a press a while back. That's about 2,000 pounds per square inch."
    Kent directed us into the snarled interior of the assembly room. It was a little hard to get a visual grasp on the place - stuff, stuff and more stuff sprawled in all directions, crammed into loose boxes, shoved under tables, piled around trash cans. Andy & I were directed to six tidy, narrow aisles along the east wall. "Here's your stuff," said Kent, pointing. On a certain shelf I found a neat stack of all my mothers - the solid nickel master record that the more brittle and short-lived pressing plates are born of. Almost every release I'd ever pressed was here. One aisle over we were shown the endless stacks of paper labels and pressing plates. "Isn't it kind of disturbing seeing everything at once?" asked Kent, laughing. It was. All my triumphs and all my mistakes were neatly arranged and covered in a fine layer of dust. The entire space resembled a monastic library, faithfully maintained over the eons by dedicated monks. Except for the overhead hum of fluorescent lights, the room was silent. The winter gloves had been a false alarm... we'd expected loose stacks of razor edged mothers and had instead found each sealed cleanly in its own manila envelope. Flipping through these manilas released small eddies of fetid crypt air. I felt like the world's luckiest archeologist. The relevance of particular artifacts made it a little hard to concentrate. Here and there were the very plates that had pressed some of the most significant albums of my formative years, long before compact disks were a twinkle in anyone's eye. Andy threatened to stab me with the (presumably) sharp edges of the Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables mothers. I menaced him with Flipper's "Gone Fishin'". Long Gone John of Sympathy For the Record Industry emerged from a further aisle. "I've got over five hundred titles here", he said morosely, to no one in particular.
    Behind the assembly room we found an equally spacious loading dock. Here were hundreds upon of hundreds of boxes, frozen in bankruptcy - some loaded on pallets, some buried, some loose. A bound tower of Lookout Records cartons teetered off an eye-level ledge at a crazy 45 degree angle, like part of a lame Universal Studios theme park ride. The clutter extended across the breadth of the room and continued into a second story loft, receding into darkness. Andy pointed to a series of aisles underneath the loft, also dark. Bill told us this was "mostly old stuff". We flipped the lights and gingerly started down the corridors of this auxiliary lost library. Faded boxes of labels hinted at the company's history; "Wild West Recordings of Rialto, CA", "Kick Khadafy's Butt", the "Erotic sounds of Love" series, the "Black Political Power" series. My excitement at certain Rollins Band labels paled next to Andy's near swoon at the sight of certain Nuclear Crayons labels. The timer light for this section kept shutting off, leaving us a few private moments to contemplate our immediate find as the other fumbled back to reset the switch.
   On the 19th we brought a truck. And my mandate was widened - Jade Tree, Troubleman, early Slap A Ham, a stray Mr. Lady mother. I made arrangements for more people, feeling like the begrudging spy from Our Man In Havana - slowly hiring on sub-agents to help with the dirty work. We spent the morning loading pallets. Alberti had always kept strict east coast business hours, 6AM to 2PM. I'd been told this was because Monetery Park is "a hellhole". Standing by their loading dock in the cool dawn air, surveying the hills and swaying cypresses behind the plant, I wondered why. By eleven I understood. Outside the sun was merciless, the perhaps 40 feet of loading area a scorched airport tarmac. Inside, the oxygen was flat and wrong. Bill Alberti good-naturedly chuckled at my pampered discomfort. "This is like heaven to us. When those presses start up, it gets to 110 degrees in here."
    Ken from Prank and Mike from Broken Records arrived mid-morning. They'd left San Francisco at 2AM and appeared grim. Andy and I clawed through boxes with the euphoria of those disoriented by hot manual labor. When Bill Alberti found me perched between shelves & pallet, 6 to 7 feet over the concrete floor, he politely asked if I might consider using their ladder. "No, we want to do this! We signed waivers!!" "Fifty five years and only one behanding," Andy added, giddy. "I think your safety record speaks for itself!" Later in the day, Long Gone John unearthed a dozen boxes of old Redd Foxx 7"s, pressed on the Dooto label several centuries ago. A very quiet and intense period of looting occurred until someone (me?) pointed out that we couldn't all sell these on eBay at once.
On the third day we reverted to scavenger hunts from my list. The dark loft was revealed as a graveyard of Alternative Tentacles jackets. Andy and I discussed which important mother would look the prettiest mounted on his wall and installed with one of those crafts store clock innards. On the envelope for the KRS 250 stampers I read: PUT BACK IN NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS PLATE SOMEBODY WAS LOCO. I overheard the familiar disembodied Frank voice, explaining to the telephone: "this would've been our fifty fifth year." On a Kill Rock Stars box I found a sad, hand-drawn heart, crudely crossed out with magic marker. It seemed emblematic of something. I used a lull to debrief Bill Alberti. How long had they been in this building? (Since Eisenhower.) How long had Frank worked here? (Since Ford.) Had they ever refused anything on grounds of content? (Never.) Did he listen to any of the records he'd pressed, for enjoyment? (back in the seventies). Any problems with bootlegs? (They'd been raided by the FBI thirty years ago, but CDs had made the issue irrelevant by the 80's.. "after a while the FBI wouldn't even return our phone calls.") We discussed some of the financial events that had led to the company's demise. An estate battle resulting from the death of Mr. Alberti (Bill's father and the plant owner) earlier in the year had triggered the final cash drain. But the economics of vinyl, no surprise, had been on a steady decline for the last decade. By 2001, their main customers were Mordam labels and Ebullition. And certain Mordam labels had stopped paying (he didn't mention any names and I didn't ask). "McClard always paid up front," said Bill. "He's a hell of a guy." Andy called out from the other side of the room, "what's this thing?" Bill showed us the recycler - used for removing paper labels from "remil". Andy picked up a chipped label, excited - "Hey... it's Brown Reason To Live!". Bill examined the shard, then looked up, stumped. "Is this a good record?"
    On Friday we made one last van trip. Loading finished before 2. Our repeated offers to treat Frank & Bill to lunch were bordering on the awkward. Bill hemmed and hawed and finally said he wouldn't have the time. Frank laughed and roared off on his forklift, cigarette dangling. I searched for more stray parts and found a few. A representative from a rival plant arrived, thumbing through his own inventory for different record labels (I might need to do business with him someday, so; no names). We introduced ourselves. "Our place is nothing like this", he said, nodding towards the disorder of the assembly room. "Actually, their plates and mothers were exceedingly well organized" I said, blushing at this man's terrible rudeness. Insulting Alberti at this stage seemed like head-butting a lymphoma patient. "Yeah, ok," he continued, "but... I mean, look at this place. We're nothing like this."
    Bill agreed to take us on a quick tour of the pressing station before we set out. This was the dark cavern behind the assembly room, one I'd only peered in. He hit the lights, illuminating the mechanical guts of the operation. The drama of insolvency had seemed to overwhelm Bill, but here he was in his element - a guy as versed with steam-release valve mechanics as he was with a spreadsheet. We passed sacks of shiny pellets from Keysor corp of Saugus, CA. This was Alberti's prime number - raw vinyl. I'd pictured it simmering in vats of blurpy liquid. In person, it more resembled cattle feed, bagged and unpretentious. We were shown to the record presses, large Semi-Automatic SMT's (for Southern Machine & Tool). There didn't seem to be anything automatic about these monsters. Each stood chest level, a weird jumble of pipes intersecting pipes, secured at points with 5 inch bolts that would be better suited to the bowels of a supertanker. "These cost us $70,000 apiece." Even with the overheads, the room remained a dreary and atmospheric place. Random spots of machinery were illuminated by stray beams of light strobing through the roof fans. The windows were clouded with years of calcium deposits. Nearby, a woman in a bikini gazed at us from a faded 1986 Thermoking Of Indiana calendar. "They're worth about $200 now," Bill added softly. He tugged on a jutting tube and a set of metal jaws rolled out and popped open. A faint hiss rose from somewhere deep inside the machine. He showed us where water cooled the system, where steam entered, where the plates and hot blobs of wax were inserted for pressing. I asked how many records one machine could make in a shift. "1,500 records can be pressed on one machine in any 8 hour period.... that's if there's no bullshitting around." My heart sank at the inhumanity of the work I'd commissioned without regard for labor, as if I had been ordering up an endless series of pay-per-view movies. Bill added: "This is where it really gets hot".
     I asked to use the office phone. A pang of gloom registered when I found my own name at # 27 on the speed dial. I'd lived in California for two years at this point. Why hadn't I visited earlier? Why, at the very fucking least, hadn't I sent a sympathy card when Mr. Alberti passed away? These opportunities to verify your humanity are rare and irretrievable. Clearly I hadn't been the worst financial offender (disclosure; I was, at a point in '97, a year behind in my Alberti bills. I also caught up in '98 and even prepaid for a batch of repressings, a rarity among the Mordamed. I'm not sure if this all equals out). But I had acted in collusion with every other stupid, thoughtless record label by default. It was too late.
     We shook hands out front, the van packed. Bill and I exchanged email addresses. I told him I'd send lists of AWOL plates. The sun continued to bleach cardboard in an overflowing dumpster. "Well." I paused for a moment, unsure what to say. "What now?"
     Bill shrugged. "Start over, I guess."

copyright 2001 Sam McPheeters