It was a bitch in the old days, because the only place even the band could get an instrumental or acappella was in the studio and someone had to remaster it. So, no way that was happening.
These days it’s all in DAW’s, one click and the vocal track is gone, bounce it to MP3 and there you go. Same for keeping the vocals and tossing everything else. I could do it in 5 minutes for every track I mixed easy.
If you ask politely and the artist is still trying hard to get his work out there, they might just accomodate you.
We (mobile disco) played a (big) living room birthday party once for one of the two brothers of “Two Brothers On The 4th Floor”. We were doing a vinyl night. The birthday boy spun for 45 minutes himself (great technique) and I ended up with about 8 or 9 white label vinyls of special editions they had tried but never released and or different mixes from material that was released.
In the old days I had some friends at record companies that sent me stuff from time to time. And when I worked for Juliana’s Of London, they sent out vinyl packages once or twice a month (it was always like X-mas getting those in) that often had the hottest UK tracks that weren’t available in the local markets (especially true while I was in the middle east where they were still stuck in the Michael Jackson era at the time).
Greetinx,
C.
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