Royal Trux : Classic or Dud ?

What are those, like, first-week numbers?

nope.

Total US Soundscan.

As of what date? You’re telling me Accelerator has only sold 6500 copies in 20 years?

sounds about right

Wikipedia sez there are 4,360 Title IV colleges/universities in the U.S.; so only 1.5 copies has sold per college since '99?

not shocking, theyre like the definition of a band that's talked and written about disproportionately to their actual # of fans

i too find those numbers astonishing. i bought cats & dogs new, so i guess I'm included in that number! crazy.

How many copies has, like, Slanted & Enchanted sold?

wikipedia says about S&E: As of 2007, the album has sold 150,000 copies.

sooo probably at least up to 200,000 by now? maybe more?

As of 2015:

Studio albums/EPs:
Slanted and Enchanted (1992, did not chart; 2002 reissue No. 152): 292,000
Watery, Domestic EP (1992, did not chart): 38,000
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994, No. 121): 357,000
Wowee Zowee (1995, No. 117): 179,000
Brighten the Corners (1997, No. 70): 190,000
Terror Twilight (1999, No. 95): 116,000

Compilations:
Westing (By Musket & Sextant) (1993, did not chart): 71,000
Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement (2010, No. 170): 30,000

source: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/02/03/383507767/unfinished-business

(also includes Pixies & Sleater-Kinney)

The numbers for those other bands are pretty much what I would have expected... it's startling to me that Trux's sales are so dramatically lower.

I feel like Trux has always been way more niche than a lot of those other bands

Surprised to hear they were outsold that much by early Smog

What's astonishing to me is that anyone who's ever actually heard a Royal Trux "song" could be surprised at their sales figures.

haha i love em but yeah

Seriously, we're in "Why didn't Boredoms' Pop Tatari go platinum?!? They were on a major label!" territory here.

Royal Trux was always incredibly niche yeah, i mean even compared to some others mentioned upthread like Jesus Lizard (who appeared on some soundtracks and who certainly had a name that people were familiar with). i think their personalities are so strong and their image is so potent that they feel bigger than they actually ever were.

I never said I thought they should go platinum. I said I'm surprised that their albums only sold btw. 5k-10k copies.

Love hearing these kinds of stats. It is a surprise to me that Accelerator isn't the biggest selling Trux. The other surprise (welcome in my case)is that Slanted and Enchanted has comfortably outsold Wowee Zowee and most other later period Pavement records. I think this is for one reason. It is better.

My point was about their sales relative to early Smog. I would have assumed that Royal Trux had a higher media profile and visibility to what Bill Callahan was managing when he was putting out I Am Star Wars etc.

Does Soundscan track all sales? There may be indie store sales missing, which could be a decent additional percentage for Royal Trux but it’d be the same for other artists highlighted so all relative.

Also mail order sales via Drag City (which is how I was buying DC product for a period, though I imagine it doesn't account for a massive % of sales)

And yes, I'm also surprised specifically that Bill Calla-who? outsells RTX

I'm amazed to see Bill Callahan is playing Edinburgh's Usher Hall this year, which holds 2,200.

Soundscan, like any sales tracking in this world, is imperfect.
That said, we're comparing their Soundscan to other band's Soundscan #s, so, it's illuminating even if just in relation.

(Pop Tatari scanned around 11k btw)

For Pussy Galore related artists, they did way better than Action Swingers!
Decimation Blvd. sold less than 750.

(that record is p cuckoo - every song sounds exactly alike and they mostly start off in the exact same way)

Please look up The Red Krayola’s Amor and Language (Drag City) and Run On’s Start Packing (Matador)

Haha, pretty sure I bought "Cats & Dogs" on cassette the week it came out, and to date it's the only Royal Trux I ever owned.

I saw a crazy Run On bill c. "Start Packing." It was Elliott Smith (solo) opening for Run On opening for Will Oldham (solo). I wonder how many records Palace, etc. has sold?

I was just wondering about Palace, as a comparison point. I’m still flummoxed by those Trux numbers.

It makes it all the more remarkable that Virgin signed them for a 3-album deal... their sales leading up to that were like a rounding error to a major label.

How many copies of Bleach did Nirvana sell before they were signed to DGC?

40k acc. to SubPop

https://web.archive.org/web/20110606040005/http://www.subpop.com/channel/blog/20_year_old_bleach

...and iirc, Nevermind initially shipped 50k (all without "Endless Nameless")

I really don't think those Royal Trux numbers could possibly be correct.

where is sic when we need him? surely he would have input here

any truxters here ever tried decrypting the song arrangements of Kool Down Wheels or Yin Jim? I'm a big Infinitives nerd and those songs bog my mind. No clue if there's like an obscured structure behind the haze or if it's intentionally drunk.

They are correct. Via Soundscan. Just US though, not international.

Amor and Language is just over 600.
Run On just over 1300.

Palace did 20-30K on their biggest, topping out at 29-32K with There Is No One... and Days In the Wake.

Maybe it's real! it is really strange to scroll through a bunch of Royal Trux tracks on Youtube and see about 100 views. It is crazy to think about the roster of early Drag City! I mean I guess it's not crazy, lots of labels started obtuse and stayed obtuse and just never became what Drag City became I guess

So did sales of Palace and Pavement CDs effectively subsidize the cost of releasing stuff that only sold a few hundred copies?

Man, I haven't thought about Decimation Boulevard in forever. That was indeed an interesting record.

I've brought this up on a few threads, but iirc it took 25 years for Never Mind the Bollocks to go platinum in the US. 25 years, for one of the most iconic, written-about bands and (major label!) albums of all time! I can only imagine what Big Star has sold, or Eno records, or the VU., or the Ramones, etc.

I don't really know how to type this in any tone that isn't an Eeyore voice but... I don't think that is what the future has in store for Royal Trux

Now I’m wondering how many copies were sold of the REALLY obscure-seeming records that I love.

@morisp - ask!

So many of these records (Decimation Blvd. included) got played daily for months at the warehouse that I worked at back then that they all seemed like big hits to me. I hated a lot of them at the time, but now they're warm memories. haha Color me as surprised as anyone else with the low numbers!

Even Crunt (3.6K) was almost as popular as Royal Trux!
All those Didjits records back then sold 1-3K.
Looks like their popularity was most similar to Gastr Del Sol, who sold between 3-10K.

oops - morrisp

Yeah it’s always fascinating to see sales figures for bands like this.

I think part of the thing that makes RT sales seem lower than you might think is how divisive they were/are. Like despite how much thy were written & talked about, even among the niche group of people who know them, doesn’t mean that they all actually them (& like them enough to buy records, at that)

*”they all actually like them”, that is

Mr. Raffles — how about:

Kissyfur, Frambuesa (Starlight Furniture Co., 1995)
Chevy Heston, S/T (Cherrydisc, 1994)
Lync, These Are Not Fall Colors (K Records, 1994)

Btw, were most small record stores truly participating in SoundScan by the mid-‘90s? Could there be a whole strata of mom & pop, college-town sales not being captured by these numbers? Just curious...