Dramarama
Vinyl

Listening notes

Dramarama's 1991 album *Vinyl*, released on Chameleon Records (catalog number 30649), carries a title that announces its format with a kind of deadpan directness. The record spans twelve listed tracks — though the final entry, "Steve Is Here," occupies positions 12 through 99, a sequencing choice that signals something deliberately unconventional about how the band wanted listeners to experience the closing stretch of the album.

The tracklist runs a considerable length. "Train Going Backwards" clocks in at 6:16, while closer "(I'd Like To) Volunteer, Please" reaches 5:49, and "Tiny Candles" extends to 6:31 — making the album's final third its most expansive in terms of pure duration. By contrast, "In Quiet Rooms" is the album's briefest standard entry at 2:37, offering a notable compression between tracks. The opening cut, "Until The Next Time," runs 3:19, while "Haven't Got A Clue," "What Are We Gonna Do?," "Classic Rot," and others occupy the middle of the record in the three-to-four-minute range conventional to the alternative rock and pop rock genres the album is catalogued under.

The genres assigned to *Vinyl* — alternative rock, pop rock, and rock — place it broadly within the early 1990s guitar-oriented mainstream, a period when Chameleon Records was an active presence in that space.

The numbered sequencing quirk of "Steve Is Here" at positions 12 through 99 is the kind of detail that rewards collectors and close listeners alike, suggesting a band willing to use the physical format's conventions as part of the work itself — an appropriate gesture, perhaps, for a record called *Vinyl*.

*Draft only — unreviewed. All claims require fact-checker verification prior to publication.*