Memory Minus Plus Minus Repress: A Hand-Screened Necktan Edition, Plus New Clear Vinyl
Posted 09.11.2026
A misprinted jacket becomes a hand-screened tribute to a Richmond legend named Necktan. A new clear vinyl pressing arrives alongside it, both available today.
"The accident is the quickened pulse of creation. To erase it is to erase the soul of the work."
- Jean Dubuffet
- Jean Dubuffet
"Do these lips make my neck look tan?"
- Necktan
- Necktan
In the mid and late 90s, the residents of 1208 West Franklin Street in Richmond, VA ran a recurring exhibition called "Art Gone Wrong," built from discarded and salvaged art the house amassed and titled. One unsettling half-finished painting, pulled from near a dumpster, was christened "Necktan." It grew into legend, eventually becoming the Mona Lisa of 1208's Louvre, guard and velvet rope included. They even screened t-shirts with his face, incomplete lips and all.
Necktan's first record credit came a couple nights before Sleepytime Trio and Four Hundred Years left for a three month tour, when their split seven inch arrived at the house. The cover was supposed to be embossed cardstock; budget cuts left it a cheap photoshop effect instead. Rather than accept it, the bands weaponized the flaw and hand-pulled Necktan's portrait over the cover using the existing t-shirt screen.
Nearly thirty years later, history repeats. The jackets for Sleepytime Trio's Memory Minus Plus Minus repress came back with scrambled lyrics and a wrong tracklist. Instead of tossing them, the band invoked Duchamp again: two hand-pulled impressions of Necktan, in baby pink and baby blue, now sit inside the gatefold, partially obscuring the misprinted text, typos still visible beneath the ink, a neon dual-tone palimpsest. Paired with chaotic "random remnants from the factory floor" colored vinyl, the record turns its own production flaws into a celebration of failure.
For anyone who wants it clean, there's an alternative: a new clear vinyl pressing, released alongside the Necktan edition, commemorating an early Sleepytime 7" that famously listed Drew's AOL email in the credits. The email doesn't work anymore. These records do.
Get Memory Minus Plus Minus, in either version, here: sleepytimetrio.bandcamp.com
