- Courtesy of Stripped & Chewed
This month Chicago boutique dance label Stripped & Chewed is reissuing 2000 (And We’re Still Here), which local house veteran Merwyn Sanders released under the name Merle. For Sanders, the fact that anyone besides himself is excited about the EP is an unexpected delight. It’s certainly different than the reaction Sanders received when he released the record in late 1999. “I didn’t sell anything, I didn’t hear any response,” he says.
Sanders financed the EP himself, and pressed 300 records. He says he sent out about 50 or 100 copies either to a distributor or packaged them as promos—he can’t quite remember—and the remaining 200 sat around for several years. “I was kinda mad at the release, and I tossed most of them out just to get rid of them,” Sanders says. Handfuls of copies didn’t make it out to the Dumpster because they were mixed in with his other records.
