By The Grace Of Black God

Back in June last year I picked up a test press of the second Black God 7", imaginatively titled 'II'. At the end of the post I said 'I see this as the start of another collection. The objective is to get test presses of all 4 of the Black God 7"s'. Well, nine months later and here's my second one, which is actually the first one:

Granted, this isn't much to look at. But neither was the other one. So it's nice to have consistency if nothing else.

I'm still hoping I can eventually get tests of the third and fourth 7"s too, and ideally for a similar price.

Well, on a related note, I also finally managed to get a blue vinyl copy of the By The Grace Of God '3 Steps To A Better Democracy' 7". This was originally issued as a CD EP with very DIY packaging. I actually purchased the CD when it came out back in 1999. Then twelve years later it was repressed as a 7", with 100 copies on blue vinyl.

I didn't even know this existed until a couple of years ago when I saw this band play in London. As is often the case, I was stoked after the show and did the inevitable 'go to discogs and see if anyone is selling any records' manoeuvre, at which point I spotted that this record existed. At the time I spotted a blue vinyl copy and bought it, only to receive a black vinyl copy in the post.

The crazy thing was that the seller was the label, and the item for sale was described as 'blue vinyl'. But when I got in touch to point out he'd accidentally sent me a black copy, dude's response was something like 'I don't have any blue copies left - those sold out years ago'. He didn't seem to realise that he had listed the item as being blue, but despite this being clearly his fuck up, he was expecting me to pay to return the incorrect item to him. Fool. Anyway, so was born my policy of 'never buy from discogs unless you get photos first'.

Black Seaweed Tragedy

I placed my first ever order with No Idea Records recently to pick up a couple of 7"s that Juan had drawn my attention to a while back on the They Still Press Vinyl blog.

The first is the recent Seaweed 7". I guess No Idea convinced them to reform and record a couple of new tunes. The songs themselves are ok. More like the last couple of Seaweed records than the first couple. It's Seaweed though. The record itself is on green vinyl and in a nice die cut sleeve. Not sure why it has a train on the front, but hey, I'm not knocking it. Looks great.

The other record I wanted to pick up was the debut 7" by Black God. Made up of dudes who have been in Black Cross, Black (aka Young) Widows, By The Grace of God and Endpoint. Black God has Rob Pennington on vocals but the songs are short blasts, and damn good they are too.

I also added the second Cheap Tragedies 7" for good luck. You know how it is... you can't just buy two records. This one comes third in more than one sense.

Test II

Not much of a story to this one. I was browsing eBay and came across this test press for the second Black God 7", entitled 'II'. I won it as the only bidder and snagged it for $10. Good job, Captain!

I thought it was pretty cool that I appeared to get number 1 out of 10 too. But then I saw ANOTHER copy for sale on eBay which wasn't numbered at all. Which makes me think there are probably more than ten. Which made this one then seem less cool than I first thought.

I see this as the start of another collection. The objective is to get test presses of all 4 of the Black God 7"s. Kinda funny as I don't even own the third or fourth 7"s at all yet. Once again I'm probably setting my sights unrealistically high...

Record Store Bank Holiday

It's not often I go to record stores these days. I don't really live near to any, but even if I did, I probably wouldn't find the time to go much anyway. But sometimes, when I do have some time, it's fun to flick through the racks in the hope of finding something cool.

Well, I got an email recently from a dude who had read this blog and told me about the record store he worked in which wasn't too far from me. The shop is called All Ages Records and is based in Camden. I went there once back in about 2003 and was not very impressed, given that it had a tiny vinyl section and was mainly CDs. I didn't even know it was still open to be honest, although the fact that it does must mean that enough people do know it's there. Anyhow, on last week's rainy Bank Holiday Monday I jumped in the car and went into London for the day, with the store forming one item on my day's itinerary.

It's probably a good thing that I'm not too close to any physical stores, because this trip showed how easy it is to spend money. Here's a summary of what I picked up:

First up, the new album by The Alligators. This is dude from Agnostic Front and dudes from Insted. I got the two 7"s that Indecision Records put out a few years ago. They were pretty good, so I was keen to pick up this album. No idea on the pressing info. I would guess this colour is the more common variation, but I'm not overly fussed as the other colour looks horrible.

Next, a 7" on Hydrahead Records by a band called Black Face. I still haven't actually got around to listening to this yet, but it sounds (and looks) promising, as you can see:

Next up, three more additions to the Black Flag colour vinyl collection. I've been meaning to order the latest colour vinyl pressings of the LPs for a while but just not got around to it. So it was cool to be able to pick two of them off at one go without ordering from the States. 'Slip It In' on both grey and green vinyl:

And here's the 'TV Party' 7" on orange. This was the last of the four 7"s that were pressed on colour vinyl last year that I was missing.

Next, the second 7" from Louisville supergroup Black God. There were a lot of different colours made for this one. I don't feel the need to own more than one copy of this one as I know there are many variations available, and the band doesn't excite me enough to make me want to buy THAT many records. Stoked on this colour though. Crystal clear always looks good.

This next one is a funny one. This is a 7" by a band called GUILTY on Six Feet Under Records. Dude played it in the shop for me. It's pretty heavy, but what sold it to me was the grunt in the first song. I challenge you to name one song where the vocalist fills a moment with a grunt that isn't good. Yeah, that's right, there isn't one. Sold.

And talking of SST Records colour vinyl reissues, here's Husker Du's 'New Day Rising' LP on grey. Husker Du are a band I have always wanted to like more than I do. My introduction to them was a song on the first Blind Skateboards video back in 1991 or so. Out of love for that song I have tried several times to get into them in the past. Seeing the record on the rack in front of me made me want to give them another go. I mean, I only started liking Descendents about three years ago, so there's still a chance...

And finally, a reissue of the Scream 'This Side Up' LP. I must have missed that this got made, as I was happily buying Dischord colour represses for the past few years. Maybe I missed a couple? I'll have to check. But this one looks great with the silver sleeve and clear vinyl. Good job.

I think if I lived closer to Camden I'd definitely go check out All Ages Records more often. My bank account, however, is probably glad that I don't.

Under The Lost Smile

A few months ago I was doing my usual round of eBay searches when I came across a great little find. I came across a test press of an album called 'Under The Lost Smile' by a band called Empathy. I've had the record in my collection since it came out way back in 1995 and I'm pretty sure that I had never seen a test press before. I'm not sure how much I would have paid for it if it had been an auction, but the one thing I knew is that I was more than happy to throw down the $15 required to 'buy it now'. Easy.

The record is as most test presses were in the 90s. A black record with plain labels in a white paper sleeve. No frills.

I'm not sure whether anyone reading this will either know or remember this band, but I always enjoyed this record. The band were from Detroit although for some reason in my head I always thought that they were from Louisville. I suppose because they had a split 7" with a band called Empathy (who actually were from Louisville) and they seemed similar to Endpoint in a ball park kinda way, with their songs straddling 'emo' and 'hardcore'. Oh yeah, and also there was a dude in this band called Jay Palumbo who later went on to play in two Louisville bands (By The Grace Of God and Elliott). So kind of easy to see how I got mixed up.

The interesting thing about this one is that I then discovered that there ust be two different test presses that exist. Upon taking my other copies of this record out for a group photo, I did what I often do with test presses and I compared the matrix of each. At this point I realised that the two other copies I have are actually different to each other.

As you can see, I have two other copies of this record. The black vinyl copy comes in a normal card sleeve with cover art whilst the other ia a green vinyl promo tour version. You can actually see the difference between the records in this photo if you check the amount of dead wax in the middle of each black record. The test press has less dead wax, and it turns out is the same as the green vinyl version (even though this is not visible in the photo). So all I can conclude from this is that this test press is of the version that was then pressed on green vinyl. The normal black version is different, so was pressed from a different stamper, which means that there must have been another test press. This seems pretty obvious, although the reasons for this are completely unknown.

Anyway, there you go. Some great information that absolutely nobody needs. Glad to be of service.

2015: Words Are Not Enough

So 2015 is done, and thank god. On a personal level, it wasn't the greatest year for me. But at least keeping the blog going didn't seem like too much of a chore this year either for some reason. The main problem was just trying to spread out the records, as I only received two big parcels from my friend in the States (one in April and one in September) and that was it. I mean, I bought a few bits myself, but 95% of my records came in two deliveries which I then spread over the year in terms of blogging. Long gone are the early days of this blog when I posted about something on the day I acquired it. Anyway, my aim is always to do ten posts a month, which is 120 for the year, and I just about managed to achieve it despite a very slow start with barely any activity in the first four months.

In terms of the number of records I acquired this year, I picked up 220, which represents a 17% reduction from last year's 264.

The number of 7"s was down by 14%, from 113 last year to 97 this year. The number of 12"s was also down, by 20% from 151 to 121. The number of 10"s, however, was up by infinity percent, from zero to an incredible TWO (one of which I kinda wish I didn't buy at all, but never mind). The next graph shows the monthly profile, although to be honest it doesn't really mean much these days, as it's more when the records hit the blog rather than when I picked them up. But it's kind of a tradition at this point.

Looking at it this way, it seems weird that August was the pinnacle of blogging activity. I mean, in theory it was summer, and has never has been a high point of posting before. I can't even remember why this was the case. I think I was probably trying to get everything up before the next delivery arrived from the States at the start of September.

TOP 10 NEW RELEASES IN 2015

For once it seemed that there were a lot of cool new releases in the year. I think this was the first year that I bought so many new releases that I was spoilt for choice to come up with a top ten. After way too much consideration, this is what I came up with as a list of my favourites:

Note - The photo doesn't put them in order of preference. It was simply arranged in the way that seemed to reflect the least amount of light. If you need someone to blame then I'd suggest December's daylight hours and the positioning of the windows in my house.

One thing I noticed when I got the records out to take this photo was that they all had either black or white covers. Turnstile were the only band who used any colour on their cover (well, Into Another & Done Dying did too, but their colours were pretty dark so I'm conveniently ignoring them). Anyway, if I were forced to put these records into an order of preference, this would be it:

01. Chain Rank 'Up Against The Wall' LP - the best release this year by a country mile. Short blasts of Boston HARDcore that somehow didn't seem to contain DFJ or CC.

02. Into Another 'Omens' 12" - Twenty years after their last release they came back, and sounded better than ever. This only loses points because there were only five songs.

03. Fade 7" - this 7" sparked a small obsession with this band for me towards the end of the year. So rad that this band is british. Hopefully I will get to see them play one day.

04. Sweet Jesus 'You Destroy Yourself' LP - I played this LP a lot before the vinyl landed. Because, let's be honest, nobody could have waited THAT long to hear this.

05. Title Fight 'Hyperview' LP - this actually came out on my birthday, and marked a change in sound for the band that I really enjoyed. This was my most listened to record on holiday this year laying on the beaches of southern France.

06. Turnstile 'Non Stop Feeling' LP - goddamn, this is a good LP from quite possibly the biggest hardcore band in the world right now, but why did they have to shove it in one of the worst covers of all time?

07. Stick Together LP - this was a bit of a slow burner for me, but once I got into it I loved it. Seems most other people forgot about this band though.

08. Violent Reaction 'Marching On' LP - a british band on Revelation is certainly worthy of celebration. I don't think this was as good as the last LP, but I still ended up playing it loads.

09. Done Dying LP - a great debut LP from a bunch of veterans. What I love about this guys is that they're still cracking out new music, unlike most of their generation who are still touring records that came out 25 years ago.

10. Blacklisted LP 'When People Grow, People Go' LP - I was a little sceptical about a new Blacklisted LP, but I shouldn't have been. This sits somewhere between their last two, and made my iphone crash not once but twice.

THE YEAR'S TOP PICKUPS

Aside from new releases, I was pleased with the year in records. I picked up some pretty rad items. My favourites are the ones in this photo:

For those of you with poor eyesight or recognition skills, the photo contains:
7 Seconds 'The Crew' LP on blue vinyl
Faith 'Subject To Change' LP on red vinyl
Godspeed 'Swimmers Ear' 12" test press
Swiz 'Down' 7" test press
Jawbreaker 'Whack & Blite' 7" on grey vinyl
Vision 'Undiscovered' 7" on green vinyl
Bold 7" on pink vinyl
Rain 'La Vache Qui Rit' 12"

2015 WANTS LIST ATTACK

When the year started I decided to try to make a big dent in my wants list. Now, that may sound like a stupid thing to say, but a lot of the items on my wants list have been there for years. For some reason, I seem to spend most money and time picking up stuff that isn't on my wants list at all, so the damn thing never gets any smaller. As I'm not getting any younger, I decided to try to reduce the size of the list this year. Overall I did ok, but not great. I picked up 24 items, which averages two per month, although I have to admit that I had hoped to cross off more. I probably shouldn't complain though as some of these were long-standing wants. Here's the full list of items I crossed off, in alphabetical order:

01. Admiral 7" on Soulforce Records
02. Avail 'Front Porch Stories' LP on red vinyl
03. Black Flag 'Six Pack' 7" on baby blue vinyl
04. Bold 7" on pink vinyl
05. Cave In / Piebald split 7" on pink vinyl
06. Coalesce 'Functioning On Impatience' 12" on purple vinyl & orange vinyl
07. Comeback Kid 'Turn It Around' LP on white vinyl
08. Dirt Merchants 7"s x 2
09. F.U.'s 'Kill For Christ' 12" on X-Claim!
10. Faith 'Subject To Change' 12" on red vinyl
11. Floorpunch 'Division One Champs' 7" with NJ/DC cover
12. Harvest 'Living With A God Complex' LP on orange vinyl
13. Integrity / Creepout Split 7" Japanese press with hand numbered sleeve
14. Integrity 'Black Heksen Rise' 7" on Indie Recordings on white vinyl
15. Jawbreaker 'Whack & Blite' 7" on grey vinyl
16. Life's Halt 'Demo' 7"
17. Mind Eraser 'Teenagers' 7"
18. No Warning 7" on purple vinyl
19. Rain 'La Vache Qui Rit' 12"
20. Samiam 'I Am' 7" on clear vinyl
21. Soundgarden 7" on Sub Pop on purple vinyl
22. Statement 7" on blue vinyl
23. Supertouch 'Lost My Way' 7" with RSD elephant cover
24. Vision 'Undiscovered' 7" on green vinyl

There were two others I picked up which are still sitting in the States waiting to be shipped, so unfortunately they don't count. They'll wait until next year though...

The funny thing is that I've just spent a little time revising my wants list, which means adding more items on, so in total the list has actually got longer this year. #fail

OTHER STUFF I LISTENED TO A LOT

Sometimes I listen to stuff that I don't have on vinyl. Or I get into stuff too late for it to qualify as a new release. Or I get impatient and download a new release without having the vinyl. So here's a list the other stuff that I spent a lot of time listening to in 2015.

Life Of Agony 'River Runs Red' LP
Life Of Agony 'Ugly' LP
Flight Of The Conchords 'S/T' LP
Flight Of The Conchords 'I told You I Was Freaky' LP
ALL 'Allroy Saves' LP
Jaguarz 'Jungle Jamz' 7"
Mutoid Man 'Bleeder' LP
Neck 'Should My Fist Eye' LP
Smashing Pumpkins 'Gish' LP
Higher Power demo & 7"
Negative FX LP
Shockwave discography
True Identity Demo
Unborn 7"

AND FINALLY...

If you've read this far then here's an extra visual treat for you. I decided to put a pic of every record I picked up this year into video format. If you missed any posts this year and can't be bothered to go back and read them, this is the format for you. Enjoy...

Every Day I'm Hustlin'

Generally in life I am a very disciplined person. I don't drink, don't smoke, exercise regularly, and only allow myself some foods that I like once a week. I make sure to eat fruit and vegetables, cut out sugar wherever possible, walk up the stairs at work, drink water regularly, blah blah blah. You get the picture. However, other areas of my life can be the opposite, and music is one. At times I am a total addict.

A couple of weeks ago Mike posted about the new Gentleman's Pistols LP 'Hustler's Row'. It came out last month and is their third LP. Funnily enough, I turned him onto the band in the first place, never got around to picking up their second LP at all, so when I realised there was a third LP I was a little 'meh'. I kinda figured that this was not really a sound that interested me anymore, and in my mind filed this band under 'old news'. Still, I figured it only worth giving them a chance, so I downloaded the album. The next day I was at work, in an office on my own, and decided to play it. I then ended up playing through four times in a row. Then I played it on the train on the way home. Then again once I got home. Holy crap, six plays in a row. And the next day, as soon as I woke up, I wanted to hear it again. I then realised I needed to own a copy before the limited white vinyl sold out.

Apparently the label usually press 800 colours of each release, but for this LP there is only one limited colour, being white. The rest are black. There are 300 white and god knows how many black. Kinda reminds me a bit of the olden days.

Well, my addiction lasted a full two weeks, during which time I listened to nothing else. I've just come out of it and have listened to other stuff this week as well. Whether I keep playing this over the next few months will remain to be seen, but for now I'm so stoked to have this band back in my life. This isn't my usual cup of tea, but man, you can't deny how damn catchy these songs are.

Hang Up Your Boots

Part 5 in my series of posts of stuff I picked up from a friend who was selling his collection last year, and I was pretty keen to finally get the remaining copies of the Right Brigade / A Poor Excuse split 7" that I was missing. This is one of those records that I never really set out to collect, but over the years I ended up picking up copies as they fell in front of me, to the point where I had 6 copies. So I figured I may as well buy three more...

First up is the test press. This is numbered out of 25 copies. According to the B9 discography there were 3 test presses that came without a cover too, but even though those are technically rarer, I'm happy to have one of the copies with cover.

Next is the Oron Cross cover, numbered out of 69 copies. It was originally made so that the band had copies to sell when they played with a reformed version of the Cro Mags back in the year 2000. My god, the year 2000 seems so long ago now.

And finally, the clear yellow vinyl, which is the common colour from the 2nd press being out of a whopping 750 copies.

This now means that I have a (nearly) complete collection of this record. So of course I had to get them all out and lay them down for a quick snap before they get banished to a box forever.

Technically I am one record short of a complete collection here because there is a black vinyl copy in a regular sleeve, but I never collect those. Yet after just checking the pressing info, I am half tempted to go after one, as it is actually rarer than pretty much all of the colour copies, due to the number of limited covers that the black vinyl copies got sold with.

Blue Are One

Hot on the heels of the Underdog 7" that I picked up a couple of months ago, I now find myself crossing yet another longtime blue vinyl 7" want off the list. This time, it's the Unity 'You Are One' 7". Wishingwell Records number one, no less.

So I guess that right now would probably be a good time to admit that I've never really understood which side of the sleeve is supposed to be the front cover. In my opinion, the side pictured above featuring the photo of the dude sitting under the tree is the front cover. This is based mainly on the logic that it features the name of the record, which as we all know is usually located on the front.

So, if I'm saying that the photo above is the front, then by process of elimination, the next photo must be the back:

The reason that I think that this side is the back is because it contains the song titles in the bottom right corner. I mean, whoever heard of putting the song titles on the front? That would be stupid.

Seems pretty straight forward, right? The front's the front and the back's the back. Well, maybe. But the confusion for me comes from the fact that about 99% of pictures I see of this record show the cartoon, x-d up dude side of the cover. So? Well, to me that just suggests that 99% of people think that side is the front. If they thought the other side was the front then they'd take a picture of the other side. Also, when Indecision Records re-released this back in 1999, they used the cartoon dude side as the front cover, although the got rid of the text box containing the song titles because, as we know, putting the song titles on the front would be stupid.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear which side you think is the front, if for no other reason than to confirm I am right.

Moving on, I was conscious that the photos above make the blue vinyl look a little darker than it actually is, so I plonked it next to the window so as to show that it really is quite a light blue.

Next we move on to the issue of the insert. And again, there's a mystery to solve. As you may know, this 7" usually comes with one of two inserts. Apart from my black vinyl copy, that is, which comes without either! But in some bizarre twist of fate, this copy comes with two inserts - one of each version.

On the right, the one with the Unity written in a weird font at the top. It features pics of the band on the other side. And at the bottom, the one which has the lyrics condensed into 60% of the paper on one side, and a pic of the band on top of a building on the reverse.

Once again, I have no idea what the deal is. The 'Die Hard' insert seems to more commonly be paired up with the later pressing of the 7" (the one on black vinyl with red labels). But checking popsike, it seems pretty much all versions of the 7" can come with any version of the insert. In theory, the 'Die Hard' insert is for a later pressing and should never come with the first press blue vinyl record. But there are two that do. So god knows.