Sick Of It All

I have pretty much every piece of Revelation Records colour vinyl there is, save for a small handful of variations of the newer releases that I missed. One that I never owned is the Sick Of It All 7". Until now.

Actually, that is not true. I did own it for approximately 24 hours back in about 1994. I bought one from some dude at a two day hardcore festival in Bradford. I think I paid £10-15 for it, which back then was a lot of money. Then I took it home and played it, and it skipped. I wasn't happy about this, so the next day I took it back to the dude and forced him to take it back and give me a refund. If I would have known that it would take me 14 years to get another, I probably would have just kept it. I mean, as if it matters that it skips. Clearly, these things aren't meant to be PLAYED :o)

So last week I saw one for sale on eBay uk, which looked to be selling at a low price. I think that the reason is that the description said it had no lyric sheet. I can't think why else people wouldn't bid. This thing usually sells for about £40, but I won this copy for £6.50. For any American readers, that's about $13. Which is pretty cheap by today's standards.

So it came today in the mail, and it's the coolest thing ever. I had never seen one like this before. It's red but with black speckles all over it. According to Jordan who released this record, "Most of the speckled copies didn't have the black as even distributed as that". Which, in case you're wondering, means that this copy is pretty unique.

I scanned it in because I thought that the black speckles would show up better using a scanner, but then I was conscious that it almost looked like a photoshop creation. So rather than have people think I made the picture on my computer, I also took photos, so you can see both. Here are the results:

The only thing I wasn't particularly happy with is the sleeve. It's a crappy photocopied version. I know that the red copies came in a regular, glossy sleeve with glued tabs, and they were numbered. But not so with this copy. I emailed the seller on ebay, and she tells me that it was bought at Selectadisc in Nottingham when it came out, and is 100% legit. I have no reason to not believe this. So I'm guessing that it was made by Revelation when they ran out of proper covers, although Jordan can't actually remember, so I guess nobody will ever know the story behind the sleeve variations.

What is interesting about this sleeve is the absence of the Revelation logo. Notice - no R in a star. So not a copy of a later pressing.

Anyway, regardless of how legit the sleeve is, the record itself is cool as hell and I paid next to nothing for it, meaning that today was a good day... which makes a nice change for a Monday.