Fastbreak 'Where It Lies' 7"

I like Fastbreak. And because of this, I have all their records. Well, I do now. But one managed to elude me for about 13 years, which is their second 7", 'Where It Lies', on Stand Hard Records. I just picked it up recently:

There were only 250 of these in total, all on black vinyl, numbered on the back of the sleeve:

Clearly numbering the back of the sleeve was deemed insufficient form of numbering, so they also numbered the paper dust sleeve as well:

Because I had never seen this before, I didn't know much about it. But the insert is interesting. It says that the four songs on this 7" were recorded for two compilations ('East Coast Assault Part 2' and a Blackout! Records compilation). I have no idea if either of those compilations ever came out or not. Anyone?

Pretty funny that this has taken me like 12 or 13 years to find. When the band were active, this was in demand and really hard to get. So I did what I always do, and decided to leave it until the frenzy died down a bit. I then got outbid on eBay several times, because I never really bid too much for this, since it was never something I was desperate to get. All of a sudden a ridiculous number of years float by, then I decide that it's stupid to still have it on my want list, spot one on eBay & think "this is the one" and then take it. And then I'm left feeling like an idiot for picking something up long, long after it came out, even though I was around at the time. I mean, seriously, what kind of moron is picking up a Fastbreak 7" for the first time in 2010 (other than 18 year old kids... who probably aren't interested in Fastbreak anyway since they've never heard of them)?

Integrity 2009 Japan Tour 7"

Did you know that Integrity played in Japan in 2009? No? Me either. But apparently they did. And to prove it, here's a tour press of a split 7" they did to mark the occasion...

This 7" is a split with a Japanese band called Creepout. I checked their myspace and these dudes kinda remind me of Fury Of Five or something. Consequently, I have no intention of ever listening to their side of the record. There are only 340 copies of this 7" in total, but there are three different sleeves (see here for a pic of all three). The version I got is the second rarest, out of 88 copies. The Manson family sleeve ties in nicely with the 'To Die For' 10" artwork.

Mine also came with a couple of stickers...

Which both have tour details on the flip side:

There are two Integrity songs on this 7". They are good. But don't just take my word for it - download them legally and for free here.

Sixteen Records for a Rainy Weekend

It's not often I get packages like this anymore:

This package contained sixteen LPs from a dude who was/is selling a collection. These records are mainly from the late 80s & early 90s, and were owned by someone from an era when records were actually PLAYED, so the condition isn't so good on a lot of them. Still, they were priced quite fairly, so I can overlook the condition, but no doubt I will want to replace some with better condition copies at some point because that's the kind of idiot I am. I'm going to run through them in alphabetical order...

Billingsgate 'No Apologies' LP. Picked this for a friend:

By The Grace of God 'Perspective' LP. I got this on blue when it came out. Nice to now have the girl's version too.

Cro-Mags 'Best Wishes' LP:

Cro-Mags 'Alpha & Omega' LP:

Down By Law 'All Scratched Up' double LP. I used to love this band, but never heard this one:

Face Value 'Coming Of Age' LP. This one is a spare if anyone wants it:

Gwar's first LP, 'Hell-o'. Used to own this one years ago but sold it.

Mighty Mighty Bosstones 12", which I wanted for the cover of 'Enter Sandman':

One Step Ahead LP, which I picked up for a friend. Such a great, and yet unknown, record:

Rocket From The Crypt 'Hot Charity' LP:

A Snuff 12" of one of their early 7"s. I used to love this band. One of the first bands I ever listened to.

Snuff 'Flibbidydibbydob' 12", which I never owned before. Only ever had a taped copy on cassette back in 1991.

Snuff 'That's Fine' 12" EP. I picked this up because I thought I traded mine away 10-12 years ago, but it turns out I still have it.

Spermbirds 'Something To Prove' LP. I picked this up because it has the song 'Americans Are Cool'. I never heard any other Spermbirds songs before, but I'm really into this LP. Probably the best of the lot in this post.

Suicidal Tendencies 'Join The Army' LP. Again I used to own this years ago & sold it.

This copy comes with a giant poster, which I didn't have with my previous copy:

Tad '8 Way Santa' LP. This copy is on Sub Pop Europe. The story with this LP is that the cover was banned. Apparently the couple on the cover objected to their image being used, so subsequent versions has a completely different cover... but only for the CD. As far as I am aware, all vinyl copies have this cover.

Not a bad haul for a Saturday morning huh?

Lard LP Test

My god, writing about this one makes me feel old! I just picked up a test press of the Lard 'The Last Temptation of Reid' LP, which came out in 1990 on Alternative Tentacles.

Here's what the regular version of the record looks like:

For anyone who doesn't know anything about this band, Lard is/was a band featuring Jello Biafra (vocalist of legendary Dead Kennedys) and and the dudes from Industrial noise metal band Ministry. This was one of the first punk/hardcore (whatever you want to call it) records that I listened to and bought, back when I was 17 years old. I probably wouldn't listen to stuff like this these days, but this album holds a special place in my heart. It reminds me of an interesting time in life. So I'm glad to have picked this up, even more so because it was cheap.

Even though this test press comes without any kind of sleeve, I can tell that this is a test of the UK pressing of this LP. How? Because it says 'A Porky Prime Cut' on the matrix. This means it was mastered by some dude in London (who you can read about HERE).

This record is from an era when vinyl was pretty much the only format, and so most records that were likely to sell more than a couple of thousand copies were pressed in multiple countries, rather than have huge volumes pressed in one country to then be shipped around the world. I've always assumed that the records pressed in the States would have a different matrix and also a slightly different sleeve (which would not include the UK Alternative Tentacles address), but admittedly this is just a guess. If anyone in the States has this record and can confirm, I'd be grateful.

Isis LP Trade

A few weeks ago I got an email out of the blue from someone who had read this blog, asking if I still had a spare copy of the first Quicksand LP (as shown on THIS POST from nearly a year ago), because if so he wanted to buy it. As it happened, I did still have it, so I asked the guy to make me an offer, which he did. I was all due to accept, but then I noticed the signature on his email and realised this guy was in a band that I have been listening to for about ten years. The band is called ISIS. You may have heard of them.

At this point, even though I had been offered a decent amount of money for the Quicksand LP, I asked whether the guy might be into trading instead of buying, and asked if he had any spare Isis records laying about. A few emails then flew back and forth as a deal was worked out. I ended up sending the Quicksand LP, a Cro-Mags LP (and also a third mystery LP which was not actually part of this trade, which I will refer to at some point in a future post) over to Los Angeles. And a few days ago, I received a couple of Isis records in return.

First up, a clear green vinyl copy of the 'Oceanic' LP:

This LP (like most Isis records) has been pressed on several different colours since it was released, but this version is part of the first pressing of this LP on Escape Artist records, released in 2002. Deep in my collection I also have this on a solid dark green marble colour. I always knew there was a clear green as well, but I don't know which is rarest. But since this is one of my favourite LPs of the past decade, I'm not overly fussed about knowing. I'm happy just to have them.

The second LP is a clear vinyl copy of the latest album 'Wavering Radient', which got released in 2009 and which I hadn't got around to picking up previously. When this came out, it sold out in about ten minutes and there were numerous different vinyl colours on different record labels. There were also then re-pressings on different colours not long after in order to satisfy the demand. I missed getting an order in for the first pressing, and because there were so many versions floating about in a short space of time, I had no clue about the pressing info. So I decided to wait until the dust had settled and then pick one up on eBay at some point. Fortunately, now I don't have to! I was given the chance to pick any one of the many colours of this thing that exist. I didn't know which one to choose, so I asked my buddy Juan, who advised me to pick the clear vinyl. Apparently this version was limited to 100 copies and could only be obtained from some record store in LA, or from the band direct. As we all know, most exclusive = best, so that was the one I plumped for and got sent.

I was also lucky enough to get my copy personalised, which is a really nice touch and makes it more special:

In case you can't read what it says from the photo above, here are a couple of close-ups:

All in all, a great parcel containing two fantastic records. This totally made my day/week/month/year. The only thing left to say now is

THANKS MIKE!

Swervedriver 'Son Of Mustang Ford' 12"

Before upgrading to the ipod about five years ago, I used to use minidisc, and before that cassettes. I would listen to music every time I left the house no matter where I was going. But no matter how many discs/tapes I used to take with me, I would find that I always ended up wanting to listen to something that I had left at home. When my minidisc player finally died and I realised I would have to upgrade to something more up to date, I began to realise the convenience of having my entire music collection in my pocket at all times, i.e. never being without anything that I may want to listen to at any moment. So I've been on a mission for the past five years to get every piece of music I own into itunes and onto my ipod. Unfortunately though, I'm still not there.

However, even though I now have over 15,000 songs on my ipod, I still keep ending up getting songs in my head that I either don't have on my ipod, or don't have in my record collection. A lot of the time, this is stuff that I used to either own or like when I was younger, but which I then got bored of and sold. So whilst my mp3 "collection" started out as just being songs that I own on vinyl, I have in recent months added to my collection a lot of songs that I used to own in a physical format, or which I just used to listen to when I was younger but never owned. And then, sometimes, when I have been listening to mp3s of something that I used to like / own years ago, I then decide that I want to own it on vinyl.

Today's entry is one such record. For some in explicable reason, I got a Swervedriver song in my head a few weeks ago. So I downloaded the four song EP on which it features. And then I found a cheap copy of the record on eBay, so I picked it up. So here it is - Swervedriver 'Son Of Mustang Ford' 12" EP:

This copy also came with some kind of press release, which is interesting because it likens the band to Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth, probably in an attempt to 'push' Swervedriver, since both of those bands were pretty big back when this came out.

I would never go as far as to say that I liked this band, and I certainly never owned any records by them. But when I was about 15/16, one of my friends was into bands like The Cure, Charlatans, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Ride & Swervedriver. At this time I didn't know much about music, and I didn't really own any records. And even though none of the aforementioned bands appealed to me musically, there was something about these records and bands that I thought was cool. I guess it was probably something to do with the fact that the average dude at school had never heard of any of this stuff. But even though something about these kinda bands appealed, the music did nothing for me. That said, I do remember my friend playing some of this stuff for me in an attempt to convince me how good it was, and literally the only thing that I liked was this one Swervedriver song. So yeah, I admitted I liked it, but I never went so far as to own the song in any format. I never even had a taped copy of it or anything.

So, given that I can't have heard this song more than five times in total, and this was circa 19 years ago, I find it kinda weird that this song just popped into my head a few weeks ago, and I could remember enough of it to decide that I wanted to listen to it. The human brain is a mysterious thing! And also, after all this, I now wonder what my old school friend (who I haven't seen or heard from since 1993) would think about me buying this record in 2010. I wonder if he even still owns all his records, and whether he carried on buying vinyl to this day?

Finally, here's a video I found on youtube for the song 'Son Of Mustang Ford'. Given that most of you won't have heard (or heard of) this band before, I thought you might find it interesting to check them out and see (and hear) what I'm going on about.

Times Together 7"

So the dude who traded me the Fired Up 7" that I wrote up in my last post happens to be in a band called TIMES TOGETHER, whose 7" was recently released by Just Another Day Records. It's a pretty rare thing these days to find a straight edge band in the UK, especially one more influenced more by Youth Of Today than AFI. Times Together are heavily and proudly influenced by the kinda bands that were on Wishingwell Records (read Uniform Choice, Unity & Insted rather than Apology!), so I took the opportunity to pick up the 7", titled 'The Changing Of The Leaves'. Red vinyl is the mailorder version and limited to 90 copies:

I also picked up some other versions:

This is a seriously good record. I have listened to this 15 times now according to itunes. A bit different to most current sxe hardcore bands. Mike said this reminded him of Ignite circa 'Call On My Brothers', and that's a pretty much spot on description I'd say. I remember when that Ignite LP came out, I played it to death. The summer of '96... a great time in my life. Here's to hoping the summer of 2010 is half as good! But yeah, if you like Ignite, Uniform Choice then I would seriously recommend checking this band out.

Oh yeah... I also got a 7" compilation called 'Youth Crew '08' at the same time, which I had never even heard of before. This has one song by Times Together, plus songs by Fired Up, True Colours, Mindset and a couple of other bands I haven't heard much of.

A nice little comp, although the cover sucks ass.

I'm sure that if Times Together were a US band they'd be signed up by React! Records by now, so I really hope that people aren't put off by the fact they're from the UK and give them a chance.

The Lost Fired Up 7"

A couple of months ago I picked up a Fired Up 7" which I thought was the final one I needed. I assembled the 7"s I had to do a group shot (you can see the post HERE). At the point I had the records laid out I realised one was missing. I frantically searched my collection for it, but couldn't find it anywhere. I then checked my collection spreadsheet, and it wasn't there either. I concluded that I never actually owned it, but must have been tricked into thinking I owned it because I had seen the thing on Mike's blog. I was annoyed that I didn't even know what I had and didn't have, and was also pissed that I was then going to have to spend time tracking one of these things down.

But then a few days later I got a comment on my blog from a dude in the UK (of all places!) saying he had a spare. So we arranged a trade, which (unlike a lot of trades) was nice and easy, and a few days later the record that I thought I picked up months previous was finally mine. I love how this thing has a plain red label. Looks really good with the yellow vinyl:

A pretty good 7" that I never planned to own 7 copies of, but seeing as I have 7, I'm now thinking that I might as well aim for 9 to complete the set. Could take a while I imagine.

2 Tests, 1 LP, an Advance, a Comp & some stickers

One of the benefits of doing this stupid blog is that sometimes people get in touch with me and offer me records that they are selling. And sometimes, I end up taking them off their hands and being stoked. So, in a way, this blog pays for itself... except, of course, the only person actually paying any money is me. So I guess what I mean is, this damn thing costs me money. Goddamn stupid blog!

Well, recently some dude called Javier got in touch with me & sent me a link to one of his many blogs (this guy seems to be involved in pretty much every blog under the sun in some way). The blog was simply a list of records for sale (and if you're smart, you can probably now find this list for yourself!). So I found a few bits that I was interested in, and then, a couple of weeks later, those very items magically appeared at my house! Here's a brief run-down of what was inside...

First up is a 7" that I didn't even know existed until a few short weeks ago. This is a Count Me Out 7" on Malfunction Records. I already had 5 versions of this 7" in different sleeves and vinyl colors, one of which I bought when it came out many moons ago, and the rest of which I picked up about three years ago over the course of a couple of months during a period when everyone seemed to be offloading CMO 7"s on eBay. But this one I had never seen or heard of before. It comes in the 'regular' Sid & Nancy sleeve and is on black vinyl:

And when you open the sleeve, it's the same as the 'regular' version except for the little bit of text in the bottom right corner:

Oh, and the back is held together by a small sticker:

Great record. I guess that's why I now have 6 copies of the thing. I think the only one I don't have is the test.

Next up, a band that have been flavour of the month from me recently. The Descendents. Seems like only last month (probably because it was) that I picked up the original pressing of their debut LP 'Milo Goes To College'. But now I have the SST grey vinyl pressing too:

And now I know the answer to the question I asked last month. The answer is no, not really:

I'm digging the SST colour pressings right now. With Chuck Dukowski selling stuff on eBay, its been interesting to see colors of records I didn't know existed, which has reignited my interest in SST releases. Hopefully there will be more coming my way in future.

This next record is has been on my want list since I first made a want list. I have been outbid on it on eBay a couple of times over the years, although never really chased it hard or bid much for it. But when I saw it on Javier's list I knew the time had come. The 'Words To Live By, Words To Die For' compilation 7" on New Age Records on yellow vinyl:

This was one of the first 7"s I got when I first discovered straight edge hardcore. What a great line-up and a great comp. I love the picture that forms the centre spread in the booklet that comes with this thing:

While I'm on the subject of this 7", it seems a good time to mention that I happen to have a spare copy of this on clear vinyl if anyone wants it. Ideally I'd like to trade, but I'll consider selling it if someone makes a fair offer. Get in touch kids!

This next record is one of those where I am convinced I am the only person in the world that cares about it. This is a 10" record by a band called Kill The Messenger. This record was released by Indecision Records back in 1999. It featured John Coyle (previously vocalist for Outspoken) on vocals and also had Dennis Remsing (owner of Conversion Records) on drums. They sounded like good era Black Flag. I love this record & still play it from time to time, so am stoked to have bagged this test press... even if it is a ten inch... and boy, do I hate ten inch records.

And just for fun, here's a picture of it next to the limited blue version that I bought when it came out:

And finally, another Indecision Records test press. This one is for the Unity 7" that Indecision re-released in 1999 (the original being the first release on the legendary Wishingwell records).

OK, so it's a test press of a reissue, but still a nice one to have none the less.

And to close out, I took of a pic of some stickers that were also inside the package:

These will be going straight into my sticker collection. But that's another story entirely...