2 EVR Tests

As I said a couple of posts back, I never used to be interested in test pressings, but changed my mind about three years ago. I was mainly interested in tests if there was no limited version of the record available, or alternatively if the test was pretty cheap. Today I present one example of each...

The first one is a test press of the 90s New York band SHIFT. I always think of (and listen to) Shift around this time of year, because they have a song with the lyric "I wish it was still April, it's almost November" which to me is something that seems apt because I fucking hate this time of year. Anyway, I fell in love with this band when their first 12" came out on Equal Vision circa '94. It seemed that back then every band could be categorized as trying to sound like Sick Of It All or Quicksand. Shift fell into the latter category, but what made them interesting was that the were a three piece and they had a slightly rough, unpolished sound and consequently I played that record to death. Then, a year or so later, they brought out a full length, 'Spacesuit', also on Equal Vision. There was one of the few EVR releases for which there was no colour vinyl at all. So finally, fifteen years later, I picked up a test so I could own a "limited" version.

I've seen a few tests in my time, and know of a few US pressing plants, but until I got this I had never previously heard of Hub Servall. The name of this plant sounds to me a bit like the kind of name that someone in the 60s would have thought that people in the future would be called.

This one didn't come with a sleeve, so I dug out my regular copy to snap the test with the proper cover, for the benefit of those that have never seen it:

I also snapped this shot of the band which is on the insert.

The girl in the band is Samantha Maloney. She went on to play in Hole, Mötley Crüe and some other rubbish bands. The skinny white dude, Joshua Louka, went on to play in a band called The Big Collapse with Gavin Van Vlack. They were much better than Mötley Crüe, believe me. I have no idea what happened to the other dude though. If anyone knows, please comment.

Shift did alright for themselves in the 90s. They got signed to a major, recruited Mark Holcomb from Undertow to play second guitar and then put out another album... and then they broke up. At the time I was really disappointed, especially because they never came to the UK, which is something I am still remain unhappy about to this day. But hey, that's how it was in the mid-late 90s. No bands came to the UK.

The second test I picked up fits nicely into the 'cheap' category. This is a test of the first album by a band called The Liar's Academy, called 'No News Is Good News'. It came out on Equal Vision in about 2001. I bought the album when it came out for two reasons - firstly because it featured the singer for Cross My Heart (some wussy band that I liked), and because it was on EVR, and at that time everything they were putting out was pretty good, so I just bought everything they released as a matter of course. There were two colours of this one (blue and brown) as well as standard black. The test also comes without a sleeve.

And so, just for fun, here' the test with the regular sleeve (complete with whack artwork):

I listened to this for the first time in years and it hasn't aged too well. It also isn't very good compared to the Cross My Heart records, which I think still sound good. I guess that's why nobody was too interested in bidding on this one.