Beta Minus Mechanic LP Test

Do you ever feel that there is a record that nobody else in the world except you cares about? I get that feeling quite often. I mean, there are god knows how many records from the 90s that hardly anybody gave a shit about when they were released, so the number of people who even remember a lot of them, let alone still feel bothered about owning or listening to them, is pretty low. And here's a prime example...

A couple of months ago, there was a bunch of stuff auctioned on ebay to help raise some money for a good cause - a school in Sacramento, CA. I don't know too much about how this cause got linked with hardcore, but basically some labels (such as Revelation, React! and Smorgasbord) donated some records for the school to auction on ebay as a way of raising some dough.

One of those items was a test press of the Beta Minus Mechanic 'Disassembly Required' LP. This album was released by Revelation's 'sister label' Crisis Records back in about '98 or so. I bought it because they had a 7" a year or so before which I really loved. But as soon as I saw the listing, I knew that I would get this thing, since I was super confident that nobody else in the world would care. On a normal day, I would guess that I would be the only person bidding, even if the starting price was 1 cent, but given that these auctions were highly publicised and likely to attract a lot of attention, I thought that maybe if there was one other person in the known universe that likes this album, they might spot the auction and force me into some kind of bidding war.

In the end though, the only other person in the world who likes this album was only willing to pay $15, which meant that I won it for $15.50. I was pretty happy with this, since it was well under my max bid of $56. It's not often one gets a bargain on eBay, but it sure is satisfying on the rare occasion when it does happen. Interestingly, this LP ended up being about the cheapest item in the whole charity auction. Even the Himsa 7" test went for way more than this for some reason, proving without doubt that nobody except me has any taste.

As expected, the test did not come in a sleeve, so the photos are a bit boring.

Interesting that one side looks like a marker vomited. I wonder what got written on the label originally that needed crossing out so forcefully?

For those of you who don't know about this band (which is probably all of you!), this band were from Syracuse, NY and had some vague connections to the vegan sXe scene that took over the world from there in 1993. One dude in the band was also in Earth Crisis and another dude used to be in Green Rage. However, Beta Minus Mechanic sounded about as far apart from these bands as you can get. For starters, the singer was a girl, and secondly, the music was melodic... although at times heavy. The reference point used at the time was Verbal Assault, and I still think that's a fair comparison.

Here's a couple of pics of the regular version of this record:

Also, here's something interesting.. the thanks list. Notice the second name:

Yes, Rob Moran / Crisis Records. In case you're unfamiliar with the name, Rob is/was the bass player for Unbroken. He temporarily ran Crisis Records in the late 90s, bringing to the world such bands as Chinchilla, Will Haven & Shai Hulud. Oh dear. Anyway, chances are I'll be meeting up with this chap tomorrow evening and I'll be sure to ask if he has a test of this for himself and, if so, how much he thinks he might get for it on ebay.