The Redest & Greyest Curses

As anyone who buys records from overseas knows, international shipping costs can be kinda high. So sometimes it seems that the best way to make the order more worthwhile is to buy more stuff than you want. This way, you spend more than you planned on records and the shipping costs are higher too, but the average shipping cost per record will probably be slightly lower, giving you a small sense of victory. Of course, this is a total false economy and anyone who does this is a complete moron, but that's just the way it is sometimes.

So when I agreed a deal on the ROTP 7" (see the post below this one) I figured 'why spend $6 on shipping when I could spend $26?', and thus looked around for more records that I will never play to add some weight (and cost) to the package. Fortunately for me, Mr Private Sale happened to have a couple of Integrity LPs knocking about that I didn't have, so I happily threw more money at him and the United States Post Office.

Red vinyl, first press, 300 copies made (aka the rarest colour):

Grey vinyl, second press, 1000 copies made:

And hey presto, I'm finally up to date:

It does strike me that someone has missed a trick by not pressing a black copy of this. I mean, surely with a name like 'The Blackest Curse' the most obvious colour is black. But no. Still, we can but hope someone will fix this obvious oversight soon and give me an excuse to fritter away more money that I should be spending on a heater and kitchen flooring.

(By the way, I got these LPs with the Rain on The Parade 7", but decided to split it into two posts simply because it didn't feel right putting Integrity and Rain On The Parade together. It's definitely not that I'm trying to get my October post count up or anything)