One of the first bands that I really got into back when I was young was Mudhoney. I bought all most of their records in their peak era, and then a couple of years later when I got into straight edge I decided they were hippy crap and sold everything. Then probably about 6 or 7 years after that I decided that I was an idiot to sell it all and started buying it all back. And then, in the past couple of years when I started trying to identify all the records that I REALLY wanted (as opposed to just the ones I kinda wanted) I realised that there was one Mudhoney record that I had never owned - the split 7" with Sonic Youth. This has always been one of the slightly more expensive Sub Pop 7"s. But the price has stayed pretty static over the years. But now that my income is a little higher, for me it is relatively cheaper, so I finally got around to crossing it off the list.
This was the second release in Sub Pop's original Singles Club, and was released way back in 1988. That's 22 goddamn years ago. According to John Pette's superb Sub Pop Discography, there were 3000 of these in total - 500 on clear, and 2500 on black. Being a colour vinyl nut I had to have a clear one.
This is an interesting record. Both bands cover each other's songs. Mudhoney do 'Halloween' by Sonic Youth, and Sonic Youth perform Mudhoney's slacker anthem 'Touch Me I'm Sick', with Kim Gordon (the MILF of rock, according to some) performing the vocal duties. A true classic. Shame I only just got around to picking one up in 2010. I feel like some kind of amateur.
I also bought a test press of the Fuckers 7" from the same seller. This is my first and only Sub Pop test press. I hadn't listened to this 7" in ages, and it wasn't as good as I remembered. The band was apparently (although I'm not sure it was ever formerly confirmed) the dudes from Seaweed playing garage punk in the style of the Dwarves. They also appeared to like wearing balaclavas and swearing.
Here's a pic of the regular version of the record. Note the aforementioned balaclavas.
Every time I pick up a Sub Pop release it reminds me that there are still loads more of their classic singles I never picked up. I think I need to revise my list and find some more...
4 comments:
ok, i have to know, how long did it take to take that background photo? impressive. taking out all of those records from the boxes, then the sleeves, laying them out and doing all of that in reverse order again. im guessing its 1 hour for just one photo. well done and look great. actually it looks better than great! -geoff
Hey Geoff, thanks for the positivity on the photo.
It's actually quite an old photo. It was taken about 5 years ago in 2005. At the time I was planning to do a zine about record collecting, and had an idea to do a full colour cover. The initial idea was a whole bunch of coloured records laid out, with some black records on top in an X formation, as some kind of straight edge image. However, the whole thing looked way too organised and the X looked crap. So then I decided to just randomly lay the records out and thought it looked pretty good. I had a friend with a good camera take the photos, and I think he took about 200 shots in all. In total, selecting the records (so that I had a good variety of colours), taking them out of boxes & sleeves, taking the photos & then putting them all away again probably took about 4-5 hours... and then I never ended up making the zine. I did however end up using the pic as a backdrop to my myspace page, when I had one. But recently decided that my blog was looking a bit boring, started playing with the new blogger features, and decided that a background photo would look good... and settled on the old photo again!
You can see the full image HERE
just a quick note: since i came across this blog in the summer of 2009 i have read every post of yours. i have to admit that i am not exactly a collector of hc-punk-records. however, i do share your enthusiasm for vinyl. and since i'm a huge mudhoney-fan i thought this would be the perfect chance to give you some props! keep up the good.
greetings from frankfurt.
- alexander
Thank you, Alexander! Your kind words are much appreciated.
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