R'N'R / Fit For Abuse Test

When Kyle was continuing his mission to make his life simpler by selling his records on eBay a few weeks ago, I (as usual) ended up watching about 20 items... and then, a day or so before they were due to end, I (as usual) decided not to bid because all of them passed prices that I wanted to pay. Well, all except one that is. There was one record that was still stupidly cheap, so I kept watching it. And then on the final day, just before I went to bed I noticed that there was only about three hours of the auction left to run, so I sat and thought about whether I could be bothered to bid or not. The reason I was not sure about bidding is that I was not even sure that I cared about the record. So in the end, because I was not hugely bothered by it, I put in what I thought was a low bid, thinking "if I won it for that then that would be cool, but if I got outbid then I wouldn't care". Well, wouldn't you know it, when I woke up the next morning I discovered that I had won it.

This is the item in question. A test press of the Fit For Abuse / R'N'R split 7" that was released by Bridge Nine Records back in 2005:

Now, I have this split 7" in my collection. I only have one copy of it, which is the most common version. I've never been motivated to buy more copies as I just don't really rate it too highly. What I found interesting about this record when I bought it 6 years ago was that, even though I bought it for the R'N'R side (because back then I was loving the R'N'R LP) it's the band on the flipside - Fit For Abuse - whose songs are WAY better.

Anyway, even though I'm not hugely into this record, the main reason I was watching this thing is that it is on red vinyl. So what? Well, checking the B9 discography for this release, there were 19 test pressings made in total, of which 15 were black and 4 were on red. Yup, that's right - there are only 4 of these things in the whole of the known universe (although I concede that there may be more out there in a parallel universe). So I figured that this was probably just about THE most limited record ever made on Bridge Nine (although, that said, I am also aware of a green vinyl Betrayed 7" of which there are also only 4 copies known to exist), so if I had a chance to get it for cheap then that would be cool... and in the end that's what happened.

Ok, so the reason it was cheap is that the majority of people don't care about it, but it's still a nice one to have.