Jawbreaker - Crimpshrine

For those of you who weren't around in the late 90s, Revelation Records used to have a cool website which incorporated the first online record trade board. I loved it. I used to trade stuff all the time. At the peak, I think there was a time when I got records in the mail every single day for three weeks straight. Good times. Anyway, there were a few records I traded away that I figured I would be able to get back pretty easily. This one has taken me somewhere in the region of 12-15 years to reacquire. The Jawbreaker / Crimpshrine split 7".

When I first bought this, it was an easy find. A common record. That's why I let mine go. I figured it would be a piece of cake to pick up again. Then all of a sudden this became sought after and the price went up and up. And when you used to see a record for sale frequently for like $5, it is hard to justify paying $30 or more. Then it started going over $50. There was a story once that this started to become hard to find because it WAS actually pretty rare. Apparently the 7" was some kind of benefit and the money was supposed to go to some charity, but the label was keeping the money, so one of the bands destroyed 700 copies of the record, leaving only 300 of the 1,000 copies pressed. No idea if this is true or not, but it's a pretty punk rock sounding tale, so who cares if it's true or not? Well after the price reached what I used to think was a crazy level, I figured I would wait until I found a copy for a bargain price, even if that took a long time... which it did. But patience is a virtue, and this truly mint condition copy cost me $17, which I'm happy with.

This also reminded me of many years ago when I had just started collecting, and I realised that some black vinyl appeared to be clear brown if held to the light. I used to wonder whether this was some kind of secret colour that not many people knew about. Ha. What an idiot. I should have known that 'cheap & thin' was not a colour!

If you've never heard this, by the way, you should check it out. Great, exclusive songs by both bands. You can hear these songs pretty easily if you use google.