Tuesday 31 May 2016

My World Be Free

A little over a month ago I had a parcel go missing. Inside was 98 records, a mix of old and new, rare and not so rare. The last month has been a roller coaster of emotions, but I'm now finally coming to terms with it. The parcel is officially lost and the records are gone. Fuck it.

Bizarrely, one of the records I was most excited about was the debut album by World Be Free, which came out at the start of the year. A friend had kindly picked me up a copy with a limited sleeve made for their tour in February, and I was looking forward to it. The band's logo is rad and I loved that the tour sleeve looked like a Chung King tribute. I also had the regular green and orange vinyl copies in the box too, which I was less fussed about. Well, that was until I realised that the first press was now completely sold out. Then replacing them became pretty urgent as I figured that I may still be able to find them in distros for relatively cheap.

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that the labels used on this LP matches the labels on the Warzone LESC 7". As do the vinyl colours. It's details like that which can only really be appreciated by true Rev nerds.

The green vinyl wasn't too easy to track down. There were 553 copies of this made, and being the limited colour, this version was only sold by Rev and a couple of distros in Europe that order from Rev in bulk. Come mid May there were no labels or distros selling this as new, so I had to go to Discogs and pay double what I paid the first time around.

The orange was slightly easier to find. With 1,354 copies made, I was able to find a distro that still had copies available for new price, which was good.

This best bit about this release, aside from the crazy characters on the back cover, is the photos on the insert. When your band is made up of old dudes who have been in bands for years, and who are probably looking a little past their best, then why would you use current photos when you can just dig out pictures from back in the day? Ha!

Back when this came out I was hugely underwhelmed. But I gave it a few tries and in time found myself enjoying it. It's quite catchy stuff... although not immediately catchy. Definitely worth persevering with if you have the patience.

There's now a second press of this available, and it sticks with the Warzone vinyl colour theme. But it's not about the ones you have. It's about the ones that got away, and it's gonna take me a fair amount of time (and money) to find a replacement for my lost tour press. Fucking parcel losing cunts.

Sunday 22 May 2016

1000th Post

I realised a few weeks ago that I was getting close to my thousandth post on here, and started wondering what I would put up to mark this occasion. At the time I had a parcel coming to me with nearly 100 records inside, and there were two records in there that I had been searching to for close to twenty years. So I figured one of those would be it. But then, unfortunately, that box went missing. So I needed an alternative choice. I figured this Sick Of It All 7" would be an apt choice for reasons I will get to at the end...

So Sick Of It All are now celebrating 30 years as a band, and back in March this year played a show at a venue called Conne Island in Leipzig, Germany, which is now celebrating 25 years as a venue. So when the two got together, it seemed fitting enough event to mark with a commemorative item. Revelation pressed up a gold vinyl copy of the 7" and some dude in Germany made a special cover and insert, and the records got sold at the one show on 12 March 2016. Now obviously I didn't go as that would have involved leaving the house, but luckily a friend helped me out.

As I mentioned, Rev didn't make the cover for this version, and the person who did went all out to make it unique. So whilst the front is the same picture as the regular version of this record that we all know and love, the back cover is something different:

Also, for some stupid reason the paper dust sleeves were stamped with characters from Batman. I'm guessing that it was some kind of tribute to the early Rev releases being stamped with Batman logo stamps, but in my mind this release could have done without it. I just don't think it adds anything really as it has nothing to do with the band or venue. Different numbers were stamped with different characters, so for anyone who's stupid (or rich) enough to try there are technically 5 different versions to go after.

The rest of the layout is pretty cool though, with lots of pictures of the band playing at Conne Island over the years. The inside of the cover is also hand numbered out of 330 copies, and there's a flyer for the show included.

The lyric sheet contains the lyrics on one side...

... and more photos of the band at the venue on the reverse. All in all, it's a pretty cool package.

The only thing I'm worried about is that the paper feels like it was made on a colour laser printer or colour photocopier. It's definitely got to go into my 'at risk' box. If it gets hot, it could end badly for all involved.

So when I thought about it, the reason I thought this would make an apt 1000th post was to do with this updated collection photo that I took. Back when I started this blog, I owned three SOIA 7"s - the Gilman press, and the grey vinyl and white vinyl represses. Over the last eight years since I started this blog, I've picked up a few more copies of this record, adding (on average) one more copy each year, to the point where I now have a pretty good collection going on. So in a way I think this photo acts as a pretty good representation of this blog and, in a way, me.

Saturday 21 May 2016

Still Got Something To Prove

I spent a lot of time on Discogs lately looking for stuff I lost. At some point I stumbled across this Spermbirds 'Something To Prove' LP on clear vinyl. It's a classic record and despite not really wanting to buy any records at the moment, I couldn't really help myself.

I don't know much about this band. They were a German band with an American G.I. on vocals and were active through the 80s and 90s. The rumours suggest that they never toured the States because the singer went AWOL from the army and so couln't return to the States. I don't really know if that's true or not, but it certainly sounds like a good story.

Monday 16 May 2016

More Jungle Jamz

I really like the Jaguarz 7" so I bought another copy on yellow vinyl. It helped that it was pretty cheap.

I did also buy two other copies of this 7" from the label just before it folded, which meant I would have had a pretty good little collection going on. Unfortunately though, those two other copies have now been lost in the mail, so I don't. Ah well.

Sunday 8 May 2016

Rot In Finland

A couple of months ago Rot In Hell went to Finland to play two shows. I didn't know about it at the time as I don't know anything anymore, but I soon became aware when pictures of a tour record surfaced. Turns out it was actually a limited tour cover made for 60 copies of the 'Termini Terrae' 7" that came out on Dark Empire Records back at the end of 2012. I guess they had a few copies leftover. The tour cover was made by Sam Layzell, who is (I think) the current bass player and a tattoo artist. So it looks pretty good like.

The blue dust sleeve is numbered out of 60.

The record also comes with a flyer for the two Finland shows, which is a nice momento for those who were there. And also those who were not.

So apparently the old singer is now back in the band. The replacement left and the old one came back. It's a bit like one of those games of chess where a player makes a move and then three years later the opponent finds time to take their turn.

Tuesday 3 May 2016

Last Great Stamp

So last night I saw BURN play for the second time in 7 months. And just like the last time they played, they had a 'special' 7" for sale at the show. Well, kind of. The 'Last Great Sea' 7" hasn't been available since it was first pressed back in 2002. Back then very few people cared about vinyl, so Rev only pressed 1000 copies of the record total. And that was it, until a month ago when it finally got the repress treatment in honour of Record Store Day. And then, as always seems to be the case, it got pressed again on a different colour vinyl. So this year we got 1100 copies on orange vinyl for RSD, and then 432 copies on clear green for Rev mailorder types. And of the 432 green copies, 120 copies got sent to Burn to sell on tour in Europe.

As you can see, my copy has a big dirty black smudge in it.

And just like last time BURN came over, the copies sold on tour were stamped inside the sleeve. However, unlike last time these aren't numbered. And the tour copies aren't a unique colour of vinyl. And there are only 120. So there aren't too many and they're not so easy to identify.

I'm guessing that this one will divide opinion. People will either think this is the dumbest thing ever and not give a shit, or they'll hunt high and low and pay out the nose for the privilege of having the stamp. If you're one of the latter then all I can say is... good luck!