Cop Out Post 2 - A Bunch Of 12"s

There's nothing like leaving things until the absolute last minute. So here's another cop out post, in which I'm posting up a whole bunch of LPs & 12"s that I picked up this year that I didn't get around to blogging about, just so I can consign them to the 2018 blog history.

As with the 7" post, I'm just gonna throw these up in alphabetical order...

So we're starting off with 'A' and this ALL 'Allroy Saves' LP on green vinyl. I picked this up on eBay UK for less than half the usual selling price, which I was pretty happy with.

Next, the self-titled American Nightmare LP that came out by surprise. I picked up the 'red glow' version. It's pressed on a pretty interesting colour. It looks like a dirty clear vinyl in normal light:

But it glows a pretty reddish pink in the dark. Looks pretty rad huh?

A lot of people seemed to like this LP. I had pretty low expectations, and they were marginally exceeded. I would rate this record as 'ok'. Not bad but not great either. But I give them points for putting out new music rather than playing shows and continuing to crank out the same old stuff.

Next is a 12" on New Age by Cutting Through called 'A Will To Change'. I grabbed the 77 pressing.

I think some people were disappointed with this record after their earlier material, but I really liked this a lot.

I also picked up the reissue of the Godspeed 'Swimmer's Ear' 12". I have always loved this record, so I stupidly bought all three versions - pink, white and red. The pink is the most limited. I think there were 200 of those, and 400 each of the red and white.

Next, this repress of the classic 'Ballads From The Revolution' LP by Good Riddance. I don't have an original colour vinyl copy of this record, so this cheap repress on a nice colour was an easy choice.

I also picked up this green vinyl second press copy of the Krimewatch LP. I couldn't resist it as it comes with a cool obi strip.

I wasn't overly impressed with Krimewatch when I first heard them. But I played this LP a few times and started to really enjoy it, which makes owning two copies of it almost acceptable.

One of my favourite pick ups of the year was a test press of the Pitchfork 'Eucalyptus' LP. This was originally released by Nemesis Records.

I've owned a gold vinyl copy of this LP since about 1993, and its been one of my favourites ever since.

Another release that had me excited was the Temperance full length 'Searching For Silence'. This was originally released by Moo Cow Records in 1995, but on CD only. And for some reason, the label decided that 2018 would be the perfect time to finally press this on vinyl. Without any limited versions, I decided I needed to track down a test press, and was partially successful. I managed to score this rejected test, which comes in a regular cover:

And I also picked up a regular black vinyl copy, which isn't quite as exciting.

When I was ordering from New Age, I also took a chance and picked up the Treason 'No One Is Safe' 12".

This is a one sided 12". The flipside features an etched design of a picture of some guy. I'm guessing he was a friend of the band. RIP.

One thing that's really cool is that the inside of the sleeve features a triple X print. It's actually pretty rad.

I also picked up another copy of this record on 'clear with black smoke' vinyl. I'm not exactly sure why I picked up a second copy, but hey.

And finally, a pink vinyl copy of the True Love 'New Young Gods' 12". Once again, I picked this up cheap on eBay UK. And although pink is the most common version of this one, I'm happy with it because pink vinyl is the best colour.

So that's it. My final post of 2018. Done. Again, sorry if it was a bit boring. Maybe I'll try harder in 2019...

Cop Out Post - A Bunch of 7"s

OK, so I haven't updated this thing much this year. This wasn't exactly intentional. It was mainly due to not being able to take photos due to light issues, partly due to the fact that I have been living in a building site for most of the year. Records built up and I tried one more than one occasion to take photos, to no avail. So I gave up. But with the year end almost here, I realised that I don't want this thing to die quite yet. So I thought I would catch up by cheating and posting all of the 7"s that I didn't get around to posting all in one go. As ever, the lighting was less than ideal, but I did the best I could.

First up, a couple of UK hardcore 7"s. I think I bought these back in about April or so. The first is a band called 'Big Cheese', and comes on a cheesy yellow colour vinyl:

This band seem to be doing pretty well building a name. This record is pretty good, although I didn't end up playing it as much as I expected to.

The second UK band is called Rapture. I picked this up because they got signed to Youngblood.

It seemed that there was a bit of a trend recently for bands to have female singers. Every label had one. Not sure if this trend is still going, but hey.

I'll do the rest of the 7"s in alphabetical order.

Depending on how you catalogue your records, numbers either come at the start or the end. Personally, I prefer my numbers at the start. So I'm starting with a couple of copies of this 27 7". This came out on Mind Over Matter Records. There were quite a few different versions, but I grabbed the only two left.

I hadn't listened to this band in quite a while, and these two songs helped pull me back in. I hope they continue to make more music in the future.

Next, the Burn 'Mountain' 7". This was pressed for a Euro tour. After the tour was over, the leftovers were sold online, along with a super limited red vinyl version that wasn't sold on tour. There weren't many available and they sold out super fast.

The red is numbered out of 150 copies, although I'm pretty sure that only about 50 of them were sold online.

I also picked up a black vinyl version. The main difference, other than the vinyl colour, is that the cover doesn't contain the song titles.

Next, the Crippled Youth reissue. This came with a huge thick booklet. The green and red were the standard versions. The green sold out super fast.

Then there was a neon green pressing for a couple of Bold shows. I was lucky and a friend picked one up for me.

Next, another 7" by The Damage Done. I won this on ebay, and was the only bidder. I think I got it for about $3. It's a tour press with a cool Turning Point rip off cover, numbered out of 88.

I also picked up this Drug Control 'Stabbed' 7" on red vinyl. It was pressed by Straight & Alert Records. It was also released by New Age Records. I have no idea which came first.

Next is this dark grey copy of the Even Score 7". I bought this because my copy is light grey and I thought it would be cool to have two different colour variants. The only issue is that my other copy is not in my house right now so I can't show the two at the same time.

I also picked up this blue vinyl Eye For An Eye 7". I have a red one which I've had since probably '93 or so, and this year someone sent me this for free. Cool huh?

I've never been a fan of bootlegs at all, and never buy them. But this year someone sold a few copies of the gold vinyl pressing of this GB 'Live At The Safari Club' on eBay, and as they were brand new and looked very shiny, I couldn't resist grabbing one.

One of my favourite pickups of the year for sure, a test press for the Release 'No Longer' 7" on Inner Journey Records. Not much to look at, but a nice once to have for sure.

And another Rain On The Parade 7". I'm not a fan of black vinyl unless it's to complete a collection. Which this pretty much does, although I can't prove it as my other copies are on holiday at the moment.

And while we're on the subject of Rain On The Parade, I also got the test press of the 'Fired Up' 7" on Youngblood.

I grabbed this 7" from a band called Safe And Sound on New Age. Like a fool I didn't listen to the band before adding it to my cart in a carefree manner. I can't imagine listening to this a second time.

A couple of years ago I decided it would be cool to collect different versions of the first Snapcase 7". Only problem is that they rarely come up for sale these days. But at some point this year I whipped this lime green one from eBay for a pretty low price. I was stoked.

Finally, a white vinyl copy of the Suicide File / R'n'R split. I remember when this came out there was some kind of controversy. I can't remember what it was exactly. But probably that whoever released it took a load of money and didn't send any records out.

I can only apologise for this being one of the worst / most boring posts of all time. Too many records and not enough time.

Test Scene

I've picked up a lot of good stuff this year, but barely posted any of it due mainly to not being able to take photos, due to bad light and lack of opportunity to take photos due to living in a building site. I am so far behind that I was on the verge of giving this thing up. But after taking a few photos at the weekend, I figure I'll try to post as much of this year's shit that I can in the last three months that remain.

I'm gonna try to post up some test presses this week. So starting the week with this 7" from the SST Records catalogue:

For anyone who doesn't know the SST catalogue numbers off by heart, there's also a basic insert that reveals what this is:

And for anyone who can't read, this is the Dinosaur Jr 'Freak Scene' test press. There were probably a lot of these made as, back then, the tests were sent out as advance promotional copies. So I'm super stoked to own this, but I don't think it's particularly rare.

I would take a photo of all my copies of this 7" together, but I can't as they're not in my house right now.

Oh, and having just counted, this is the 14th test press on this blog this year. Let's see if I can get that number up a bit this week to a more respectable level...

USA Trip, Part 10 - Boston (Again)

After flying back from LA, we spent two days in New York City. I popped into Generation Records and Limited To One, but neither had anything that I 'needed'. So even though I was there, not buying anything means that they don't feature on here. Sorry dudes.

After New York we had one final day back in the city where the adventure began - Boston. We spent the day walking about and seeing more sights, and in the evening went for food with some familiar faces:

Even though this should have been a cool end to the trip, when the time came around we were totally shattered and struggled to keep our eyes open, so had to leave pretty early in the evening. After food the other dudes went to see Pat Flynn's band Clear play a show with Remission just around the corner, but there's no way I could have stayed awake long enough to have got through that.

Brian was kind enough to give us a lift back to our hotel, and before he left us there was time for one final record deal to go down. This had been arranged for a few weeks, and was mainly to help me avoid any shipping risks, as the records involved were slightly more valuable than the average 7"s that I'd picked up on this trip.

Brian was in the process of packing stuff up in order to move to the UK, and had decided to sell some records. I figured it was the right time to fill a couple of holes in my early Rev collecton, so we did a deal and I ended up paying him cash in his car. Kinda like a sketchy street deal.

First is a first press of the Warzone 'LESC' 7". I was never hugely fussed about picking one of these up, but in the end just wanted one so that I could get my Warzone 7" collection one step closer to a 'complete'... whatever that means.

The first press has no Rev logo, and the graffiti logo on the b-side label.

It's not really that much to look at, but is a pretty cool piece of Rev history.

The second 7" I used to not give a shit about, as technically it's an error variant rather than an actual intending pressing. But over time I just came round to the idea that it would be cool to have. Pity I didn't decide that ten years or more ago for price reasons, but hey, never mind.

So this is the Gorilla Biscuits 7" with Warzone b-side label. Nobody knows how many exist, and what's cool is that Rev didn't even know that these existed for many years. My memory is slightly hazy on this, but I think it was in fact Lecky over in the UK who made Rev aware that this existed. They didn't even have one, so he traded them his copy. When I was at RevHQ I saw that they indeed had one copy in the vault. My guess at this is simply that the plant got confused and put the wrong labels on some copies, although whether this was at the start of the press (and they then realised their mistake) or the end of the press (when they ran out of the labels they were supposed to be using) we will never know. But what is interesting about this one is that quite a few copies ended up in the UK, as a few people I know over here have one and bought it when it came out. As a friend of mine used to say, 'it's a nice one to have, mate'.

I was also pleasantly surprised to be gifted a release show copy of the Fiddlehead 'Springtime And Blind' LP. This was sold a week earlier, at which point I was enjoying the California Sunshine. I actually pre-ordered a copy of this LP months ago and still don't have it yet, so it was cool to get this version as my first copy.

As with a lot of release show records, the cover is an extra piece of card folded over the regular sleeve.

Numbered out of 40 copies, I got number 10.

This was a pretty cool gift, especially when I noticed one sell on eBay a couple of weeks later for $150!

The next day we got up and flew home. I then entered three weeks of total exhaustion and depression. But when I came out of it and started writing these posts, it reminded me of what a great trip I had. Trip of a lifetime for sure. And as for the records... in total I ended up bringing home 84 of the bloody thing (54 7"s, 1 10", 29 LPs). This was probably at least 50 more than I had expected. But hey, I got some cool items and some great deals, and only slightly overspent my budget, so it worked out pretty well in the end.

It has also just occurred to me that even though my number of posts on this blog is much lower than every other year, at least the total number of records featured is still up at normal levels. These posts were hard work so I'm glad they're now done.