USA Trip, Part 1 - Boston

I haven't published much on here this year. Motivation, time and light are all reasons. I've been strongly considering letting this blog go. I'm still undecided. But I decided that I wanted to document my recent holiday to the States first. So here goes...

The trip started in Boston. Day 1 was a bit of tourist stuff and a trip to Salem to visit a friend. Day 2 was a day in Boston with a famous blogger.

So after a visit to the SSD steps and the Cheers! giftshop, we grabbed an uber to Harvard to check out the Armageddon Shop.

Walking into the shop was overwhelming. All the record shops I have ever been in have generally had very small hardcore sections. Armageddon Shop is full of it. I was faced with these racks of LPs:

The sheer volume of records was so overwhelming that after 5 minutes I was tempted to give up. It felt like I could have been in the store for hours, and didn't really want to be. But Anna forced me to carry on as this was a once in a lifetime trip, and she didn't want me to regret missing anything. So I pushed on, and found a couple of LPs that I couldn't resist...

First, a mint, sealed copy of SSD 'How We Rock'. This was never really on my want list, but finding a sealed copy in Boston... well, it just seemed like the right record to buy on that day. Plus, you know, I've always kinda liked the cover for some reason, even though the record itself isn't great.

The next one I was super stoked on. A test press of the Forced Forward 12" on Collapse Records. I have a couple of other copies of this record already. It's a real gem of the 00s in my opinion. So finding the test for $12.99 made my day.

I also love how this test comes in a handmade cover made with crayons. The Robot Whales 12" test has an almost identical cover. I know this because my friend / rival Mike managed to steal it from right under my nose!

So after flipping through the hundreds of LPs, it was then onto the 7" boxes...

By this point I was getting sick of looking at records, so went straight to the 'S' section. That's my method for judging the quality of a shop. There are way more bands with names starting with 'S', so if you look through the 'S' section and it's weak, it's probably safe to assume the rest of the stock is weak. So i looked through the 'S' section, and found one 7" I wanted, but the rest of it wasn't too great. So I didn't look through any more. I was truly bored of it.

The 7" I picked up was this Serpico 7" with a tour sleeve. I picked up this record when it came out, but had never seen one of these before.

I used to really like this band in the mid 90s. They had a couple of LPs on Equal Vision which were rad, and a bunch of records before those too. This was one of their last couple of releases. Also, random fact - they had a guy in the band called John Lisa. There was also a band once called 'C.R.' who named an album after him. More on that later...

So after the Armageddon Shop we headed to Newbury Comics to do a bit of loitering:

Newbury Comics was very disappointing. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was just full of new releases and reissues. And it wasn't cheap. Nothing was purchased, and we moved on quickly and walked a couple of miles to get some vegan ice cream.

At the end of the day a trade took place in a sketchy car park. I'd asked Mike to help me by picking up the 2nd press of the 2nd Battle Ruins LP a few weeks ago, as it was going on sale at a time when I would be safely tucked up in bed. He happily obliged, although we never really talked about how he was going to get it to me. So when he offered to bring it out to hand me directly, all I thought was 'cool, yeah - a record!'. I didn't think at all about having to carry it around America for three weeks. Oh well.

Anyway, I had intended to pay Mike for the record. I hadn't intended for it to be a freebie. But I'd tried to surprise him with a small gift from his want list. So we ended up calling it a trade. Even though really it was two dudes giving each other a gift.

I've been enjoying the Battle Ruins LP the last couple of weeks since I got home. Just like the first one, it's a slightly slower burner for me than the average hardcore record. But it's a cool record for sure. Very happy that I missed the black vinyl first press, and ended up with this blue copy for the collection.

Next stop, New York...