Christie Front Drive

One of the best things about having a big record collection (or being old) is having the ability to rediscover things from years ago that you had neglected or forgotten about. I spend so much time listening to 'new' music, that I can go YEARS without listening to certain bands or records that I enjoyed at some point in the past.

I stumbled across a test press for the Christie Front Drive LP on eBay a few months ago, and it immediately grabbed my attention. I hadn't listened to the record for a LONG time. In my mind, it was weaker than the band's self-titled 7" and 12" EP releases that preceeded it. But here was a test press with a buy-it-now price waiting to be scooped, so I pulled my record from it's shelf and gave it a spin to decide on whether I wanted to invest my money in this band in 2019. It must have been probably 20 years since I had played this, but the tunes were immediately familiar, and I was instantly annoyed at myself for having not enjoyed these songs for so long, and somehow thinking that this record wasn't that great. I must have just got confused somewhere along the way.

Despite realising instantly that I wanted the test press, I didn't really want to pay the price it was listed at. It was just more than I wanted to pay. So I added it to my watch list. The one of two things happened, and I can't remember which. Either the price got reduced after a few days, or it ended with no bids and then got relisted. Whichever happened, the new price was about 30% lower, and I thought it was ok. So I grabbed it.

This is actually the test press of the first pressing of this record on Caulfield Records, from 1996. The regular black vinyl copy used to command a lot of money, until it got reissued by Magic Bullet Records in 2010. It has since been pressed on numerous different colours of vinyl, to the point where half the population of the known universe probably owns a copy. I also found a listing on Popsike for a test press of the reissue that sold for more money than I paid for this first press test, which I think it kinda cool... well, for me.

This was such a good trip down memory lane. A band from an era when everyone wanted to sound like Sunny Day Real Estate, but only a couple of bands pulled it off with any real success. It also made me go back to some other similar bands I was into from those days, all of which I think still hold up. They just don't make records like this anymore, sadly. Or, if they do, they are part of a totally different scene that I know nothing about.