Bus Vol.I

Here's another compilation 7" I just sourced, and I would guess that a lot of people won't have heard of this one. This one is titled 'Bus Vol.1', and was released by a label called Jester Records way back in 1990. This one absolutely made my day / week. Carry on reading out find out why...

Jester Records is probably most well known for releasing a Headfirst 7". This compilation also features Headfirst, as well as Smile (who also had a 7" on Jester) and a band called Ice (which features Popeye from Farside).

I've actually owned a black vinyl copy of this 7" for many years. But I literally only found out that the clear vinyl existed about three weeks ago. For some reason or other, I started looking at my compilation 7"s and trying to figure out which ones I needed to 'upgrade' (i.e. find more limited, or additional copies of) and I decided to check whether this 7" existed on colour. I always suspected that it did, because I have two other releases on Jester Records (the Headfirst 7" and the Smile 7") and both come on limited coloured vinyl. The coloured vinyl copies are actually quite difficult to find, to the point where most people didn't know they came on colour at all, although that will have now changed with them being listed on discogs).

This was a pretty cool find. I checked on discogs at how many copies of this one were for sale. There were about 15 copies for sale, but one of them stated 'clear vinyl'. I messaged the seller and asked them to confirm that the record was indeed clear vinyl, but got no response. So I just took a chance and bought it anyway. It was only £2.50 + postage, and was being sold in the UK, so it arrived in about 3 days and I was pretty happy. And the picture above confirms what I always suspected, that the label made a limited colour vinyl of each of their releases.

This is the joy of record collecting summed up right here. Finding a 30 year old record you didn't know existed that nobody else cares about, and getting it for super cheap at the same time.