Live! On The James

2020 has been pretty crazy so far. First up the Corona virus took over and forced us all to stay at home and avoid all human contact, and next came been a wave of protests against racism that has felt like a social revolution. Hardcore and punk were always driven and heavily influenced by politics and even though at times that side of things got too much, I'm still grateful to be part of a scene where people are predominantly have a conscience and strive to do good. So it was good and bad news when bands and labels atarted to auction or raffle off rare records to help raise money for a good cause. Good news because it made some rare items available and raised some good money, but bad (for collectors) because most of the auctioned items were selling for more than double what they usually would. And with raffles it's a bit too much like gambling, and easy to spend money you don't have and then ultimately end up with nothing. In the end I decided to take part in two raffles run by Edgewood Records for which the prizes were Down To Nothing test pressings... and lo and behold I won one of them!

Down To Nothing's 'Live! On The James' LP was released in 2017. I'm not a big fan of live records as they are generally pretty pointless, and the cynic in me thinks that they are often put out to fulfill legal obligations with labels. But I'll gladly take a test press of a live album on Rev for my collection.

As with pretty much all Rev tests, it's just a black vinyl record in a plain white paper sleeve. Not overly exciting to look at.

There are a few records for which I own a test press only, but I didn't want this to be one. So I got straight onto picking up a pink vinyl copy of the LP too.

I love solid pink vinyl. It's quite possibly my favourite colour. So inappropriate for hardcore records, yet looks so right. This is also the rarer of the two colours made, being out of 327 copies.

One touch that I do like is that the insert is a copy of the flyer for the show. I imagine that owning one of these LPs would be a pretty cool souvenir if you had been present that night.

Fun fact - it was a little less than a year ago that I won a Curl Up And Die test press in a competition. So that's 2 Rev tests that I have now won, which is pretty cool achievement I hope you'll agree.