Open Your Eyes

When Revelation repressed the first two Warzone LPs a few years ago, I wasn't interested. I just figured that they were records that I could live without. But of course, when I saw one selling for cheap on eBay recently, I found myself feeling tempted. I guess I am still a sucker for a piece of Rev colour vinyl that I don't own.

'Open Your Eyes' was the second Warzone album, originally released in 1988 by Caroline Records, and Revelation repressed it 30 years later, in 2018. This is the more common colour option, being out of 1315 copies.

The main difference between the original pressing and this repress is the insert. The original release came with a single sheet, folded in half, which had the lyrics on it and a photo of each band member. This repress comes with a large, glossy booklet, which has the lyrics printed in a massive font as well as some action shots of the band. Its kinda cool, although its very thick, and probably could have been condensed into half as much paper without too much effort.

I never liked this album as much as the first, or even the later ones on Victory. But listening to it again recently and I've definitely appreciated it more than ever before. Turns out it's not bad after all.

Dot Class "C"

I first got into a band called Inch back in (I think) 1994. This was an era when I was discovering a lot of new music, bands and scenes, and I would read descriptions of records and just take a chance. I was keen to discover bands that my friends didn't know about so that I could bring stuff to their attention and feel like I was ahead of the pack. I don't know why that seemed to matter really, but it meant that I was always looking for something new. I think Inch ended up on my radar because their first LP was listed on a mailorder list from a record shop I used to buy from at the time, and it said that the band featured a dude on vocals who used to be in the band Sub Society, who I knew about due to H-Street skateboard videos. So that was enough information to buy their first LP. I also picked up 3 or 4 7"s back then too. I enjoyed them at the time, but probably within a year I had moved on and rarely listened to them again.

A couple of years ago I was adding my collection to discogs, and I found that Inch had two more albums that I never knew about. I guess there were so many bands and labels in the mid 90s that I couldn't keep up. So I lost touch with Inch. But I was interested to see that there was a vinyl pressing of their second LP, 'Dot Class C', although it seemed relatively hard to get. So I added it to my want list and waited. The copies that came up for sale seemed to be more expensive than I wanted to pay. But last week I was googling around and I found a brand new copy for sale for a super good price.

This album was originally released in 1997 on CD, and the LP was limited to 750 copies, which come in screen printed, hand numbered sleeves.

The band were from San Diego, and apparently these covers were made by another San Diego legend, Rick Froburg. I imagine he must have regretted agreeing to make 750 screen printed covers after making the first couple of hundred.

If you haven't heard this band before, which is probably most people reading this, then be aware that they sound like an indie / alt rock type band. Same vague ballpark as Drive Like Jehu. Not hardcore. You probably won't be into it.

The Closure Of Closure?

In June this year I bought 3 colour vinyl copies of the Integrity album 'Closure', which was officially issued on vinyl for the first time since it was released back in 2001. At the end of the post I wrote this:

...at this stage, it is unclear as to whether there will be another pressing or not. Although if I know Integrity, it seems more likely than not.

Well, it was iterally one week after my post went up that I saw someone post a photo of two more different versions on instagram. Obviously I had to pick them up to keep the collection as close to 'complete' as possible... although obviously this is a total illusion as there is no such thing as 'complete' as far as Integrity is concerned, so I'm not sure why I keep on chasing the impossible. But never mind.

These two colours were also, I believe, limited to 100 copies each, just like the previous three copies I picked up. The first one is known as 'absinthe ice':

The second copy is referred to as 'Halloween':

This album is defiitely the odd man out when it comes to Integrity records, although the record has grown on me over the years. And whilst it's good to see an 'official' release on vinyl, and I quite like what has been done to the original artwork, I'm not such a big fan of the vinyl colours chosen. So it's a good job I only have 5 copies.

The Mutt's Nuts

Another new post and another new release. Will wonders never cease?

I would guess most people reading this are already aware of this one, but this is the sophomore LP from Chubby And The Gang, titled 'The Mutt's Nuts'. This was one officially released a couple of weeks ago so I'm actually quite up to date for once. I downloaded this and wasn't impressed after a couple of listens, finding it slower and less of a jolly romp than the first album. But after a couple more listens it started to grab hold, so I decided that I'd buy a copy. The dilemma was then whether to buy the more limited black vinyl, gatefold sleeve version, or the common colour vinyl version. Given that neither seemed particularly limited, I just went with habit of a lifetime and picked up the colour vinyl.

Cool to see that this one also features the same style artwork as the first LP, although the cover of this one looks way nice in my opinion. I guess it must be the colour scheme.

My copy arrived sealed, but outside of the shrinkwrap was included this 'insert' with signed pictures of the band members. I'm unsure as to whether every copy comes with one of these or not, although I would guess probably yes. But if that's the case then why was it not included inside the cover? Strange.

In some ways this record seems to have come along at a similar time to the first one for me. The first album always reminds me of January 2020, as I went through a short period back then of listening to it whilst walking along the River Thames on the way to my new job that I didn't like. And here we are a year and a half later, and this second album is now proving to be the soundtrack for me finishing up at that very same job, which I decided to leave as I recently realised that I still don't like it.

9th And Walnut

It's been a while. After being ahead of my scheduled 10 posts a month work rate for most of the year, the last couple of months have seen a total slow down in both blogging and buying records. The main reason is that I haven't had many records recently due to focussing on other things. But I have recently found myself losing interest in records for the first time in many years, for a few reasons.

Well anyway, I finally got around to picking up a copy of the new Descendents LP '9th & Walnut'. This was released by Epitaph Records a few weeks ago. I was already annoyed at preorder stage by the endless number of colour vinyl options available, so didn't bother ordering one at all. But after downloading the record and enjoying the songs for a few weeks, I was naturally drawn towards wanting a physical copy. So I ordered this white vinyl copy which arrived today.

Of all the colours I have seen for this, the white seemed quite a good match for the artwork. Plus it was still available to buy, which helped the decision making process. And even though the many vinyl colours that exist for this thing are apparently all out of the same pressing quantity of 500, I have seen fewer photos of the white one than some of the others, which somehow makes it feel rarer even though it isn't.

This record is an interesting one. I think I have this right, but these are all old songs re-recorded by the original line-up. I think the music was recorded years ago, and then Milo recorded the vocals recently. I wasn't so into it at first, but after a few listens I was really enjoying it, like all other Descendents records.

That said, there's a lot about this that I don't like. For example, the fact that mine has some dumbass sticker on the back that covers some of the artwork, and that won't peel off easily. But mainly it's that there are already 12 different colours of vinyl, and it's nigh on impossible to buy one and get much change out of £30. I guess this is modern record collecting, and it has sapped pretty much all of the fun out of the game. I stupidly got sucked into collecting several copies of the last LP, but that isn't happening this time. Game over.

Happy collecting!