The Sound Of A New Soup Being Born

I've always been a fan of Crimpshrine. I first heard them on the 'Turn It Around' compilation around 30 years ago, and I liked them right away because they sounded very similar to Operation Ivy but without the ska bits. They had a great 7" release in the very early days of Lookout! Records (released as Lookout! number 4), but for some reason their only full length release ('Lame Gig Contest') came out on a German label, Empty Records. I think I read somewhere once that the reason for this was that Lookout! Records didn't think that the full length was good enough and so declined to release it.

Well anyway, I guess in time Lookout! realised their mistake and decided that those songs were good enough after all. So most of them got released as originally intended, with it being titled 'Duct Tape Soup'. This was then released as Lookout! number 57 in 1992.

A lot of people regard this as a Crimpshrine album, but I always thought of it as a compilation of songs released on other records, so I never felt the need to pick it up. But the label did a good job of remixing the songs on here so they actually sound better.

This is a first press copy of this, denoted by the black & white cover. Later pressings had a yellow & red cover. And in the spirit of older Lookout! releases, this first press copy comes with a nice booklet.

A few years later, Lookout! released another Crimpshrine record. 'The Sound Of A New World Being Born' came out in as Lookout! 194 at a time when Lookout! were rolling in cash and putting out a lot of records. I remember than when this one dropped it definitely felt like a cash grab and an excuse for Lookout! to press some Crimpshrine songs onto vinyl for the newer fans. This record compiles their first two 7"s along with some other songs onto one 12", and I also never bought this one for the exact same reason that I never bought the above 12" - it didn't have anything really new or essential.

This one also comes with a huge fold out poster insert, which in 2022 I think is kinda cool.

So there we are. Two Crimpshrine records that I never had any intention of buying when they came out originally, but when I found them in my house and I had to decide to either sell them or keep them, I felt that I'd actually quite like to have them in my collection. Tell me you wouldn't do the same.