Freak Out

You can tell you're a record collector when you actively choose to buy a record on a totally impractical and stupid format. And what's the most impractical and stupid format of them all? Yup, it's the album released as a 7" box set. Presumably if you're the kind of person who just hates sitting down or being away from your record player for more than 3 minutes, then this is the format for you. For everyone else, however, this is a total pain in the arse. Yet whenever I have the choice between buying a 12" or a 7" box set, I'm choosing the latter every single time.

So I picked up a Samiam 7" a few weeks ago in a trade, and it got me going back to my old Samiam records, and I was really enjoying them. I used to listen to them a fair bit in the early and mid 90s, but at some point they vanished from my radar. So recently I decided to check out one of their older records that I never heard, 'You Are Freaking Me Out'. With a few plays I was singing along and then went to discogs to see whether there were any copies for sale... and I ended up coming away with this 4 x 7" box set.

'You Are Freaking Me Out' was first released in 1997. This 4 x 7" version came out a year later, and then it was two more years later that a 12" version appeared on the scene. So back in the late 90s your only option was this or a CD. Since then this has been pressed on a whole range of different 12" colours on a few different labels. On discogs there are 43 versions, of which 7 are CDs. Yet of the remaining 36 vinyl versions that exist, I plumped for this one.

Turns out that this is the second pressing. The first press was a black vinyl 4 x 7" box set. I could have bought one of those, but clearly this colour one is way better. Oh yeah, and it's also numbered inside the box out of a massive 2000 copies... which feels slightly unnecessary to me.

So of course, here I am all these years later getting sucked back into listening to Samiam, who look to have at least 4 more albums that I have never heard. Maybe I'll get to another one of them before another 25 years passes by. We shall see...