King Face

I often go back to the past to try to find new stuff to listen to, and last year at some point I was listening to the Dischord compilation LP 'State Of The Union' and it reminded me of the band King Face. I have a King Face record in my collection that I've had since the early 90s, but I never listened to anything else. So I checked out their first record and immediately loved it, and then the hunt was on to find a vinyl copy. Fortunately it seems that King Face have been forgotten about and their records and pretty cheap these days, but given that the record came out in 1987, the challenge was to find one in good condition.

This 12" contains 6 songs and was released by the band themseleves. I love the simple design of the dront cover which is just plain black with a small sticker in the top left corner. There are actually two versions - the colour sticker (which almost looks like a tattoo design to me) and a black and whhite version. You'll have to take my word for it that the colour version looks much better.

King Face was a DC band and with hindsight it seems crazy that they weren't on Dischord. The singer, Mark Sullivan, was in a band called The Slinkees (which also featured Ian Mackaye and Jeff Nelson, and whose 7" came out as part of the Dischord 200 box set a couple of years ago). Mark is also the borther of Soulside vocalist Bobby Sullivan. This 12" was also produced by Ian Mackaye. So quite why Dischord didn't releases this I have no idea. I'm sure if they had done then this record would be much better known than it seems to be. But for me this was a great find at a great price, and I'mreally happy to have it in my collection.