With Dave

A year and a half ago or so I bought some records from a dude who briefly worked at Jade Tree Records in 90s. I remember asking him if he had any other test pressings in his collection that he was looking to sell, but the answer was no. So that was that. But then a few months later, he sent me an email to tell me that he had found a test press for the Swiz 'With Dave' 7", and asked if I was interested. Of course I was interested! It didn't take too long to work out a deal, and he sent it pretty quickly too. Sadly it didn't come in anything other than a plain white paper sleeve, but that's ok I guess. I'm just happy to have it at all.

The title of this 7" comes because these are the first (and last!) songs recorded with Dave Stern on bass. He replaced Nathan Larson, who left Swiz for Shudder To Think. I have had a blue vinyl copy of this 7" in my collection for many, many years, so I grabbed the regular sleeve to take a picture with the test press.

Swiz have long been one of my favourite DC bands. God only knows why they were never on Dischord. I'm sure that if they got back together and put out new music then it very much would be on Dischord. But I always felt that they should have been back when they were around. Regardless, I have always loved Swiz, and I have slowly acquired some pretty cool Swiz records over the years. There are 3 Swiz 7"s and I now have test presses of them all, which I think is a pretty big achievement, especially seeing as there are only 2 copies of the 'Down' in existence, and only 3 copies of the 'Rejects' 7".

I'd absolutely love to get test presses for the two 12"s, but they must be scarce as hell as I have never so much as seen either anywhere. Hopefully one day...

Congregation

This year I have been buying a lot of early Sub Pop 7"s and discovering some great 'new' music (which is generally 30+ years old),a nd I was really excited to spend a little time with Afghan Whigs for the first time in a while. I used to listen to the band back in about 1992, and then in time I came to the decision that I only really liked the first album, so I sold the rest. But of course, here I am years later realising that I was too harsh, and realising that the second album, 'Congregation', is actually brilliant. So I set out to buy a copy.

This is one of those weird Sub Pop releases that originally came out with no colour vinyl option. In fact, the only vinyl option at all was pressed in Europe. If you lived in the States and happened to want a vinyl copy of this one back when it was released, you'd have had to had bought a European import. How very back to front eh?

So when I was looking for a copy of this one, it was either an original European black vinyl copy, or this 2017 US reissue on an interesting red marble colour for half the price. So this is one of those times when a reissue is absolutely fine.

If you've never heard this band, then they are not easy to describe. Their wikipedia page describes them as a garage band that incorporates R&B and soul influences. I think that's a pretty fair description. And even though I gave up on them years ago (except their earlier stuff) I am now thinking that I would probably appreciate their later stuff more, so I am sure that I will check some of those out at some point.