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...