Roses For You

Earlier this year It's Alive Records repressed the Unity 'Blood Days' 7"... again. This was always a slightly straneg release in my nind. The band was around in the mid to late 80s, and released a 7" and an LP. And then this 7" came out in 2012. It contains the extra songs from the 'Blood Days' LP that were not on the original 7", which allows you to own all the Unity songs on 7" format. This was last repressed in 2019 or so on white vinyl, and this year it was pressed again, this time on purple vinyl.

This pressing is numbered inside the sleeve out of 300 copies.

When this went up for sale, the label advertised that there were going to be some test pressings for sale too. I checked, and they were going on sale at 1am my time. I made the decision to stay up past my bedtime to try to get one. It turned out to be a successful mission as I managed to secure a copy.

This test is particularly nice as it is pressed on blue vinyl. Gotta love a colour vinyl test press, especially one that comes in a sleeve.

I also decided to grab a white vinyl repress copy of the 'You Are One' 7". I figured I would try to collect all the colours of this one. There seem to have been a few repress colours in the last few years, so I figured I would grab them if I see them.

Martin & An Elastic Star

I posted recently about this year's new LP from J Mascis, 'What Do We Do Now?'. And, as is often the case, buying that record then started a chain of buying more records.

The first thing I realised was that I had completely missed the last J Mascis LP, 'Elastic Days'. I vaguely remember that this came out just before I went on my first trip to the States, and I was holding a copy in Rough Trade in Brooklyn trying to decide whether to buy it or not. Something put me off at the time. It may have been the price or it may have been that I wasn't sure it was a colour vinyl copy. Whatever the reason, I didn't buy it, and then after that I never actually got around to buying it or listening to it at all.

This is the US pressing on clear with purple swirl vinyl. I think it looks great.

Next I went back to the 'Tied To A Star' LP from 2014. I bought one of these when it came out, but the copy I bought was the UK pressing. For the past few years, Sub Pop press records in the US and also at a separate plant in Europe. So I decided to pick up a copy of the US pressing. I figure I'll sell my Euro pressing at some point.

I then also picked up a copy of the 'Martin + Me' LP from 1996. This was J's first solo record, and contains mainly acouctic versions of Dinosaur Jr songs, as well as a few cover songs (Carly Simon, Greg Sage, Lynyrd Skynyrd). I was curious as to who Martin is/was, but apparently that was a refernce to the guitar he was using at the time. Apparently this album wasn't particularly well received when it came out, but I really like it, as it contains a bunch of Dinosaur Jr songs from various records and they are all great songs.

This is an original pressing from 1996 on Reprise Records, which is a subsidiary of a major label.

As much as I love Dinosaur Jr, I don't feel the need to own more than one copy of each J Mascis LP. So now I've nearly got to where I want to be, with a US pressing of each LP. I say 'nearly' as there is one more record I need to complete this objective. Hopefully I'll get there soon...

The Basilisk Gaze Of A Tyrant State

Back in May last year a new Rot In Hell record was announced. The band has a long tradition of split releases with other bands, and this followed suit, being a split with a UK band called Cruelty, who I had never heard of before.

Having been a longtime fan of Rot In Hell (since their first release back in 2007!), I was keen to check out this new record, especially since they have been pretty quiet for a few years. I've lost track a little in recent times, but I think I am right in saying that they have not released any new music since 'Oblivian Songs' which came out in 2018.

I got a bit carried away when this went up for order. There were 6 options to choose from, and I found it impossible to say no to any of them. So I came away having ordered six copies, which I probably wouldn't have wanted to do if you had asked me in advance. Oh well. This is how things go sometimes. The nicest looking copy, I think, is the pink vinyl which is limited to only 20 copies.

I was also able to buy a test press, which comes in a different cover and is hand numbered out of 26 copies.

The other colours are all quite dark, but this also makes them difficult to take photos of, but I did my best.

Shown in the pic are the following:

Top row: Test Press (26), Teal (18), Blue (8)
Bottom row: Maroon Marble (45), Pink (20), Swamp Green (9)

Annoyingly, after I laid these out to take this photo and write this post, it came ot my attention that there is also a black vinyl copy which was/is only available to buy from the bands. This gives me a slight dilemma, as I don't feel that I need another copy, but without it this collection is not 'complete'. Hmmmmm. What to do?

The only slight disappointment is only one Rot In Hell song on here ('The Basilisk Gaze Of A Tyrant State'), although in terms of 'value for money' it is over 6 minutes long. It's also worth mentioning that this recording is the band playing 'hardcore' as opposed to 'neo folk' (or whatever you may want to call these two styles), and this may potentially be the best song the band has ever recorded, in my opinion. The hardcore songs are usually played at 100mph and go at it right out of the gate, but this song here takes time to build, and then fades out for a while at the end. This is a useless description, I appreciate, but what excites me here is that this shows that there's plenty of potential still left in this band, if they have time to explore it. I hope so.

Steps Ascending

Back at the end of June, Nico posted about the new record from Stand Still. At the time I had no idea who the band were, but his brief write up, and the picture of the record, had me intrigued. So I found their bandcamp page and gave it a chance, and after about one minute I knew I was going to have to buy a copy.

Part of what drew me to this record was the cover art and the vinyl colour that was a perfect match. However, the copy I got sent wasn't quite the same colour. Mine is a definite blue & black swirl which still matches the cover art, but doesn't look anywhere near as cool as the copy Nico received.

The band come from Long Island and have previously had records put out by Triple B and New Morality Zine. To me they sound like other melodic hardcore bands from Long Island, such as Capital and The Movielife, and their songs are every bit as catchy. Nico was absolutely right when he referred to this being the summer record of the year. I have been regularly blasting this for the past two months and it just seems to get better with every play. There is something here that just takes me back to the early 2000s. Check out 'In My Blood' and you'll get what I mean.

Summer may now be pretty much at an end, but this record still has plenty of life in it yet. Definitely one of the highlights of the year so far.

Get Done

One of the many things that is interesting about record collecting is that there are some records that, over time, you come to realise are seem stupidly hard to find. I mean, that's probably an obvious statement as there are LOTS of records that are rare and hard to find. But what I am specifically referring to here are records that aren't that well known (or remembered) and that are not actually that sought after or valuable. There are quite a few of these low value but super rare 7"s that I have become aware of over the years. But the same thing happens each time - the more time passes, the more my interest level increases. The mere fact that they are hard to find makes me want them more.

Back in 2003/4 there was a Boston band called Get Down who had a 7" put out by Painkiller Records. I picked it up partly because it was on Painkiller, and partly because of who was in the band (Anthony Pappalardo from In My Eyes plus other people from other Boston bands of the early 00s). At the time I liked the record as it reminded me a little of Swiz. So when I saw that there was a second 7" released in 2004, I added it to my want list. And then a lot of time passed.

So here we are in 2024 and I finally managed to find a copy. Or rather, two copies. I was pretty excited when I saw this for sale, because over the last twenty years or so, I had never seen it for sale, and began to wonder whether it really existed at all. But when I finally saw these copies for sale, they were cheaper than new release 7"s are these days.

The first copy I obtained was this blue vinyl copy. This was released by a label called Mosh Camp Records.

The second copy is a clear vinyl copy, but on this copy the Mosh Camp Records name has been covered by a sticker for 'Piss Mountain'.

The clear vinyl copy also has a stamp on the inside of the sleeve, and the name of the person who bought it is written there too. If anyone happens to know Steve Chaya, please tell him that I now have his Get Down 7".

I wasn't sure why this record seemed so rare. In my mind this was one of those records where the label ripped people off and never sent the records out, although clearly a few got out somehow. I had always wondered whether the label guy gave a few copies to friends (which would explain how some are out there) and then just didn't bother selling the rest, so I was curious as to whether there may still be a couple of hundred of them sat in a cupboard somewhere. I reached out to Anthony Pappalardo to see if he could fill me in. This is what he came back with:

''We took the entire pressing and put it out ourselves and put “Piss Mountain” stickers over his logo and they all had a card with everyone’s name who ordered that was hand screened. The whole thing was totally odd because the record happened over email and shit.

We had a recording ready and my friend Nathan Nedorostek put together an amazing layout but Evan O’Hara (Mosh Camp founder) ghosted/wasn’t the greatest communicator. That being said, Evan was a good egg because even though he was over it, he gladly gave us all the 7”s to handle which was cool but stressful--so many of them were shipping overseas so that meant filling out mad customs forms...

So we mailed out hundreds of 7”s and then had a grip of them sitting around without an active band. Someone offered to take them but this time I flaked so a few boxes sat in my storage unit for years until I left them on the street in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Maybe they made good ashtrays or some shit.'

I'm happy with this story because in a way I'd feel bad if I ended up with these knowing others got ripped off. So it's nice to know what happened after all these years, and also to have this record. Listening to it now and I have to say that this has ageed really well. It definitely still has a Swiz vibe to it, like the first 7", but to me this one sounds a little groovier. I really like this and I'm stoked to have another one of these seemingly uber rare records that most people aren't particularly aware of.

Sunny Blunts

In my last post I mentioned that I recently took a trip up north to visit a friend and see a show. I went to see Jeff Caudill perform an acoustic solo show, and even though there were other bands playing, I managed to miss them all... apart from one song by a band called Fast Blood. I liked the one song that I heard, and given that some dude that I have vaguely known for about thirty years was on drums, I figured I wuold support them and buy a copy of their debut LP that had just come out and that they were selling that night.

The record is titled 'Sunny Blunts' and is named after the estate on which the singer grew up (as opposed to being a reference to smoking weed in the summer). As fasr as I can tell, all copies are on white vinyl.

I started playing this about two weeks ago and it is my current obsession. The band play melodic punk sounding tunes, with a female vocal over the top that really reminds me of some other band from the past, although I am not sure which. The vocals range from softly sung to screams of rage, and now again you hear the british northeast accent coming through, which I think works really well here, a bit like a female version of Graham's accent in High Vis songs. The music is really, really catchy and even though I know nothing about music, I can tell that these guys are very talented at their respective instruments.

I'm probably not doing a good job here of describing this, but I will end this post with two things. Firstly, this might just be my favourite record released this year. Yes, it is that good. Secondly, based on this, you should give three minutes of your time to checking out one of their songs to see if this might also be your cup of tea. I'd suggest starting with the opening song, 'Sexual Healing'. If you don't like it then that's fine, but please be aware that we may not be able to be friends anymore.