The Fluids

This year has been mainly about old Sub Pop releases for me. It all started with a message from a friend and then we both kinda decided to start trying to collect all of the 7"s up to catalog number 200. I mean, we both had quite a few already, and the catalog numbers include 12"s. But we were both essentially taking on a mission to pick up at least 80 different 7"s. This has led to me buying and listening to a lot of Sub Pop releases from the late 80s to the early 90s, which with hindsight, was a really great period for music.

I was in Baltimore earlier this year, and took a brief trip to Celebrated Summer Records. I didn't have too much time there, and there was a lot in the shop to look through. I focussed on the used 7" and 'new in' sections and found a few gems. In the 'new in' section I found a couple of used 12"s by one of the early Sub Pop bands, The Fluid. I guess these days they are mainly remembered for being a band that had a split 7" with a band called Nirvana.

The first LP I grabbed was this blue vinyl copy of their second LP (their first on Sub Pop) 'Clear Black Paper'. This was released in 1988 as SP16. Apparently the first 500 copies were on blue.

I also picked up this pink vinyl copy of the band's third LP 'Roadmouth'. This came out in 1989 as SP36, with the first 500 copies on pink vinyl. It's an interesting colour. It's such a pale pink that it barely looks pink at all. It's pretty cool in real life as it is quite distinct.

Fun fact - I actually posted different colour vinyl copies of both of these two Fluid LPs as my 3rd post on this blog back in February 2008.

I also managed to pick up two different colours of the 'Tin Top Toy' 7". I already owned an orange vinyl copy of this one, but there are about 9 or 10 different versions you can collect if you want. Most of them are pretty cheap, so I figured I would start picking them off and see how it goes. These two copies (purple and grey) are mid rare, in that they are far from the most common, but also not the rarest. This one came out in 1990 as SP57.

Sub Pop announced in the last few weeks that they are going to repress all of The Fluid's records from their back catalogue. I'm kinda surprised, as most of their records are still relatively easy to pick up and not that expensive, so I have never had any real reason to believe that they are particularly popular. But I guess part of it is to make sure that these old bands don't get forgotten, and hopefully some younger people will finally get a chance to listen to these records. If there does turn out to be a huge resurgence of interest in this band then I'll be glad that I picked these up when I did.