No Motiv

Earlier this year I picked up an LP No Motiv which I found languishing in a record store in California, which was cool as I had wanted the record for three years or so. The band were from Oxnard and active around the time that The Get Up Kids and Saves The Day blew up. They were also on the same record label, but didn't quite reach the same level of popularity. Well, all these years later and I'm really digging them, and as such I sought out some of their 7"s, all of which were pretty damn cheap.

First up is their debut release, a self-titled 7". There were a few pressings of this one, and this is an old pressing, on purple vinyl. It sounds pretty raw and much less polished than the later LP that I have.

This was released by It's Alive Records in 1996. Discogs lists four different versions, but it is not clear whether they were all at the same time, or spread over a number of years. But then, twenty five years after its initial release, the same label repressed 100 hand numbered copies on clear red vinyl.

As with all the semi recent represses from It's Alive Records, this one comes with a bunch of extra stuff:

I also picked up this 7" on blue. This only contains two songs, which were originally released on a split 7" with a band called The Choice. I'm not sure why the other band was left off of this repressing. This one is also numbered out of 100 copies on the inside of the sleeve, and has some extra bits and bobs.

These 7"s are really nice and collectible, although musically they do sound quite rough and primitive compared to the album I bought, which is only from three years later. But I would say that if you have never heard this band are may be slightly interested, these records are probably not the best place to start.

Tooth And Nail

A couple of years ago I picked up a couple of Chokehold 7"s, thinking that this could be the start of a new collection. And here I am now with semi recent pick ups of two other copies to build the collection.

Last time I posted, Geoff commented to tell me about how tough it was to track down the rarest colour back when it came out. I guess I got lucky as I managed to pick up one from a friend who had got it directly from the label when it came out. It's a split pink and orange vinyl and hand numbered out of 50 on the back cover. I absolutely love it.

I also picked up one of the clear vinyl European tour copies. This one doesn't look quite as cool, although this version comes in a different sleeve with the logo changed into a Burn ripoff.

Here's the collection so far. There's no denying that this is now an official work in progress. Two more to go and in theory I could go buy them tomorrow on discogs... although I figure it will be more fun to leave it a while, wait for them to sell out, and then buy the next copy thst comes along five years later for three times the price. That's generally how I operate these days.

Anger Management

The next installment in my 'catching up on 7" posts' series, and this is a compilation from the early 00s that I am convinced that there is zero interest in these days.

'Anger Management Session 1' was released by Martyr Records back in 2003. Back then I had been a little out of touch with hardcore for a couple of years due to life, and when I came back I was discovering all manner of new bands and labels. It felt like I had been gone for ten years as the landscape had changed a lot, so compilations were a really useful way to help me catch up. This comp contains 6 'B-list' bands from the era, namely Kill Your Idols, Holding On, Close Call, My Luck, Diehard Youth, and What Feeds The Fire.

The early 00s was also the era that spawned an increase in the numbers of different versions of each record, but this record was released on 'only' three different colours of vinyl. This copy completes the trilogy for me of red vinyl (110), blue vinyl (330) and green (not sure, but the most common colour).

I really love hardcore from this era, and for some reason I associate it with cold, dark winter nights, so this one seems perfect to get reaquainted with at this time of year. The strange thing is that the best song on here is by Diehard Youth, but I never got around to picking up any of their other records. And somehow even now they don't seem easy or cheap to acquire. So if anyone wants to sell me some Diehard Youth 7"s that would be appreciated.

Seasons Change

It seems that 7"s are growing increasingly rare these days. They're also increasingly difficult for me to keep track of. It's been a wet weekend here, so I spent some time indoors tidying things and I came across a small pile of 7"s that I had left in a weird place. I got these over a year ago and my record room was a mess at the time, and I ended up putting these into a box along with things for sale. So I just discovered them and realised that I never got them up here. So I figured I'd spend the next few posts trying to catch up on some 7"s.

I'm starting off with a(nother) copy of the Locked Inside 'Your Thoughts Your Own' 7". This gold vinyl version was exclusive to RevHQ and limited to 145 copies.

This is the 10th copy of this record that I own, which is kinda funny as I missed out on every single version when it first came out back in 2020. I took a photo of the 9 'regular' versions that I have. The tenth is a second press test press, which has a different cover, so I decided to leave it out of this pic.

Five years since this came out, and I have no idea if the band is still going. There's not been any activity on their instagram or bandcamp pages for a long time, so I'm guessing they are no longer active. But I'm sure that I read a couple of years ago that their LP was coming out soon. Hopefully I'm wrong and that will end up coming out pretty soon.

Sliver 1st Press

A couple of years ago I picked up a copy of the Nirvana 'Sliver / Dive' 7" and it started an obsession. I was checking eBay for copies almost daily, and over the course of the next year and a half I picked up 10 different copies of the thing. There are still a few I don't have, but those copies are much more expensive generally. The last 'affordable' copy out there is the first pressing, and after over a year of not picking up a copy of this record, one appeared in the UK for a good price.

The way to tell a first press from the many represses that followed is that it comes in a foldered paper sleeve, rather than a glued card sleeve. And of course, if you're going to go after a first press, you want to make sure that it comes with the Sub Pop Singles Club coupon still attached.

I acquired a copy last year which was a first press record in a second press sleeve. I pulled it out to show the two first press copies together. I think this latest copy is a much prettier and more interesting colour.

There are at least another four or five copies that I am missing - white, clear, red, hot pink, and peach. Despite the impressive speed with which I have picked up the ones I have so far, these other copies are going to take years. But that's fine by me. I've always been good at being patient.

Can't Wait Three Minutes

I picked this one up for dirt cheap semi recently. It's crazy to think that I have never owned this before, and that this year marks 30 years since it came out. This is a promo 12" for the CIV song 'Can't Wait One Minute More'.

This features three versions of the same song. The album version, an extended version, and an instrumental version.

I love records that use this look... a DJ sleeve and a sticker. And even though this isn't one that will ever need to be played more than once to hear those extra versions of the song, it's still a cool thing to own.

Souvenirs & Evidence

Sometimes I am pretty late to the party, and here is yet further proof. Back in 2008 when this blog was six months old, I picked up a 7" on Livewire Records by a band called Cheap Tragedies. And here we are seventeen years later and I finally got around to picking up their LP, 'Volume 1: Souvenirs & Evidence'.

The band was from Cleveland, which explains why they used this famous mugshot of Jane Fonda holding a CLeveland sign. The story behind it is that she was arrested at the airport charged with smuggling pills, but it is felt that it was really just an excuse as she was at an anti Vietnam war activist and the authorities had her marked as 'trouble'. ANyway, she was released without charge, but the mugshot will live on in popular culture forever.

I remember when the LP came out in 2009 that I was wanting one of the clear vinyl copies. It wasn't a high priority at the time, and a few times I have seen black vinyl copies for sale over the years for cheap, but it's taken this long for a fair priced clear copy to fall in front of me.

Sometimes timing is everything, and even though the 7" didn't make a huge impact on me when it came out, in 2025 this LP sounds great. Fast and dirty hardcore punk rock and just right for Autumn/Fall and Winter. It's just a shame that Volume 2 never came out.

All Talk

I recently bought something from somewhere and pulled that old move where you look around to see what else the seller is selling to make the postage cost seem better value. One of the things I then found was a cheap clear vinyl copy of the Struck Nerve 'Rattle The Cage' LP that Youngblood Records put out about 4 years ago. Sold.

The clear vinyl looks great as it really shows off the huge amount of dead wax in the centre of the record, which is a look that always excites me. Blame 'Break Down The Walls' and Wishingwell.

This is now the third copy of this record that I have bought, which seems amusing considering I wrote this three years ago when I bought my first copy:

My Youngblood collection is pretty complete, and I have multiple copies of most releases, but when the preorder for this when live I didn't fancy spending money on three copies of the same record. So I just ordered one copy of the most limited colour.

Bets are now being taken for when I will find an excuse to buy copy number four.

Just Accept It

At some point last year Revelation pressed a No Escape discography onto vinyl. I was pretty happy about this on paper because their only full length, 'Just Accept It', came out as a CD only release. It was one of the earliest hardcore records that I heard / bought, as it came out around the time that I was first getting into hardcore and straight edge. I got the Turning Point / No Escape split 7" and it was a natural next step to pick up the No Escape album, despite it being on a CD. However, as much as I love those songs, I always thought that it sounded awful. So all these years later, it's cool that it has come out on vinyl and also been remastered so that it sounds much bigger.

This contains all of their studio recorded output, which includes the full length, the two songs from the split 7" with Turning Point, the demo, and the song from the 'Rebuilding' comp. In total there are 15 songs here.

This also comes with a huge booklet. However, this feels like a little bit of a disappointment. It has a brief intro by Tim Singer, but other than that it's just basically a big lyric sheet. The booklet contains a bunch of photos and then the lyrics to the songs. But there are no other writings by anyone other than Tim's intro. So all in all it provided about 5 minutes of entertainment.

There were three different versions made, so of course I had to pick up all of them.

Shown in the photo above are:
Blue (RevHQ Exclusive /200)
'Coke Bottle Clear' /250)
Green (Retail Store Exclusive /250)

Overall a really great summary of this band's output that sounds great, but where I feel slightly puzzled is to the fact that they got back together to record new songs which were released as a 6 song 12" in 2021. There is no mention of this in the piece Tim wrote in the booklet, which makes me wonder - did he forget, or did I imagine the whole thing?

Something To Forget

Despite my obsession with trying to collect every piece of Revelation Records vinyl, at some point i decided that I wasn't interested in collecting multiple copies of the Texas Is The Reason 2xLP. But then a year or two ago there was a new pressing on purple vinyl, and I made the decision to buy it, and I effectively decided to carry on trying to collect this record, despite having intentionally avoided a few pressings of it. Recently I picked up two more copies from different sources.

First up is a brown vinyl version. This was the most recent pressing from 2024, but I'm not sure how many were made.

The second version is this clear yellow pressing. This was from 2022, and was the third clear yellow pressing (although the first pressed at RTI after Rainbo closed down). Given that I don't own any of the older yellow vinyl copies, I'm not sure if there is much difference, although I'm pretty sure that the only way to tell would be to compare the matrix on each record.

The pressing info on this record makes it pretty much impossible to collect at this point. There were about four different orange vinyl pressings and three yellow. I'd probably collect them if I could be certain of which was which, but I'm not sure how to figure out which is which. The main one I know for sure that I am missing is the red vinyl pressing, but I'm sure that I will eventually find one of those. If anyone can help with next level detail about the orange and tellow pressings, please get in touch.

Boston, Don't Wait Up

I went to see Bane play in London a couple of months ago. It had been ten years since I had last seen them play, and in betweem they had played a last show and broken up for good... and then got back together a couple of years ago. Following their reformartion, Equal Vision have been busy repressing their records, with three of their four albums having been repressed on multiple different colours of vinyl. There were so many copies of the the first two LPs made that I took the decision to not bother trying to collect them. And just like that, twenty five years or so of trying to collect every version of every Bane record came to an end. However, that doesn't mean that I'm never buying another Bane record. Far from it...

When I saw that the city series 7"s had been pressed as a 12" for the first time, I decided to pick up one copy and leave it there. The decision on which version to pick up was made pretty easy, as the band had some copies for sale on tour, so I just grabbed one at the London show. It was sealed, and you can probably imagine my thoughts when I opened it up to find this crazy colour combination.

I'd arranged to do a trade at the show with Ralf. Well, not so much a trade, but an exchange. I'd been storing a few items for him at my house, and he had repaid the favour, and there was an opportunity to exchange everything at the show. I'd actually forgotten that one of the records I was getting was another Bane record, being a test press of the ten year anniversary pressing of the fourth LP, 'Don't Wait Up' on End Hits Records.

I'm pretty happy to have this one as I have somehow managed to lose the original test press of this one on the same label. I don't think that I have ever lost any other record other than that one, and over the last few years it has driven me absolutely crazy. I'll probably never know what happened to it, so this is a fair replacement for that gap on my shelf.

Said And Done

Despite my best efforts to stop buying reissues or represses, I am always finding exceptions and buying more copies of the same record again and again. The latest example of my inability to follow my own rules is yet another copy of the Negative Approach 'Tied Down' LP, this time on orange vinyl.

One of the things I really enjoy about the different colour represses of this record is that they change the colour of the sleeve to match the vinyl. The first colour repress was green vinyl, then we got purple vinyl.. but both of those colours were pressed to match the sleeve colours that had previously been made and issued over the years since the LP first came out in . This orange pressing is the first time that the sleeve has been turned orange, and this makes it a cool pressing in its own right.

Of course, now that they have taken the step of issuing this in a completely brand new sleeve colour, there are no limits, so it wouldn't surprise me if this eventually gets pressed on every colour under the sun, but I wonder at what point I would stop buying them?

Fuck Around

I picked up the latest Scowl LP ('Are We All Angels?') a couple of months back, and this set me off listening to their older stuff, which of course then lead me on a shopping spree. Ok, so maybe 'spree' is a slight exaggeration, but I ended up finding a 1st press copy of their first record for a fair price in the UK which I could not resist.

This orange vinyl version is the more common version of the first pressing, although the rare colour looks like shit, so this was the one I always wanted. Back when this came out, the entire first press sold out insanely quickly and it eluded me for a year, at which point I had to settle for a second press yellow vinyl. Finally I can upgrade.

Having suffered from Scowl overload the last year or two, I hadn't played this in a while, and despite recently thinking that the latest album and its 'grunge' sound is better, when I listen to this one I'm not so sure. I guess the reason I was suffering from Scowl overload is because they are absoltely everywhere... which is because there is a lot of interest in them... because they are really good. And this early sound is what projected them into everyone's line of sight. So if anything I'm just guilty of forgetting how good this is.

If anyone wants the second press yellow vinyl copy, get in touch.

Damage Control

If you read this thing with any regulatory then you'll know that I enjoyed the 90s era of music, and also that I enjoy test presses. So it will be of no surprise that a combination of the two things is always something that I am excited by.

A year or so back, Nico was in a record store and messaged me asking if I would be interested in a Die 116 test press. I had to ask which record it was, as the band had two releases and I already own a test of 'Dyna Cool', but by good fortune this turned out to be the one that I didn't have... the first record, 'Damage Control'. SO I asked him to grab it for me and then, a year later, he delivered it to my house. What a service!

The test came in a generic white sleeve that someone had written on. I dug out my regular copy to show the cover as it makes for a slightly more interesting picture.

This record was released by Wreck-age Records in 1994, and I bought it when it came out as the description I read at the time said that it contained members of Burn and it sounded like Burn. Back then that was a guaranteed way to get most hardcore kids to throw their money at you. The band had Gavin Van Vlack (Burn), Andrew Gormley (Rorschach, Kiss It Goodbye), Keith Huckins (Rorschach, Deadguy, Kiss It Goodbye) and a couple of other dudes. Their second record seemed to be pressed in higher numbers and better distributed, but it had a different sound and was in my opinion nowhere near as good as this debut five song 12". If you've not heard this record then it's well worth checking out if you like 90s hardcore and any of the bands mentioned.

Hard To Believe

A couple of years ago I picked up an LP titled 'Existing The Dream', the debut from Low Coast, a band fronted by by Jeff Caudill (of Gameface fame). Well, at some point a few months ago, the label put some test pressings up for sale, and even though I can't remember whether I got an email to tell me about it or saw an instagram post, I bought one immediately.

The record was released by Spartan Records, and the test comes in one of their standard test press sleeves, which I have to say looks great.

The name of the band and record is hand written and numbered at the bottom of the front cover. I got number 2 of 10.

I still isten to this record often and recommend it highly if you enjoy Jeff's voice. I really hope that they get around to putting something else out in the near future.