Yet More YOT Represses

Not really much to say about these - the latest Youth Of Today repress colours from Revelation.

First up, yet another pressing of 'Can't Close My Eyes', this time on clear vinyl. I didn't think there would be demand enough for another pressing of this one. But I guess there must be enough fools like me willing to buy another copy to make it worthwhile.

Next is 'Break Down The Walls' on blue. I guess after they did it on red it was inevitable that they would then also do it on blue. I wonder where they'll go next though? Perhaps change the sleeve colours to black and yellow? Only time will tell...

Also, not too exciting, but these records are the first to feature the new sticker on the shrink wrap. Making good use of the 'R' in a star, these look way better than the old ones in my opinion.

And finally, 'We're Not In This Alone' on red. This seems like a much more suitable colour choice than white, which was the previous colour. Looks good.

The funny thing is that I wouldn't really class myself as a Youth Of Today collector, but these records now mean that I own a total of 21 YOT LPs. Yes, that's right. Twenty One. Crazy.

Repress HQ Order

Got my big RevHQ order on Friday last week. I originally ordered some records which were showing as pre-orders. Then the Chain T-shirt / poster thing happened, so I placed another order for that. Then the YOT reissue LPs appeared, and then the Quicksand 7" on green. So I decided that placing a third order seemed stupid. So I emailed and asked to add to my existing orders and have everything sent at one go. Emails went back and forth and it took weeks to resolve. But eventually it arrived safely in a giant box.

When opened, I found a lot of these polystyrene packing beads:

And underneath was another, smaller box:

Which, when opened, was found to contain more polystyrene packing beads:

In the end the pile of records probably accounted for about a quarter of the space in the big box. The rest was polystyrene. Pretty funny.

Anyway, this order contained the latest repressings of some of Rev's classics. Being a Rev nut I needed to buy these things yet again.

In case you're not sure of what's what from the picture, here's a list:

Youth of Today 'Break Down The Walls' LP on Red

Youth of Today 'We're Not In This Alone' LP on white

Sensefield 'Killed For Less' LP on green

In My Eyes 'The Difference Between' LP on purple

In My Eyes 'Nothing To Hide' LP on green

Ignite 'Call On My Brothers' LP on orange

Into Another 'S/T' LP on gold

Farside 'Rigged' LP on red

Kiss It Goodbye 'She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not' LP on white

Quicksand 'S/T' 7" on green

And finally, at the front is the one exception - the one that isn't a repress, but a new release (of old songs) - the Rev 25 LP, on blue.

Record Store Day 2012

Record Store Day. Some love it, some hate it. I'm somewhere in the middle. But I don't want to talk about my thoughts about the positives & negatives of what the day is trying to achieve. I haven't got time. I just wanted to post up pictures of the stuff I bought.

Last year I tried to go out early but got annoyed by the crowds so went home. This year I decided to go late enough to let the crowds die down. I wasn't entirely successful as I still had to stand around for about half an hour outside. This was the queue I joined in the early afternoon:

I guess waiting in line is just part of the event. The time soon passed & once I got in I found everything I wanted so it was cool.

Note - spare copies were picked up for friends. They are not destined to be flipped on eBay.

My main interest was the Revelation Records reissues. I get the impression that most people who are fans of Revelation were disappointed by their choices this year. Previous years have seen classic 7"s like Sick Of It All, Burn, Quicksand and Youth Of Today repressed on new colours of vinyl. This year, the classics were from the early - mid 90s that most of today's Rev collectors aren't too fussed about. For me though, these bands are my favourites. Farside, Into Another & Sense Field are three of my favourite bands of all time, and I was more than happy to buy three of their records again.

I love each of these records dearly. But I am slightly curious as to why, of all the Revelation releases, these were chosen to be repressed in 2012. Mind you, I wondered the same about the Elliott LP last year.

The fourth rev repress was not originally released by Revelation. Ignite 'Call On My Brothers' LP. This one was originally put out by Conversion Records in 1996. I remember mail ordering the original when it came out, sending cash in an envelope and wondering if I would ever get anything, such were the horror stories I heard about mail ordering from New Age & Conversion. As it turned out my stuff came in three weeks, which was pretty amazing. Some labels can't even manage that these days even with instant online payment systems. Anyway, I was least bothered about this one before I left the house, but this one is definitely my favourite color record of the day. Its a clear-ish purple swirl colour. Very very similar to the purple Uniform Choice 'Screaming For Change' LP. Looks great.

Next up, Endpoint's 'In A Time Of Hate' LP. This reissue is on Simba Records, and comes in a nicely made screen printed cover hand numbered out of 500 copies. Again, this one was originally put out by Conversion Records. This isn't my favourite Endpoint record by a long way, but its cool to see it put out for a new generation of kids. Or rather, for the same generation to buy again. Ha.

Next up, the Misfits 'Walk Among Us' LP on purple vinyl. This one was pressed on three different colours for US citizens, and then there were 1500 copies on purple vinyl for the International markets. Ha. I've never really been a Misfits fan, but for some reason I was interested in picking this one up. Such is the madness of record store day. You get tricked into buying shit you're not that fussed about. I'm not convinced this is purple, more of a dark red, but it turns pink when you hold it to the light which looks way cooler.

Once I'd taken all of the LPs out of their sleeves to photograph, I couldn't resist putting them all together for a 6 pack shot.

Poison Idea 'Pick Your King' 7" reissue on TKO Records. I've never really been too interested in Poison Idea, but seeing this classic 7" reissued I couldn't resist. 1000 pressed. I think they're all on clear vinyl.

And finally, the Tomahawk 3xLP Box Set. Tomahawk is a Mike Patton band. I've checked out a couple of songs in the past but never been excited enough to get into them. I mainly picked this up because it was cheap - only a couple of quid more than one of the Rev LPs, which seemed a really good price for a triple LP box set. I'm not sure if I'll end up keeping this one or not.

So that's it for RSD 2012. Kind of a funny day really. I did enjoy being in a record store and flicking through the racks, which I rarely do these days. But as I sit and reflect I think it fair to say that I got sucked into the hype a little bit. Ah well. No real harm done.

Screaming for a Repress

There are a lot of represses & reissues these days. But here's one that everyone should own (especially if they don't already own the record) - a new colour vinyl pressing of the classic Uniform Choice 'Screaming For Change' LP on Wishingwell Records.

When I first heard about this one being on green vinyl I thought it was a stupid colour choice, seeing as the record was originally pressed on clear green way back when. And we all know that one of the golden rules of pressing records is that you don't press the same colour twice. Fortunately though, this recent pressing is pretty easy to tell apart from the original clear green pressing.

Here is the repress (on the left) next to the original (on the right). As you can see, the repress is on a lighter green vinyl, but also the colours on the front cover of the repress are slightly lighter than the cover of the original, which is most noticeable if you look at the words 'screaming for change':

The next difference would probably not be obvious unless you had both records laying next to each other. But the dead wax area at the end of the songs is much smaller in size on the repress compared to the original, as these pictures show:

Also, not that you can see it here (as I couldn't capture it in a photo) but the matrix itself is different. The original has a little message in the matrix, whereas the repress contains only the catalogue number.

Finally, the most obvious difference is the insert. Here's a pic showing the original on the right and the repress on the left:

Yes, that's right, there is no insert with the repress! I guess it was too expensive to make more inserts. Could there be any other reason?

Also, in case you are not aware, there is another variant of this repress out there, which is some weird ugly green colour (see HERE). If anyone has one and wants to part with it please get in touch as I'd quite like one.

Finally - I picked up an extra copy of this thing. If someone in the UK wants it then get in touch.

In My Brown Head

Continuing the recent SST colour vinyl reissues, here's a brown vinyl copy of Black Flag's 'In My Head' LP. Way back in the early 90s, this one was issued on pink vinyl, which remains one of the few colour vinyl 'original' (ahem) Black Flag records that I'm still missing. Seems a little less urgent now though seeing as it is easier to find a colour version, and this brown seems like a much better colour choice seeing as it nicely matches the cover.

And here it is next to the brown vinyl copy of 'Loose Nut' that I also picked up, just to show the different shades of brown.

There's also a yellow and a light brown knocking about out there. Beyond that, who knows? I still need the original early 90s pink pressing though. Can anyone help?

Loose Nuts

You may or may not know that SST Records have recently repressed a few records on color vinyl. This hasn't really been done since the early 90s, which is when pretty much all the SST color vinyl was originally manufactured. But now, twenty years later, the latest round of represses have appeared on non-black wax. And to keep things interesting, there's more than one colour of everything. Yay!

Case in point - 'Loose Nut'. The original early 90s colour pressing was on clear blue (I picked one up in June 2008). Now we have at least three new colours on the scene... a brown, a light pinky grey, and a deep pink:

To make things worse (for me) I have just scanned eBay and seen a super dark grey version which the seller describes as 'olive'. I'm starting to think that these were maybe pressed on 'scrap' colour vinyl, which is where the plant uses random leftover colours which then results in almost countless different variants. If that's the case then I best give up now or I'll end up owning 20 copies on varying shades. Although, in a way, that would be kinda cool...

Bold RevHQ Order

I finally got around to ordering the latest piece of Revelation vinyl a couple of weeks ago, the BOLD discography. In all honesty Bold are probably my least favourite classic Rev band. The LP I can listen to, but the 7" these days I find awful. I can't listen to it. But obviously a new piece of Rev vinyl on the scene I'm down. This discography is pressed as a double LP. When I first took the vinyl out of the sleeve I thought I had been sent a black vinyl copy, but it turns out that the red vinyl record I was holding is just super dark unless you put it to the light. Good to see that the vinyl colours are closely matched to the cover art, which is always a nice touch.

As usual, when I placed the order I thought that it would be a waste for someone to pack me up one record and mail it all the way from California. So I had a browse around the RevHQ online store and found a few other bits to pad out the mailer. First up was the latest Revelation re-pressing - a red vinyl copy of the second Shai Hulud LP. I bought the clear vinyl first pressing of this when it came out in 2003 and I'm not even sure I have ever listened to it.

I also picked up the recent vinyl pressing of the Harkonen 'Shake Harder Boy' LP. This one came out in 2002 on Hydrahead, which was at a point in time when vinyl was not so popular, so it was only issued on CD. Thankfully someone has seen sense to correct this mistake nine years later, which is a good thing as this is a great album.

I also noticed that Rev had a couple of the recent Black Flag 7" colour vinyl reissues in stock. There were 4 of 7"s repressed on colour recently, and the addition of these two means I now only have one left to get.

I also took the opportunity to pick up a copy of the Converge / Drop Dead Split 7" that came out a while ago. There are an almost infinite number of variations of this one. I'm just happy with the one - a very dark green with black streaks through it.

And finally, another recent Dischord reissue on colour wax. This time it's the Egg Hunt 7". One of the weirdest but also coolest covers of all time. Anyone know the story behind the picture on the front cover?