Sub Pop 7"s (3 of 6)

As the title suggests, this is post number 3 in my series of 6 in which I am trying to cover all of the early Sub Pop 7"s that I have picked up this year and haven't got around to posting about. I'm doing this in catalogue number order, and here we are already into the post SP100 releases...

SP103 Unrest 'A Factory Record' released in March 1991. I didn't know about this band, but they were an indie rock band from Washington DC active from the mid 80s to the mid 90s. Usually I'd be interested in any band from Washington DC, but I'm not overly interested in checking out anything else by tihs band as this is possibly the worst Sub Pop 7" I have bought. The first song is just plain fucking annoying as shit.

SP104 Fastbacks 'The Answer is You' 2x7", released in July 1991. 2,500 on green and red vinyl. This band was going for pretty much forever. They formed in the late 70s and still seem to be cranking out records to this day. One of their biggest claims to fame is that Duff McKagen (from Guns 'n' Roses) was in the band at some point. They are referred to as 'punk rock' but sound more like indie rock to me. Overall I found this one a bit disappointing. It hasn't really excited me.

SP109 Urge Overkill 'Now That's the Barclords! b/w What's This Generation Coming To' released in May 1991. There were 5,000 copies, all on neon yellow vinyl, which looks pretty rad in real life. This one is a weird one. I'm not exactly sure what genre this is. But the band was from Chicago and had other releases on Touch & Go Records, so the weirdness kinda makes sense. I quite like this record, and I'd definitely be interested in checking out a little more, although I doubt these will end up becoming my new favourite band.

SP115 Come 'Car b/w Last Mistake', released in August 1991. There were 45500 copies, all on white vinyl. The band were from Boston and featured an ex member of Codeine, and sound very vaguely similar. A really great record and I love the cover and matching vinyl colour.

SP119 Gorilla 'Detox Man b/w Sober', released in September 1991. There were 4,500 copies and all came on grey vinyl. The cover looks pretty terrible, but this is a really catchy, fun, singalong record, even though some dickhead is playing an organ at some point. The song 'Detox Man' is so good. Another great example of 'don't judge a band by their record cover'. I would definitely listen to more of this band's output.

Credit where credit's due: the pressing info in this post came from the Pette discographies site. Thanks to John Pette for developing and maintaining such a great resource for Sub Pop collectors.

Sub Pop 7"s (2 of 6)

As the title suggests, this is post number 2 in my series of 6 in which I am trying to cover all of the early Sub Pop 7"s that I have picked up this year and haven't got around to posting about. I'm doing this in catalogue number order, so let's dive straight into the mid 70s...

SP75 Sister Ray 'The King' released in August 1990. There were 2,500 on green and 1,500 on black. The guitar slightly reminds me of the slower, less furious Dead Kennedys songs in places, but with singing over the top. It's ok, but I'm not in a hurry to listen to more of this.

SP77 Sister Double Happiness 'Don't Worry b/w Wheels a' Spinnin' released October 1990. Apparently the first 2,000 copies were on green, but other rarer colours also exist. The band was, according to discogs, an 'Alternative blues rock band' that existed from 1986 until 1995. Based on that description, I approached this one with caution, but goddamn, this is fucking awesome. I can see that they had an album on SST too. I will definitely be checking out more from this band. A good lesson in 'don't judge a band by their record cover'.

SP88 Poster Children 'Thinner, Stronger b/w Pointed Stick' released in October 1990. There were 3,000 on pink and 1,500 on black. The band are an indie rock band from Illinois who formed in 1987 and are surprisingly still going all these years later. This 7" has a really cool vibe going on and really reminds me of something that I can't quite put my finger on. I would definitely listen to more of this.

SP94 Thin White Rope 'Ants are Cavemen b/w Little Doll' released March 1991. The first 1,500 were on dark purple vinyl, and the rest black. My immediate thought was that I would not like this based on the cover art. I mean, look at it. Then the title of the first song 'Ants Are Cavemen'... what the hell are you talking about? I have to say though, when I put it on, there is something kinda interesting about the first song. The vocal sounds like a man eating gravel, and the whole thing plods along at a relatively slow pace. I kinda dig it. The second song, however, made me want to end my own life to escape it. It drones on for 8 minutes and at no point did I enjoy any aspect of it.

SP102 Velvet Monkeys 'Rock the Nation b/w Why Don't We Do It in the Road?' released in February 1991. There were 4,000 on clear, and 3,000 on black. This is ok, although no doubt the cover makes it look way better than it is. It kinda sounds like you would expect from the back cover photo. The first song kinda rocks, the second song is pretty stupid, but very early Sub Pop. It's ok, but isn't going to land anywhere near the top 50% of Sub Pop releases for me.

Credit where credit's due: the pressing info in this post came from the Pette discographies site. Thanks to John Pette for developing and maintaining such a great resource for Sub Pop collectors.

Sub Pop 7"s (1 of 6)

So this year I got sucked into collecting old Sub Pop 7"s. It started when I picked up a Nirvana 'Sliver' 7" last year, which snowballed into buying a further 8 copies.. and drove me to want to just buy more Sub Pop 7"s from the label's early days. I love the consistency of the labels and early sleeve layouts, and given that a lot of the records were pressed in relatively high numbers, lots of them are both easy to find and also cheap. So I set about trying to collect the Sub Pop catalogue up to SP200. After that the direction of the label kinda changed direction and focus and I have no interest.

Anyway, I have bought quite a lot of Sub Pop 7"s this year, so I decided to bundle them up into a short series of posts. If I tried to post them all individually it would take forever, and I have more things I want to get to before the year ends. So I'm posting a bunch a day, in order of catalogue number, starting here. So here we go...

SP35 Mad Daddys 'Take Me Back to Woodstock b/w Alligator Wine', released in May 1989. There were 1,500 copies, all on black vinyl. The song titles kinda suggest that this is some weird hippy shit, and I can confirm that this is just that. One for collection completeness completeness purposes only.

SP39 Das Damen 'Sad Mile b/w Making Time' released in July 1989. There were 1,500 copies, all on black vinyl. Apparently Das Damen is was an alt rock band from NYC, active in the 80s and just about making it into the 90s before calling it quits. They had a couple of LPs released by SST Records too. I quite like this record. I'd definitely give an album a go.

SP46 Lonely Moans 'Shoot the Cool b/w Texas Love Goat' released in October 1989. There were 1,200 copies on red vinyl and 800 on black. The cover suggests this will sound like The Beatles. It doesn't. The song 'Texas Love Goat' has a strange title, but is a very catchy tune. Definitely an enjoyable 7".

SP51 Honeymoon Killers 'Get It Hot b/w Gettin' Hot' released November 1989. 1200 on red vinyl and 800 on black vinyl. This one sounds halfway between garage and grunge to me. It's alright, but it doesn't excite me enough to want to seek out any of their other records.

SP71 Thee Headcoats 'Time Will Tell b/w Davey Crockett (Gabba-Hay!)' released June 1990. 2000 copies on blue vinyl and 2000 copies on black vinyl. I have memories of record shopping in Camden in the early 90s and seeing Headcoats and Billy Childish and thinking it looked like weird, old fashioned music. I mean, look at the front cover photo. Back then I never heard the band, but in my mind they earned a firm 'avoid' rating. When I decided to collect Sub Pop 7"s this year, this one was quite high on my want list due to nostalgia and curiosity. Ultimately, however, the 17 year old me was right.

Credit where credit's due: the pressing info in this post came from the Pette discographies site. Thanks to John Pette for developing and maintaining such a great resource for Sub Pop collectors.

Guided Tour

Without doubt one of the most anticipated new releases of 2024 is the third album by High Vis. It was announced back at the end of July that this was coming out, and I was not expecting it at all. It felt to me that the band had been pretty active since their last record ('Blending') dropped in late 2022, partly due to it being such a huge success. The band has played a lot of shows and played overseas a lot, so I was surprised to find out that somehow they had also written another record. But what a cool surprise. In a rare move for me, I preordered immediately as I didn't want to miss out.

'Guided Tour' was officially released on 18 October, and arrived at my door on the same day. I was impressed that whoever dispatched this obviously planned to make sure that people like me who ordered a physical copy got it on the same day it came out, so we could enjoy it at the same time as people who used new fangled technology to stream songs through the ether.

At the point I preordered, all colours were available and I had a choice. I ignored any splatter sounding colours, and then ended up choosing the 'onyx' vinyl because it was described as the 'artist version', which was not available through the same link as all the other versions. I figured that the artist version and the harder to find link would mean that this would be the coolest one to have. But if the info on discogs is correct, it seems that this is the second most common. Oh well.

I've had this for just over a month now, and I have played it every single day without fail. And even though I'm enjoying it, I still don't feel that it has grabbed me in the same way as 'Blending', although I guess it's always going to be a tall order for any band to follow up their breakout record. Still, this is a solid record, and I'm nowhere near bored of it, which is rare these days as my interest lasts on average three weeks. So I'm sure this has a lot more mileage in it yet.

Make It Fit

This post is about the power of friends and their influence on each other and my life.

This year Ralf got really into the band Karate. I hadn't listened to this band since about 2006 or so. My journey with the band was basically that I got the first LP when it came out in 1995, the second LP when it came out in 1997, and then I saw them live around this time and recorded the show with my video camera (and still have it on a tape somewhere). After this I gave up on them, although I eventually got around to giving their 3rd LP ('The Bed Is In The Ocean') a go years after it came out, in 2006 I think, and got really into it and cursed myself for ignoring it when it came out. I also bought a 12" of covers called 'In The Fishtank' which I only played about twice. But for some reason I went no further. Well, this year I dusted off those old records following posts from Ralf (here, here, here and here. And then it seemed that Ralf also caught Mike's attention too, and he got sucked into buying and posting a couple of Karate records (here and here. And then I noticed an announcement that there was a new album coming out this year, which was going to be the first in twenty years. Suddenly it felt like Karate was everywhere, so I did what I often do in such situations.. I jumped on the bandwagon and bought the new album.

It was nice to see that there were only two different colours of vinyl available for this record, in a world where every new record seems to get pressed on ten different splatter variations, each available from different a different retailer. I wasn't sure which colour to choose, but decided to go for the 'blonde' vinyl as it looked like it would be a good match to the cover... which it absolutely is. I don't know the pressing info, but this is definitely the more limited of the two colours.

'Make It Fit' was officially released a little under a month ago, on 18 October 2024. I think it landed on my doorstep on the day of release, and I think I have listened to it once a day since. It's a really great record and I am really thankful to my friends for reminding me how great this band was, and still is. This id definitely one of the highlights of 2024 so far.

Hey, wait... where did Geoff go?

Cool World

A few weeks ago I was scrolling down the infinite feed of instagram and, for once, I had the volume on. At some point my ears were met with a strange tune that immediately had me captivated. It's hard to describe, but the music I heard was like nothing else I had heard. I'm not even sure I thought it was great, more that it was just strange and fascinating.

Scrolling for another tenth of a second and I realised that it was music from a band called Chat Pile, and was being played on a post to tell me that their new album was in stock in a UK distro that I have used a couple of times. I'd never heard of the band and to be frank thought that the band name was kinda stupid, but I sure did like the cover of the record and the colour of vinyl on show.

The next day I found myself seeking out that post again, and then decided to order the record.

I've said it before, but this is a great example of how the aesthetics of a record can make me want it. I mean, this just looks... interesting... right?

This is a strange mish mash of a record. The band simply describe themselves as 'an American rock band from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma'. They have a black metal style logo, but the rest of the cover looks like an indie rock record. Yet they sound like the soundtrack to some kind of dark, creepy as fuck, weird film... which is pretty much what the video to the song 'Funny Man' is.

Without a doubt this record has come along at the right time of year. It's the perfect soundtrack to cold, dark gloomy days, especially if you happen to be a serial killer.

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.

The Fire Theft

When I was picking up the Orange 9mm tests and Understand test press from Thirty Something Records, I also decided to pick up another record that I have had in my life for a long time but never owned on vinyl previously... the self titled album by The Fire Theft.

This band was around for a relatively short period, from 2001 to 2004. This was essentially 3 of the 4 original members of Sunny Day Real Estate who got back together with some other dude to crank out tunes that (surprise surprise) sounded similar to Sunny Day Real Estate. They cranked out one full length that came out in 2003 on CD only, and that was it. Thinking back to this era, when I had just bought a house and was spending all my time studying, I'm not exactly sure how I even knew that this band existed. But somehow I did, and I also managed to buy a promo copy of the CD in a cool card sleeve.

Unknown to me until semi recently, this album was first pressed on vinyl sixteen years after it was first released, in 2019. There were just under 1400 copies pressed, which these days isn't that many, especialy considering how big Sunny Day Real Estate are / were. Unsurprisingly, this pressing sells for a fair amount these days. So it was probably about time for this to be pressed again, and Thirty Something Records got the job, and pressed up another 1,000 copies, split across three different colours of vinyl.

By the time I got around to ordering this, the only option available was the most common colour, which is 'Red-transparent w/ black & white marble'. It looks pretty good though, I think, and it's kinda cool to be able to finally own these songs on vinyl after having them for twenty one years.

Burning Bushes And Burning Bridges Test

I've posted about a few Understand records on here over the years. I've said it all several times. I won't repeat myself again (you can read some old posts HERE, HERE and HERE), but they were a pretty important band to me for a few reasons, and I will happily talk about them anytime anyone wants to listen.

Well anyway, back in the lockdown era, Thirty Something Records put out their debut album, 'Burning Bushes and Burning Bridges', on vinyl for the first time. At the time I emailed the label and asked if they had a spare test press they could part with, and I was told that no, sorry, there was only one 'unallocated' test press and it was not for sale. I was disappointed, but that's how the gane plays out sometimes. As Mick Jagger might say, you can't always get what you want.

Earlier this year, when I was picking up the Orange 9mm test pressings from the same label, I had a look around the store and was excited to see that there was also a test press for the Understand LP for sale. Four years after I first asked about buying one, it seemed that I was actually going to get what I wanted after all.

Just like those Orange 9mm tests, this comes in a custom Thirty Something Records sleeve, and is personalised and numbered 11 out of 13 copies. I figured this was reason enough to pull out the other copies that I already owned for a collection photo:

I'm super happy to have this record, and feel pretty lucky to have bagged it. And even though it was back in April that I ordered this, I have just checked and as I type this almost 7 months later and it is still possible to buy a test press of this record in the label's store, in case anyone is interested. If it's still there in a few weeks I might just buy another for myself.

Orange 9mm Tests

My last post was for the Orange 9mm 'Ultraman Vs Godzilla' 12". I mentioned how I was never overly excited about any of the later, (previously) CD only Orange 9mm releases... however, when the opportunity arose to buy test presses of them, I was all in. The prices were pretty good, and somehow the shipping price for these from Germany was also really low, so I had no excuse to not buy them. These are all kinda cool as they come in standard, custom Thirty Something Records sleeves, which are numbered and also personalised, so they look like quite a cool lilttle collection in themselves.

First up is 'Tragic', number 7 of 13:

Next is 'Pretend I'm Human', number 10 of 13:

And finally, 'Ultraman Vs Godzilla', number 4 of 13:

In the hierarchy of Orange 9mm test presses, these are probably at the bottom of the list, with the first 12" on Rev at the top, although I figure it's unlikely that any normal mortal will ever find one of those. But only 13 of each makes these cool to have, and I'm happy to have got one of each before they sold out.