Paid In Full

Another classic from the golden age of hip-hop crossed off my want list. I can't stress enough how much my taste in music has been influenced by skateboarding. Videos used to be a great source to find new music, at least as long the music was shown in the credits. In the early 2000s, another skateboard related source entered my world: video games. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was the shiny, cool game and it was admittedly a ton of fun and the soundtrack of each game was great. Thrasher's Skate and Destroy video game was always in the shadow of the THPS franchise, but I enjoyed it a lot as well and it had a fantastic soundtrack. 

Traditionally, Thrasher Magazine has been more associated with a no-frills, grimy approach to skateboarding and was closely aligned with punk rock, so when I got the video game and saw that it had an all hip-hop soundtrack and the booklet even gave a short history of hip-hop and the acts on the soundtrack, I was very surprised. Playing that game was when I first heard Eric B & Rakim and their song, I Know You Got Soul, was a favorite of mine. It only took me some 20 odd years to finally get a vinyl copy of their debut LP Paid in Full. 

Italian Press on Black on Island /???

There's a weird stamp on the A-side label. I can't really make out what it says, except for the word 'Italian'. I doubt it was done by the label, but I have absolutely no idea what it could be. 

Long Way From Lawrence

The Get Up Kids is one of my favorite 90s emo bands and Something To Write Home About is one of my all-time favorite records. I know I often post how I don’t really order directly in the US anymore because of shipping and customs, but every once in a while, there’s just no way around it. When Nico posted about a live record of Something To Write Home About, I knew I needed a copy. Originally, the record was only available at shows, but the band made the leftovers available on their website. It took me a minute to pull the trigger because I’d hoped a copy from a seller in Europe might pop up on Discogs, but when that didn’t happen, my fear of the record selling out kicked in and I ordered a copy straight from the band. It helped that they had some cool merch available as well. 

This record is so good. I love the adaptation of the original artwork and it’s cool to hear the songs of Something To Write Home About played live in the order of the album. The only thing I can criticise is the fact that there are no liner notes or a special booklet. I feel like this could have elevated the record a lot and not going the extra mile feels like a wasted opportunity. 

1st Press on Black on Quality Hill

True Fraud

A couple of weeks ago, my band got to play a cool show with a bunch of awesome German hardcore bands. One of them was True Fraud, one of the myriad of bands coming out of the Cologne/Munster connection. It’s basically one of my favorite German bands of the last 10 years, Tides Denied, only with a different bass player. True Fraud is rougher around the edges though. Good, fast hardcore that’s a lot of fun live. I’m looking forward to a 7” or an LP. 

1st Run on Clear w/ Orange Cover on Collective Memroy

Magical

The last record I picked up at the local store was Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles. I’d been eyeing this record sitting in the store for some time, because it was priced a littler higher than on Discogs, but in the end I decided that a couple of bucks aren’t as important as helping to keep the store afloat. Magical Mystery Tour is actually not a proper album, as I thought for a very long time, it was an EP released originally as a double 7”. This version contains said EP on the A-side and a couple of songs originally released as singles only on the B-side. It’s quite astonishing that it took me so long to buy a copy because four of my top 10 Beatles songs are on this record and since I don’t own any Beatles singles , this is the first time that I own most of these songs on vinyl. Needless to say I’ve been playing this record A LOT since I got it. The cover is so bizarre and so much of the time, but I actually like it. 

Collector’s Conundrum

A little more than 10 years ago, I started buying Fugazi records. My original resolution to buy one Fugazi record a month didn’t really work out at the time, but I did manage to buy all of their releases. I bought the current represses back then, because I wanted to support a label that truly holds a special place in my heart, not to mention the band itself of course. I bought the now classic s.t. Record round about 10 years ago and I bought all of the Fugazi records more or less in chronological order. I messed up my system though, when I bought a first press of In On The Killtaker, but there’s just something about first presses and I usually can’t help myself but to get them. Which brings me to today’s post. While flipping through the bins at my local record store, I found a first press copy of Fugazi’s s.t. debut. It showed the $5 price on the back cover and after checking the matrix, I knew this was an actual first press.  I tried to talk myself out of buying the record, but after about 10 seconds I stopped fooling myself and put it on my pile. 

Buying this record puts me in a conundrum. I now have two first presses of Fugazi records and the collector in me screams that this doesn’t feel right and I now need first press copies of all of the Fugazi records, which is something that hadn’t really been on my mind at all until I got this record. I’ve been thinking about replacing my current copies with those really nice looking colored represses Dischord has done these last few years - and I still want to do that, sort of, because Dischord has been doing such a great job with the colors. But do I really need three copies of Fugazi records? Probably not. So buying this record has possibly kicked of a chain of events in the foreseeable future. Luckily this might end up being one of the cheaper micro collections because Dischord is still selling records at Dischord prices (by 2025 standards). 

1st Press (According to the Matrix) on Black on Dischord

Real Life Record Shopping

Whenever I get the chance to hit up the local record store, I go in there with a feeling of excitement and hopefulness. I always enjoy just flipping through the records, but more often than not I leave empty handed and disappointed. When I last went there a couple of weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see that in the new arrivals section there were a bunch of very interesting records: Strife first and second LP, Texas Is The Reason, Farside and a bunch of others from that time - all original presses. The one that caught my eye was Reality Filter by Eleven Thirty-Four because that artwork always looked cool to me, albeit very of the time, and you can’t really go wrong with records on New Age released in the early to mid 90s. Reality Filter is a really good record and I’ve really enjoyed listening to it over the last few weeks. I also wish that bands did more cool poster inserts again. There was never a pressing on color for this release, so I’m just fine with black vinyl. 

Now I’m just left wondering who in the area I live in might have sold their collection, or a least part of it, because there scene is rather small here and even fewer people from that scene listen to that kind of hardcore. 

1st Press on Black on New Age /???

Bonds Of Trade-Ship

Trading seems to be a lost art these days. I was never that big of a trader because I rarely had money to buy spare records just to trade and I often had a hard time letting go of  the ones I’d bought for myself. Still, I managed to make a couple of cool trades over the years and got to meet, virtually and in real life, some great people. 

When I ordered the represses of Bane’s Boston, 6.58pm, I asked a couple of friends if they wanted copies too, so we could order together and save on shipping. One of them who was onboard happened to be selling a bunch of records right around the time when the records arrived and instead of him sending me the money, we managed to work out a record for record deal. I’ve long given up on collecting every variant of Have Heart 7”s, but whenever I can get my hands on a special version, e.g. some different cover art, I’ll gladly jump at the opportunity. 

This Insted rip-off sleeve of the What Counts 7” had been on my want list for 10+ years but somehow it always slipped through my fingers whenever one popped up. But finally I managed to close that gap in my collection. I never knew that this variant comes with a regular cover and the rip-off is just an additional sleeve. I really like the rip-off itself, but “bro-ship” is pretty cringe, if it’s not some sort of irony. I mean they once had a shirt that said “Have Heart masturbates after the first date”, so they’re not beneath making fun of themselves. 

3rd Press on Black w/ Bonds of Bro-Ship Cover on Think Fast /150

Turning Point II

The last record I received from Marcus is the repress of the Turning Point 7” on green. Alright, there was also as Taylor Swift record in there, which had sold out too quickly on mainland Europe so I ordered a copy in the UK, but that was for my wife, so it doesn’t really count in regards to my blog. I was actually very surprised when I opened the parcel and saw this record. Marcus and I had talked about this record at one point, but I’d all forgotten about it, so this was a very nice surprise for me. When I picked up a copy of this repress originally, I said that I’d much rather have a copy on green than on orange, so this gives me some closure. I still prefer this color over orange as it has a more classic 80s record look in my opinion.

Thanks again, Marcus, for letting me ship those records to your place and you dragging them to that show so my friend could pick them up. 

Repress on Clear Green on Revelation /517

DIY Spirits Or Die Faster

There was a time about 10 years ago when Spirits was a very important band to me. They played a style of hardcore that I love but which wasn't all that popular in the after 2010 or so. So hearing them was a breath of fresh air for me. Collecting them turned out to be a collector's dream/nightmare, because the band put out a ton of releases in a very short period of time and all of them came out on what felt like a million versions. I managed to build a solid collection, but there are still certain records that I missed out on and haven't been able to track down so far. One of them is the record release version of the Spirit/Die Faster split, to be precise the Die Faster version of the record release, because each band had a different one of course. This was actually the record that kicked off me ordering a bunch of records in the UK and having them shippped to Marcus. 

After getting the record, I was disappointed though because the seller had listed the record incorrectly and this one turned out to be the regular version on red vinyl with the red cover. The record was not that expensive, so I’m not too mad, but it’s still annoying that people list records incorrectly. I’m even more annoyed with myself though for not asking the seller for more info or a picture of the numbering beforehand to make sure. 

1st Press on Red w/ Red Cover on Coin Toss /300

There are four versions of the stamped cover: purple, dark blue, orange and red. Each cover was stamped by hand with a wooden stamp on 7” format. I’m not 100% sure if the stamp was actually carved by hand, but knowing the band member, I’m pretty sure it was. I was lucky enough to be given one of the stamps by the band member who’d made them. Come to think of it, maybe it is the only stamp and this one was used for all of the colors, because there is also some dark color on the edges. Be that as it may, it’s a pretty cool artefact of the band to have and I felt like sharing this along with the record. 

Secret World

The last record I got from the UK distro I purchased the previous three records from is Guilt Is Good by Secret World, a band from Sydney, Australia. I’d never heard of them before but when I was browsing the distro’s webstore, the cover somehow caught my attention. I can’t say why, but it did for some reason. And I didn’t get disappointed. The songs on this 7” are really catchy and I’ve been listening to the record over and over. I’d say, if you like Militarie Gun or Fiddlehead or even Title Fight, this might be for you. As it happens the band just released a full length yesterday, lucky me. 

1st Press on Clear on Sunday Drive / Last Ride /150

Splitting Vinyl

7” records are a dying breed in 2025 and split 7”s are a marginalised group within 7”s. So when a band I like decides to put out a split 7” this day and age, I’m in. I played the Anklebiter demo a lot when it came out. I missed out on the LP they released in 2023 and by the time I learned about it, it had been sold out everywhere. When I was browsing the inventory of the UK distro I’d found the records I wrote about in the two previous post, I came across a split between Anklebiter and Prevention. As mentioned before, I was really into the band’s demo, so ordering the split was a no brainer. I’d never heard of Prevention before, but the fact that there were new Anklebiter songs was enough for me to add a copy to the shopping basket. The Anklebiter side is very good and it left me wanting for more (so I will have to pick up a copy of the LP soon I guess). The Prevention side is fine, but doesn’t grab me the way the Anklebiter side does. All in all, a fun listen 

1st Press on Clear Blue on Sunday Drive /150

Ascending

Another record I’d been really looking forward to was the latest Stand Still release, Steps Ascending. Actually, this came out already in 2024 but I didn’t get around to ordering a copy until I ordered the Anxious LP from a mailorder in the UK and as I detailed in the last post, it took a while until I got those records. 

Stand Still managed to write a really good and diverse record. It’s melodic, it’s heavy, it’s very entertaining. I also like the vinyl color in itself, even though a different color scheme would have made more sense with the cover. But I’m not mad at this combination. 

1st Press on Pink w/ White Splatter on Daze /150

Anxious

2025 seems to be a slow year as far as new releases are concerned, or a least new releases by bands I like. One of the few records I was actually looking forward to was the new Anxious LP. The previous one, Little Green House, was so good. Definitely one of my favorite records of the 2020s. So when I read that Anxious was going to release a new LP, I was very happy. Ordering a copy from the US was a no-go thought and the versions available through the European store weren’t that nice to look at. However, the version exclusively available through Devil Dog mailorder out of the UK looked very good. I shot a message to Marcus to ask him if I could have delivered this record (and a couple of others) to his place and then have one big parcel sent to me eventually. Gentleman that he is, he’d offered that service before, but I just wanted to make sure. Once that was sorted out, I could go on and order the record(s). 

I was in no hurry to get the record(s), even though it meant I wouldn’t be able to listen to the record for a while because certain records I want to listen to on vinyl for the first time. I’m old-fashioned that way. Anyway, an opportunity of saving on shipping arose when a very good friend of mine told me he was going to do merch for Bane again and one of the shows was going to be close to where Marcus lives. I checked with Marcus to see if he was going to be at that show and sure enough he was planning on going. So my friend took some records I had for Marcus and Marcus gave him the records he had for me, which my friend in turn gave me a couple of days later when I caught Bane on the same tour. Good old punk mail still works in 2025. 

So about three weeks ago I could finally listen to Bambi. As much as I liked the predecessor, this album hasn’t grabbed me at all as of now. It sounds too polished. Maybe it’ll grow on me, who knows. I actually hope it’ll grow on me because I really liked all the Anxious material so far. But for now this is a let down for me. I don’t know what to make of the art work either to be honest. The best thing about the record is the vinyl color. That looks amazing. 

1st Press on Clear w/ Glitter on Run For Cover /300 (Devil Dog Exclusive)

Close up of the record. Just beautiful. 

Got Bane?

My timing for deciding to pick up the Toyko CD couldn‘t have been worse, because a day or two later Bane and Equal Vision announced that there was going to be a repress of the city series 7“s compiling all songs on one 12“ record. At least there were only five variants announced, which by today‘s standards is almost moderate. I managed to get my hands on four of them pretty easily, so I decided to combine them into one post, considering I post about Bane records enough already. The two variants in the top row were available directly through Equal Vision and because I bend all of my self-imposed collecting rules for Bane, I ordered directly from the States. The variant on the bottom right is the Rev exclusive version and I was able to get that through a mailorder in Germany directly, probably because Rev does wholesale to Europe are well. The variant on the bottom left was the tour press and I knew there was a limited quantity available during Bane‘s summer tour. I was going to see them at a couple of shows, but only later during the tour, but luckily The Genie came to the rescue once again and sorted me out. Sidenote: the shows were all fun as hell and I got to hang out with old and new friends. At the Berlin show they even played Every Effort Made, which happens to be one of my absolute favourites but is a song that rarely gets played, so I was really stoked on that. 

So now I only need the so-called retail version on white vinyl limited to 500 copies, though I don‘t know what the difference between ‘retail‘ and ‘wholesale‘ would be. Bane always manages to come up with variants that no one seems to know about. I haven‘t seen any copies on white vinyl of the Boston, 6:58pm 12“ anywhere and no one in the band seems to know about this variant either. It‘ll show up at some point, I‘m sure, but until then, I‘m left with these four versions. Which is a shame, because regular white is definitely the best looking version. Oh yeah, and of course I wouldn‘t say no to a test press, but getting one of these is very unlikely, so I‘m not holding my breath.  

White w/ Red, Sky Blue, Yellow and Lime Green Splatter /250
Dark Edge Glow Pink, Red, Black Swirl w/ Pale Blue Splatter / 250
Canary Yellow w/ Black Splatter /500
Teal w/ ORangeSplit w/ Red Splatter /250 (60 sold during the European Tour 2025)
All on Equal Vision 

Your Choiche

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I got to spend a weekend in Berlin without the kiddo. The reason we travelled there was a festival. I really enjoyed the bands I already knew and I got to know a bunch of new bands that had been blanks to me before. One of the perks of the festival was a second hand band shirt and record market. There were a bunch of records that I usually would have bought, but since I’d spent quite a bit on test presses that month, I had to make some hard cuts. 

The one record I did end up buying was the second Uniform Choice LP, Staring Into The Sun, which I got for a really, really good price. The first Uniform Choice LP, Screaming For Change, is one of the all-time great (straight edge) hardcore records. I love that record. Over the years, I‘d hear people talk about the second Uniform Choice LP a bunch and usually it wasn‘t in a positive way. I never really checked it out, just because I didn‘t have a copy and didn‘t feel the urge to actively pursue buying a copy. But when this copy more or less fell into my lap, I thought that now would be a good time to finally give it a chance. After listening to the album a bunch of times, I will say that Staring Into The Sun is nowhere near Screaming For Change, but it‘s not nearly as bad as people always made it sound either. Will I end up listening to Staring Into The Sun as much as I listen to to Screaming For Change? Most definitely not, but I can thoroughly enjoy the songs on here and I‘m glad I picked up a copy. 

1st Press on Black on Giant