The Power Of Positive Thinking

If you're really into a hardcore band, you will sooner or later stumble across the bands your favourite band has been influenced by. Thank you lists, cover songs, rip-off art for shirts or records, you name it. Now, I love Good Clean Fun, so I was bound to stumble across Cruical Youth at some point. Come to think of it, I think GCF did everything on the list I just came up with.
Anyway, I got Crucial Youth's Posi-Machine LP a few years ago and now I picked up their 2nd LP The Power Of Positive Thinking. Actually it's more a compilation since most of the songs were previously released on the Posi-Machine LP with a couple of live songs strewn in on the B-side, but all in all it's nothing new. It even comes with the same comic/lyrics booklet (except for the cover art). Now, I didn't check on this fact before, but I would have bought the record anyway most likely, because I really dig the artwork too. This is something I greatly admire about this band. They really put in great effort with the artwork and the booklet that comes with both LPs.
Crucial Youth were this over the top posi-core band, and from what I read they caught a lot of shit for what they were doing, because many straight edge kids thought they were dragging the good name of straight edge through the mud and I think that the members were also accused of not being edge at all if I remember correctly. I don't know about that, but I think this is a good parody one way or the other. Hardcore and straight edge kids often take themselves and their music too seriously, so I think a nice dose of humour is sometimes needed as some sort of reality check.

The first 1,500 copies came with the booklet, so there are at least 1,500 copies. There's also a limited version with blank labels and numbered out of 100.



I bought the All Twisted 7" from the same seller. Both songs, All Twisted and Do Something, are also featured on CIV's first LP, but I still had the need to pick this up. I really like the early CIV material. There's some sticker residue on the cover, but nothing I can't live with.

Last but not least, I also picked up Four Walls Falling's European Release. The title is a little weird and I have no idea why it was picked. All three songs were later also featured on their 2nd LP Food For Worms, so maybe this was a special pre-release only available in Europe? Just conjecture here. I love Culture Shock a great deal, and I think it's highly underrated, so I knew I had to get some more Four Walls Falling releases at some point. I think these songs are still really good, but not as great as the ones on the first LP. The lyrics are still outstanding and really set this band apart from many other bands from that era. Will pick up their other releases at some point in the future.

At Both Ends

At Both Ends was a great fanzine done by Stephen Fallis. He made 10 issues all in all, and documented a good part of the first decade of the 21st century. I haven't read every issue so far, but the ones I could get my hands on were all excellent reads. For the last and final issue(s) Steve really outdid himself. First of all the zine is a double issue, i.e. issue #9 and #10 are combined in one big zine. You can read the zine from the front and the back, which is a neat idea. The quality of the zine, i.e. journalistic approach, layout, paper and so on are much more magazine than fanzine, and Steve definitely has raised the bar for all the zines out there. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it.
As if that weren't enough already, Steve also decided to put out a double 7" along with the zine. You get two songs each by Bane, Grade, Unrestrained and Between Earth And Sky. Can't hardly beat that package. My main interest in the vinyl here obviously were the Bane songs. Non-Negotiable was later featured on their final LP Don't Wait Up, the other one is a re-recorded version of Struck Down By Me, which was originally released on It All Comes Down To This.
No one knows how many different colours are out there. Stephen and Justin from Unrestrained once tried to document all the different colour combinations, but there's no actual record of what is out there. Also, the numbers vary from colour to colour, so some colours are much more common than others.  This Bane 7" comes on clear red vinyl and it is the eighth version I have of this record. I also have dark green, light grey, dark grey, baby blue, purple, dark purple and orange. I know of three or four more colours and I guess there are quite many transition variants in between the light and dark records. Beyond that, I have no idea. Keeps collecting interesting though. If you have anything I don't have, hit me up.

Empowerment

Sometimes I buy records simply to support bands that I think are worthy of support without being 100% convinced of the music. Empowerment from Stuttgart falls under this category. I've seen them live a couple of times and all of the shows were a lot of fun. Great live band. Plus, this is a band that has something to say and actually mean it, which sadly is not a given anymore in the hardcore scene. Empowerment play NYHC (and nothing else!) better than most of the OG NYHC bands I know. Their attitude on the other hand is rather punk, especially compared with classic NYHC, which has a tendency towards conservatism, patriotism and a lot of other '-isms' I think have no place in hardcore/punk. I rarely hear of bands from that niche of hardcore or hardcore in general that outspoken against patriotism, anti-immigration initiatives, homophobia or the use of the word "retarded/behindert". I don't like their overly stated localism, which is also true for most hardcore bands, but there are still a lot of good reasons to support this band in my book. Now, as far as the music is concerned, there are some really good songs on this LP, but it isn't that great a LP. I know that a lot of people will probably disagree with this statement, since Empowerment are huge in Germany right now.

The artwork is pretty unique, since it features a wheel system which allows you to change the cover, right where the woman stands in the open door. There are four different pictures and four different text messages. Nice gimmick. Cobra Records didn't skimp on the cover.

In the next few weeks, Empowerment is going to do a split series with four other German bands. The first split 7" has already been released, and besides Empowerment it features Hamburg based band Krank. Musically speaking, these bands are on the opposite ends of the hardcore/punk spectrum. NYHC vs. classic punk sound. Good songs by both bands, although I favor Empowerment a little bit. Then again it's really hard to compare these bands since they play such different styles.

Good Clean Fun - Live In... 3D

I can't really remember when I picked up the last Good Clean Fun record before this one. This is mainly due to the fact that there aren't that many left I don't have. There are some absurdly rare ones like out of 4 and out of 1 and a few test pressings, but apart from that I have a pretty complete collection. That is, if no variants pop up that I wasn't aware of. Like this one. For many years I was under the impression that this LP came only on purple vinyl. Then I found out about a black version with blank labels. I got it from a fellow Good Clean Fun collector, which was very kind of him, seeing that these don't pop up all too often. He told me it wasn't a test pressing, but I'm still not sure on the issue. Black vinyl, blank labels, different insert than the other two ones. Maybe, maybe not. A few weeks back I stumbled over this variant, which also comes on black vinyl, but with the regular labels. The insert is the same one as for the purple vinyl one.

Now, about the release itself… I know there are many people who don't like live recordings. I on the other hand really like them. The best bands are the ones who play out their heart on stage, so why not try capturing that live energy? In the days of youtube, vimeo, younameit, live records may have become obsolete, but I truly believe they had their place in music recording history. Good Clean Fun lived off of their over the top positive approach on stage, and I think they did a great job of capturing a live Good Clean Fun show. This LP was recorded when they were at their peak imho, i.e. when they had only released their first two 7"s and their debut LP On The Streets…, which is by far their best material. In 2000, when this show in Springfield was recorded, they were touring extensively, an account of which you can find in the inlay that comes with this LP. It's a fun read for sure. 

Good Clean Fun not only appealed to me musically and lyrically, but as a collector, too. They always put in great effort to make the covers somehow special. Just think of the On The Streets… LP. This live LP comes in a 3D jacket including 3D glasses. If I have some time on my hands, I might make a separate entry just for my GCF collection.

Here are the three variants I have (so far). It's really hard to see, but the one in the middle is actually on purple vinyl. If you look very closely, you can see that this record is slightly lighter than the two black ones to the left and right. You can even make out some streaks/veins of the purple vinyl if you look very, very closely. Unfortunately, the colour doesn't photograph well, unless the record is being held up against the light.