Of Kanji And Wrestlers

I managed to pick up another Black SS record recently. This is probably the last missing variant of their s.t. 7", minus test pressing that is. This record had been on my want list for ages, but for some reason I never really bothered to look for it seriously. A few weeks back I had some spare time, started browsing Discogs and found the record rather quickly. All in all this one went down easier than I'd thought. I have no idea about the pressing info on this record. It's basically the same sleeve as the one the band had for This Is For You Fest. The only difference is it doesn't say "This Is For You Fest" in the bottom left corner.

This is what I have so far. If you have any variant I don't have, let me know.

Black Sheep Squadron - s.t. - Third Party - black (regular press)
Black Sheep Squadron - s.t. - Third Party - Kanji cover - /100 (record is shown right below the sleeve)
Black Sheep Squadron - s.t. - Third Party - gold - 2nd press - /300
Black Sheep Squadron - s.t. - Third Party - Wrestler cover
Black Sheep Squadron - s.t. - Third Party - This Is For You Fest cover - /100

Holding This Moment

Wow, I can't believe that a whole year has passed since I started this blog. Time  really does fly by. I picked up some records I'd wanted for a long time, got some cool new records from current bands, and I got to know a whole bunch of cool people I traded with/bought stuff from. This has been a lot of fun so far, so here's to what the future may hold.

To celebrate the anniversary, I thought it'd be fitting to post a record by the band that was also featured in the very first post. Incididentally, it was also the band that was on my mind the most this year, from collecting records and shirts, a lot of fun on instagram (check out #banemerch), to shows, travelling, and meeting cool people. Sadly, this band will come to an end a little later than the 2nd birthday of this blog here...

When I think about records I'd like to be buried with one day, Bane's Holding This Moment 7" ranks pretty highly on that list. I absolutely love everything about this record from music to lyrics, artwork and layout. I especially like the fold out lyric sheet that opens like a window. Also, Count Me Out will forever be my favourite Bane song.

Getting the last variant of this turned out to be quite a task. There are only 100 of these around and they don't pop up as often as I'd hoped they would. Finally I was able to sweet-talk someone into letting go off their copy and so I got this crucial piece of the Bane puzzle. If there's one record I'd kill to own, it'd be the test pressing for this release.

Finally, I'm able to take that group picture...

Bane - Holding This Moment - Equal Vision - green - record release version /100
Bane - Holding This Moment - Equal Vision - black - /800 (not 100% sure on that number)
Bane - Holding This Moment - Equal Vision - purple - tour version /100
Bane - Holding This Moment - Equal Vision - gold - /200

Start Today

So, 25 years ago one of the best hardcore albums ever was released. You might have heard of this band called Gorilla Biscuits and their debut LP Start Today, so I don't have to talk a whole lot about how good and influential this record was and still is. On a sidenote, I'm really looking forward to the book that Anthony Pappalardo is doing on this particular record.

Rev took the anniversary to re-release this classic LP. And what a re-release this is. Embossed cover (like the original first press), glow-in-the-dark vinyl and a sleeve that is printed on the inside. Great job, Rev. But really, if any LP (on Rev) deserves this kind of deluxe treatment, what other than Start Today? Probably none.

Printed inner sleeve. Nice touch.

There was also a black version of this available, so I grabbed this one too. Can't have too many Gorilla Biscuits records, right?

Minor Threat

This post is embarrassing for two reasons. One, it reminds me how embarrassing my Minor Threat collection is despite the fact that Minor Threat is one of my favourite bands (whose not, right?). I don't own any of the original 7"s, a situation that needs to be remedied very soon. Two, I haven't changed anything about the lack of Minor Threat records in at least a year, because this is the first post that features Minor Threat since I started doing this blog.
Obviously it was high time I did something about this situation. This record is far from a heavy hitter, but still, it's a Minor Threat record I didn't have yet. This is the s.t. LP, which features the first two 7"s Minor Threat released. What I really like about Dischord is the fact that their releases have always been available for cheap because they just kept pressing the records in one form or the other. Another reason why Dischord is the best label in hardcore/punk.
I decided to use a picture of the backside of the sleeve since that's where you can see the differences between different pressings the best. Unless Dischord changed the colour of the sleeve completely. This is the $5.00 version with blue sleeve. There's another $5.00 version out there, but the sleeve is green. There are so many different versions of this record floating around, so you can expect some more posts on this record and Minor Threat records in general in the nearby future.

X-Mas Time (For The Skins)

I don't collect a whole lot of bands, but I really enjoy the ones I actually do collect. Good Clean Fun is one of them. There are tons of colours and probably as many sleeves of their releases, so hunting down variants is a lot of fun, especially since their discography is not documented very well. I still stumble across some new variants I didn't know about before here and there. This record is a good example. I already had three different copies of the Good Clean Fun / Throwdown split, and I knew that there are test pressings for this release because I once saw one listed among a Throwdown collection, when I came across this version with green vinyl and this weird copied cover a few years ago. It's either out of 30 or 34. I've seen both numbers since then.
So anyway, I saw this variant on someone's howsyouredge? list and contacted the person. He was down for selling the record and I was glad to be able to add another Good Clean Fun record to my collection. This was when the other guy was on a trip at the time and shortly before I went on a trip, so I told him I'd contact him once I was back. Which I never did because I forgot about the whole thing for some reason I'll probably never be able to figure out. This was summer 2013. The whole matter completely slipped my mind until I did some cleaning up in my e-mail account at the end of summer 2014.  I found our correspondence, finally wrote him back and lo and behold, he still had the record and was still willing to sell it to me. Great! Better still, he had some other records I'd been looking for for quite some time, so I managed to cross off three records of my want list instead of just one. Awesome!

This Good Clean Fun release is kind of weird. First of all, Good Clean Fun and Throwdown don't exactly scream split release, but maybe the bands were really close and I'm just ignorant to this fact. Second, they each play one of their own songs and a cover. So far so normal, but the choices of cover songs is a little strange. Good Clean Fun actually play a cover of a cover. Plus the original became really famous only through yet another cover. Got it? Here's what happened. Iron Cross from Washington, D.C. wrote this song Crucified, which is also where the crucified skin motive comes from. Agnostic Front covered the song on their Liberty And Justice… LP and I'm under the impression that this version is arguably better known than the original. In the late 80's Crucial Youth decided to write some new lyrics for the song and released it as X-Mas Time (For The Skins) on their Crucial Yule 7". And that's the song GCF decided to cover for this release. Throwdown cover Jingle Bell Rock, which is even weirder if you ask me.

This is the rarest version I own. As you can see, the cover is not really a cover. It's two separate sheets of paper that were neither folded into a cover nor glued together. It's #14 either out of 30 or 34.

Black Sheep Squadron

Black Sheep Squadron is a highly underrated band from Syracuse. At least it's my impression that they fly a little bit under the radar of the hardcore public. Anyway, the first songs I ever heard by BSS were the ones on the Foreign Object LP and I was hooked immediately. Despite the name, which I think is a little weird, considering the history of the country I'm from. I am aware that this band name doesn't have anything to do with Nazism, still it has this weird ring to me. But I digress... Raw, angry, right in your face music - that's what you get from the Black Sheep Squadron. One of my favourite and most played LPs from the 2000s for sure.

I got most of the pressings of their only LP quite easily, including the test pressing, but the white pressing out of 100 had eluded me for too many years. I finally got it from a guy I also got some other goodies from. But i'm gonna delve into that story with another post. 

Here's a picture of the whole squad:

Black SS - Foreign Object - test pressing - /45
Black SS - Foreign Object - grey - /100
Black SS - Foreign Object - orange/green splatter - 2nd press - /1025
Black SS - Foreign Object - clear/pink splatter - /100
Black SS - Foreign Object - red - 700
Black SS - Foreign Object - white - /100

I also got another sweet record by Black SS from the same seller. This is a test press for the Black SS / How We Are split, released by Specimen 32 and Stop Whining Start Winning. Pretty neat that I got #20/20. I like both sides of the split, but I'm leaning towards the Black Sheep Squadron here. Actually, I thought I was done with this release once I got a test press, but as it turns out I'm apparently missing some versions of the record release sleeve and colour vinyl combinations. Oh well, the fun just never ends.

And This Is Where It Ends

Lately I found myself listening to a lot of Champion. Man, I miss that band. I used to listen to Promises Kept when it came out constantly. I still think it's a great LP but I've been more into their 7"s as of late. Left Your Mark may just be the best song Champion ever recorded. I've had a copy on orange vinyl for the longest time and I used to own a copy on mint green if I remember correctly, but I stupidly traded it away or probably even sold it a few years ago, which I now kind of regret. Anyway, I got to pick up two copies of this 7" on clear vinyl. The one on the right was released by Platinum Records back in 2001. Phyte Records put out the CD, but for some reason no American label was willing to put out the recordings on vinyl originally. Seems weird in hindsight seeing how big an impact Champion made in the early 2000s. There are 157 copies on clear vinyl of the Platinum version.
Two years after its original release, Bridge 9 decided to re-release Champions first 7". Probably because there was a high demand for this since Champion was already quite popular at that time. They also opted for clear vinyl, but as you can see it's not exactly the same colour. The OG press is more of a milky clear, whereas the repress is see-through clear. Bridge 9 pressed 700 7"s on clear vinyl making it the most common colour for this particular release. Can't wait to pick up some more Champion records.

More Empowerment To You

This is the second part of the split series Empowerment is doing. This time they teamed up with their recent tour buddies AYS. Both bands play one of their own songs, plus a cover song of a band from their region, which is the whole concept behind this split series. I don't care too much for the new Empowerment song to be honest, mainly because of the guest vocals. Kind of ruins it for me. The cover is well done, but musically it's just not my cup of tea. The same goes for AYS. I think I saw them live once when they opened for some band I actually wanted to see and I vaguely recall wishing their set to be over quickly. I got the same feeling when I listened to their side of this split 7" for the first time. They just don't strike a chord with me.

I hope the next split will be better again seeing that I did like the first 7". Clear vinyl out of 262.



I ordered another record from the label's distro section. Damage Control were a band from Oslo, Norway and were around during the mid and late '00 years. If you're into bands like Champion, Go It Alone, Carry On and the like, you should give them a listen. I really like this 7" and I'll definitely pick up their other releases in the nearby future. This is the least rare version on black vinyl out 1,860.