Endless Roads, Miles Away

Sometimes making your significant other happy is pretty easy. Especially if she is into the same music and doesn't think buying vinyl isn't an odd thing to do in 2015, but rather encourages your collecting habit. When I showed her the list of vinyl up for sale of the person I bought the GIA LP from, she noticed that he was also selling a tour press of Miles Away's Endless Roads. The rest is pretty self-explanatory. In the picture you can see #141/161. I really like the red swirl vinyl.

The Only Blood Between Us

The Only Blood Between Us is Go It Alone's debut LP and for me it certainly has stood the test of time. The mid 2000's really were a great time in hardcore. So many awesome records were released around 2005. Hard to believe it's been 10 years. The tri-colour variant was pressed for Posi Numbers Fest 2005, and there are 210 copies in total. Love that colourway and the whole look of the cover and insert. Go It Alone really did a good job with this LP, and for that matter all of their releases.

More Discontent

I thought I was done blogging about all the records I'd ordered before travelling during summer. While cleaning up yesterday I went through the crate with record next to my records player. I flipped through it and came up with four copies of Spirits Discontent LP. The thing was, I could only remember buying three copies: the tour press I picked up when I saw them live and the two colours of the regular pressing. I was a little confused when I suddenly pulled out a black copy to be honest. Then I remembered that I'd also ordered a copy of the pre-order variant. Apparently these hadn't sold out and State Of Mind put the remaining copies online sometime mid-July I think. The record must have arrived while I was travelling and when I got home I just put it in the crate and forgot about it. There are 56 copies of the pre-order variant, which comes on black vinyl and without any labels. Someone scratched in 'Spirits' and 'X' respectively 'XX' where the labels usually are though. Kind of weird, but also kind of cool. By the way, this is my frontrunner for Record Of The Year. Such a great record.

One Piece At A Time

Two weeks ago or so a buddy of mine messaged me to tell me that 6131 had put up test presses in their online shop, and more precisely, they had put up test presses for Bane's Los Angeles 3:58pm 7". I didn't hesitate because when opportunity knocks, you have to answer. And quickly, when it comes to rare records. I messaged a few people who also might be interested and I made at least one other person happy that day.
There's not that much to see actually other than what you can see on the dust sleeve. I know of five test presses, two of which look exactly like my copy. The two other ones come with a cover saying "test press", written with a golden pen, and they're numbered. What is weird is that the numbers I know of are #19 and #20. And supposedly there are only 20 copies in total. So, why would you have numbers #19 and #20 and then other copies that are not numbered but should be technically a lower number? Anyway, I'm glad I managed to track down another piece to the puzzle.

Complete 1st press including test press. I'm still looking, desperately by now I should add, for the 2nd press copies on clear and blue vinyl. Officially there are 300 and 700 copies respectively. So there should be plenty of copies popping up, but for some reason they never do. So probably there aren't 1000 copies out there. Who knows. If you have one of these, get in touch and I'll make it worth your while.

John Wayne Was A Nazi

While record shopping in London, I came across this repress of The Stains' debut 7" John Wayne Was A Nazi. This is the latest repress on Beer City Records and it was done for Record Store Day 2015. I wasn't aware of this repress since I've lost all interest in Record Store Day and didn't really follow this year's releases. Anyway, I wasn't going to pass up on the chance to pick up this repress of a classic record that I wanted to have bud didn't want to spend that much money on. The original only featured the two songs that are on the a-side on this 7". I don't know where the songs on the b-side were taken from. Well, what can I say, you get early 80's hardcore from the Reagan era, but with a strong political message. The Stains later changed their name to MDC, a band which is still known for their political message. This reminds me: I don't own any MDC records. Time to change that.

You Destroy Yourself Again

After what felt like waiting for an eternity for the full length debut by Sweet Jesus and finally receiving the records, Atomic Action posted that there were going to be a few other variants soon. The black vinyl variant seems to be from the same run as the European tour pressing, but it comes with the original cover art. 600 copies.

Orange vinyl was supposedly used for the record release variant, although I only got this information from internet sources. Nothing on the record, dust sleeve or cover suggests that this was actually used for a special occasion. Bit of a let down.

Last but not least, Revelation exclusively distributed the LP on yellow vinyl. 100 copies exist, but I've been told that some of them were damaged, so probably fewer copies will be in circulation. So this is probably the rarest pressing.

Times Still Here

Last part of my shopping haul in London. I've had the s.t. 7" by Mainstrike for years and actually liked the music, but I never got around to picking up more of their releases. This is a first press copy on black vinyl of their debut 7" (/1660). The cover was originally supposed to be blue for the most part, as is the 2nd press cover, but somehow the printing job got fucked up.

In On The Killtaker

Wow, my new year's resolution to buy more Fugazi records, i.e. one per month, hasn't really been working out at all. This is only the second Fugazi record I bought this year, out of potential 10. What's more, for once I wanted to listen to the output of a band in complete chronological order. I also messed that up by picking up their 3rd LP before the first two ones. Silver lining, I got this 1st press ($7 ppd) for a good price at a record store in London.

Make An Effort

Make An Effort is the 2nd 7" Government Issue released and in my humble opinion it ranks up there with the great 7"s from the early 80's. Teenager In A Box is a song I can listen to everyday. This is the repress on clear vinyl from the mid 90's. Originally the 7" was released on Fountain Of Youth, the repress was handled by THD.

Kill The Poor

Another Dead Kennedys' 7". This version of Kill The Poor is slightly different from the one on Fresh Fruit For Rotten Vegetables, though I couldn't tell you which one is better. The b-side features the song In-Sight. This 7" also comes with a lyric sheet, which features also the lyrics for Police Truck, which is not a song on this record. Kind of weird. This 7" is part of the UK pressing on Cherry Red. Virgin was in charge of distribution again. Originally, this record also came with a badge - well, at least the first 20,000 (!!!) copies had a badge - but my copy came without one.

Holiday in Cambodia

London is always a good place to go for record hunting. It's a terrible place for buying new records, because everything is much more expensive than here thanks to the Pound. But London has a bunch of record stores that have a good 2nd hand section for hardcore and punk records and I usually find a bunch of cool stuff. I also enjoy going to actual record stores seeing that there are none close to where I live.
Holiday In Cambodia is one of my favourite Dead Kennedys' songs. That intro creates such a cool atmosphere that carries on throughout the whole song. Great, great song. The b-side features Police Truck, which is just as good as Holiday In Cambodia.
Collecting Dead Kennedys records must be a nightmare because there are a million different pressing for each release. I'm happy with just owning copies I can listen to, so I don't really care about pressings. Having said that, I'd make an exception for different covers because those are almost as good, respectively important as the lyrics and the music. Maybe that'll become a new project in the future. This is one of the UK pressings with the Burning Monk cover and silver labels, released by Cherry Red, distributed by Virgin.

Burn London, Burn

Last Sunday Burn played in London. An event that had cast a very long shadow. It was the first show Burn ever played in Europe and kids from all over Europe were travelling to London. I'm pretty sure there were more people from other countries than Brits at the show, which is kind of funny. I struck lucky because I had to go to London work related during that week anyway, so I had no extra travel expenses. No need to talk about how awesome Burn are. The first 7" is not only one of the best 7"s Rev have ever released, it is one of the best hardcore 7"s period. So (my) expectations were pretty high. And Burn didn't disappoint.
I must say I didn't care for the location the show took place at. Too big, stage too high, commercial venue, pretty much everything I dislike about a venue. The two bands that opened the show weren't really my cup of tea either. Then again, I hadn't really come for them, so my level of disappointment was pretty low. Burn played a great show, although they could have just played the songs off the first 7" because that's when the crowd went wild. During the other songs, the audience was much quieter. I'm pretty sure that at least 95% of all the pictures of the show posted on the internet were taken during those four songs. But anyway, it was a great set and I'd have been content if they'd only played Godhead. One of the songs I'd always wanted to hear live. I probably wouldn't have travelled to London just for the show, as many other people did, but I'm also glad I was able to attend the show.
About a week before the show the promoter posted on Instagram that there was going to be a surprise, which turned out to be a special pressing of the 7" on Rev. Surprisingly - well, maybe not that surprisingly since there are 300 copies, but still - the record didn't sell out before/during the show, so I was able to pick up a couple of more copies afterwards to help out two collector buddies.
Speaking of collectors, it was really fun meeting so many people I'd only known via messageboards and Instagram so far in real life and I had some nice conversations. Definitely a memorable show.

Close up of the stamp: place, date and the numbering. My copy is #252. 300 copies in total, three variants for the nerds. Apparently the numbering was done with two different pens, black and red. And there are also a couple of sleeves that didn't get numbered. All of this was deduced just hours after the show from pictures on Instagram. That's what you get when a whole bunch of nerds attend a show like this, haha.

This is what the record looks like when being held up against the light. Pretty sweet.

Perfect People

Perfect People are a relatives new band from St. Louis and they play music in the vein of late 90's / early 2000's bands. Somewhere between Count Me Out and Carry On maybe? I don't like the cover art at all, but I dig the music. Could be a fun live band. This variant (out of 100) comes on translucent brown vinyl with black swirls. Looks pretty good.

Miles Away

I'm still catching up with the records I got before a big trip I did with my wife during summer. Travelling is a whole lot of fun, but it certainly gets in the way with keeping the blog going. Can't have everything I guess.

A few months back it was announced that Miles Away were about to release a new LP, called Tides. Seeing that I'd been turned onto the band by my wife recently and my wife really likes this band buying this was a no brainer. However, considering that my wife really likes this band, she talked me into pre-ordering this LP, which is something I rarely do nowadays, because shipping to Europe is quite expensive nowadays. But every once in a while you gotta do what you gotta do. Especially if you can make your wife happy. I must say though that I was a little disappointed by this LP. I really like some parts, others, erm, not so much. Especially the parts that are sung, not screamed. Doesn't work for me.  This is the pre-order variant on pink/purple swirl out 150.




I also picked up their Endless Roads LP, which was released in 2010. Overall I like this record better than Tides. Less singing equals better record in this case. This is the 4th press on coke bottle clear vinyl out of 500.