Never Quit

This may be my summer record 2016. Five youth crew kids who play melodic hardcore in the vein of Lifetime, Kid Dynamite, Shook Ones etc. The songs are so catchy, goddamn. Summer's finally here sunshine sunshine sunshine I need to go skateboarding right now is there anything better than hanging out with good friends I wish I was 15 years younger again.

Judge

I'm pretty sure that 99% of people regularly buying records from the Revelation catalogue will agree that the first press of the Judge discography ranks very highly on the This Is Absolutely The Ugliest Colour Scheme For A Record EVER list. I bought it when it came out and as many others was stuck with it for quite some time. I enjoyed the music mind you, but the records weren't a pretty sight to behold. Then Rev decided to repress it on black, black, and more black vinyl. When they repressed it on this awesome looking grey swirl/smoke vinyl, I thought it was time for an upgrade, and a mere three years later, here we are.

One, Two, One, Two, This Is Just A Test

For the original release of Spirits' Discontent LP on State Of Mind Records, there have never been any test pressings. For the European release on Useless Pride, however, there are tests. The label on the sleeve actually says "Discontents", which is obviously wrong. The label also says QTY: 5, but I'm pretty sure there are more than five tests in total. The label sold these at a very reasonable price, too.

Yet Another Fan Boy Posting I Guess

A few months ago, Spirits announced that there was going to be a European press of their debut LP Discontent. Useless Pride from France were going to handle everything. Now, a few posts ago, I explained that I'd decided to take things a little bit slower as far as records go, but some things I just couldn't pass up. So, I picked up another copy of this awesome LP. Definitely a good choice.

FYI Spirits are on tour right now in Europe. Catch them live and you'll see how good they are.

When Dead&Gone Is Dead And Gone

When Dead&Gone, the label Death Is Not Glamorous had released a bunch of their records on, came to an end, label and band decided to do something to commemorate their collaboration, so they came up with this Farewell sleeve for DING's Soft Clicks LP. The vinyl itself is part of the 2nd press on clear yellow vinyl. 65 copies total, I have #11. Thanks again for the trade, Marcus.

Death Is Not Glamorous Split

More Death Is Not Glamorous records. The split with Down And Outs comes on two colours, clear purple (which looks way redder than it is in reality) and clear yellow. Both variants are out of 500. The DING side is as good as anything else they recorded. I'd never heard Down And Outs before and I have to say it's not like I'd missed out on anything. The voice in particular is not for me.

Undercurrents

One of the trades I did recently involved Sick Of It All and Death Is Not Glamorous. A fellow collector asked me if I could help him get the special edition of the SOIA 7" which was made for the Conne Island 25 year show a few weeks ago. I had to pull some strings since I couldn't go myself, but I managed to make sure he and I both got a copy. In return he traded me a bunch of DING records he didn't want any more. Here's the first press of the Undercurrents 7" on clear blue out of 300. Pretty good deal in my book.

Clear Blue

One of the last times I met up with my buddy Tom, we got to talking about - well, records. We were talking about come classics and some newer stuff that we both were into. One of the records we talked about was the Clear Demo 7", which we both agreed was pretty good and we were looking forward to more releases by this band. When I got home again I wanted to listen to it on vinyl again, because we had been talking about it so much. 'On vinyl again' is probably the wrong phrase though, because apparently I'd never owned a physical, or at least I couldn't find the copy I thought I had anymore. I searched high and low but either I really misplaced it and it is lost in the depths of my collection, or I traded it away and couldn't remember, or I indeed never had a copy of the demo 7" to begin with. I'm still not sure what happened here. The next time we talked on the phone I told about it and neither of us could make any sense of it.
Fast forward to my birthday and me getting an unexpected parcel with an unexpected present: a copy of the Clear Demo 7". Tom had remembered and made sure I finally got these songs on vinyl. It's moments like these when I'm really, really thankful for the people I've chosen to surround myself with in my life and who I can luckily call friends.

Last Great Sea

Things have admittedly been really slow on here these last few months. Work was rather crazy lately and I sort of took a break from buying records, just to prove to myself that I could. Does anyone know that feeling when buying records seems more like becoming routine than something you feel genuinely excited about? When you start fretting about (not) missing out on pre-orders, tour pressings, first presses on limited colours etc. to a degree you don't feel comfortable with? Like a burn out for record collectors? That's how I felt a little bit and I thought it was necessary to take a step back and reassess a couple of things.

I didn't quit collecting completely though because I love it too much. I still bought a couple of new releases and I was lucky enough to do some cool trades. Even though I cut down the amount of records I bought, somehow I managed to pile up quite some backlog...

The first ever Burn show in Europe, which took place in October 2015 in London, was pretty hyped. People from all over Europe travelled for this show. It was a good evening as far as I'm concerned, and for the collectors out there, there was a cool variant made especially for this show.
Before the show I had been to talking to an acquaintance I had met by chance while waiting outside the venue if this was actually going to be the only Burn show in Europe or if they might do a tour at some point. We both agreed that judging by other old bands first doing shows again in the US, and then a few exclusive shows in Europe, that yeah, they'd be back at some point.
In the end, it took them less than six months to come back, haha. They played a show at one of the venues I used to go to on a regular basis when I first started going to shows, so that made for a promising evening. However, the show itself turned out to be really weird. The opening bands were horrible, there were only maybe 40-50 people in the audience, and I was definitely one of the younger people there - and I'm 34. Burn played a very good set though. They didn't really care that the turnout wasn't all that great and seemed to have a lot of on stage. Again, they had a special variant of one of their records with them. Last Great Sea had been repressed shorty before that on green and orange vinyl. The tour variant is also green vinyl, plus it was stamped "Europe 2016". Some of the green vinyl copies have this black smudge/thumb print. I've been told there are 100 copies of the tour press. Correct me if that's wrong.

Close up of the stamp.