Holding On

When I ordered the FC Five CD I took a look at the seller's inventory on Discogs. Like I said, I'm still not 100% over being a vinyl snob so I felt I needed to order at least one vinyl record, too. 

In many respects, I‘m a quite simple guy. Put a guy jumping with a guitar on the front cover of a record and you got my interest. Combine it with a classic looking hardcore font and you got my full attention. I‘ve had the second Holding On LP for a long time, but for some reason I never bothered to check out their other material, even though I really like that album. But here we are and I finally listened to the Hoding On demo 26 years after its release. No frills hardcore just the way I like it. 

1st Press on Clear Blue on Looking Back /???

Reasons Not Self-Imposed Rules

Mainly, this is a vinyl only blog as you may have noticed. Tapes get a pass from me, but I can‘t honestly say when I spent money on a CD the last time. It must have been one of those Bane city 7“s that were also available on CD. But after that, I have no idea. 

Now, in the 2000s, there was a phase during which less vinyl was pressed by record labels. Even hardcore labels followed that trend to some degree, which is why there are certain releases from that era that are CD only. For the longest time I was a real snob about this and didn‘t buy albums or 7“s that weren‘t released on vinyl. Well, that was pretty stupid in hindsight. So after decades of ignoring CDs, here we are. 

FC Five were a band from Japan that existed from 2000 - 2012. I saw them twice in the mid-2000s and both shows were so much fun and really memorable. The first time I saw them was the very first Bane show I went to, which itself was such a huge turning point in my life. For some reason, FC Five weren’t featured on the flyer for the show, but I know they played that night. The second time I saw them was a year later when they were on tour with Ritual, a German hardcore band, and they played a local youth club. I don‘t think I‘ve ever seen a band that had more fun on stage and that‘s true for both times I saw them. They seemed to genuinely enjoy playing hardcore shows on a level I‘ve never seen with any other band before or since. And the band having the time of their lives was so infectious. The music was right up my alley at that time, too. After getting this CD, I listened to their whole discography and their records have stood the test of time for me. 

 

Here’s a shot of everything laid out. The band / label certainly didn‘t hold back when it came to the cover and inlays. The only thing that annoys me is that some of the pictures on the left are turned 90 degrees. Hard to tell because, well, it‘s a CD and not a vinyl record. I guess I‘m not 100% over being a little snobbish when it comes to CDs. 

One cool thing about releases from Asia are OBi strips. I‘m a sucker for those for some reason. They just look cool. 

Having said all of this, if anyone were to put out this record on vinyl, I‘d be all over it. But considering that the 20 year anniversary was already two years ago, I don‘t think this will happen anytime soon. 

Big Kids

A while ago a very good friend of mine tagged me in a post on Facebook in which he‘d posted a bunch of emo bands. One of the bands he‘d chose was Big Kids. He tagged me because I was the one who introduced him to the band. As a matter of fact, I recently turned on one of my bandmates to the band when we were on a long drive a couple of weeks ago. Two people in roughly ten years, not bad, but also not great. I‘ve been a longtime proponent time proponent of the band and Hoop Dreams easily makes my all-time top 5 of emo/indie records, but I feel like I‘m one of only a few people who are really into that record and that’s exactly why I‘ll never get tired of singing its praises. 

After my friend had tagged me, I started looking on Discogs what other versions of Hoop Dreams are out there. Looking turned into putting a pink copy into my shopping basket and after I admitted to myself that I was just kidding myself by pretending not wanting to buy it, I clicked on ‘Place order and buy now‘. There‘s only a few variants out there (good old 2000s…) and all of them are cheap, at least until you factor in shipping from the States ($8.75 for the record turns into $56 total…). So that keeps me from buying more copies right now. However, this great looking pink copy was available from a seller in Europe and for less than 10€ I couldn‘t say no. 

1st Press on Pink Marble on Topshelf /250