Paid In Full

Another classic from the golden age of hip-hop crossed off my want list. I can't stress enough how much my taste in music has been influenced by skateboarding. Videos used to be a great source to find new music, at least as long the music was shown in the credits. In the early 2000s, another skateboard related source entered my world: video games. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was the shiny, cool game and it was admittedly a ton of fun and the soundtrack of each game was great. Thrasher's Skate and Destroy video game was always in the shadow of the THPS franchise, but I enjoyed it a lot as well and it had a fantastic soundtrack. 

Traditionally, Thrasher Magazine has been more associated with a no-frills, grimy approach to skateboarding and was closely aligned with punk rock, so when I got the video game and saw that it had an all hip-hop soundtrack and the booklet even gave a short history of hip-hop and the acts on the soundtrack, I was very surprised. Playing that game was when I first heard Eric B & Rakim and their song, I Know You Got Soul, was a favorite of mine. It only took me some 20 odd years to finally get a vinyl copy of their debut LP Paid in Full. 

Italian Press on Black on Island /???

There's a weird stamp on the A-side label. I can't really make out what it says, except for the word 'Italian'. I doubt it was done by the label, but I have absolutely no idea what it could be. 

Long Way From Lawrence

The Get Up Kids is one of my favorite 90s emo bands and Something To Write Home About is one of my all-time favorite records. I know I often post how I don’t really order directly in the US anymore because of shipping and customs, but every once in a while, there’s just no way around it. When Nico posted about a live record of Something To Write Home About, I knew I needed a copy. Originally, the record was only available at shows, but the band made the leftovers available on their website. It took me a minute to pull the trigger because I’d hoped a copy from a seller in Europe might pop up on Discogs, but when that didn’t happen, my fear of the record selling out kicked in and I ordered a copy straight from the band. It helped that they had some cool merch available as well. 

This record is so good. I love the adaptation of the original artwork and it’s cool to hear the songs of Something To Write Home About played live in the order of the album. The only thing I can criticise is the fact that there are no liner notes or a special booklet. I feel like this could have elevated the record a lot and not going the extra mile feels like a wasted opportunity. 

1st Press on Black on Quality Hill

True Fraud

A couple of weeks ago, my band got to play a cool show with a bunch of awesome German hardcore bands. One of them was True Fraud, one of the myriad of bands coming out of the Cologne/Munster connection. It’s basically one of my favorite German bands of the last 10 years, Tides Denied, only with a different bass player. True Fraud is rougher around the edges though. Good, fast hardcore that’s a lot of fun live. I’m looking forward to a 7” or an LP. 

1st Run on Clear w/ Orange Cover on Collective Memroy

Magical

The last record I picked up at the local store was Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles. I’d been eyeing this record sitting in the store for some time, because it was priced a littler higher than on Discogs, but in the end I decided that a couple of bucks aren’t as important as helping to keep the store afloat. Magical Mystery Tour is actually not a proper album, as I thought for a very long time, it was an EP released originally as a double 7”. This version contains said EP on the A-side and a couple of songs originally released as singles only on the B-side. It’s quite astonishing that it took me so long to buy a copy because four of my top 10 Beatles songs are on this record and since I don’t own any Beatles singles , this is the first time that I own most of these songs on vinyl. Needless to say I’ve been playing this record A LOT since I got it. The cover is so bizarre and so much of the time, but I actually like it. 

Collector’s Conundrum

A little more than 10 years ago, I started buying Fugazi records. My original resolution to buy one Fugazi record a month didn’t really work out at the time, but I did manage to buy all of their releases. I bought the current represses back then, because I wanted to support a label that truly holds a special place in my heart, not to mention the band itself of course. I bought the now classic s.t. Record round about 10 years ago and I bought all of the Fugazi records more or less in chronological order. I messed up my system though, when I bought a first press of In On The Killtaker, but there’s just something about first presses and I usually can’t help myself but to get them. Which brings me to today’s post. While flipping through the bins at my local record store, I found a first press copy of Fugazi’s s.t. debut. It showed the $5 price on the back cover and after checking the matrix, I knew this was an actual first press.  I tried to talk myself out of buying the record, but after about 10 seconds I stopped fooling myself and put it on my pile. 

Buying this record puts me in a conundrum. I now have two first presses of Fugazi records and the collector in me screams that this doesn’t feel right and I now need first press copies of all of the Fugazi records, which is something that hadn’t really been on my mind at all until I got this record. I’ve been thinking about replacing my current copies with those really nice looking colored represses Dischord has done these last few years - and I still want to do that, sort of, because Dischord has been doing such a great job with the colors. But do I really need three copies of Fugazi records? Probably not. So buying this record has possibly kicked of a chain of events in the foreseeable future. Luckily this might end up being one of the cheaper micro collections because Dischord is still selling records at Dischord prices (by 2025 standards). 

1st Press (According to the Matrix) on Black on Dischord

Real Life Record Shopping

Whenever I get the chance to hit up the local record store, I go in there with a feeling of excitement and hopefulness. I always enjoy just flipping through the records, but more often than not I leave empty handed and disappointed. When I last went there a couple of weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see that in the new arrivals section there were a bunch of very interesting records: Strife first and second LP, Texas Is The Reason, Farside and a bunch of others from that time - all original presses. The one that caught my eye was Reality Filter by Eleven Thirty-Four because that artwork always looked cool to me, albeit very of the time, and you can’t really go wrong with records on New Age released in the early to mid 90s. Reality Filter is a really good record and I’ve really enjoyed listening to it over the last few weeks. I also wish that bands did more cool poster inserts again. There was never a pressing on color for this release, so I’m just fine with black vinyl. 

Now I’m just left wondering who in the area I live in might have sold their collection, or a least part of it, because there scene is rather small here and even fewer people from that scene listen to that kind of hardcore. 

1st Press on Black on New Age /???