Banesanity

There are some collections that border either on pure dedication or near insanity, depending on your point of view. This may be on of those. At Both Ends was a great fanzine in the '00 years. One of the best out there for sure. The final issue came with a double 7". One of bands featured was Bane, so I had to get a copy. To be honest, I got a lot of copies because I ran a little fanzine distro at the time. So I got like a dozen copies from Stephen Fallis directly. When I checked on the records that came with the zine, I noticed they came on a lot of different colours. So I ordered some more, sold most of the doubles (colourwise) and kept the rest. I got something like six or seven different versions by doing that. For a few years I didn't really bother to pick up other versions,  let alone search for them. Then along came Discogs and looking for records became much easier. So I started looking for different variants of this release and I managed to get my hands on a few more. Here's the latest addition: the Bane/Grade 7" comes on clear green vinyl, the Unrestrained/Between Earth And Sky on dark blue with black streaks. If you have any variant I don't have, get at me!

As I wrote in the beginning, this may be one of the more stupid collections I pursue. The reason behind that thought is that nobody knows the pressing info for this release. In the picture you can see that there are a lot of different colours out there. What's more, there are also a lot of transition colours, e.g. the different shades of grey and purple, which always makes it harder to get a detailed pressing info.

I took a close-up picture of the two green ones in the top row. Yup, the one in the middle in the top row is not on black vinyl, it's a really dark green. You can only see that it is actually green if you hold it up against the light.

At Both Ends

At Both Ends was a great fanzine done by Stephen Fallis. He made 10 issues all in all, and documented a good part of the first decade of the 21st century. I haven't read every issue so far, but the ones I could get my hands on were all excellent reads. For the last and final issue(s) Steve really outdid himself. First of all the zine is a double issue, i.e. issue #9 and #10 are combined in one big zine. You can read the zine from the front and the back, which is a neat idea. The quality of the zine, i.e. journalistic approach, layout, paper and so on are much more magazine than fanzine, and Steve definitely has raised the bar for all the zines out there. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it.
As if that weren't enough already, Steve also decided to put out a double 7" along with the zine. You get two songs each by Bane, Grade, Unrestrained and Between Earth And Sky. Can't hardly beat that package. My main interest in the vinyl here obviously were the Bane songs. Non-Negotiable was later featured on their final LP Don't Wait Up, the other one is a re-recorded version of Struck Down By Me, which was originally released on It All Comes Down To This.
No one knows how many different colours are out there. Stephen and Justin from Unrestrained once tried to document all the different colour combinations, but there's no actual record of what is out there. Also, the numbers vary from colour to colour, so some colours are much more common than others.  This Bane 7" comes on clear red vinyl and it is the eighth version I have of this record. I also have dark green, light grey, dark grey, baby blue, purple, dark purple and orange. I know of three or four more colours and I guess there are quite many transition variants in between the light and dark records. Beyond that, I have no idea. Keeps collecting interesting though. If you have anything I don't have, hit me up.