The Circle Of Influence Continues

This post goes out to two of my fellow bloggers. The best thing about this whole blogging affair has been meeting like minded people and getting to know so far unfamiliar bands through their blogs. Sparkmarker is a really good example for that. Both Marcus and Mike posted about this band and were very positive in their comments. So against my usual behavior I checked out the band on YouTube. I really liked what I was listening to, so when I ordered one of the records I recently posted about I checked the seller's other items and saw that he had a Sparkmarker 7" for something like $3. Really a no brainer to pick up the record. I'm definitely going to add more of their records to my collection sooner or later.

The New What Next

Hot Water Music used to be one of those bands I'd really look down on when I was in my formative hardcore years, simply because I thought they didn't sound hard enough. Definitely not one of my proudest moments in retrospect. The words close-minded and stupid come to mind. I'm not saying I'm the most open-minded person out there nowadays when it comes to music, but let's say I've broadened my horizons a little bit as I grew older. I mainly bought this because my wife was nagging me to pick up some Hot Water Music for her. After listening to The New What Next a bunch of times, I'm kind of hooked. Which is good, because I found some new good music, on the other hand I kind of dread having to go through the massive Hot Water Music back catalogue. I'm not even going into the pressing info here, because every Hot Water Music release has seen a myriad of pressings and colours. I wonder if there are people dedicated enough to go through with a collection. Knowing record collectors, I'd probably say the answer is 'Yes'.