It Was A Very Good Year

2014 was a really good year as far as records go. There were some really great records released this year and I also managed to pick up a lot of really cool records that had been on my want list for quite some time. I tried to come up with a Top 5 for 2014 releases and 2014 collectibles. It worked fine for the releases, but I couldn't slim down the collectibles to just five. Anyway, here goes.

2014 Releases

Dangers has been a favourite band of mine ever since I heard them for the first time. I haven't been floored by a band both lyrically and musically like that for a long time. They're also a great live band and all of the shows I've been to were great fun. 5 O'Clock Shadows At The Edge Of The Western World is not as good as their previous releases imho, which doesn't mean that much cause compared to most other bands it's still very, very good. The song of the same name however is so awesome. My #5.
Our Inner Wastelands is the first full length release by local band Zerre. Their singer is a good friend of mine, plus I know most of the other members as well, and I'm so stoked about what they accomplished with this LP. Plus it looks so good. The red variant is probably the best looking record I got this year. My #4.
I've been a fanboy of Barren ever since I heard their demo. It had been rather quiet around this band for quite some time, but this year they finally managed to release their first full length LP Anachronism. Great politically minded 90s hardcore. Awesome live band, too. Plus we share a craving for the same vegan baked good, which is definitely a big plus. XStreuseltalerYouthX. My #3.
Sweet Jesus are the surprise band of the year for me. I'd never heard of them before, despite the fact that Pat Flynn of Have Heart fame is the singer for this band. When I got their their first 7" Box, I put it on the record player and I was blown away. I had to flip this record over and over and over and over. So, so good. Their upcoming LP just might show up in my Top 5 2015. We'll see. My #2.
It's been a hard debate between me, myself and I, but in the end there could be only one release at the top of this list. Bane is my favourite band ever, just in case somebody wasn't aware of this fact (despite the 15 posts about this band in little more than a year). They decided to call it quits next year, which sucks, but they released a new LP this year, which rules. Don't Wait Up is such a good LP. I was a little afraid they might release a record that could leave a bad aftertaste, urging people to say "They should have quit a few years ago…", but this LP is so much better than I'd ever hoped for. Perfect record to end this amazing journey of this band. My #1 2014.

2014 Collectibles

I managed to pick up a lot of cool records this year, some of which had been on my want list for quite some time. Narrowing it down to just five records was impossible, so I stretched the list just a tad. There are still a few records that could have easily been in this picture, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Some of these records I got for cheap, some I had to pay a pretty penny for, some I got for free or as presents. For various reasons these records are my collectibles of the year. There's no ranking here since all these records give me joy for very different reasons. 

Greatest hardcore record of all time. Prove me otherwise.

Favourite release by my favourite band. Collection complete.

Out of the blue. Rarest release by my favourite band besides test pressings.

Birthday present by the greatest girlfriend on this planet.

There are always more variants out there than you think. Keep looking.

Record I probably listened to the most 2014. One of the wildest and hottest shows this year.

Out of the blue part II. There are still some great people involved in hardcore.

Sometimes you gotta give more. Sometimes you gotta give everything.

Not in this picture but in the one above, you can see a test pressing of Bane's final LP on End Hits Records. This one is definitely one of my pick-ups 2014 as well, but I didn't feel the need to picture it twice.

Thanks everyone for reading my blog and commenting. Keeps record collecting a lot of fun.

XXX

X-Mas Time (For The Skins)

I don't collect a whole lot of bands, but I really enjoy the ones I actually do collect. Good Clean Fun is one of them. There are tons of colours and probably as many sleeves of their releases, so hunting down variants is a lot of fun, especially since their discography is not documented very well. I still stumble across some new variants I didn't know about before here and there. This record is a good example. I already had three different copies of the Good Clean Fun / Throwdown split, and I knew that there are test pressings for this release because I once saw one listed among a Throwdown collection, when I came across this version with green vinyl and this weird copied cover a few years ago. It's either out of 30 or 34. I've seen both numbers since then.
So anyway, I saw this variant on someone's howsyouredge? list and contacted the person. He was down for selling the record and I was glad to be able to add another Good Clean Fun record to my collection. This was when the other guy was on a trip at the time and shortly before I went on a trip, so I told him I'd contact him once I was back. Which I never did because I forgot about the whole thing for some reason I'll probably never be able to figure out. This was summer 2013. The whole matter completely slipped my mind until I did some cleaning up in my e-mail account at the end of summer 2014.  I found our correspondence, finally wrote him back and lo and behold, he still had the record and was still willing to sell it to me. Great! Better still, he had some other records I'd been looking for for quite some time, so I managed to cross off three records of my want list instead of just one. Awesome!

This Good Clean Fun release is kind of weird. First of all, Good Clean Fun and Throwdown don't exactly scream split release, but maybe the bands were really close and I'm just ignorant to this fact. Second, they each play one of their own songs and a cover. So far so normal, but the choices of cover songs is a little strange. Good Clean Fun actually play a cover of a cover. Plus the original became really famous only through yet another cover. Got it? Here's what happened. Iron Cross from Washington, D.C. wrote this song Crucified, which is also where the crucified skin motive comes from. Agnostic Front covered the song on their Liberty And Justice… LP and I'm under the impression that this version is arguably better known than the original. In the late 80's Crucial Youth decided to write some new lyrics for the song and released it as X-Mas Time (For The Skins) on their Crucial Yule 7". And that's the song GCF decided to cover for this release. Throwdown cover Jingle Bell Rock, which is even weirder if you ask me.

This is the rarest version I own. As you can see, the cover is not really a cover. It's two separate sheets of paper that were neither folded into a cover nor glued together. It's #14 either out of 30 or 34.