Hardcore Does Live

I won this copy of Lights Out's LP on eBay. The copies of white were stamped with the Lights Out stamp on the labels and were out of 202. This was the second and last press of the record according to the Youngblood site. This band was great and this LP came out really awesome too, the artwork, the layout and everything are awesome.

I went over to Reaper's webstore to order the third press of the latest Down to Nothing release. I also wanted to pick up a copy of No Values debut 7", which I had delayed picking up. So the third press of DTN is nice. The cover has a different color font and the vinyl is no longer on black, which is nice. Not to mention we got new and arguably better labels, so that is all good. The third press is out of 500. The No Values 7" looks great and matches the music. No Values I believe have members of Bracewar and maybe some other Richmond bands as well. They play more of a traditional fast paced hardcore punk, very much in a Richmond punk style. The red is out of 389.

When I went to pre order the Stick Together 7" from Back to Back, I also thought it would be good to get the United Youth demo. United Youth, it's pretty obvious what they'd sound like. These kids are young, like 15-16 I think. So it's awesome that they are playing in a band and they respect the history of hardcore, and aren't just playing what is really popular right now. That being said this is a rough demo. They show a lot of potential and I hope they put out some more stuff or maybe down the road they join other bands. This could be something really cool to have years from now. The tape is out of 100. By the way I didn't post my Stick Together 7"s because I didn't get a copy on Orange, instead two on White. I'm starting to really get annoyed with labels sending me two copies of the same color. I think about 80% of the time it's because the label made a mistake. I sent Back to Back an email but I haven't heard anything back for over a month now. I might try again sometime soon.

Keeping with the tape and the pre-order trend, this is the Police & Thieves tape put out by Youngblood. I picked this up when I was ordering the Sacred Love 7" and Final Fired Up press. I think this was maybe originally release by the band because I remember seeing them at a show or two before Youngblood announced they would be putting it out. This is called the Blizzard Sessions, when last winter there was a ton of snow in D.C. P & T decided to record some songs. This is some good stuff and it's good representation of things to come hopefully. I'm looking forward to their split with Remission.

I picked up another copy of Wake the Dead from the 1st original press. This one on green is out of 887.

So there's a great story about this one. Back in November Laura put up a list of records on the D.C. board, she was trying to part with them and she'd be taking offers. So I sent her an offer for this, True Colors Focus on the Light record release cover out of 130. She wrote me back saying that unfortunately she was getting better offers from people in Belgium and in Europe. With the bad conversion rate to the USD and shipping, I would have to offer double what I was offering, at a normally fair price. So at one point I even offered more than I thought it was worth, but it wasn't good enough in comparison to others. A little later that night she said she had spoken to my friend Ryan and that he had convinced her that I needed to have this record. I was instantly surprised.

She offered to bring me the record when she was in America a few months later. I even explained that I would no longer be living near D.C. but she said we could still meet up and work it out. So I sent her the money and waited until February when she was in the U.S. She ended up being at the Mother of Mercy record release show here in Philly and she had the record with her. I was amazed that not only did she have it and she was there, but that she even wrapped it and had my name on it. Laura brought it on the plane with her as one of her carry-ons. That's dedication.

To me this is what is so cool about hardcore, someone would take the time out to personally deliver me a record that I want simply because of a friend of a friend. I feel like this wouldn't happen in almost any other community. A big thank you go out to Laura and Ryan.

So I also picked this up at that same show, this is Mother of Mercy's latest LP IV: Symptoms of Existence with the record release "shirt". I say shirt because that's literally what it is. Normally it would be a special sleeve or a whole different cover. Instead this is what seems like a shirt that was cut and re-sewn to fit the size of the record. Very cool touch.

On the back is the date of the release show. Cool touch. I'm not sure how many of these there were. Let me know if you know.

About a Week Later

Strap yourself in. There's a lot of stuff in this one.

Here we have my pre order for the Jane Doe reissue from Deathwish. Everything looks very cool and as long as the wait was, I think its safe to say it was worth it. On the left is the big booklet that comes with each copy. The thing is pretty true to the original style of the release, just taken a step further. I was surprised at how simple and straight-forward most of this was. I thought with as much hype as this reissue got naturally, there would be some more baggage per se. Here we have the two most common versions, as it seems I didn't luck out on getting a rarer one. White is out of 2,000 and red out of 1,305. Pretty nuts that they put out 5,000 copies of these, but I guess that makes sense. The reason why I lined up the records the way I did is that the sides of the labels for this double release are J.A.N.E. So as lame as I am I had to lay them out to spell it.

Here we have the fourth press of The Things We Carry. I've wanted to get a copy of this for a little while now, and since I didn't want to pay like $40 for a copy, this worked out for me. I was a little disappointed with how this turned out. Would've been nice to be a gatefold, apparently the third press wasn't either.

Here we have another pre order from Six Feet Under. First is the second press of the Kingston 7", defiantly better colors of vinyl this time around, I'm happy. Also I ordered three copies of The Rival Mob 7", though I got two copies of purple, I'm guessing that the black just sold out that fast. No worries I think I'll be able to trade/sell my extra on purple, as this is already sold out and Dave ordered a second press. 1,500 records gone that fast, impressive. This band is defiantly getting a lot of attention. I'll get to an example of that later.

Here we have another record that I probably didn't really need, but I figured why not. This is a plain version of Down to Nothing's Splitting Headache. By plain I mean, there's no special stamps, like all the other ones I own. This is blank and supposedly out of 225. Not sure, no idea what the full pressing info is on this one.

So I ended up getting an extra copy of ON record that I already had, by accident. So I ended up making a trade with it pretty quick. Here is what I got in return, this is a copy of Go It Alone's Histories with the European tour stamp on it. Pretty nice accidental opportunity. I traded this with clichejon, and the funny thing about this is that it was supposed to go to Seb of Just Another Day Records, from Mark of GIA, but I suppose Seb never got this. He wrote a note on the dust sleeve.

Another funny thing about this trade was that Jon included a copy of De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, which just made my package. I actually just got it out and put it on the turntable, that's how stoked I am about it. Not to mention there was this like stupid dance DJ LP that was all marked all over it to use as a mailer, because well that's all its good for. Apparently it was meant to be an international exchange mailer. As it started with L.O.James and then went to Jon in the UK, and now to me. The reason why this is even funnier is that James lives in the D.C. area, as do I. So really it just came back to pretty much the same place it started. Anyway, I'll send this out with whoever I next send a record out of the country to.

Here we have my Common Cause pre order from React! This has got to be the best looking React release yet.

The cover is just awesome with the glossy gold accent all over it and as usual the fold out insert is stellar.

The mailer is awesome, I actually want a shirt with this design. I NEED a copy of this on gold from the showcase. So if you got one please get at me. Aram just out-does himself all the time.

This is a copy of the 7" of the same record that I just so happened to get at the same time by chance. As you can see this version is also very cool with the silver accent, but the React version is the winner.

Here is two copies of Police & Thieves' Amor y Guerra from Youngblood. The top copy on green is out of 300, the bottom copy is the Youngblood 08 Showcase version stamped and numbered out of 150. Two nice pick ups around my area, one at a show and the other at a record store.

That's all I can fit in the labels for one post, so you'll just have to wait for the rest. There's plenty more to go.