True Colors Gems

So I got a bunch of True Colors records a ways back from fellow blogger Willem. He was selling a bunch of stuff I couldn't pass up on. Plus he runs a pretty awesome blog.

So we begin with the basic black pressing of the Perspective 7". The two colors from the first pressing were black and white. They are both out of 300, so these are both common versions of the record, but still not easy to come by.

Here we have the Self-Titled 7" on white. Again this one had a pressing of white and black. The black is the most common out of 525 and the white is out of 315. The white is more rare, and this 7" in general is harder to find than Perspective. Now that we got the basic stuff out of the way let's move on to the limited stuff shall we?

Here we have the UK Tour/Record Release cover of the Self-Titled 7". This one is out of 110, odd number. Why not 100? This is a pretty awesome cover and still has some of the aspects of the regular sleeve. So I believe that means I have all of the versions of the self-titled 7" except the test.

Here we have the band's Get 'Em demo originally put out on tape. I have no idea how many of these there are. Can anyone help? I think this is the first batch of the tapes. I believe they were released by the band. This one has the white cover with the green insert. The second batch had a yellow cover with a white insert. This was also pressed on vinyl by I Drink Milk Records right before the band's last show not too long ago.

So I've saved the best for last. This is the Wide Awake rip off cover. These put together by Powered I believe as the last few copies of the 7" from the second press. The last press was on the white/red split color vinyl. I believe they made these covers on the last 30 copies of the record and put them up in their webstore for the first come, first served basis. So these sold out really fast from what I've heard. So I'm super happy to have this one.

They even paid tribute to the Schism Records logo on the back of the cover. This one is numbered 26 of 30. They used the artwork on the back on a lot of stuff for the band going forward, merch and what not. This also means I have all of the versions of this release except the test.

This Is Hardcore, Part 2

Here we have the fest edition of Disengage's 7". Back to Back put together some special screen-printed sleeves for the fest. There are 100 of these, and they are not numbered, but stamped on the back.

Hoodrack, the frontman of Stick Together and War Hungry was selling some of his personal collection. I recently got in to Rhythm to the Madness before I went to the fest and Hoodrack had several of their releases, so I picked up all of them. Here we have the LP the 7" and a promo tape. I can't find any pressing information on the tape. Anyone know?

So Bridge 9 was there and they had copies of the new Carry On reissure, which I knew was coming in the near future. So I was happy to snag a copy of it on white, this was the only color they had. I couldn't be happier about having a copy of this one without having to spend $40 or more for a copy from the first press. I also pre-ordered the other color, so I'll be looking in the mail for that one.

So I picked up some records from the other label staple at the fest, Deathwish. They screen printed some special covers of some of their big releases specifically for the fest. I picked up a copy of Blacklisted and Cold World's first LPs. They also pressed copies of the We're Unstoppable release, which I believe was originally released as a CD. The grey color was the label color, clear was Blacklisted's color. I'll have to get that one. Anyone know the pressing on any of these?

I picked up a pair of Mindsweats. I've wanted to have these after rave reviews online. This is the third incarnation of the sweats, and I have to say I lucked out because these match perfectly with my Mindset hoodie.

For Sound and Fury and This is Hardcore, Reaper Records and Tee Till Death did a collaboration shirt. This thing came out great. Since it's a classic Uniform Choice boot, it's too hard to pass up on. Take a look at the original here.


So Face Reality had A Straight Ahead rip for the fest, which was pretty popular. How can you go wrong?

So I couldn't resist this shirt. Back to Back did a Simpsons shirt, I don't think specifically for the fest though. This thing is just awesome. I usually never buy label shirts, but these two were hard to pass up on.

Back from Vacation, Time for an Update

So Deathwish decided to repress some of their successful releases all on Black. Up top is The Carrier's No Love Can Save Me which would be the second press. Below that is Blacklisted's The Beat Goes On which would also be a second press. They got a much heavier vinyl for this press than the earlier press which was pretty flimsy, so huge bonus. The bottom is Cold World's Dedicated to Babies... which would be a third press I believe. The Deathwish site has not been updated so I don't know what the pressing numbers are on these but I'd suspect their pretty high. Deathwish also did this black repress for Pulling Teeth's Paranoid Delusions/Paradise Illusions and Converge's Jane Doe.

I got this one off of eBay. It's Focus on the Light on yellow. This is the Powered release out of 200. I'm starting to get a decent True Colors collection. That makes me happy.

This record is one I've been wanting to get a single copy of for a long time. I've loved this record for years now. I'll have to try and collect these now. This one is out of 440.

So I'm going to copy Mike. Here is The Euro tour version of ON's Double Vision. Like Mike said, this is nothing amazing, but given the back story it makes sense. Luckily the final version of this record came out great. At least that's what I'm telling myself so that I can justify having so many copies of it.

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.

I'm Moving

So I'm in the middle of a move right now, so I haven't had a whole lot of time to update this or really get pictures and records together. Presently I don't even have my records with me, they're still back home. As I'm typing this, I'm in a hotel because I'm off training for my new job and the wireless internet cuts in and out. This is an example of the reason for why I haven't updated this. Since I've been getting a lot of stuff recently I thought it would be a good idea to get a head start before it just get's out of hand.

Here we have the Summer Tour 2006 version of Bracewar's s/t 7". This is my seventh copy of this record. Other than the really rare ones, I'm only missing the red record release cover. Almost there. This summer tour version is numbered out of 100.


This is the '08 Euro Tour press of The First Step's Connection 7". This was the rarer color of the second press, with 270 copies. The first press also had a red so the labels on this one were changed to white to differentiate.

When Dave of Six Feet Under put out an distro update stating he got in copies of Bracewar's latest 7", I jumped at the opportunity, as I knew this may be the only time I'd be able to get both copies at once at a reasonable price. Clear is out of 300 and black is out of 700.

This is the Pulling Teeth and Frightener split. I believe this is the rarest color, white with splatter, 350 copies.

Here is a copy of Pulling Teeth's Vicious Skin on green with haze. This is from the first press, no idea the pressing info on this release.

When I made the order from SFU for the Bracewar 7"s I also decided to pick up another copy of Common Cause's The Power to Change on what I thought was going to be clear, that's what the listing in the webstore said. This arrived, apparently there is a second press out of 300 on blue. So I got a copy of the record, which is cool, it just means there's another one I still need to get.

So that covers everything I got right before I moved up to PA about 2.5 weeks ago. Hopefully I'll get time to post about the massive amount of stuff I had waiting for me when I went home for Thanksgiving.

Keeping It Going

Here is Pulling Teeth's Witches Sabbath IV. Its got a cover of The Ramones' Teenage Lobotomy. Just happy to have one of these.

I got another version of the Swamp Thing 7". This is on black out of 300.

This is The Effort's From Our Mistakes on clear. It's the cloud variant I believe out of 200.

This is US Tour version of Perspective. Numbered out of 75. Only missing the Wide Awake cover and a black one.

I picked up the copy of It's All Our Blood I was missing. The red was the React! exclusive color. Nice to have them all now.

This is Insted Live at CBGB put out by Livewire. Clear is out of 300. Another cheap pick up from Celebrated Summer.

This is the last copy of Martyr Immortal I was missing, and also the most rare out of 150.

I made an order from the Half the Battle guys. I picked up the three colors of the LP and four copies of the Youth Crew 10 compilation. The singer apparently lives in Arlington, so I think he drove it to my house or something, there wasn't a postage label on it or anything. I can see why people like what Seb is doing at JAD, the packaging for this LP is quality.

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.