Thursday, March 14, 2024

Atlanta Vacation

One last record before I checked out of Wanna Hear It. I said that I wasn't going to spend a lot, and while I did walk out of there with six records, they were all relatively cheap, so I'm saying that I did an okay job with self restraint.
When I bought the Abuse Of Power 7 inch back in 2017, I only grabbed the black vinyl pressing, and I was okay with that. Black vinyl was the more limited pressing, and while there was a small itch to grab a colored vinyl option, I kept my cool and didn't do it. Now that I have this edition with the Atlanta Vacation cover, and it puts my total collection for this record at 2, I'm really feeling a pull to chase more for this one. I listened to this 7 inch today for the first time in a while, and it is still a really good record.
There are a series of Atlanta Vacation tour sleeves. This one is for the Northeast tour for Baltimore, Boston and Wallingford CT... but there is also a different cover for their California tour, plus two others for each of their European tours... and I want them all. This copy was only $15 from Wanna Hear It, so I'm trying to stay chill and not chase the $30 to $50 ones available on Discogs right now for the other covers. Patience.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Test Press Of Fire

I'm not a big fan of live recordings. Sure I'll break out Kiss Alive or Black Sabbath Live Evil every now and then, and I'll grab the occasional live bootleg for the historical documentation of what songs some of the big metal bands were playing at that point in their career, but for hardcore bands... kind of pointless. Is there a single live hardcore record that people listen to on a regular basis? Fuck. I was at the last Have Heart show, and still, I have no interest in listening to the live album from it.
So when I was obsessing over the early 2000's in recent years, and picked up a couple of Fields Of Fire records, I noticed that they also had a live 7 inch. Hard pass. Zero interest. But then when I was at Wanna Hear It with Sandwell, and I saw a test press of the live record in the rack... well, now you have my attention... and for $3, get in my collection.
Nice special cover as a tribute to Sounds Of Nature from Christ On Parade, and number 4 out of 20.

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

Broken Distance

When I listen to music, I usually pick a year and then stick around listening to the records from that year over and over, until I feel the need to move on to something else. A couple of years ago, I found myself stuck in a 2008 playlist. For me, that seems to be a time period that I rarely reach back to, and I attribute that lack of attention is due to the fact that my brain insists that 2008 was just a couple of years ago. I either listen to stuff that is brand new to me, or stuff that is really old... anything in the middle kind of gets lost, and 2008 kind of falls in that weird in-between place. Because of this, it was really fun to stick around in that year and dust off and rediscover some records.
One of the records that I found myself really getting into when revisiting 2008 was the Hourglass 7 inch from Broken Distance. I wasn't really familiar with the band at that time, but years later became good friends with the singer, David, when he was running Salad Days Records, and it was a lot of fun to finally spend some time with one of his early straight edge bands. I started digging into the pressing info for Hourglass because I was tempted to pick up some colored vinyl if the price was right, and in the process I discovered that there was a second 7 inch from the band. Sundown was released 9 years after Hourglass, so I'm assuming that the band just got back together to record the final songs that they had written... but I immediately loved what I heard and wanted to buy the record.
I reached out to David immediately and asked if he had any spare Broken Distance records laying around because I wanted to buy one of anything he still had available. He told me that he probably had some stuff at his parents house, and that he would check the next time he was there. Over a year later and I still haven't heard back from him on it, so when I saw a cheap copy of the white vinyl in the racks at Wanna Hear It, I quickly added it to the handful of records that I needed to buy.

158 pressed on white vinyl.

Saturday, March 02, 2024

The Title Fight You Forget

This is the last record that I picked up last year that was influenced from sharing songs with my friend Sarah. There are a few other bands that she turned me on to that I'd still like to pick up the record for... namely Life Of Agony's River Runs Red, and maybe the In Love There Is No Law album from Twitching Tongues. This record, however, is from a band that I never expected to like, Title Fight.
I was obviously familiar with Title Fight when Sarah sent me the song Loud And Clear to check out. The band had a lot of hype when they were around, and it seemed like everyone liked them, but they just never seemed interesting to me. I tried to get into both their Shed and Floral Green albums at the time because it seemed like they were everywhere... but no matter how much I tried, each time I just felt like they were kind of bland. Ten years later, I gave Title Fight another chance with the song that Sarah sent me... and surprise, I fucking loved what I heard. Looking back at 2012/2013, I was heavily into stuff like Mindset and those first two Turnstile records... stuff that had more of a HARDCORE sound... so I can understand why Title Fight didn't interest me at the time. Listening to the band in 2023/2024, after loving stuff that is more melodic like the first Anxious 7 inch, and heavily getting into bands like Seaweed, Title Fight made more sense to my ears these days and I could finally appreciate what they were doing.
I ended up listening to those songs from the early Title Fight EPs quite a bit the last six months, and when I saw the 7 inch for The Last Thing You Forget in the racks at Wanna Hear It, I was excited to grab it. I was hoping for a colored vinyl version, but after quickly checking Discogs, it looked like those records carry a price tag that I wasn't really ready to tackle at the time, so this inexpensive black vinyl third press from 2015 was good enough for me.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Can't Get There From Here

I listened to a lot of R.E.M. last year. There was just something about that band that struck the sad and melancholic nerve in me, and I returned to their records again and again. When I was flipping through the 7 inch racks at Wanna Hear It and I saw the single for Can't Get There From Here, and it was obvious that I needed to buy it even though I've never given much thought to collecting R.E.M. singles.
Can't Get There From Here is from the 1985 album, Fables Of The Reconstruction. I still don't have the vinyl for that album, and it seems to be one that you can still pick up for a reasonable price, so maybe I'll have to add that one to the collection soon.
R.E.M. singles are cool because they come with an exclusive track on the b-side. The flip side for this single features the song Bandwagon... and since I've never bothered with R.E.M. singles, this is the first time that I've heard the song, almost 40 years after it was released. Apparently the 12 inch single has two exclusive songs, so obviously that was the way that I should have gone, and I'll have to remember that if I want to keep collecting R.E.M. singles.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Wanna Hear Crumbsuckers

Sandwell was back in the US last October for his holiday in NYC (yes, I'm just posting about it four months later), and asked if I wanted to meet up with him in Boston for a day. I wasn't able to see him when he was here in 2022, so I was happy that I could make the trip to see him this time around. So he hopped on a bus, and I jumped in my car, and we both made the trip to Boston hang out, shop for some records, and get some good vegan food at Veggie Galaxy. Typically we just meet at the bus terminal in South Station and then jump on the subway to Harvard Square and visit the Armageddon Record Shop, but for this trip I really wanted to introduce him to Wanna Hear It Records... which is not on the subway line, so it meant that I was going to have to drive through Boston for the day. I'm not a big fan of driving through Boston these days, but for records I'll do it.
I had told myself that I needed to limit my spending and take it easy at the record store, but we are talking about Wanna Hear It, so that was going to be really fucking hard to stick to. I bought a lot more than I intended to, so obviously this is going to be spread out over a number of posts to cover this entire record haul. First up is the Life Of Dreams album from Crumbsuckers.
I've owned the Beast On My Back record from the Crumbsuckers for years, and while I do love that album, Life Of Dreams is really where it's at. Seeing it in the rack at the very start of our shopping trip, I knew that I was going to be in trouble with my self imposed spending limits for the day. The price was right, and I was not going to be able to pass up this classic. Doug Free, from Free Spirit and Rival Mob was working the counter at Wanna Hear It, and when I brought my stack of records up to pay, he told me that he had the original Sean Taggert artwork for this album cover framed on his wall. Very cool.
Great day hanging out in Boston with Mark, and a great excuse to get down for some record shopping. More posts to come.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Guided By Angels

Another band that my friend Sarah recommended last year, that I wouldn't have bothered to check out otherwise was Amyl and the Sniffers. I don't think that I'd even heard the band name before she sent me a song to check out, but there was something there that I would have avoided if it weren't for her recommendation. I'm not sure why that is, because the band name seems like it was lifted straight out of the 70's punk scene, but it kind of turned me off. Still, in my effort to approach new music with an open mind last year, I hit play on the song... and holy shit, it hooked me immediately.
Amyl and the Sniffers was so fucking infectious and catchy, that I ripped through the song Sarah sent me three times and then I moved on to check out the entire album. I was floored. There was so much energy here that it captured my full attention. I stopped what I was doing at work and could not turn away from what was coming out of my speakers. 15 minutes after Sarah had sent me the link to the song I was on Discogs and buying the record. I could have taken the 10 minute drive up the road to the record store and grabbed a deluxe vinyl version that included a second LP containing their live at Williamstown set, but I figured that this US press on "Romer red" would be good enough.
After hearing Amyl and the Sniffers, I obsessed over them for a solid week, checking youtube for any live performance from the band that I could find. I was fascinated with the energy and intensity of the singer and I could not stop watching. After a while, and listening to the record multiple times a day, I had to force myself to put it away for a bit so that I didn't burn myself out on it... but this album and the Gulch record were probably two of my favorite finds last year.