This is a nice looking record, so much so even Chuck himself agreed when he saw it. Last November Chuck Ragan played an in-store show at Banquet records in Kingston on a Tuesday lunchtime and, being a lazy student with nothing else to do, I jumped at the chance to see him play a tiny venue again. He played for 25 minutes and squeezed in some great songs (including an acoustic version of Drag My Body from the new Hot Water Music LP, which might be my favourite song on there). Banquet recorded the whole thing and you can watch it here. It was a very cool show indeed.
Afterwards, they explained that Chuck would be staying around for a bit to sign any records people wanted signed. I usually don't go for the whole autographed records things, but this is the man who wrote my second favourite album of all time so I decided I would get something signed and thank him for his great music. The problem however, was that I already had at home all of the Chuck/HWM albums Banquet had in stock and the only record I didn't already own was the slightly-more-expensive-than-I'd-have-liked-but-lovely-nonetheless Sawblade 7" which, as you can see, is in the shape of a circular sawblade with the outline of Florida and a hammer crossing it. It is a lovely looking record, and looks even nicer in white. I had been thinking about buying it for a while and figured today was as good a day as any. I'm always happy to spend my money at Banquet, especially when they put on incredible free live shows like that, and I figured I would have paid at least a fiver to see that, so maybe the cost of the record isn't that bad after all.
Anyway, Chuck signed the label (see the last picture) and was pretty impressed that Banquet had it in on white vinyl, we had a brief chat and I was off. He is a thoroughly lovely man. Musically it's very nice too, although Live by the Sword has already found its way into my record collection twice (here and here), so calling it "unreleased" is a bit of a stretch (although the recording is different here, and a nice one at that - the backing vocals give it a haunting feel). The other song Field Holler is another great Chuck song and would have sat on his last record perfectly.
All in all, a nice record with even nicer memories of a great gig.
Format: 7" shaped vinyl (12" across at its widest)
Tracks: 2
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 13/11/12
Colour: White
Etching: none
mp3s: no
