Grappler - Callow

I got this 7" for free, which is always nice. I ordered the Gnarwolves Fun Club double 7" and, if I remember correctly, this 7" was a freebie to sweeten the deal as the double 7" was taking longer to come together than planned. Sounds about right. Not sure if everyone got the same record though.

I think in it's fullest form, this record has a screen-printed b-side and a sleeve. Mine has neither - I guess they had an excess of the 7" and didn't screen-print them all. It's also incredibly warped - I've tried the normal approaches to smooth it out, but with little luck and, eventually, a lack of desire to bother.

Grappler have the sound of a lot of post-hardcore bands of the early 2010's. If I closed my eyes, I could equally believe this was a Goodtime Boys record. It's a fine example of the genre, but ultimately it's a genre that I don't need to spend a whole lot of time listening to; I certainly don't feel the need to expand my collection beyond the few bands I've already tried. The first song, which Discogs tells me is the title-track, Callow, builds up for quite a while but, disappointingly, goes nowhere. It's quite exciting whilst it's building up though. Neon and Trials are much the same, but shorter, which feels like a shame because it was the things they did when trying to make a song last a whole three-and-a-half-minutes that did the most for me.

Format: One-sided 7"
Tracks: 3
Cost: £0 new
Bought: Internet
When: 20/05/13
Colour: Transparent green
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Cable - God Gave Me Gravity

I vaguely remember being aware of Cable back in the day, but can't really remember why or how; they were probably just one of those bands you kinda knew about. The band were brought back to everyone's memories in 2012 when Hundred Reasons and Hell is for Heroes played the 10-year anniversary shows of their excellent Ideas Above Our Stations and Neon Handshake albums - a flurry of shows were scheduled for December 2012 featuring Cable, Hell is for Heroes and Hundred Reasons. Many people of a particular age (my age) got very excited and I went to a couple of the shows.

Some friends of a friend were very excited for Cable at the show in The Coronet in London (a fairly hideous venue in Elephant & Castle that I’d never been to before, nor have I been to since). They were in the very small minority of people who were there to see Cable more than the other two bands and I think left afterwards. I enjoyed Cable’s set, but it was hard to get as excited by for two reasons - I’d never listened to them before (and nostalgia is a huge factor in these reunion shows) and that I was really looking forward to seeing HIFH and Hundred Reasons (I’d seen HIFH play Neon Handshake the day before and the day before that in The Peel in Kingston, and I saw Hundred Reasons earlier that summer, but still - they were both playing incredible albums that I love dearly).

I found this 7” just over a year later in Reading. I’d been record shopping in Reading a few times over the years, but hadn’t been there for a very long time by the time I went in 2014. For work I was having to go there a couple of times over a month, and made up for the long and tedious train journey by going record shopping on my lunchtimes. However, most of the shops that had yielded great finds in my teens had long since closed and there was little left. In fact, all there was left was The Sound Machine in one of the arcades, HMV and an Oxfam Books and Records; my lunchtimes were not as fun as I hoped they might be. My main memory of those trips to Reading was using the train journey home to apply for other jobs (one of which I got and, thankfully, escaped suit-wearing drudgery).

The Sound Machine was where I found my copy of Manic Compression in 2002, amongst a few other gems, so I was pleased it was still there. I was less pleased with the stock - after browsing through pretty much all of it, all I found was this 7”. There are many circumstances where I might not have bought it, but given I’d been in the (tiny) shop quite so long, I felt like I had to buy something. It had some excellent stock back in 2002.

Additionally, I was intrigued by the sticker on the sleeve explaining how the two b-sides were squeezed onto one side of vinyl. I’ve certainly not seen anything like it before - for the b-side, the left channel plays Dinky and the right channel plays Electro Gazelle. If you don’t have the ability to focus the audio through one speaker, then the resulting sound is a mess. It’s a funny idea and a novel solution, but entirely unnecessary - I’ve seen 7”s where the b-side plays at 33rpm rather than 45, meaning you can fit more songs. However, it played a part in me wanting to buy the record, so it worked in that sense (which I suspect might have been a large part of it). The second is slightly longer than the first, so you still hear a bit of it at the end, which makes you wonder how much you can hear of the other song even with the sound entirely to one side.

All the songs are fine, but getting into this band 15 years after their hey-day is not advised; it's hard to listen to them without thinking how late-90's their sound is. That's not a criticism - it was the late-90's, so it was fine - and I can't imagine many people will be in the position I'm in now. God Gave Me Gravity builds up to a decent ending, which I like. The b-sides are ok, but actually suffer from the novelty of their arrangement on the record, as both sound pretty flat in mono. I suspect I'd enjoy them more, particularly Electro Gazelle, in stereo.

Format: 7", folded sleeve
Tracks: 3
Cost: £2 second hand
Bought: The Sound Machine, Reading
When: 25/02/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Jane's Addiction - True Nature

The second single from Jane's Addiction's reunion album, Strays, was True Nature. Despite being the opening track, it wasn't as strong as the first single, Just Because. Perry basically mumbles the first verse, which is a strange way to sing, given his voice can do incredible things when he tries. The b-side is a live recording of a far better song, Been Caught Steeling. There's nothing terribly wrong with True Nature, but it's just a very standard Jane's song.

Shortly after starting university I found this 7" in the local HMV, presumably around the time it was released. It wasn't a necessary purchase, but vinyl was hard to come by back then, so I bought what I could. The live recording was the main appeal, since the picture disc itself is pretty hideous. The cover looks nearly identical to that of True Nature and it makes you wonder if they just did one photoshoot for the whole album (perhaps that was the maximum amount of time they could spend in a room together). Even stranger is the reverse, which is basically a flyer for the tour they were doing. I've known the idea that singles are a way to advertise the album, but I've never known them as a way to adverse a tour before.

Format: 7" picture disc
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.80 new
Bought: HMV Lancaster
When: 27/10/03
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Jane's Addiction - Just Because

Twelve years after they released Classic Girl as a single, Jane's Addiction reunited and released their fourth album, Strays. A week ahead of the album, they released the single Just Because and I remember it being plastered all over MTV that summer. I bought the 7" in HMV the day it came out and went into town the following Monday with the sole purpose of buying the album. That day ended up being a far more significant day since the MVC in town had a sale on, which meant hundreds of pretty niche albums were £4. I bought a couple of albums I knew I'd enjoy, but also chanced £4 on a band I'd never heard of called The Paper Chase. Without too much hyperbole, that album started a chain of events that introduced me to so much incredible music that I can't even begin to describe (although I did try to here). I remember thinking at the time that Strays was a fine album, but that took up very little space in my mind compared to how excited I was about The Paper Chase. I'd spent a few years loving older bands like Jane's Addiction, but their reunion actually threw me into a whole world of other music, such that they'd seem drastically less exciting. It was something of a turning point.

2003 was before a lot of bands started doing the whole reunion thing, so it was much less of a cliche back then. On top of that, Just Because was actually a great single - it certainly gave you the idea that Strays could be great. It wasn't, of course; few reunion albums are. I've not listened to it a whole lot over the years, but I remember thinking there were too few risks - there were no ten-minute songs (let alone back-to-back) and nothing shocking (excuse the pun). Even the artwork was boring. But Just Because was an exiting single (and the video with all the flashing lights helped), so I got into it a bit. The b-side is a live recording of a song that also made it onto Strays, Suffer Some, which is, without being too critical, a very run-of-the-mill Jane's Addiction song.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.35 new
Bought: HMV Winchester
When: 14/07/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Chillerton - Chillerton

Chillerton were one of the many bands that played a lot during the time I was living in Cardiff. I definitely saw them a number of times, but have few distinct memories of what they sounded like exactly. That's no slight on them - we saw a lot of hardcore/punk bands and they were one that I never spent the time to get into at the time; in hindsight, this was a mistake.

A few years later, they were playing the Deadpunk All-dayer in Bristol and lots of people were very excited about this. Their set was great and I struggled to remember why it was that I hadn't become a fan all those years beforehand; I probably had a bit of hardcore-fatigue around that time.

Since the band had long since broken up and were playing a one-off (I think) reunion show, they had this 7" and the cd version on their merch table for free - there was a box of each that had presumably been sat in someone's garage for years, neglected. Eager to give the record a good home, I picked up a copy (of each, not realising that the cd contained the same songs as it had different cover). The 7", as you can see, is a very nice clear with blue and red splatter.

I was pleasantly surprised when I played the records - the songs were catchy but still very heavy, and the mixture of male and female vocals on The Way She Types and Torque was refreshing (especially the way they were layered on the former). The whole EP is a bit rough around the edges, but I like it for that. I eventually bought the album, which made me further wish I'd spent more time getting into the band back in the day. Better late than never I suppose.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 5
Cost: £0 new
Bought: gig
When: 28/08/13
Colour: Clear with blue and red splatter
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Pop Will Eat Itself - Poppiecock - The Poppies Play 5-a-side

One of the last PWEI records I bought was this 12" from their very early days. I'd bought a copy of Now For a Feast on cd in Bournemouth in 2002 which, along with the early songs on the PWEI Product anthology album, meant I was already very familiar with all these songs. However, it was £3.50 on eBay and I didn't have any of those songs on vinyl, so I guess it seemed like a good purchase.

All those years later, these songs aren't anywhere near as bad as I remember. I mean, they were basically a different band to the PWEI I got into, but that doesn't mean they're not good songs. I don't know if I'd have got into a band that sounded like this without knowing the band they'd go on to be, but here we are. The whole thing plays at 45rpm and is over pretty soon after it starts. Does it show potential? I guess so, although I don't think anyone could have guessed how the band would sound in a few years given how they sound here. The songs are fine, but none I like enough to call a "highlight", although Candyiosis makes me smile.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 10
Cost: £3.50 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 02/05/03
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Play a fast 'un you bastards"
mp3s: no

One Minute Silence - I Wear My Skin

Just before OMS released their third album, they released I Wear My Skin as a single, which I eagerly bought, so that I could hear a bit more of the album ahead of its release. As a indication of what I was like back then, three days later I had my long hair dreadlocked into 30-or-so very thick mats of hair. It was the early 2000's and I was into metal; it was acceptable at the time.

I Wear My Skin was a much stronger single than We Bounce and, if I remember correctly, great fun to jump around to at their shows. The break before the final chorus and the outro are particular highlights. The b-side is a non-album track, something of a rarity around that time for the band. It starts off too messy, but comes together and has quite a huge chorus. With a bit of re-working, it could easily have been an album track (and would have actually been better than a couple that did make it on there, as far as I remember).

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV Winchester
When: 24/06/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

One Minute Silence - We Bounce

We Bounce was the second single from OMS's third and final album, many months after the first. I bought it along with a Therapy? 7" and Funeral For a Friend double 7" one day in HMV in Southampton. I think, had I not been buying the Funeral record, I probably wouldn't have got either of the other two - they were fine additional purchases, but not exciting enough to open my wallet for.

At £2, this record was lucky to be bought, given that it contains the same song twice, where that song had already been released on the Revolution 10", and where the edit is just a censored version of the original (they change "fuck" for "frig" and make it a little quieter, which just sounds ridiculous). I always found the start of the song a little hard to get into, but it does bring it around towards the end. Needless to say, not a record that's had a great deal of play over the years. The image on the cover is almost comically terrible.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £2 new
Bought: HMV Southampton
When: 03/05/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

One Minute Silence - Revolution

In 2003 One Minute Silence released their follow-up to 2000's Buy Now... Saved Later, an album that was hugely popular amongst my friends and me. Quite a few months before the album coming out, they released the first single from it, Revolution, on a one-sided 10" with laser-etched b-side. I only had a couple of 10" records at the time and none of my records had any etching beyond text in the run-out groove. I really had no idea what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised to see the OMS logo on the reverse. I ordered this copy into my local HMV and remember asking so often whether it had arrived that they told me to stop asking and they'd phone when it finally arrived.

Revolution is one of the highlights of One Lie Fits All and has aged surprisingly well. I've listened to that album a few times in the last 10 years or so, and still get some enjoyment from it. The production was slick and the songs sounded great, which helped a lot - their particular segment of nu-metal could have easily sounded shit in 2017, but actually still kinda works. Or maybe it's just so steeped in nostalgia that I can't separate the two. I always really liked Revolution so it's hard to say if it's objectionably a good song, but I like it so that's all that really matters. I think people were put off by the slick sound of the album at the time, and you can kinda see why. But it's still a heavy song, and if you crank it up loud enough you can hear the bass line well enough to hear that.

After that we get We Bounce, a song that would eventually be an album track and another single, much closer to the album launch. It always did less for, but gets going after a slightly uneven opening. Finally there's a live recording of Holy Man one of the singles and highlights from the second album. Listening to it now brings back so many memories of going absolutely fucking mental in the pit at their shows, something we did almost routinely in our teen years. That breakdown in the middle makes me feel tired now thinking about how I used to throw myself around to it. My body definitely could not handle that anymore.

Format: One-sided 10", laser-etched b-side
Tracks: 3
Cost: £3.60 new
Bought: HMV Winchester
When: 03/02/03
Colour: Black
Etching: Band logo etched on b-side
mp3s: no

Manic Street Preachers - Let Robeson Sing

I paid £5.50 for this 12" back in 2001, which was a lot for a single. However, my Manics collection was in full swing, so I pretty much bought whatever I could find. The sleeve is numbered - in this case #3136 - but I'm guessing there was a fairly large run of this single.

In a fairly strange move, the first song here isn't Let Robeson Sing; it is in fact a b-side called Fear of Motion, a song which, I think, is only available on this 12" (it’s not even on the Know Our B-Sides Japanese release, collecting the b-sides from that era). It's a nice song and could have easily been on Know Your Enemy - kind of floaty, a bit like some of the TIMTTMY songs but has a pleasingly heavily strummed guitar and interesting vocal patterns from James. As it happens, it's the thing that makes this 12" very much worth having, as the other two songs are fairly dodgy remixes.

The first remix is by Ian Brown and the second by Felix Da Housecat (and no original version, which is even more unusual). I think it was around this time I saw the Manics in Manchester with Ian Brown supporting, which was really my only introduction to the man. As well as remixing the song, he raps a verse, which is just terrible. He's far too Mancunian to rap like that. It makes for a very strange minute in the song. Otherwise, the song is quite similar to the original, which itself is a fine song, but not one of their best. The Felix Da Housecat remix is crazy-different to the original and takes a few minutes before you recognise anything from the regular version. I'm not a fan.

Format: 12", numbered
Tracks: 3
Cost: £5.50 new
Bought: HMV Southampton
When: 24/10/01
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Among Brothers - I Am Certain / I Do Not Believe

Among Brothers were a band I got into because I was friends with one of the members. A few years before they became a band (I think) my friend Hugh became friends with Matt after arranging the local Oxjam festival with him. Matt ended up coming to an All Tomorrow's Parties with us and we've been friends since.

A while later, Among Brothers were playing their EP release show in Cardiff the night before Taint played their last ever show in Swansea. I was making the trip back to Wales for the Taint show, so it was a nice bonus that if I got there a night earlier I could see Among Brothers too. A further coincidental bit of timing was that the week beforehand a friend had arranged a trip to Centre Parks near Bath, so I had even more reason to be in that part of the country. As we drove away from Centre Parks (marginally hungover) the sky began turning very dark and somewhere between Newport and Cardiff it started dumping snow. I have never seen snow like that in the UK before. The motorway slowed down to about 20mph as I tried to follow the gaps in the snow the car in front of me had carved out, whilst my window-wipers swept the window clean as fast as they could. We arrived into Cardiff very slowly (as I quickly learnt that in icy weather brakes are your enemy – the only safe way to stop is to drive so slowly the car stops naturally; we very nearly hit a camper van, but at such a speed it would have been a tap on the bumper; we also skidded worryingly sideways at a traffic light). I parked as best I could outside Hugh's house, which was at nearly 45 degrees to the curb due to the snow mounds that had built up.

Nonetheless, we walked into town for the show, trying to keep to grassy sidings that weren't as slippery as the pavements had become. The Among Brothers show was great – they had balloons and tetrahedron flyers about the EP. The turnout was pretty good too, despite the weather. I have vague memories of lots of drinking afterwards in Dempseys, followed by a fairly hungover day before Taint. We got the train to Swansea quite early, mainly because the snow was promising all sorts of disruptions. Taint were great (as ever) and a debaucherous night followed in Swansea with a lot of acquaintances, dancing to Michael Jackson, eating kebabs and sleeping on Stubb's living room floor. The Sunday morning, we returned to Cardiff but I couldn't face the task of digging the car out of the snow and attempting to drive home, so I simply parked it slightly better and got the train back to London (I picked the car up about a month later in the end, since Christmas got in the way). It's worth noting that this whole trip was my first long distance trip since getting a car (having passed my test a few years earlier and barely driving in-between) so I was slightly scarred by the experience. In hindsight, it might have been unwise to go to Wales given the forecast of snow, but a) snow forecasts are rarely accurate in the UK and b) it was Taint's last show, so I had to.

All of that is a long aside, but often in my mind when I listen to Among Brothers. I saw the band a few times since, lastly on an early date with my wife. I've always had a lot of time for their music and I still listen to their EP a lot. I’ve listened to this 7" considerably less so, but mainly because I don't have the mp3s for it and I don't often sit down to listen to 7"s these days. I found it for £2.50 in Sister Ray in London about two years after it came out (I remember meaning to buy it when it came out, but then forgetting all about it). The sleeve is hand-numbered and mine is #499 (apparently out of 500, which is quite cool).

I Am Certain is a good song, but not as strong as the ones on the EP; it tries to fit a lot into five minutes, and I think suffers for it. I Do Not Believe, on the other hand, benefits from its relative simplicity and is my favourite of the two - the chorus, when it finally hits in the dying moments of the song, has a Sufjan Stevens feel to it, which works well.

Format: 7", numbered

Tracks: 2

Cost: £2.50 new

Bought: Sister Ray, London

When: 23/05/14

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Manic Street Preachers - Suicide Alley [Bootleg]

I knew this record was a bootleg copy when I bought it - the eBay listing was very clear about that and, for £11.40 (including postage!), it was definitely not priced with any implication of it being the real deal.

But I was fine with that - I was hugely into the band and I'd read so much about that first 7" I just really wanted to hear it. Both of the songs made their way onto other records as b-sides, but I think I had neither at the point when I bought this. I also knew, from the New Art Riot EP, that I shouldn't have high hopes for their musical talent at this early point; that EP was quite the shock on the first listen. Suicide Alley and Tennessee (I Get Low) are similar, if not worse, in how hard they are on the ears. James' vocals on the start of each verse of Suicide Alley are so far off-key it's almost funny; I'm glad he learnt to sing better. I love their passion and dedication to making music at this early point, but I love more that by the time they recorded Generation Terrorists they'd learnt a lot more about how to write and record great songs.

Both songs show huge potential, which I guess is all the 7" needed to show. As a song, Suicide Alley does a few interesting things, the only problem is that it does them quite badly! The bootleg is numbered, which seems strange - mine is #42/480 - and the name of the band is underlined where it isn't on the original. Both labels say "side a" despite otherwise having the correct song titles; I have no idea if the original pressing has the same thing. Looking on Discogs, it seems that this bootleg sells for about £40 these days - I definitely didn't see this as an investment when I bought it, I was just eager to hear the first record they released.

Format: 7", bootleg, numbered
Tracks: 2
Cost: £11.40 new
Bought: eBay
When: 02/12/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Tool - Undertow

Undertow recently turned 24 years old, which strangely meant there were a lot of articles reflecting on the album; they were interesting to read. I've been listening to Undertow for 16 of those years, having bought the cd for £5 at a record fair back in 2001. I'd bought Ænima a few months earlier on the back of a review in Kerrang! Magazine that made it sound like an incredibly appealing album, plus I knew their new album was imminent so wanted to be familiar with the last before I heard Lateralus. After those two, I bought the Salival boxset (an excellent find in a record shop in France - it was impossible to find in the UK, but this shop had two copies just sat on the shelf) and heard some of the band's earlier work for the first time on the dvd. Hearing Prison Sex and Sober for the first time, alongside their creepy music videos was quite something.

I always enjoyed Undertow, but very differently to how I enjoyed the other albums. I've always felt it's the hardest to get into, despite having fewer songs than a lot of their other albums (although some of those are filler-noise tracks). In reality, all of the nine songs on the first three sides are solid, great Tool songs. Perhaps that was what it was - they'd released an album of fairly equal songs, rather than an album with a few designed to really shine (which I'd certainly say is true of the others).

Side A is an excellent side of vinyl - Intolerance, Prison Sex and Sober are all huge songs. Sober is the only one I'd describe as "catchy", but makes for an incredible single from the album. Bottom is a great song too, and probably would have been a catchier single than Prison Sex, except I imagine the swearing in the chorus ("Shit ends up at the bottom") would have been too much for MTV. Plus, the Henry Rollins verse might have been even stranger on a single. As it is, I love that little break and how the vocals gradually change from Henry's spoken words to Maynard's huge voice (which really shines here for the first time on the album). Side C is pretty solid too, and Flood is where the album probably should have ended. Disgustipated is saved for track 69 on the cd, but here we get it nicely on one side of vinyl. The actual song part of Disgustipated (after the baa-ing and rant, but before the crickets) isn't bad, but feels a bit like a half-formed idea of a song, rather than a song itself. The crickets then sing for what feels like forever before a little spoken word monologue; it's a strange and rather unnecessary way to finish an otherwise great album. I pretty much always skip it out.

On the whole, the album feels like the logical step between Opiate and Ænima - the songs are all longer and fuller than those on the EP, but not quite as much so as they'd be on the subsequent albums. They're also that much more serious than on Opiate, a theme they'd maintain (excluding the fact that Disgustipated is track 69, of course). As much as I love the later albums, I'd love to hear Tool write more songs like they did in this era. They wait so long between albums that I think people would be pissed if the next album wasn't an epic like the last few, but I think it'd be great for them to revisit songs like these.

I bought this vinyl copy on the same day I got the Opiate 12", in Newbury Comics in Boston. I was pretty happy to find them - they weren't so readily available in the UK and I hoped it would be the beginning of a Tool record collection that never really got off the ground (the subsequent LPs were very hard to find and often bootlegged. In my local record shop in Canberra they had some very pricey copies of Lateralus that I could never quite bring myself to buy. I think I was going to reward myself with it after some exams, but by that time it'd gone). The "inappropriate artwork" from the cd sleeve is missing here, as there is no insert with the LP.  It was definitely a good purchase, and I'm pleased to have it amongst my collection. I've seen reissues knocking around record shops in recent months (maybe that was why there are so many articles about the album) but it's hard to say whether I'd have still picked it up, knowing that my Tool LP collection would never be complete in any decent way.

Format: Double 12"

Tracks: 10

Cost: £10.50 new

Bought: Newbury Comics, Boston

When: 05/08/02

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Manic Street Preachers - Forever Delayed - The Greatest Hits

The Manics released their first Best-Of album in 2002 and I rushed out to buy a copy - I, of course, had all the albums long before that point but there were two new songs - the single, There By the Grace of God, and Door to the River - so it was always going to be an essential purchase. Plus, the cd came with a bonus disc of remixes which were mostly unexciting, but an essential part of the collection. About a month later I picked up the DVD in HMV for an expensive £18 (£16.20 after my student discount), but it had all their videos, a bunch of singles that didn't make it onto the 20-track album (the DVD has 30 songs, including both You Love Us versions), as well as videos for all the remixes. It pleased me that the videos were presented in chronological order.

Just a few months later, I found this double-LP copy in HMV in Bristol and quickly added it to my collection. I was in town for a university open day, but made the most of the day by trying to find as many record shops as I could. It was lucky timing finding this early in the day, given that I found a great record shop at the end of the day and ended up emptying my bank account there. I was gutted at the time to not get all the records I'd selected in that shop, but in hindsight I'd have been annoyed to have not bought this - I've not seen it since, until the morally-dubious Music On Vinyl reissues appeared recently (as it was, I had to leave without buying some Nine Inch Nails 12" singles, which would have been quite nice too. I'd found a copy of a Cave In record for Hugh that I'd promised to pick up for him - had I not been so nice I could be sitting here writing about those NIN singles now, but I think he was pretty happy with his LP; it's still one of the gems of his collection).

It was very exciting to get this LP back then - there are many songs that I didn't have on vinyl at the time, and it was the only outing of the two new songs (I still don't have Gold Against the Soul on vinyl, but both the songs here also found their way onto the National Treasures LP that was included with a copy of Q magazine). The records are thick so the songs sound excellent.

It goes without saying that the compilation is superb. I mean, the band have written so many incredible songs that it's pretty easy to find 20 excellent ones to group together. In places I might have chosen a few different songs, but I enjoy this selection very much. There By the Grace of God has aged much better than I expected - at the time I wasn't that fussed on it (but still bought both cd singles and the DVD single - there was a limited edition box sent out to fans that mine live in, although only two of the three really fit). Door to the River is a little weaker and saved by the high production quality (those strings) - it's the only flaw in the collection.

Can you imagine being able to start an album with two songs as strong as A Design For Life and Motorcycle Emptiness and still have enough huge songs to finish on The Everlasting and Motown Junk? I think for most bands such a strong set of songs would be unfathomable. I love that it starts with A Design For Life - I have so much time for that song - but I do find the transition from that into Motorcycle Emptiness a bit off. They almost feel too different, but on the other hand, that's one of the things that makes the Manics so special. Little Baby Nothing and Suicide is Painless are nice side 4 treats. It says something about the era this was released in that Gold Against the Soul has more songs here than The Holy Bible does - I don't think they'd snub that record in such a way these days.

The record is very nicely presented - as was the cd - as each record is in a picture sleeve with a quote for each song (as ever). On the back they list the UK chart position that each single reached. I doubt the singles charts mean what they did when I was a teenager anymore, but it says a lot that in 2002 it was worth printing those for all to see. You forget quite how many high-charting songs they had. As much as I remember A Design For Life being their break-through single, it only made it to number 2 - they didn't have a number 1 until If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, although I do remember that being huge at the time (a quick bit of research shows that A Design For Life was kept off the number 1 position by Mark Morrison's Return of the Mac, a song I remember vividly but had not thought about for over 20 years now).

Format: Double 12", picture sleeves
Tracks: 20
Cost: £11.70 new
Bought: HMV Bristol
When: 05/02/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Fugazi - End Hits

My Fugazi collection is complete in that I have all the releases on at least one format, however I'd quite like to have them all on vinyl one day - I started out that way with the self-titled EP and Repeater, but then started buying them on cd for some reason; it was 2005/2006 and LPs weren't as easy to find as cds (even routinely in-print Discord releases, in the UK at least). I keep meaning to buy the albums I only have on cd on vinyl, and I'm sure I will one day, but it's far from a challenge, so I keep putting it off.

I bought End Hits from Damaged Records in the spring of 2007. I was buying an LP every week from Spillers, but felt like I should spread my business more widely, and Damaged seemed like a very complimentary record shop - I could only get punk there, but they always had all the punk records anyone could want. So I would go there once a month and buy an LP and have a nice chat with Welly, the guy who ran it. In April, I bought End Hits.

I've never got along with End Hits as well as I'd have liked to. It's still very much a Fugazi album, but focuses more on the areas I enjoyed less (free-jazz) and less on the areas I enjoyed more (shouty punk). Vocally, few songs have the ferocity of some of the early records, which is a shame. No Surprise is the first really good song on the album for me (mainly because of the guitar riff). I remember hearing a lot about Five Corporations before hearing the song and it's definitely a great song. It's certainly nice to hear Ian's vocals on such a frantic song. Closed Captioned is another highlight, as is Foreman's Dog. Pink Frosty and Recap Modotti, on the other hand, are good examples of the sort of songs here that I'm not fussed by.

End Hits hasn't had the amount of play as it probably should have, but that's a function of it being the era before mp3 download codes and me not having the songs digitally. That, combined with the fact that when I want to listen to Fugazi I tend to pick the self-titled or Repeater, means that I really don't know it as well as I should. Quite a few of the songs are familiar from the Instrument soundtrack, so always make me think I know them better than I do, but I don't know them that well at all. Anyway, a solid Fugazi album, but I doubt it's anyone's favourite.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve, insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 05/04/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Pop Will Eat Itself - Box Frenzy

Back in the early 2000's when I was getting into Pop Will Eat Itself, it was incredibly easy to find their records. As a result, I have many PWEI records. One day when record shopping in Reading I found this 12" copy of their debut LP, Box Frenzy (for a very reasonable £5), along with another PWEI LP and a 12". I think there were a few more to be had that day that I didn't bother picking up.

I was familiar with a few of these songs from the PWEI Product anthology double-cd, so I knew that the album was the transitional release between their very grebo days and the strange hip-hop/indie mash-up that would dominate their sound in the 90's (so much so, the words "Fuck this grebo shit" appear before the song Hit the Hi-tech Groove on the sleeve). Throughout the album there are some really great moments, spiked with turntables and a blatant disregard for the genre they'd been in up to that point. Songs like Beaver Patrol, There is No Love Between Us Anymore and Hit the Hi-tech Groove are genuinely really good, but there are also fairly stupid songs, like Ugly and Inside You.

Stupid is the name of the game throughout the album really - the sticker on the front boasts that it contains two "totally crap singles", there's a comic strip about becoming well-built by listening to the Poppies and there's a quote from the NME asking "So how come they've made such a crap LP?". I guess hindsight does a lot for an album like this - if you heard this alone, without the context of what was to follow, it wouldn't be a great album. It's even stranger to think that this was technically their debut album - I can imagine a lot of people hoping they'd release something like the fully-grebo EPs and singles that preceded it.

I've not played this album in a very long time, but it's better than I remember. I think I got a lot of it mixed up with the early EPs in my mind - the first half of the first disc of PWEI Product covers the era before Box Frenzy and it does less for me (and, interestingly, was missing entirely from the other PWEI compilation I had in those early days). The confusion might be because I have the Poppiecock 12" and the Now For a Feast cd, which both cover a lot of those early songs, so I got confused about which album was which. Largely, anything before the Designers Republic era was slightly dubious, but Box Frenzy was the best of that time in my opinion.

Format: 12", picture sleeve

Tracks: 12

Cost: £5 second hand

Bought: Reading

When: 27/12/02

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no