About six months after finding the Too Hard To Be Free 7" at a record fair, I picked up this picture disc at the same record fair. I'd bought a lot of records that day and was heading home, but browsed through one last stall on the way out. The guy had this 7" for £4 I think, but I had only £2.90 left on me, so I asked him if he'd take that much for it and he begrudgingly accepted. The cheapest one on Discogs is £3, so I reckon I'd got the price right.
The Waiting 18 was the first single from Amen's second album, and far better than Too Hard to Be Free (but not good, don't get me wrong). I remember really digging the chorus at the time - it is a pretty huge chorus - there's something very Alice Cooper about it. The b-side is a scrappy live recording of Justified, another song from their second album. It was recorded in Oxford, which is now where I live (I certainly never thought at 16 that one I'd be sat here listening to this record in Oxford at 32). The whole thing is on a shamelessly gratuitous picture disc of a naked woman within a crucifix, so comes in a black sleeve. The Sex Pistols-style font is more annoying than anything else.
Format: 7", picture disc
Tracks: 2
Cost: £2.90 second hand
Bought: Record Fair, Southampton
When: 29/07/01
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no
