Various Artists - Earache:Nextgen98 Tour - The Singles

This is a funny one. I knew that one of the last records Dub War released was a 7" featuring a song I hadn't heard called Dreams and Illusions backed with a string version of Silencer. When I wrote about Wrong Side of Beautiful, I ranted and raved a lot about how much I loved Silencer. Anyone who's read this blog before will know that I'm also a sucker for classical instruments in rock music, so this 7" was something I very keenly wanted to hear. However, I never saw it come up on eBay, so after a while I did a bit more hunting. I went on the Earache website and noticed, to my great surprise, that they were still selling it seven years after it came out. Not only that, but they had the whole series of records it belonged to for less than a fiver (the text etched into the b-side of the Dub War 7" seeming very ironic - see below). I excitedly purchased.

A bit of history: in 1998 Earache put on a tour of five bands called the Nextgen98 Tour. Earache was more of a metal label, but I think they were trying to edge into the increasingly popular nu-metal scene. This wasn't only obvious from the music of the bands featured, but by the comical late-90's cover-art. Anyway, they put out a 7" by each band each week in December, with the tour starting the following January. The first record came with a box to keep them all in.

Despite the largely terrible music included, there are a lot of thing about this project that I like: the whole idea of releasing a series of 7"s is one that all record collectors love, but even more-so when you can collect them into a nice boxset. It's also a great way of encouraging people to actually buy the whole lot. One of the greatest things here is the way that the art on each sleeve makes up part of the final picture (check the pictures below). It's not quite as cool as Les Savy Fav's Inches project, but pre-dates it by a few years. It's a shame the picture isn't more interesting, but I love the idea. I only have one other 7" boxset, and I'm constantly disappointed by the plain white sleeves inside and the fact they didn't do something similar.

So on to the bands. Janus Stark have very little going for them, and Pulkas are mildly more interesting. Misery Loves Co were the only band other than Dub War who I'd heard before (possibly on a Kerrang! cd). They were slightly sludgier and heavier, and I enjoyed that. Even now the a-side is quite listenable. The b-side is a remix and really does little for me. Dub War's Dreams and Illusions sounds like where they would have gone had there been a third album; much like a lot of Wrong Side of Beautiful, it's a much smoother, softer affair - more raggae than ragga. The strings version of Silencer is suitably dramatic, but just strings and vocals. It's nice, not as good as the original. I like what it adds, but I think I'd have preferred a middle ground - strings with some guitars. Benji's vocals still soar towards the end and it just shows that his vocals can be backed by pretty much any genre. The final 7" is by Ultraviolence, who sound like a shit Prodigy. Their b-side is a cover of Sabbath's Paranoid, and it is dreadful. Truly terrible.

Despite the vast majority of the music on it, there are a lot of things I like about this boxset, and it was definitely worth the money for the Dub War record alone.

Format: five 7" boxset
Tracks: 10
Cost: £4.64 new
Bought: Earache Records website
When: 20/04/05
Colour: Black
Etching: see below
mp3s: no

Etchings:
Record 1, Side A: "Only four more to go"
Record 1, Side B: "Same channel next week is Pulkas"
Record 2, Side A: "Serious collector, eh?"
Record 2, Side B: "Don't miss Misery on Monday"
Record 3, Side A: "Over half way there now"
Record 3, Side B: "Next instalment ... Dub War"
Record 4, Side A: "Only one more to go"
Record 4, Side B: "It'll be worth stacks in years"
Record 5, Side A: "You've got the set"
Record 5, Side B: "Now see the show"

Dub War - Cry Dignity

Approaching the end of Dub War Week now. This is the 7" of Cry Dignity from Wrong Side of Beautiful. My friend Hugh had picked up a bunch of Dub War cd singles at a record fair at some point (CD1 and CD2 of Cry Dignity and one of the Million Dollar Love cds), but decided he'd prefer a little extra cash, so sold them to me. He'd also got this 7" at some time along the way too, and sold the four of them for a fiver. There were a scattering of interesting b-sides (including a very nice acoustic version of Cry Dignity and the jam-track, Glover's Weird, which appears here) and a bunch of remixes which all made it onto the remixes album.

Format: 7", two promotional postcards, numbered 1431/3000
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.25 second hand
Bought: Hugh
When: 11/04/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Dub War - 4 Track

Here's another Dub War 12" EP, which came out some time before their debut Pain. This was the other record I bought at the same time as the split with Cowboy Killers. Again, it's probably far from essential - Respected and Over Now are the same as the album versions. The version of Nar-Say-a-Ting is different from the version that would end up on Pain, but not as excitingly different as Original Murder was to Mental. The dub version of Over Now is nice enough, but again nothing to write home about.

Being the mildly obsessive collector I was for a while, I also have the cd version, which has a fifth song (and is, fittingly, called 5 Track), a live version of Dub War. As with nearly all of my Dub War collection, that was an eBay find too.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 4
Cost: £7.50 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 12/07/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Dub War - Gorrit

I picked up this 12" single for £2 on eBay (including postage!). It was a whim purchase and far from essential - Gorrit and the remix both appear on the albums and the other b-side is a live version of another album track, Mad Zone. I imagine I bought it because for £2 it would be rude not to, I liked getting post, and I'd missed the chance to see Dub War live, so figured it would be good to hear a live recording, which it was. Gorrit is a classic Dub War song, and the remix (with its Pulp Fiction sample - "and you will know my name...") is enjoyable.

The only mildly interesting thing about this record is that I had it with me the second time I saw Skindred. For some reason I was taking it home from university (despite my record player being at university) and we were seeing Skindred in The Nexus in Southampton the night I arrived back in town, so I left all my stuff in my friend's car. The annoying thing was that we saw Benji after the gig and I could have got it signed, had I not left it in Nick's car. I'm not sure how receptive he would have been to signing a record of his old band though. Plus, I'm kinda on the fence about signed records, swinging towards not being that much of a fan, so it's not a huge loss.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 3
Cost: £2 secod hand
Bought: eBay
When: 21/11/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Cowboy Killers + Dub War - Split

Today we have what is possibly the highlight of the Dub War collection, even though only half of it is Dub War, and both songs are on other records. This record is a one-sided, white label 12" split with another Welsh band from the 90's, Cowboy Killers. I basically know nothing about Cowboy Killers, except that when I moved to Cardiff, people still knew of them, provided you asked the right people.

I found this on eBay a few months after picking up a copy of Dub Warning. The bidding was mildly furious (all considering) but it ended on a perfectly reasonable £7.50 (including postage). The guy was also selling another Dub War record which I also got for £7.50. Some good eBaying indeed. It's worth mentioning that Dub War were the very reason I became addicted to eBay for a while. I'd been after a copy of their remix album Step Ta Dis and someone suggested looking on eBay. I did, and found a copy surprisingly easily. That success led me to seeking out loads of records on eBay and, for 5 or so years, I eBayed excessively (a time that ended by getting a job and not being at home to receive 12" packages in the post). 

Anyway, I'd never seen nor even heard of this record when that auction came up. The sleeve was a large factor in drawing me in; as you can see, the Dub War side is a hand-stamped logo and the Cowboy Killers side is written in glitter. Of course at that point I had no idea how annoying a glitter record sleeve would be, and this record has lived inside two layers of plastic sleeve since I received it - I don't want loose glitter all over my other records. I like to think that somewhere in Newport in the mid-90's Dub War and Cowboy Killers sat down in a room and hand-made their own records. They were The Arteries of their scene, but 15 years earlier. It might not have gone down that way, but I like the idea. The track-listing is also stamped on each side.

Cowboy Killers offer an original, Anorak Man, and a dubious cover of Right Said Fred's Deeply Dippy. That song came out in 1992, so I'm wondering if it was as strange a cover then as it is now. Imagine Dead Kennedys covering Deeply Dippy, and you have a pretty good description of both songs. Dub War offer the same recording of Dub War as on Dub Warning, as well as a version of Mental that sits somewhere between the earlier incarnation, Original Murder on Dub Warning, and the final version that would appear on Pain. The quality isn't as good as either, but it's nice hearing a bit of both choruses being used at the same time. A great find either way.

As it happens, this wasn't the only copy of this record I'd own either, but more on that in the next post...

Format: one-sided 12", hand-stamped/glittered sleeve

Tracks: 4

Cost: £7.50 second hand

Bought: eBay

When: 12/07/03

Colour: Black

Etching: Side A: "Simon - the exchange"

mp3s: no

Dub War - Dub Warning

Now we start to get into the more interesting Dub War records! Possibly most interestingly, this isn't the first copy of Dub Warning I've owned either. You may remember from my previous two Dub War posts that my friend Tom introduced my friends and me to Dub War. We'd played the two albums (and the remixes) endlessly but hadn't realised there was a scattering of other records they'd put out. Well, back in the day I used to go record shopping in the second-hands of Bournemouth and Boscombe fairly regularly, a habit that fleshed out parts of my record collection very cheaply. There were certain letters of the alphabet I'd go to first (which was pointless because I'd always look through them all eventually), and "D" was one of them. I hoped to pick up the Dub War LPs at very best. One day, I was amazed to finally see the name "Dub War" on a record, even more-so because it was a Dub War record I'd never heard of. I was so surprised I spent ages looking at it just to make sure it wasn't some other band called Dub War.

I knew that Tom's birthday was coming up and, at that time, he was way more obsessive about Dub War than I was, so I decided to give it to him for his birthday. When I was a kid I was always baffled by my parents saying Christmas was more fun for seeing how happy their presents made us, and I never really got that until that day. I knew Tom was going to be over the moon. He'd not long bought a turntable too, so the fact it was on vinyl was all the better. I was so excited about this present that I stopped in the first phone-box I could find to phone our friend Nick and tell him about it (an actual phone-box! This was in the days before mobile phones and phone-boxes basically being toilets). Anyway, Tom's birthday soon came round and he thought it was excellent, so I was pleased.

A year or two passed, and a similar feeling of stumbling across a Dub War record in a second-hand store occurred, but this time I instantly recognised the sleeve (in the same Soho record shop where I bought Therapy?'s Babyteeth). It was a good find, because I'd come to want a copy of Dub Warning of my own (and this one was in even better condition than Tom's).

Dub Warning is a nice little record. The opener, Original Murder, went on to become Mental on Pain, but with some slight changes ("We don't want no" rather than "Mental, it's really mental" in the chorus). Crack is an unintentionally amusing song about the dangers of smoking crack ("Don't smoke crack / It's gonna make you whack"). The highlight though must be Dub War where Benji's vocals get to soar in a way they hadn't yet. (Also, I only just noticed the Blade Runner sample at the start of Words of Warning.) The cover is a picture of the air-raid siren that Dub War (and, later, Skindred) used at the start of their shows. All in all, a pretty excellent find, especially considering I had to find it twice!

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 6
Cost: £4 second hand
Bought: Soho
When: 09/04/03
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Jeff was ere" Side B: "Dange is ere"
mp3s: no

Dub War - Wrong Side of Beautiful

Continuing with Dub War Week, today we have their second and final proper LP, Wrong Side of Beautiful. For years this was my favourite of the two, but both were so full of hits it's hard to make such a call. The thing that always pushed me towards Wrong Side of Beautiful was Silencer, which I genuinely considered my Favourite Song for quite a long time.

I mentioned yesterday the fact that my friends and I spent hours listening to Dub War at my friend Tom's house when we were teenagers, and how the remix album Step Ta Dis opened us up to a lot of genres. I distinctly remember listening to the remix of Silencer before heading out into town one evening. I couldn't get that song out of my head all night. A short while later I picked up a copy of Wrong Side of Beautiful on cd, and Silencer made it onto every mixtape I made for a while. I love the way Benji's vocals that gradually creep up in a muted scream, all backed to gentle acoustic guitars and violins. I still love that song. My desire to hear Silencer on vinyl lead me to seek out Wrong Side of Beautiful on vinyl, and I found a copy on eBay a few weeks after getting Pain on LP.

The rest of the album has some huge Dub War moments too, including the relatively big singles that were Enemy Maker, Million Dollar Love and Cry Dignity. Can't Stop was always a favourite too (for the way that chorus breaks). One Chill was pretty excellent too, although the Aphrodite remix was far more popular with my friends (there's a moment when the bass drops and wobbles that's just incredible. I don't know much about drum 'n' bass, but that remix was great). The smooth singing-vocals that we only heard occasionally on Pain appear far more often here, which I'm a big fan of; Silencer and One Chill would have sounded very out of place on Pain, but here they fit in perfectly.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 14
Cost: £6.80 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 27/11/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Dub War - Pain

It's Dub War Week on These LPs! For those who aren't familiar with Dub War, they were one of the finest bands to come out of Newport although, if this is the first time you've ever heard of them, you may not believe me. This record, their debut, came out in 1995 and, whilst I still think it's pretty awesome, I can see how without the fond memories I have of it, Pain might sound a bit dated. Not to mention that nu-metal really ruined the ragga-metal scene for everyone.

I first heard Dub War when I was 16. I can't remember the date, but the location was definitely my friend Tom's house. Long before we were old enough to go to the pub, we'd spend Friday nights sat in Tom's room listening to records and drinking beers if we'd been able to get any. The biggest discovery in that time was Dub War. Tom watched a lot of skateboarding and BMX videos and one of them at some point contained a Dub War song. I'm pretty sure it was Strike It, but that doesn't matter; Tom sought out their albums and we all got into them. I particularly remember listening to their remix album Step Ta Dis and hearing genres that I'd never usually let pass my ears. It was a pretty cool experience.

I can't imagine a better time to first hear Dub War than being a teenager at the turn of the millennium. Dub War were fresh and exciting, despite this album already being five years. I'd never really listened to much ragga/reggae (it'd be two years until I finally heard Bad Brains), but the metal Dub War were mixing it with was reminiscent of the other British metal bands we were into, like Pitchshifter and Therapy? Most of all, we were too young to ever think it was cliché, so it never was.

Not content with copying Tom's cds, I picked up Dub War's albums myself and found a copy of Pain on cd (along with a bonus cd called Extra Pain, and someone's ticket stub from when Dub War played with Skunk Anansie) in the market in Lancaster. I'd been up there for the university's open day and had enough time to find a second-hand record stall in the market before the day was out. I think finding Pain (along with the 12" of the Manic's Roses in the Hospital, and this Jane's Addiction picture disc) helped solidify my choice of Lancaster University, although the record stall had sadly closed by the time I actually got there. A year and a half later I found this copy of the LP (minus the sticker sheet) on eBay for a reasonable £7.53 (I often add an extra 3p to have the edge over other bidders - I can't count how many times that's worked in my favour!).

Back in April this year, I was out and the sun was shinning and Pain came up on my mp3 player. I hadn't listened to it for years at this point, but I found myself still loving it, so much so I even text my friend in excitement. The album is packed with classics, like Nar Say a Ting, Strike It, Respected and Gorrit. My favourite might well be the title-track though, for how huge the chorus sound when Benji properly sings. In fact, the whole middle section of the album is incredible. And the closer Over Now is huge. Good times.

Anyway, stay tuned this week for more Dub War thoughts and stories.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 12
Cost: £7.53 second-hand
Bought: eBay
When: 06/11/03
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Stubbs!...." Side B: "...Keep your mouth shut"
mp3s: no