Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible [UK RSD picture disc]

Back in the early 2000's my love of the Manic Street Preachers and discovery of eBay collided with excellent consequences; I bought so many strange releases in an early attempt to hear as many of their songs as possible and have a complete collection. In my browsing of eBay, I heard about the "US mix" of The Holy Bible for the first time - a guy was selling bootleg copies and I was kinda tempted. I decided not to buy one - the bootlegs were still quite pricey and I didn't like the idea of buying something that wasn't real. With that decision, it ended up being another couple of years before I'd hear the US mix of the The Holy Bible.

In 2004, it was announced that the Manics were releasing a 10th anniversary edition of The Holy Bible with the US mix on a second disc. I had a flyer about it from somewhere (possibly after seeing them on the Lifeblood tour?) and remember texting a friend about it. I was excited, not just for the the bonus tracks (some of which I had, some I didn't) and the dvd, but mostly to finally hear the US mix that I'd read about.

I remember being slightly underwhelmed by the mix when I first heard it. I think I expected it to be more different - I imagine a couple of years of wondering what it might sound like didn't help keep my expectations in check. The differences were there, but rarely make a material difference to the album as a whole. I'm not remotely an expert on music production (I'm far less than a novice) so to the (very) untrained ear it is very hard to say what has been mixed differently. As a result, the following paragraph about how the songs sound different is painfully vague and has an over-reliance on the word "different".

From the off, Yes just sounds different - not better or worse necessarily, just different. The guitars are quieter (I think) and it somehow sounds slower. I think I prefer the the original mix here, but maybe that's just my memories of listening to a murky cassette copy when I was 15 kicking in - there's something brilliant about the opening song sounding so intentionally off-putting, and I love that. Ifwhiteamerica... also sounds cleaner, but it works for that song. Funny how subtle differences can work in different ways. Of Walking Abortion barely sounds different, whilst She is Suffering is one of the most notably different versions - there's almost a wash over the whole song that adds a certain dreaminess. Achieves of Pain is far less dark and the guitars just before the chorus have hair-metal feel to them - it's only brief, but makes a difference to the song nonetheless. The verses of Revol are definitely worse - it feels like everything has been swept away and covered in cotton wool. As a result, the choruses lack the punch. It's not until This is Yesterday on the second side that I can hear that anything has changed (so much so, you almost wonder for a while if they pressed the wrong side B). The difference on This is Yesterday appears to mostly be extra echo on James' vocals; again, I couldn't say if it's better or worse, just different. The intro to Die in the Summertime is all over the shop; The Intense Humming of Evil is also pretty similar whilst P.C.P. was something strange done to the vocals that I'm not keen on.

Having never been musical, I do find it fascinating to see the effect of a new mix. You always assume the songs are the sole creation of the musicians in the band, but the relationship with the producer becomes apparent quite quickly; how that then translates to the mixing and mastering is another thing altogether. I can't begin to imagine what it's like to hear the song you wrote as countless slightly different versions and choose the one that fits the best - a bit more reverb here, an echo there - the lifecycle of a song is something I'll probably never fully understand unless my musical abilities take a dramatic change for the better (they'd have to exist first). I'm not actively working on this, so I very doubt I'll ever know.

Anyway, for Record Store Day 2015 they repressed The Holy Bible on picture disc - the UK getting the US mix and the US getting the original mix. I was lucky enough to find a copy of the US release on holiday a year and a half later (on sale too). I love the artwork they used for the US mix - a close up of the boy from the Faster single faintly overlaid with the image of Jesus that appears on the cd picture disc and in the booklet - it's so subtle I didn't notice it until recently. I love the original artwort, but I think this would also have made for a striking album cover the first time around. The reverse is disappointingly plain, but no one is looking at that.

Format: 12", picture disc
Tracks: 13
Cost: £25 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 18/04/15
Colour: picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible [US RSD picture disc]

The first time I heard The Holy Bible was on a cassette a friend had made from his brother's cd copy. I'd borrowed it and, for reasons I can't remember, his walkman too and played it for the first time on a bus for a school trip. I can't remember where we were going, but I distinctly remember pressing play as we sat on the bus just outside the school gates.

Cassettes are a horrible medium. I've always associated them with murky, inaccessible music. The two main reasons for that are this album, and Bleach by Nirvana - both albums I listened to on cassette and found initially impenetrable. One of the many problems with the format is that the only way to know what song you're listening to is keep counting and compare to the tracklisting. In this case, someone had messed up the recording of the cassette, so I had the full tracklisting but was missing two songs from the latter half of the album - Faster and This Is Yesterday. In a lot of ways, it's not a great way to hear an album for this first time, but appropriately difficult for such a difficult album.

I can't remember exactly when that school trip was, but I think The Holy Bible would have been the second Manics album I heard, after becoming a fan on This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. I say this, because I got Generation Terrorists a full year later, and my own copy of The Holy Bible two months after that. I have a strong memory of listening to that same taped copy in a tent in my friend's back garden, discussing the songs, and that can't have been between October and December as that would have been too cold. I had been wanting to dig into their back-catalogue for a while, and I suspect it was the classic "this album is their best, try this one". Interestingly, when I finally bought my copy of Generation Terrorists, the girl at the counter said that Gold Against the Soul was her favourite even though no one else agreed. I love that album now, and probably play it the most these days.

A few of my initial thoughts of the album have stuck with me: I was amazed that there was nothing I'd consider a "single" (which possibly helped with that murky, impenetrable feeling - had my cassette included Faster I suspect I'd still have thought this); 4st 7lbs was haunting; the bass on Archives of Pain was excellent; the opening duo of Yes and Ifwhiteamerica... said so much about the band and the fact that this wasn't a pop album; PCP felt much more accessible somehow, and was a strangely light and upbeat (musically) way to finish such a dark album. I remember feeling distinctly uneasy at the lines "Conservative say: there ain't enough black in the Union Jack / Democrat say: there ain't enough white in the Stars and Stripes" having not quite heard the start of each line. They let themselves off the hook a minute or so later when they reverse the sentiment and start them with "And we say", but for a short while I did panic that my new favourite band were openly racist. Of course now I know that thought to be ridiculous, but the fear of that stayed with me and I think of it nearly every time I hear the song.

23 years have now passed since The Holy Bible came out, and over the years it has been held up as a classic, which it is. For me, it still holds some of that early inaccessibility, probably by design. It is a classic, but for reasons entirely different to the ways in which I consider the others classic - Generation Terrorists has the bold arrogance and timeless songs, Gold Against the Soul is the forgotten gem, Everything Must Go is the huge comeback, and TIMTTMY was the pop breakthrough; The Holy Bible on the other hand, was a treat for the fans who wanted the band to exorcise their darkest corners, which they did (arguably far too well). It is so vastly different to the other albums, that it's hard to compare it in the same light. I enjoyed reading all the fanfare around the 20th anniversary, and it's impossible to not agree with it all.

For Record Store Day 2015, the US version of the album was pressed onto vinyl for the first time and available in record shops in the UK. The US, however, got the original version on a picture disc with the original artwork. The album was available as a picture disc when it was first released, but I'd never bothered to pick one up - they always seemed readily available on eBay. The US RSD version differs as it has "20" after the title, and "original mix" at the bottom. Last year I was in Boston and found this copy in the Harvard branch of Newbury Comics, a shop I'd fallen in love with in my early teens. The exchange rate is appalling these days, so I only bought this record, which had luckily been reduced to half-price - $14 from $28 - probably as it had been sat on their shelves for a year and a half. I was very pleased to add it to my collection.

Format: 12", picture disc
Tracks: 13
Cost: £12.20 new
Bought: Newbury Comics, Boston
When: 14/10/16
Colour: picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

System of a Down - Steal This Album!

System of a Down were one of the bands you had to like if you were into nu-metal around the year 2000. They somehow were the edgy, cool band to like, especially if it was before their second album came out. The first one, released in 1998, felt like the closest thing to an "underground hit" that the genre had, at least amongst the people I knew (which is obviously bollocks in hindsight, but felt like it at the time. Like I've said many times, the early 2000's was a dangerous time to be a teenager). Their second album, Toxicity, came out in 2001 and suddenly they were everywhere.

I got a copy of the first album in 2001, just weeks before Toxicity came out, but I'd borrowed it from a friend earlier and made a cassette copy, so knew the songs very well. On top of that, I'd bought a copy of a limited edition tour cd from a distro that a guy someone had met at a record fair was running – it had three of the album tracks twice each, the studio version and a live recording. Toxicity dropped the day after they played a great set at Reading Festival on the main stage, almost certainly winning them many more fans (I distinctly remember the maniacal look in the bassist's eyes as they walked out on stage to a song about how they're all on drugs). An enterprising record store owner who routinely had a stall at the festival stayed open until midnight to sell copies of Toxicity and Iowa, the new Slipknot album released on the same day; they must have made a killing with that festival audience.

SOAD enjoyed a lot of success from Toxicity, especially from the single Chop Suey!, which became an instant classic in rock clubs all over the country. Then they had the awkward follow-up, the difficult second album (except, in this case, the difficult third album). In 2002 they released Steal This Album!, an album I always believed to be a b-sides/rarities album, but I've just read online that it was more along the lines of leftovers from Toxicity, or even tentatively a sequel to the album. Either way, it wasn't billed as a regular album, so I certainly never listened to it as such.

The cd was released with four different designs on the cd itself, which given that it didn't have a sleeve was basically the cover of the album. I bought the one with the skull on it, which was my favourite of the lot at the time – I think the shop had at least one of each. A few months later I was in Nottingham after an open day at Lancaster University, and found this double picture disc of the album for a bargain £9.50. It was appealing in itself, but I liked that each side had one of the four covers on; it made me feel better about having picked just one of them on cd. That price seems like even more of a bargain given that copies on Discogs are now around £75.

As an album, I remember liking it less than the first two, but that was almost to be expected, given that it wasn't an album proper. A.D.D. was always the highlight and still has a huge chorus. It could have been a huge song had it been on either of the first two albums, although that awkward transition between the verse and the chorus probably needed some more work. Otherwise, there were some nice enough songs (Highway Song has the second best chorus on the album) and a few slower moments (good ones, like Mr Jack and unnecessary ones, like Roulette). A common theme was one of half-heartedness, or incompleteness - Chic 'n' Stu and I-E-A-I-A-I-O both had that fast-paced singing that Serj could so uniquely do, but piss-poor lyrics; Boom was a political song with none of the subtlety they'd shown in the past. All in all, an odd collection, but a nice enough record to own.

Format: Double picture disc 12", insert
Tracks: 16
Cost: £9.50 new
Bought: Selectadisc, Nottingham
When: 20/02/03
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Billy Talent - Fallen Leaves

I wrote about Billy Talent a few years ago with this post about a shaped-7" of Devil in the Midnight Mass. They were never a band I was hugely into, but I do seem to have a lot of their 7" records (three, to be precise). I'd enjoyed Try Honesty from their first album (which I eventually bought, around the time the second one was out) and found myself buying all the singles from the second, despite never hearing the full album.

Fallen Leaves was the third and, thus, the last I bought. I think I knew by this point that I wasn't going to be a huge fan of the band, but it was £1 and I enjoyed the clear picture disc. I found this around the time it was released in my local HMV, a few weeks after buying the shaped picture disc in Paris. The song is catchy enough but a little repetitive. The b-side is a live recording of the same song (lame) from MTV, but sounds terrible. I know picture discs aren't known for their quality, but this is really bad. Still, you can't argue with that price.

Format: 7", picture disc, insert
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV Lancaster
When: 19/02/07
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Him - Buried Alive By Love

Him were always terrible; I knew that even when I bought this record, but when I was 16 I thought their logo was kinda cool, and so having it on a shaped picture disc was too good an opportunity to miss (plus, even the notion of a shaped picture disc seemed cool at the time). I think I also hoped that they'd end up being huge, and that a shaped picture disc of their logo would be worth something. That, obviously, didn't happen.

When I was 15 we went to see Alice Cooper for Hugh's 15th birthday. On the way in there was a person handing out promo cassettes (yes, cassettes) publicising Him's newest album, Razorblade Romance. It had snippets of four songs, including their cover of Chris Isaac's Wicked Game. I can't remember thinking much of the other songs, but I enjoyed the cover, having vague memories of the original. I'd also read a few bits about the band in Kerrang! Magazine and toyed with the idea of getting their album and becoming a fan. However, I never found a copy for a good price and quickly realised that they were probably shit, and that goth-rock wasn't a genre I wanted to be a part of. I dodged a bullet really.

However, in that short period of thinking they could be an interesting band, I did become quite fond of their logo, which adult-me knows to be thoroughly ridiculous. That, combined with the fact this record was only £1, made me decide to buy it. If, I reasoned, the music was terrible, it's not much to spend on an interesting shaped record purely the sake of looking at it. As it happened, the music was terrible, so I'm pleased it wasn't expensive. I've not spent that much time looking at it over the years, having filed it away it amongst my 10" records. The a-side has an objectionably catchy chorus, but the b-side is pure drivel.

Format: Shaped 7" picture disc

Tracks: 2

Cost: £1 new

Bought: HMV Winchester

When: 07/05/03

Colour: Picture disc

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Slipknot - Left Behind

I wrote a very long post about this record, but my computer over-heated and crashed, deleting my ramblings. Truth be told, there's really very little of interest to say about Slipknot - everyone knows their story, and my story of how I started listening to them is the same as that of every other kid who turned 16 in 2000 - everyone was going mad for Slipknot and you pretty much had to like them; plus, it was hard not to be bought into their gimmick. I spent a while tracking down an original pressing of their self-titled album to get the tracks that had to be removed (in hindsight, I wonder if such a scandal was really just a publicity stunt). There's a live dvd filmed in London that I spent ages trying to spot myself in the crowd of. They were a big deal back then.

However, half my life has since passed, and my feelings towards them can be assumed from the fact I can't be bothered to rewrite this post. By the time I went to university, I remember making a conscious choice to leave my Slipknot cds at home. The strange thing is that for people a few years younger than me, they aren't an embarrassing band - at ArcTanGent festival last year, Slipknot came on at the silent disco and people went mad; I didn't even know the song - this record was the last Slipknot release I bought, a few months after Iowa came out. Iowa did less for me than the debut, and by the time the third album came out I was exploring other genres. I don't know how many albums they have released by now.

16-year-old me would be disappointed to hear of my ambivalence to Slipknot, but these things happen. Left Behind was a fine song, but listening to it now, I don't remember it particularly well. I had to check the tracklisting, but I think The Heretic Anthem was the big lead single from that album? The b-side is a live recording of Liberate from the first album, a song I remember fairly well, but not as well as I'd expect given how much play that debut album got back in the day. It could well be that over the last 16 years I've repressed all memories except for Wait and Bleed. The live recording sounds like shit, but that might be the picture disc doing it's wonders.

Format: 7", picture disc
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.50 new
Bought: Bournemouth
When: 30/10/01
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Disturbed - The Sickness

Jesus Christ, there's really no excusing this one. Yes, I own an album by Disturbed. Yes, it is a hideous picture disc of their debut album. No, I've not played it in a very, very long time. There are some lows in my record collection, but this is truly the bottom.

When I bought it I thought to myself "do I really want to own this album?" and I was on the fence even back then. However, I fell for the usual tricks - numbered release and a picture disc. I've mostly learnt not to be suckered for such things, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't occasionally make bad calls based on similar features. I don't always do the smart thing.

As far as I was concerned, there was the first wave of nu-metal, featuring bands like Deftones and Korn; then, in the very late 1990's the second wave appeared and were very different to the first: Slipknot were a prime example - gimmick first, music second; Disturbed were one of the less enjoyable bands from that second wave. Basically, the record labels realised there was money in this genre, and the bands that came in the second wave were much more twisted in the hope of selling more records to foolish teenagers, and I think it worked. Who am I kidding? It definitely worked - I was a teenager and I bought in to the extent I thought it'd be good to have a copy of The Sickness on vinyl.

Disturbed had seen a lot of success on MTV with the song Down With the Sickness, which was basically the reason why anyone listened to them. Actually, hearing it now, I remember Stupify being on a free cd from either Metal Hammer or Rock Sound; this is taking me right back. I've not thought about that song in a very long time, but I remember enjoying it on that free cd. So maybe I'm mistaken, maybe it was the combination of the two songs that meant I knew who they were. It's hard to recall the exact order of things, partly because it was a long a time ago, but partly because it really isn't that important. Down With the Sickness is hilariously bad now - I forgot so much of this song - that weird noise the singer makes before the chorus and the fucking ridiculous rant he goes on in the break. Surely that was cut from the single edit? I barely remember it, but maybe I've just blanked it out.

Obviously, this record has not aged well. The singer's voice is really quite annoying (he had those stupid lip piercings - it's all coming back) - four songs in and I'm reaching my tolerance levels for it. Musically, they remind more of Spineshank (another second-wave nu-metal band) than they ever did - maybe my ear to discern differences between nu-metals has faded over time. That is not a loss. There is nothing memorable or enjoyable on the second side, which is quite an effort. There's even a Tears For Fears cover, inexplicably.

Luckily, I've never had mp3s of this album, as this picture disc was long before the notion of mp3s download codes. I didn't take it to university with me (imagine if someone saw it!?), so it basically stood no chance after I was 18. I very much doubt I would have played it much in the years between either way - I wasn't impressed by it when I got it home and played it, but did kinda like the fact I had it on a numbered picture disc; like I said, I can be pretty dumb. Being a picture disc, it sounds like shit. That is made worse by the fact the plastic sleeve is incredibly tight, so on the few occasions I played it, my fat fingers made a bit of a mess of the grooves on the b-side. The start of that side is incredibly muffled (that said, that can't all be me - maybe it’s just poorly pressed).

I've been embarrassed to own this record for the vast majority of the time I've owned. At least with other embarrassing albums they mostly had a time when I was a fan to reflect nostalgically on, but that isn't the case here. Luckily, it's a picture disc, so nobody browsing the spines of my record boxes would ever know it was there, which is comforting to know; out of sight, out of mind.

Format: 12", picture disc, numbered

Tracks: 12

Cost: £10 new

Bought: Record Fair, Southampton

When: 26/01/02

Colour: Picture disc

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Soulfly - Primitive

This was amongst the first ten or so records I bought - my record collection was a strange mix back then. It eventually made a solid turn into "more good music than early-2000's nu-metal", but it did take a little while to get there. It was a strange time really, not very much was getting pressed onto vinyl, so it was hard to find anything, let alone things that were genuinely good. I remember the Tower Records in Southampton stocking Deftones' White Pony (which I bought), Rival Schools' United By Fate and A Perfect Circle's Mer De Noms on vinyl over the time that shop was open - I didn't get the latter two because they'd both taken some nasty damage somehow, although I regret not buying both nonetheless. They also had this Soulfly picture disc, which I bought knowing it wasn't going to be great, but it was 2001 and I was excited to hear it.

Soulfly were known for being the band that Max Cavalera formed after he left Sepultura. Their debut album quickly became one that everyone wanted to hear, because it featured so many singers from other bands we were all into - Deftones, Fear Factory and, most strangely, Benji from Dub War and Skindred. On top of that, Deftones had the song MX on Around the Fur where Max screams "Soulfly" over and over again - it felt like a solid endorsement. I bought a copy of their debut with a bunch of bonus tracks (which introduced me to crust punks Discharge) and a few months later bought this picture disc of their second album.

My main memories of this album are both within the first four songs - Pain with Grady from Will Haven and Chino, and Jumpdafuckup with Corey Taylor from Slipknot. I was never a huge fan of Will Haven, mainly because of Grady's singing style (although I wonder if I should give them another try now I'm older), but his vocals are a welcome addition to Pain. Jumpdafuckup was, of course, huge news back in 2001 - Slipknot and Soulfly together on one song? That was a nu-metal dream. We saw Soulfly at Ozzfest in 2001 and I bought a t-shirt with the chorus of Jumpdafuckup on the back. Yes, that meant I walked around with the words "Motherfucker you don't understand all my hate / Motherfucker you don't understand all my rage / Motherfucker you don't understand all my pain / Motherfucker you don't understand" in large font on the back; I can't emphasise this enough - it was 2001 and I was 16, it was acceptable at the time (even if it makes me cringe a little to think about now). Seeing them play that song at Ozzfest was quite exciting, I recall.

I also remember Son Song and thinking it was shit back then - it features John Lennon's son on vocals and really has little going for it. Terrorist with Tom Araya from Slayer was one I'd forgotten about. I remember another t-shirt they had back then said "Terror rise" on it, which I’m glad I didn't buy - just a few months later was 9/11 and the notion of terror was not something to take lightly. I was never a huge Slayer fan, but Tom's vocals are excellent here. Between Grady and Tom, I wonder if I was just keen to hear any voice that wasn't Max's (unless it was Sean Lennon's, it seems - in that case Max was a fucking relief).

I guess it shouldn't be a surprise, given the first album, but it's interesting that almost all the most notable songs are the ones featuring guest singers. The opening track Back to the Primitive is the only song without guests that remotely stands out. I don't know whether that's because they relied on the other musicians heavily, or because they wanted them on the best songs they could write. I don't care enough either way to think about it much more than that. It wasn't an observation I made back in 2001, but I was just excited to hear the output.

Format: 12", picture disc
Tracks: 12
Cost: £13 new
Bought: Tower Records, Southampton
When: 07/09/01
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Amen - The Waiting 18

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

Marilyn Manson - The Fight Song

This record, sadly, has the accolade of being the first 12" record I owned. I'd started my vinyl addiction with the very reputable Motorcycle Emptiness 7" single (a record which was truly a turning point in my life), but then I ruined it all by buying a Marilyn Manson 12" picture disc. It was 2001; what else can I say.

My sister got me into Marilyn Manson. She introduced me to three bands - Deftones, Silverchair and Marilyn Manson. On a holiday to the states when we were younger, she bought a bunch of cds by them and a short while later I ended up buying them from her. One of them was Antichrist Superstar, Manson's peak (or so I assume, it was certainly a local-peak, if not global); she also had The Last Tour of Earth (a live album from just after Mechanical Animals) and Portrait of an American Family (his simpler, industrial beginnings - I've long thought the actual songs on there might have aged better than the concept albums that followed - I've not listened to check).

In 2000, he released Holywood, the third in his loosely-related trilogy (which played out in reverse order, so felt a bit like an after-thought). Being the year 2000, this was exciting news, so I rushed out to buy a copy the day it came out. I remember enjoying the album, but finding it far too long. I liked that it was heavier than Mechanical Animals, but it lacked the real highs that Antichrist Superstar had. It would be the last Marilyn Manson album I'd buy - by the summer of 2001, the charm had worn off and I remember being really disappointed by his performance at Reading Festival; a year earlier and I would have loved it, but as it was, I just remember too many outfit changes and a stage show that felt like it was compensating for the music. It was an odd crowd too, given the very nu-metal start to the day and the fact that Eninem was headlining. 2001 was a strange time. (He also released a cover Sweet Dreams, a song I hated with a passion. That didn't help.)

However, in early 2001 I was still into his music, and when I found this 12" picture disc in Tower Records in Southampton, it was hard to resist. I was young and the prospect of a "Slipknot remix" was far more appealing than the adult-me knows it to be. Plus, I hadn't seen many picture discs and was into the idea of them (years later I'd realise why they were always the shittiest sounding of my records). The a-side is surprisingly fun still. Stupid also, obviously, but he did know how to make a heavy pop song (much like his on-and-off friend, Trent). The Slipknot remix never did much for me, but then again rock remixes rarely do; it feels like a cluttered, less enjoyable version of the song. There's also a remix of The Love Song, which is much more twisted from the original (or how I remember the original being). It's certainly not a record that I consider highly in my collection, but I guess as a representation of a time and a place, it's nice to have.

Like many people, I went a great number of years without listening to Marilyn Manson – why would I? I didn't check out any of his albums post-Holywood and wasn't ever that aware of what he was up to. Then, in 2015, I was in San Francisco with work on the same week that the Smashing Pumpkins and Marilyn Manson tour was passing through town (or, at least, the bowl in Concord, a very suburban district about an hour out of SF). By even better coincidence, the night of the show was the only night when there weren't work social plans, so I had to go. I listened to a few MM songs on my iPod on the flight over (although, for reasons unknown, only a few songs had made it onto the device) and enjoyed them more than I expected. I suspect it was 100% nostalgia – they're not good songs, but I did listen to them a lot in my teens.

Anyway, the show was strange – almost entirely seated with pricing bands of seating meaning that there were empty seats at the back of each section (because it wasn't sold out). Additionally, Manson played in the light, which just doesn't work and a load of people who were there to see him left before the Pumpkins, meaning it was even emptier. Billy Corgan played a few bars of the American national anthem and some guy yelled at me for not standing up – the irony of the fact he'd sat through Marilyn Manson's set with an upside down US flag on the stage wasn't lost on me. Manson played some songs I knew, which was nice, and a lot I didn't. It was similar to that Reading show in some ways, particularly in that it felt like more stage-show than substance. Also, he looked old, which really makes it even harder to take him seriously. But I wonder if we were never supposed to?

Format: 12", picture dsic
Tracks: 3
Cost: £4 new
Bought: Tower Records, Southampton
When: 01/03/01
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Pop Will Eat Itself - Karmadrome / Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me, Kill Me

I bought this record in the same transaction as Fugazi's classic Repeater; I can't imagine many times in either band's history that Fugazi records and PWEI records were bought at the same time. There used to be a guy who'd sell records in the main square at university, a tradition I imagine no longer exists. I bought a handful of things from him over the years I was there - it was often a struggle to find anything good, but I usually found at least one thing kinda worth buying.

As singles go, this double a-side is pretty strong. Karmadrome was one of the first PWEI songs I was really into. It made it onto their Live At Weird's Bar and Grill album, which was a solid introduction to the classic years. The build-up the chorus is wonderful and I love the backing vocals, as well as the explosive outro. Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me, Kill Me was also a huge song, appearing near the start of that same live album. More than any of the other songs pre-Dos Dedos Mis Amigos, that song hinted at the darker heavier direction their final album would go in. However, it retained a lot of what made them so likeable in the middle-era, which makes it quite a highlight in the back catalogue. PWEI-zation is another classic.

All three of those songs made it onto the Best Of albums I have, so the only new song was the subtly-named remix Eat Me, Drink Me, Dub Me, Kill Me (which suffers for the lack of guitars in the chorus - Clint's vocals sound a bit out of place without them rising up with him). One remix and the fact it was a picture disc that looked quite nice was enough to get me to spend £5 on it.

Needless to say, over the years, Repeater has had considerably more airtime, but that shouldn't come as a surprise; it's up there amongst the greatest albums of all time. But, if you wanted some PWEI highlights (and a remix) in a very concise form, you can't go wrong with this little collection.

Format: 12" picture disc, insert
Tracks: 4
Cost: £5 second hand
Bought: Lancaster University Square
When: 12/02/04
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Pop Will Eat Itself - The Pop Will Eat Itself Cure For Sanity

The Pop Will Eat Itself Cure for Sanity is the PWEI album I know the least well. I've never owned a copy on cd and this picture disc, whilst lovely, sounds like shit. One of the (many) problems with picture discs is that they often come in very tight plastic sleeves, which leads to a lot of fat-handed tugging at the side of the record. The pops and clicks at the start of each side here are louder than I've ever heard, and I feel a bit bad for my record player for having to deal with them.

An early PWEI purchase was the live album At Weird's Bar and Grill - I'd actually been listening to it for a while before buying it, because a friend bought a copy that I saw in a record shop one day (I think just so I couldn't buy it) and I eventually bought it from him. That album features a lot of these songs, albeit in quite different live recordings - 88 Seconds and Counting, Axe of Men and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet are all songs I'm very familiar with from their live versions. (Side note: I eventually ended up with a turquoise t-shirt from that very live show that another friend found in a second hand shop. My other PWEI t-shirts have all been given away in recent years, but I plan to keep that one for a long time yet).

Other songs are of course staples of best-of albums (of which I have two) and singles or EPs from that era - Dance of the Mad Bastards, X, Y and Zee, 92F (in various mixes) and Touched By the Hand of Cicciolina (the latter was always one I enjoyed for how shamelessly upbeat the piano is). As it is, playing it now, it feels much more familiar than I expected; the songs well known but as different versions. There's a fair bit of dicking around that thankfully didn't make it onto the other albums - I can take or leave the intro or City Zen Radio 1990/2000 FM and Dr Nightmare's Medication Time. Psychosexual and Axe of Men have a level of darkness that hints at the style they'd find two albums later on the very industrial Dos Dedos Mis Amigos. In a lot of ways, it's the odd-one-out of that era, as the albums either side of it sound much more similar to each other than either does to this one.

The highlight of the album is probably 92F (The 3rd Degree) - there are many different versions of that song and I think this might be the finest. I don't know anything about the woman singing, but her voice is great - somehow strained and slightly raspy, but it works so well. Later in the album we get the Boilerhouse "The Birth" remix, which features Clint or Graham singing instead. It's still enjoyable, but I find myself longing for the female vocals instead.

I found this 12" picture disc on a very fruitful shopping trip to Reading, a city I can only assume was overflowing with Poppies records, as I got two other PWEI records that day, and left even more behind on the shelves. At £10 it's £4 more than it's ever sold for on Discogs, but I was very pleased to find it and add it to my PWEI collection. The picture disc is great and it's nice to have the legendary "Sample it, loop it, fuck it and eat it" in large letters on a record, even if it's been censored. I think I once saw the cd in a second hand shop (in Morecambe, a place I'm glad to have not thought about for many years) but it was in very poor condition, and I figured other chances would come around. They haven't, but I'm not sat here regretting not buying it - the Poppies were a great band at a very certain time, but I don't get as much out of them as I used to.

Format: 12" picture disc
Tracks: 19
Cost: £10 second hand
Bought: Reading
When: 27/12/02
Colour: Picture disc
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

Transplants - Diamonds and Guns

This is a strangely embarrassing 7". I think part of me knew that at the time, but Diamonds and Guns was just so damn catchy that I had to buy into the whole thing the Transplants were doing. It felt fresh at the time - nu-metal had been around for a bit, so why not let punk take its turn with rap? Writing that in 2017 feels dirty, but at the time it was kinda acceptable. Maybe.

Diamonds and Guns is shamelessly catchy; it's like they weren’t even trying to hide how popular they wanted that song to be. The piano and the "woah woahs" from the off scream "huge MTV hit", which is not at all a surprise - for a punk band they were not worried about trying to reach the masses. I remember the video appearing on one of the music channels and it instantly being hugely popular and plastered all over MTV that spring. It's funny, because the first two verses are incredibly flat but, for me, it was always all about the half-rapped, half-shouted vocals that came in later. The b-side is another album track, Tall Cans in the Air, which benefits from the shouted/rapped vocals throughout and a much rockier chorus.

I bought this 7" a few days after buying their debut, self-titled album. It was £1, so it felt rude not to (I use that excuse a lot, but £1 is a very nice price to pay for music). Plus, I was still enjoying the single at the time and thought it'd be nice to have it on vinyl, albeit shitty picture disc vinyl. I don't remember being bothered that the b-side was an album track, although I'd only had the album a few days, so maybe I just didn't notice.

Musically, the band hasn't aged well, which isn't a surprise. I doubt even the most hardcore Rancid fans consider Transplants anything more than a piss-stain on history.

Format: 7", picture disc

Tracks: 2

Cost: £1 new

Bought: HMV Winchester

When: 07/04/03

Colour: Picture disc

Etching: none

mp3s: no

The Music - The Truth is No Words

The final 7" I bought from The Music's first album (and maybe the final 7" they released from it? There weren't that many more songs on it that weren't already singles!) was The Truth is No Words. It’s arguably a better song than Getaway, but lacks vocally - we know the guy can sing, so why he doesn't try on the verses here is beyond me. The b-side, What's It For is another simple acoustic song that would have sounded thoroughly out of place on the album. It's fine, but I certainly wouldn't consider it a vital part of their back-catalogue.

As a final note, I do enjoy the consistent art style they went for over the first EPs, singles and album - it's simple but it works. Whilst picture discs sound shit because the vinyl is so thin, this artwork was surely always begging to be on a picture disc like these ones.

Format: 7", picture disc

Tracks: 2

Cost: £1.50 new

Bought: HMV Winchester

When: 17/02/03

Colour: Picture disc

Etching: none

mp3s: no

The Music - Getaway

Getaway was another single from The Music's debut album, and another 7" picture disc I bought a record fair for £3, just a few months after buying Take the Long Road and Walk It. As a single Getaway isn't as strong as the others, but it's fine.

The b-side here is Dragon Song, another non-album track. Unlike Alone it wouldn't have sounded out of place on the album, but possibly didn't make the cut because it just wasn't as good. It's also a fine song for the band, but doesn't really do anything they'd already done on a bunch of other songs on the album.

Format: 7", picture disc
Tracks: 2
Cost: £3 new
Bought: Record Fair, Southampton
When: 25/01/03
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Music - Take the Long Road and Walk It

Take the Long Road and Walk It was one of the singles released from The Music's debut, self-titled album. The People had got a lot of play on MTV ahead of the album release and I'd bought a copy as soon as it came out. I found this 7" at a record fair in Southampton and was fairly happy to add it to my little collection of The Music records. At that age, picture discs were an appealing thing, rather than the pain I know them to as an adult.

It's still a fun song, and very representative of what they were doing at the time. I can't say I play this 7” very often (ever), but I can vividly remember the appeal of the band. The b-side is a slow, mostly acoustic song called Alone; it’s not remotely like anything else the band had released up to that point, but it kinda works. The singer's voice is stretched in different ways, but it's good to hear. I have a few more The Music 7"s, and I probably bought them partly because I enjoyed this b-side so much.

Format: 7", picture disc
Tracks: 2
Cost: £3 new
Bought: Record Fair, Southampton
When: 26/10/02
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no