Wednesday 12 August 2009

Uniform Choice - Screaming for Change

Here’s this week’s instalment of Cliché Vinyl. I couldn’t put up an update last week, so I hope this post will make up for the delay. I’ve tried to collate all the information on the classic release; Uniform choice’s - Screaming for change. Screaming for change without fail will always be on my top 10 hardcore LP’s of all time.
This was the 3rd release put out by Wishingwell Records in 1986 and in my view this is a pretty much the prefect release. Uniform choice is well known for being one of the main iconic straight edge bands and for their iconic t-shirts . What is less well know is that some of their songs where going to be released as a split 12” with the rap group N.W.A. sadly the split release never came out :(



From what I can see there are 4 presses of this record.

1s press – This press has a yellow sleeve and yellow labels, unlike the other press’s which have a green sleeve and green labels. I believe most of the 1st press came with a sticker and a large fold out poster. Around 1000 of these were pressed.

2nd press – This press had a green sleeve and green labels. An unknown amount were pressed on black vinyl – maybe around 2,000 plus? As well as the black vinyl version, they made a few colour versions. A lot of these colour versions were sold on tour. A cool thing about the record was that they sealed all the records, so lucky people have picked up the colour version of the press thinking that they were just opening a black version of the record.
From I can see there are 4 main colours pressed. And a couple of “transition version”
The main versions are the:
Green vinyl
Red Vinyl
Purple Vinyl
Grey Vinyl
I believe that pressing plant must have pressed the colours one after another. As some of the Red vinyl versions have some purple streaks in them when you hold them to the light. Also there is a “Pink” version. This Pink version might have been created from a mix of the grey colour and the purple mixing together, or maybe the purple colour wasn’t 100% mixed before the pressing started. I’ve heard that there might like 10 – 20 of the pink versions. The Pink version looks similar to the purple version, but has no streaks in the mix and looks like a very faint purple vinyl aka a pinkish colour. As far the number of numbers that were pressed, I’m guessing they made a same amount of the colour versions as the other wishingwell colour releases. Therefore you could be looking at 250 made per colour? Either way, it’s still a cool record to look out for.



3rd press – This was just pressed on black vinyl. The way to tell difference between the 2nd press on black vinyl and the 3rd press is from the lyric sheet. The 3rd has a smaller more condensed vinyl sheet.

4th press – I’ve heard that this press might actually be a bootleg done in Europe. It looks just like the 2nd press and 3rd press on black vinyl, but has no lyric sheet. A lot of them have surfaced in the last couple of years. All of them seem to sealed, these can be found in some distros at the moment..Odd?



Thanks for reading, sorry about the bad grammar. I’m going to blame it on lack of sleep and jetlag!

Sunday 2 August 2009

Youth of Today – Can’t Close My Eyes - Batman press

After writing about the classic Youth of Today – break down the walls release on wishingwell, I thought I should follow up with another classic Youth of Today record, the “Can’t close my eyes” 7”

I’m talking about that odd 4th press on positive force records / Revelation records, or better known as the “Batman stamp” or “Orange vinyl”. There were only 100 of these pressed, so good luck on hunting them down!

This rare version was pressed by Ray and Jordan of Revelation Records in order to trade for toys that they collected. Often the best way to get those rare Revelation records was to trade all sorts of collectable toys to them (Ask Marcus Andrews .. lucky git!) In a lot of the early releases Revelation records would put in hand made fliers asking people to trade toys for rare revelation records.
Here a just a couple of fliers I dug out:





This Can’t Close My Eyes version was created just purely to trade, if you didn’t have a toys that they wanted, you didn’t get the youth of today 7”. So what does the record look like? The A side of the record has a blue label like the 2nd press of the, “Can’t close my eyes” on positive force records, but the b-side as a blank label. Maybe Ray and Jordan had a bunch of labels left over from the previous positive force releases? On the b-side you will find a black batman stamp, this stamp was also stamped on paper dust sleeve and again on the front cover.







Over the years I have seen other early Revelation records releases with “Batman” and “superman” stamps on the dust sleeves; I believe that if you traded a toy to Rev they would stamp the dust sleeve, to maybe indicate that the record was obtained by trading toys rather than just buying it.


Revelation records also made some other things to trade for toys. They also made the “GI Joe” t-shirt to trade for toys. I have to honestly say I thing I would have rather kept the toy than the GI Joe t-shirt. I believe they made two versions of the GI Joe t-shirt, the version I have is well ... pretty hideous. I would love to see a picture of the other GI Joe t-shirt.





After a quick hunt on the Webb I think I found the GI Joe model used for the t-shirt above. I no expert when it comes to Toy’s!



Again if you are reading this post and you have some more fun facts or interesting information about the Rev trading records or GI Joe t-shirt, please let me know or just leave a comment. 