Stick Together - Surviving The Times

Sometime just before Christmas, right around the same time I was finishing off my Beware 7" collection, I decided to also get serious about my Stick Together collection as well. I ended up with a pile of records for just two releases. One of them was Surviving The Times.
Surviving The Times is a great record and was easily one of my favorites of 2012. I think that by slowing down, the songs ended up being so much more memorable and catchy. Pure youth crew straight edge hardcore. So good.
As is the trend these days, anything super good, popular or hyped has to get the multiple color and pressing treatment. Time to dive in.

Triple B starts things off with red vinyl. This was the most limited color and it sold out quickly during preorders. There were a total of 165 pressed.

The next color up is clear with black swirl. It just ends up looking like clear with smoke, one of my least favorite looking color patterns ever. There were 406 pressed on this color.

Finally, the first press is finished off with good old black vinyl. This is out of 924.

The cover is a tri-fold with plenty of pictures, lyrics and thank you's. Sharp!

Next up is this cool white vinyl version complete with this awesome In My Blood Records fold over cover. The layout, dust sleeve sticker and Brett Beach shout out is super awesome and harkens back to the Floorpunch D1C 7". I ended up with #100 out of 100.

Control Records stepped up once again to do a European pressing and the results were awesome as expected. They changed things up for the cover layout but obviously used shots from the same show. The layout also goes to a single foldout instead of the tri-fold.

There was a small limited color pressing on blue vinyl. These were hand numbered out of 100 by a sticker on the dust sleeve.

 There was also a black vinyl pressing which is out of 300. Not exactly a huge number and surprisingly was still available the last time I checked. You should buy one.

The Great Youngblood Records Catch Up of 2013

A few weeks ago I got an email from Sean Youngblood inquiring if I was interested in buying a No Tolerance test. Luckily, I made the choice years ago not to get into that game. I politely declined his offer, but in return I asked him if he had some doubles or spares of records from his back catalog.
At first I hit him up for a No Remorse, No Tolerance on blue. It was the first thing that came to mind and one record that I knew I needed. What came after that got a little out of control. I figured since I had the guy on the line, I might as well go for it. I checked my list, cross referenced against the Youngblood discography (in serious need of an update!), Kyle Whitlow's blog and the How's Your Edge swap page to come up with a comprehensive want list.
I proceeded to freak Sean out with a list of 76 different variations of Youngblood releases. Pre-presses, tour covers, final presses, stamped showcase sleeves and every color variant I didn't already have. Well, after some back and forth we settled on 58 records. I wanted all 76, but he just didn't have spares of all of them.
It will do for now.

I have to say, for shipping 39 7"s in one box, postage wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Sean is the master of safe and secure packing.

First up with the 7"s, there were three large 7" mailers packed tight inside a box with cds and bubble wrap!

A few days later the 19 lps came in a large box with three deep album mailers and triple protection on the corners. In the end, there was not one single dinged corner. Not one.

As far as the records go, I ended up scoring a bit of everything from YB01 Rancor Flip the Switch to YB38 Give Flower Head. I am super charged up to have gotten so many rare and cool records. Bladecrasher, Life's Halt, Desperate Measures, Far From Breaking, Lights Out, Striking Distance, Iron Age... The list goes on and on.
There was no way I could take pictures of all of it, so here are some of the alternate covers of both 7"s and lps.

The really amusing part of this deal is that Sean had spares of all the limited stuff but almost none of the common. My remaining want list is almost nothing but black vinyl or the most common version. Hell, a quick visit to Discogs and I could be done this sucker!
As it stands right now, I have 134 different Youngblood pieces from 37 total releases. I am only missing five variants from YB13 on. I always regretted waiting so long to collect the label as complete as I did from the Iron Age lp on, but it seemed a daunting task looking backwards at the catalog. I had at least one of everything, but not enough from the early stuff. Now it feels like I got the balance right.
I am truly insane.

REV25: Chicago

Sometimes you get lucky, or maybe I have a problem.
My wife may be on to something when she says I spend too much time on the computer/iphone. It seems that I have always had good fortune when it comes to getting the head's up for pre-orders, rare sales and things like that. A couple weeks ago I just happened to be reading a book with my daughter (and checking twitter at the same time) when the message from Rev came in that a limited number of leftover 7" sets of the Rev25 Chicago were available. I politely excused myself from story time to run upstairs and place an order. I'm not going to win father of the year anytime soon.
The order went through no problem. I emailed my brothers from another mother Mike and Marcus to give them a heads up, posted on the Rev Collectors board and not 15 minutes later, it was over. Sold out. Word was another round would be available "in the morning". Well at around 2:00 AM MST another round were put up and promptly sold out in 5 minutes. Damn.
It's kind of nuts that it played out this way. The impression online was that these didn't sell very well at the Chicago show, plus the label held back 100 sets for online sales. There should have been plenty to go around much like the 25th Anniversary California and New York lps.
I guess not.
To be fair, there were a lot fewer of these pressed than the compilation lps. Plus, there was some word of people selling individual copies at the shows which would of course lower the total amount of sets available after the fact. In the end, it is what it is. They sold out and a good number of collectors are still on the lookout for them.

There really isn't that much to say about these other than they are absolutely fucking beautiful. The clear vinyl, the special labels, the covers...all top end. No wonder collectors are kind of going bat shit over these.
I will just run down each of the four in catalog order.

REV004: Gorilla Biscuits - s/t 7".

REV017: Youth of Today - Disengage 7".

REV042: Into Another - Poison Fingers 7".

REV047: Texas Is The Reason - s/t 7".

Everything about the layout is awesome. The REV25 Chicago is a great touch as is the B side label showing the Chicago downtown skyline.

Each also came with the regular current inserts (except Into Another). I didn't include pictures because - well you have them already and they don't really add anything to the overall aesthetic. The TITR insert is downright shocking when compared to the new layout.

Now I just have to figure out if I store these together with the compilations or file them individually with the regular copies of each release. OCD is kicking in...