Category: collecting

The Weirdest Thing

On By bigbadburchIn collecting1 Comment

There are always things to consider about having a physical collection of music – what’s your favorite piece? What’s the most expensive thing you have? What act’s works are complete in your collection? What rare or out of the way pieces do you own that are cool to have? And the most important question that we ask all of the time and plagues our bank accounts – what’s next?

Today I’m not going to ask or answer any of those questions. The one I’m going to work with is this – what is the weirdest thing in my collection?

Being weird isn’t a matter of the music itself – I have a bunch of stuff on my shelves that would be considered weird. Death metal and jazz is a hell of a combo and I’m not sure why I own several examples of it. But that’s not the issue at hand today.

What I’m concerned with is weird, as in format or presentation. I have a few oddball things that do stick out, like a few albums on DVD audio that are in bigger cases, oddly-sized box sets and things of that nature. But none of those really qualify as the most weird thing in my collection.

I considered the question for a moment but then I quickly remembered something I’ve owned for a long time that easily qualifies to answer this question. I proudly present the 2007 album from British doom merchants Paradise Lost, In Requiem.

There’s nothing odd about the album itself – Paradise Lost are a great band and I really enjoyed their material in the 00’s. But if you notice the box in the picture, this presentation is a box set. And it’s a box set of 7-inch vinyl. Yes, this is the full album presented on four small records, as opposed to a standard 12-inch record. And yes, the album is available in that standard format as well.

This box set did come with a few extras – it has the CD version of the album as well as a poster. The CD was important at the time, as we were in the “digital collection” age and it was super cool to get a CD along with vinyl so we could import the album into our collections with ease. Those days are long gone, as streaming has rendered a digital collection unneeded for many.

This edition also comes with a few bonus tracks – the vinyl has a bonus called Missing, while the CD includes that as well as Silent In Heart. These two songs were also available on a few deluxe CD versions of the album but those and this seem to be the only sources of the material. So I guess this can qualify as weird but not necessarily useless.

I honestly can’t say why I even bought this. I don’t specifically recall wanting it. I did used to order from Century Media records on occasion back then and I probably just thought it was a neat thing to have so I put it in with my usual order. It’s possible they also had it on clearance, but again I don’t remember. All I know is I bought it and here it is 17 years later.

And, all else being equal, it will remain in my collection. The box has a tiny premium online, not enough to really bother with unloading – it’s just a hair more “valuable” than its retail price. I would also figure that the box is not a high demand item – there aren’t lines of people queued up to score a 7-inch box set copy of a doom metal album from 2007.

So I will speculate that this oddball box set will remain in my collection until I’m not around to have a collection anymore. The only practical way this gets unseated as the weirdest thing in my collection is if I buy something weirder than it. I don’t go out of my way to find weird music stuff but it is out there, so that is certainly a possibility.

Do you have questions, comments or concerns? Feel free to use the comment form below, or head to my contact page.

Nevermore – Gold CD Remasters

On By bigbadburchIn collecting, UncategorizedLeave a comment

First things first – I clearly haven’t been posting this week. I was off work the week before, then when I went back this week I walked into an absolute meat grinder. My job gets busy this time of year but this week was insane to a degree beyond what I expected. Things are going to calm down some next week so I decided just to punt my posts to a week beyond in order to keep my time free.

So to the point of today’s post – recently I had to make a few “money moves,” and in the end I came out a hair ahead of the curve. It allowed me to shop around for a few things I’d wanted to buy and, all of a sudden, I noticed this set of gold-disc remasters of the Nevermore catalog on sale for a great price. These were done by Brutal Planet Records and seem to be the only licensed, in-print version of the Nevermore albums available now. Their former label Century Media doesn’t have any Nevermore stock on their site. But that’s fine, as these remasters are well worth the money.

So what’s sitting here is the seven full-length Nevermore albums, as well as two solo albums from guitarist Jeff Loomis and the first solo album from singer Warrel Dane. This is nearly a complete collection, but not quite. It does give me the idea to run through a series on the Nevermore albums and associated solo works. I won’t include Sanctuary in this as I feel they should be treated as a separate entity.

There is an EP, In Memory, that wasn’t a part of this bundle but is also available in the gold remaster series and I have it on the way. Nevermore also issued one single in their career, which seems odd but hey, it is what it is. I was able to find that for a decent price and it’s also en route to my mailbox.

There is another Warrel Dane solo album, Shadow Work, released in 2018 after his death. He was working on the album when he died and this was compiled from the recording sessions. I don’t own this yet but it is pretty easy to get so I’ll pick that one up soon too.

There is one other Nevermore piece – the 2008 live album Year Of The Voyager. I had this on both CD and DVD back when it released but they wound up parting ways with my CD shelf at some point. And as it would turn out, they are out of print and pretty hard to get right now. The DVD is unobtainable but the CD seemingly can be found within some reason. It is on streaming services so if worse comes to worse I can play it on there if I can’t hunt down a copy.

After I gather the rest of the stuff I will take some time to evaluate it and then later on in the year I’ll throw together a series going over everything in detail. I might as well since there is no hope of adding to the Nevermore catalog. The only component that might add to this series later on would be another Jeff Loomis solo album, which I can happily add in if and when that comes.

So all that will come later this year, I would guess it’ll be an after summer thing. I wasn’t planning on doing it but having all these nice gold remasters got the idea going for me. Something to look forward to later on in the year.

One other thing about the reissue set – each CD also came with a cool trading card in it. It’s a bit of a tricky collectible to be inside of a CD case, but luckily I have some protective sleeves for trading cards laying around so I can keep these in a spot where they’ll stay minty fresh.

The Oldest CD

On By bigbadburchIn collecting11 Comments

I was thinking about the state of my music collection recently. By this point I have a fair amount of stuff – around 800 CDs and 250 or so records. But the point of today’s post isn’t really the amount, but more of the timing of it all.

I’ve had a music collection of some sort since I was probably eight. Tapes and a few old records, then CDs for a long time, then back to records to some degree. As I got to thinking about it, I realized that the vast majority of my collection is from 2008 and on. I built most of it through the 2010’s, and honestly most of my records have been picked up these past couple of years.

It’s kind of sad in a way, as I wish I had more of the stuff I used to way back when. I honestly didn’t have any real collector’s items or anything, this isn’t about that – the stuff I have bought in the past several years commands way more value than the stuff I had in 1991.

But I do kind of hate that I had to let things go over the years. In some cases, stuff simply got lost due to moving. A box misplaced at one time was actually a bunch of old records my relatives gave me. It wasn’t all great stuff but there were some cool albums in there and I liked having them. Other odds and ends I couldn’t even really tell you what happened – I’m not even sure what I did with my old tape collection, it might have walked off when my family moved houses while I was in the Navy in the mid ’90s’.

The bulk of stuff though, mostly CDs, met a more obvious fate – at various points in my life I had to sell stuff off. Back in the early 2000’s, a CD could actually fetch a few bucks from a store. Throw ten in the pile and you got enough for food and gas money, or even beer and cigarette money, which honestly was where I blew a fair bit of that cash. I had one or two times where I had to basically start my life from scratch, and the vast majority of my music collection was sold off for that purpose. These days a CD collection probably isn’t valuable enough to float a person for a month’s rent or whatever, but back then it did work.

With ever rule or tendency there is an exception, of course. And my collection being a pile of stuff I’ve bought from ’08 onward does have its exception – this one CD that I bought on release day in 1994. It’s the unsellable CD – not because it’s worth anything or even for sentimental value – I love the album, but I have it on vinyl and a reissued CD edition. It’s unsellable because it’s just that – the packaging just doesn’t hold up and no one would buy it.

A lot of people reading now who were around back then probably already knew what album I was talking about. The CD packaging for The Downward Spiral was infamously “collector unfriendly.” It has a rickety cardboard sleeve to hold a slimline jewel case and a thick booklet. These did not hold up well at all and the packaging bombed out pretty quick on them, even if someone tried to take care of it. As I recall from a lot of collections back then, many people did not try to care for their stuff.

My copy I guess still holds up – the CD itself has small scratches but plays just fine and the whole jewel case part is in primo shape. But the outer packaging is hosed, in fact it broke apart when I dug it out for these pictures. It all looks a bit waterlogged but I can’t for the life of me figure when it got wet – I think it might just be from the famous Missouri humidity. Nothing else around it or in my collection at all has any signs of being waterlogged.

In the end I guess I do have one CD from my old collection, if only because it was such dim packaging that no one wanted to buy it. I’m kind of glad, it’s nice to have on hand even though it only serves sentimental purposes. I can’t be “that guy” who has an entire life’s worth of a collection on hand, but hey, that’s ok – I have this beat up old copy of a Nine Inch Nails album still.

Last week I covered The Downward Spiral in great detail for its 30th anniversary, that post is here.

For questions, comments or other concerns, use the comment form below or use my contact page to reach me.

The Record Store Relocation Haul

On By bigbadburchIn collecting9 Comments

Last Saturday I got the chance to do something I don’t do a ton of these days, that is go buy a few records. Thanks to a big sale I was able to get more than a few things for really damn cheap and so I figured I’d post my haul here since it’s the first time I’ve bought enough at once to justify a haul post. I could keep better track of what trickles in over a few months and do them that way, but that would require more effort than I’m apparently capable of.

It’s not all great news, as one of the local stores here has to relocate. I don’t know the full story but it sounds like maybe it has something to do with crazy commercial real estate prices these days, but again I don’t truly know. Heavy Heads Records has been a real good shop for me over the past few years, I’ve scored several of my prize albums like the Japanese Queensryche pressings and the Japanese pressing of Iron Maiden’s Powerslave from there.

As anyone who collects music knows, it’s not at all easy to move a music collection. Especially records, they are pure hell to move. Just imagine having a record store’s worth and needing to move it. To that end, there have been occasional sales of the inventory at extremely awesome prices. I missed a few but was finally able to make my way down to scour the bins.

I’ll go over the CDs first and then get into the vinyl. Also I’ve never done a super heavy picture post before so I don’t know how this is gonna look, we’ll see I guess, lol. The preview looked good, anyway.

First up is Soul Asylum. I covered their big album Grave Dancer’s Union before but beyond that and the one after it I’ve never heard a note of their stuff. They have a bunch of albums and these were sitting there so I figured I’d help myself and see how these are.

There’s also Collective Soul. I remember the album on the top left but I’ve never heard the other two, so again I figured why not? I’m not out much if these don’t move me.

I had these Robert Plant albums in one form or another over the years but I misplaced them along the way. I figured I’d get to replenishing my stock.

Here in the miscellaneous pile – I had been revisiting a bit of Robert Palmer recently so I grabbed this compilation. I knew a fair bit off of it so it hit the spot. I haven’t had a copy of the Mr. Big album since I had it on tape when it came out, no time like the present to give it another spin. I don’t know if I’ve ever owned that Prince album but I do know some of the songs on it and it’s hard to go wrong with Prince.

I snatched up The Joshua Tree since I have no U2 in my collection, it was always my favorite one and I was wanting to hear it again after a long, long time of not. And I’ve always enjoyed Hall and Oates. I honestly have both of these on vinyl already but I didn’t want these CDs to be lonely in the record store.

Up next is the vinyl. I was not expecting to find much I wanted but I honestly had to stop myself after a point, there was more here that I wanted than what I bargained for. And it was a great bargain, so I loaded up.

I could not let the first Georgia Satellites album sit there at a great discount. And I don’t recall this early Joe Walsh solo record much so I thought I could acquaint myself with it.

I covered the self-titled Heart record awhile back. Oddly enough I’ve had a fairly hard time finding this and the other two mega-selling albums after it on record, so this was an automatic purchase. As for Belinda Carlisle? Well, as it turns out she was my first ever celebrity crush, so all these years later she finally came home with me, at least in some form.

Up next is Night Ranger. I’ve had Midnight Madness for a while but I was really wanting Dawn Patrol since it has my favorite song of theirs on it. And 7 Wishes was sitting right behind it so I felt obligated to keep it with its buddy.

I’ve never owned this Rainbow album and honestly I don’t recall it much at all, none of the songs were familiar to me. I’ll get more into my old Sammy Hagar collection in the next picture but I honestly don’t remember if I ever had this one on vinyl. I do now so whatever.

I used to have these two Sammy albums, and a whole lot more. The records belonged to my late uncle and wound up in my possession several years after his death. Sadly through having to move last minute and general irresponsibility in my 20’s, or maybe even 30’s, I was unable to keep the records. I’ve sort of put off really going after them again but I guess the time is now to get that collection rebuilt. Danger Zone isn’t his best solo album, but Standing Hampton is really close to being his best.

Oh, and in the style of every lame Internet presenter since the 2000’s, there’s one more thing….

I’ve been going on a run of these CDs and I’m starting to gain ground, he only released one actual album a year now instead of 12. At some point in the future, and I do mean a ways off in the future, I’ll probably undertake the ambitious task of going through all his studio albums on here. Again, that’s quite a ways off and he’ll probably release 10 more “lost” ones before I get there. But anyway, that’ll be a thing someday.

That’s about all for the record store haul. There’s going to be at least one more sale so I might go rescue a few more vinyl stragglers if they’re still in the bin.

The Burn Pile – Remembering The CD-R

On By bigbadburchIn collecting4 Comments

For those of us at a certain age, the blank tape is a fond reminder of how we “shared” music in the distant past. You could make a mixtape if you wanted, or you could copy entire albums onto tapes. Often you could get two albums on one tape, one on each side, and be truly ready to jam out.

The cassette tape went away (thankfully, as far as I’m concerned) and the CD came along. That would slowly be phased out by digital files and then streaming services. Those two totally fulfilled and made obsolete the concept of “sharing” music – just tell someone to look up a song or album, send a link to it over a text message. It’s light years beyond the blank tape shuffle of the 1980’s.

But there was another medium for sharing music that ran concurrently with the rise of the MP3. The CD itself offered up a writable disc and by 2000, most PC’s had CD-R drives in them. Copying an album to CD was a process that didn’t take a lot of time and was super reliable, only very rarely going wrong compared the potential headaches of the cassette.

I do remember “burning” a CD in 1997 or thereabout. It took several hours and the CD wound up not working right in spots. A few years later allowed the technology to catch up and become more practical for the typical home user. Just as the idea of keeping digital music on computer hard drives was becoming a reality, it was very easy for someone to burn a CD and play it at home, in a car, or wherever.

I would take to burning CDs in the early 2000’s and wound up generating quite a pile of stuff. A lot of mine came from a friend who worked in radio at the time and was getting promo stuff from record labels. Some labels were already sending promos via digital distribution, but others sent physical CDs and I would copy a lot of those. Otherwise I was borrowing stuff out of friends’ collections and making sure I had my copy of that, allowing me to concentrate my purchases in focused areas.

My horde of CD-Rs, first time I’ve had them out in eons

The CD-R was a currency of music but it also didn’t quite take off the same way tapes did in the ’80’s. This was because the digital music revolution was happening at the same time. The time and material needed to burn a CD, while nothing that would set someone back a lot, was more than the simple act of ripping it straight to the hard drive. For more die-hard music fans like myself who are album-oriented listeners or who enjoy long mixes spanning a lot of songs, the CD was an ideal format. But for the more casual fan who is generally just into songs, simply having them on a hard drive was good enough. And with the advent of smartphones, even needing a PC was eventually phased out.

I would join the digital age somewhere around 2008, scoring my first iPod. This would naturally phase out the concept of burning CDs for me. Over the years I have occasionally made a copy of something for someone else but the days of buying spindles of blank discs were long over. And now with streaming I almost don’t even use my digital collection now, though it does have its uses from time to time and isn’t something I’m ready to part with yet. It’s not like it’s doing anything other than taking up disk space that I’m not using anyway.

What really inspired me to write this was me going through stuff and still having my two containers of burned CDs laying around. I haven’t even gone through them in over 10 years, they haven’t served a purpose for me at all. It’s finally time to send these relics of the past to the recycling center. I do have to remove them all from the paper sleeves I keep them in, but that would take all of 15 minutes if my lazy ass would get to actually doing it.

As I go through these I’ll probably check to make sure I’ve ripped everything I want to my PC. It’s probably not a big deal, some stuff I burned is stuff I now own, and many of the promos I had access to didn’t really excite me in the end. I might throw one or two on to see what I think now, but I’m not gonna spend a ton of time with it. I’m also curious if any of these degraded over time, the conventional wisdom on writable CDs is that they might not hold up over many years. But I’m not going to conduct a survey of the total pile I have.

The CD-R doesn’t really come with the nostalgia factor that the blank tape does. The CD thing was a practical matter that was no fuss, there was no need to time things right like would often happen with tapes. Just set your burn list and let it go, get out the sharpie and there you have something to listen to. People do still fiddle with CD-Rs, in some cases it’s to play music in cars and in others it can be to make and send mixes out. The full arrival of the digital age has ended the practical use of CD-Rs for most, but there are still holdouts out there, just like there are still people using blank cassettes. I won’t be joining them, for me the age of the CD-R has come and gone. But for several years it was a great tool to expose myself to way more music.

The Postage of the Beast – Iron Maiden stamps

On By bigbadburchIn collecting1 Comment

A quick post today and more of just a show-off thing. I have apparently entered the world of philately, which isn’t a strange sex act but rather the practice of stamp collecting. Since I’m pretty well broke from buying music, my stamp collecting begins and ends with this series of Iron Maiden stamps the Royal Mail issued earlier this year.

There were a wide variety of stamps and collectible packages available, I settled on the presentation pack as a one-shot deal to cover all the bases. It includes the stamps pictured below as well as a pretty detailed biography on both sides of the presentation card. Eddie gets his own bio on the back of his stamp series, as the most important member of the band surely should.

In ironic fashion it did take a little while for these stamps to arrive, because mailing stuff between the British mail and the US Post Office can’t be as quick and easy and one would figure. I know people in Canada got theirs a bit before anyone here in the US did. Though in fairness I’ve had these for a bit now, I’m just now finally getting around to taking the pictures and making this post.

I am very impressed with the setup and how well done it is. I have no previous exposure to the Royal Mail’s collectible stamp issues, as honestly Iron Maiden is the only band I’d really drop money on for stamps. My intent was to frame this and I probably still will, but it seems a bit of a shame to do that when the double-sided layout is so neatly done. But in the end framing is still likely the best option for display.

And that about does it for the Iron Maiden stamps. Not much more to say, really – they’re very nice and a pretty high-class presentation. Behold the postage of the beast.

King Diamond – No Presents For Christmas

On By bigbadburchIn collecting4 Comments

It’s one more dive into my singles collection before the turn of the year and the beginning of my Iron Maiden singles series. Since Christmas is just around the corner I thought I’d get festive and get out what likely is the only Christmas-themed music thing I own.

This single was the very first release from King Diamond after splitting up Mercyful Fate and going solo. Joining King from the ashes of Mercyful Fate were guitarist Michael Denner and bassist Timi Hansen. They recruited guitarist Andy LaRocque and drummer Mikkey Dee to join them in the new venture.

No Presents For Christmas

The A-side features the holiday tune, which of course is twisted into King Diamond form. The song intros a few familiar Christmas melodies before opening into the true experience. It is suitably dark for a King Diamond song but is also extremely silly, lending a light-hearted air to the proceedings.

While King Diamond would use his solo band to primarily tell album-length stories, our song here is a standalone effort. No great, overarching theme here – simply put, Santa can’t deliver the presents and no one else gives a damn. Somehow Tom and Jerry, famed cartoon duo, made it into the chorus while pounding some sherry. I have no clue what Tom and Jerry have to do with Christmas but hey, the chorus rhymes so props to everyone for that. Donald Duck makes an appearance too, again not a noted Christmas icon. But it goes to show the loose and silly nature of the song.

No Presents For Christmas has become a quasi-classic in King Diamond lore. While not an album track when the debut Fatal Portrait was released months later, the song was added as a reissue bonus and the single itself has been reissued through the years. It’s a bit of levity for what is often a dark and spooky atmosphere.

Charon

The B-side is a song that did make the cut for Fatal Portrait. Charon is about its namesake, the ferryman in Greek mythology who takes souls to Hades. The King Diamond approach to the song is straightforward as he assumes the role of the ferryman in lyric form. The song does have the feel of a Mercyful Fate tune, but with a bit of NWOBHM vibe to it as well. It’s a nice cut to showcase what was to come with the full-length album hitting shelves a bit after this single.

That pretty well covers the single. Mine is an old cassette copy though it’s available in several formats and versions. I just can’t help but have the cover with King Diamond and goofy Christmas stuff on it. Despite the goofy nature, this was the beginning of a legendary solo career and a gamble that paid off after personal conflict ripped Mercyful Fate apart just as they were making a name for themselves.

It’s about time for the holidays – hope everyone has a merry Christmas and/or other celebrations. After today at work I’ll be off for the rest of the year so I’ll (hopefully) have some time to get this site set up for the new year. Just remember – if there’s nothing in your stocking, it’s because Tom and Jerry got wine drunk and didn’t help out Santa.

Note the screw up in the album name below…

Gold In The Bargain Bin – Where To Buy Music

On By bigbadburchIn collecting8 Comments

Today’s post is about buying music, a topic I like to cover here from time to time. This time it isn’t so much how to buy it or what it costs, but it’s about where to buy it. And, more to the point, where I’ve bought it over the years.

While I was born in the late 70’s, I was a child of the 80’s and music was a big deal back then. Radio was huge, MTV was going full blast (with actual music), and people were scooping up albums left and right. Records were still a thing, cassettes were likely the predominant format, and CDs were around but just getting their legs under them.

Pop music was massive in the 80’s. Rock and metal were at their highest point of exposure and sales. Rap was emerging as a force. Country, well, it wasn’t necessarily great in the 80’s but a few legends of the game were setting themselves up on the scene. Music was everywhere – in ads, in movie soundtracks, it was big business in the decade of Reagan and cocaine.

For a good part of the population, buying music in the 1980’s was as simple as having the money for it. Mainstream releases flooded the shelves of both specialized music stores and general retail outlets. Mail order buying clubs existed, even if their best use wasn’t exactly above the board. It was pretty easy to get what you wanted when it came to music.

Well, mostly. I had it a little different. I didn’t grow up in a big city, my hometown’s population was around 2,500. It left one option, that being Wal-Mart. This wasn’t one of the SuperCenter Wal-Marts, either – this was a plain, old-fashioned Wal-Mart. The store was a different animal before the SuperCenter concept took off.

And as a side note – while I rarely ever visit my hometown anymore, I’m fairly certain that the store there is still a regular Wal-Mart, which is an oddity.

Anyway, Wal-Mart is where I had to buy music in my younger days. The selection was honestly pretty decent – I remember records still being in stock when I first really started paying attention to music, but I took to the cassette format due to cost and all that. I was into rock and hair metal at the time, and the store carried all a person could want and more of that.

As my tastes evolved in the early 1990’s, Wal-Mart would still serve a purpose but did become outmoded. I sought more and more stuff with the dreaded “Parental Advisory” sticker, and a holy site like Wal-Mart wouldn’t sell that.

They sort of did, once. I’ll post about it someday but I have to try to dig up more info on it first.

Thankfully a music store opened in the college town just 20 minutes down the highway from me. They had no qualms about selling PA sticker stuff to minors (that was never a law, despite many peoples’ misunderstanding of it) and they’d special order stuff that wasn’t on their shelves. I made out my remaining years of high school with that and the occasional order from underground distributors and labels.

I was in the military for four years and over in Europe during that time. While it seems nice on the surface, since a lot of metal comes from Europe, here’s a reality check – the music there is still just as underground as it is here, or at least was in the late ’90’s. There were plenty of music stores where I could get cool stuff, but mail order was still the lord of the land for more underground fare. That got easier with the advent of the Internet and online ordering, speeding up the process quite a bit.

After returning to the States just before the dawn of the new millennium, things began to shift. Music stores were still in force when I got back, but the digital music revolution clearly eroded the physical distribution model. Music stores began to decline as album sales fell, though the shops were far from extinct.

I was lucky for a very long time – a very quality CD store held out for a long time. Its name was CD Warehouse, and it was an awesome place to buy music. They had a great selection, the staff were super cool, and it was easy to spend a lot of time just browsing for something with no specific purchase in mind. A lot of what still sits on my shelf today came from CD Warehouse over the past few decades.

Sadly, the changing times caught up to the store, and they closed in the late 2010’s. It seemed as though buying physical music was confined to the online retailers. I was at a point where I had too much stuff anyway, so I was only making selective purchases when I really, really wanted to have something. It seemed that the idea of collecting music was going the way of the dinosaur.

But that’s not quite what happened, is it? I wasn’t paying all that much attention to it, but all through the last decade, a once thought-dead format was surging forward in a massive way. Even before my beloved CD store died out, vinyl was again a booming market. What’s old was new again, and the vinyl resurgence has carried into the 2020’s.

While there are plenty of places to buy records, we’ve been lucky that independent shops have seen a comeback. It’s so much better to buy in a shop run by people who know and care about what they’re selling, and the vinyl comeback has been a great opportunity for that sort of business.

Of course it’s getting to be a more rocky road. Vinyl prices are high, inflation is shit and it’s getting tougher to buy music. I’ve personally cut things off entirely for a bit as I regroup financially, and I know many others who have curtailed or eliminated purchases altogether. It’s a necessary thing in the present reality, but it’s a terrible thing for those independent stores who rely on those sales. Big box stores and online monoliths can get buy without music sales, but it’s the thing keeping the good shops alive.

And that sums up the journey of buying music from 1980-whatever through to the present day. I’m sure there will be further adventures in that regard, that is, if I can ever find that elusive thing called “surplus money” again. Nothing beats hitting up the store and finding that perfect album to haul home and put on.

Metallica – Creeping Death and Jump In The Fire

On By bigbadburchIn collecting7 Comments

Today I’m going over the two Metallica singles I have in my collection, both on cassette. These are the early singles Creeping Death and Jump In The Fire. Both were released in Europe when Metallica was distributed by Music For Nations over there, I don’t think these singles ever got North America releases.

These are somewhat collectible, owing to them being Metallica releases. They aren’t all that rare and can be had without coughing up huge cash, at least for the cassettes. They do get price gouged a fair bit, but these aren’t worth a huge premium or anything.

Creeping Death

I’m going out of chronological order just because this one was sitting on top of the stack. First up is Creeping Death, from Ride The Lightning. It is absolutely one of my favorite Metallica songs. It’s one I’ll probably talk about in the future in more detail so I won’t get too much into it here, but it is a total beast of a song and is a staple in live sets, I believe it is their most played song. It really doesn’t get much better from Metallica.

The two B-sides are cover songs and are very iconic in Metallica lore. Up first is Am I Evil?, a song that has become an anthem for the originators, England’s own Diamond Head. While Diamond Head’s original did make some waves in the UK, they did not break international markets until Metallica’s cover.

The original is a fantastic tune and Metallica’s version is amazing. This might be the best cover song they ever did, and they’ve done quite a few. It was a boon to Diamond Head, who never broke huge but have had a respectable career.

The obscure picks for cover songs theme marches on with Blitzkrieg. This is a case of the song Blitzkrieg by the band Blitzkrieg. Sadly it was not also from the album Blitzkrieg, as it was a B-side to their debut single and they have never had a self-titled album.

This is also a well-executed cover and one that’s still a highlight of Metallica’s covers selection. Blitzkrieg the band have been on-again and off-again over the decades but were active as of 2019.

Jump In The Fire

The next single on the list is Jump In The Fire. This song is from the debut album Kill ‘Em All and the single was released in early 1984, roughly six months before Ride The Lightning hit shelves. This one has three tracks and repeats the program on both sides. I’ll still use A-side and B-side to denote things but I guess they aren’t technically correct terms here.

The A-side is a fantastic cut from the ferocious debut album. James Hetfield could wail back in the day and it’s on full display here. This is also one of Dave Mustaine’s contributions to the group (no shaking his immense influence).

The two B-sides promise live tracks in the form of Phantom Lord and Seek And Destroy, both also from the debut album. The thing is that both songs are fake live tracks – Metallica recorded alternate versions of the songs and added crowd noise to the recordings. Odd choice but I’m guessing capturing the band live during their first tours didn’t result in the best audio, so this was the chosen alternative. It’s fine from a curiosity standpoint but these B-sides clearly don’t push any real value.

That’s it for my Metallica cassette singles. Tomorrow I’ll wrap up Metallica week with my album ranking.

Xero – Oh Baby!

On By bigbadburchIn collecting5 Comments

Today’s single is a curiosity from the early 1980’s. This is a band that never wound up recording a proper album. They released one single, featured here today, as well as a handful of songs on compilation albums. A retrospective CD would come many years later, long after the band called it quits.

There are a number of ways to market a single for an emerging band. In the early 80’s, one such way would be to feature a guest spot from a famous rock star. It would appear from the cover that Xero have that part nailed down.

But, appearances are deceiving. Yes, Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden does have a vocal track on this single. But Bruce never sang for Xero, he did not drop by the studio and lend his vocal talents to the band.

Here’s what happened, this rather obscure tale is sourced through the Discogs page for Xero as hard info is hard to come by. The common thread between Bruce Dickinson and Xero is a band called Shots. Bruce sang for them for a bit before joining Samson in 1979. Shots recorded a few songs with Bruce, one of them being the track Lone Wolf.

At one point in Shots before they broke up, guitarist Billy Liesegang joined. It does not appear that Liesegang was in the group at the same time as Dickinson, but I can’t confirm one way or the other. Shots would break up and Liesegang formed Xero.

As Xero were preparing the release of their lone single, it would appear that the band’s manager was the one who had the idea to take the Shots recording and tack it on to the Xero single. I can’t source this definitively, but I have seen it mentioned at the Bruce Dickinson Wellbeing Network, an archive of Bruce-related news and releases. This concept that it was the manager’s idea also comes up in discussion, but again, a super hard and fast source is tough to come by. It doesn’t appear to have been Billy Liesegang’s idea, that much seems clear.

Whatever the case, Xero released the single with Lone Wolf on it. It apparently didn’t take long for Iron Maiden management to come calling in regards to the unauthorized use of Bruce Dickinson’s vocals. The track was replaced with a different song in subsequent pressings of the single.

So, with all that commotion out of the way, let’s get into the songs themselves. Bear in mind that these are not hosted by any official source and, as is often the case with YouTube, these clips may vanish without warning.

Oh Baby!

The lead single is a melodic rock affair with, uh, not the greatest production but good enough to hear what’s going on. The song seems a bit “light” given that the group have a New Wave of British Heavy Metal billing, and it’s especially light when compared to the B-side. I think the song is fine, I don’t at all mind listening to it. The single apparently moved a few copies back in the day but I don’t have solid information on that, just Internet anecdotes.

Hold On

On to the B-side and a very nice track. This is more along the lines of what I expected when I first checked this single out. It is a very straightforward song with a nice solo passage and I, like many, think maybe they should have led the single with this instead of Oh Baby. This song did appear on a comp record called Brute Force so maybe that’s why they didn’t release it as the A-side.

Lone Wolf

Here we have what is not really the band Xero, but the band Shots instead. This was one of a few tracks that Shots recorded with Bruce Dickinson and it was illicitly used on this single (again, an apparent management decision and not the band’s).

The song is pretty cool but it does stand out a bit from the other two recordings, this one is clearly a bit older than the other two songs. One can be forgiven for not thinking that Bruce is singing on this, but recall that he was still a teenager when he recorded this and hadn’t fully fleshed his voice out, something he’d do more of in Samson. After a few listens I can find him in there a bit, it’s interesting to hear him on an old recording so young.

So that’s the tale of Xero and their big single release, something that would be derailed by a pesky thing called performance rights or something like that. I don’t know what caused Xero to not get around to a full-length or to break up, again, info on them is super hard to come by and almost all of it revolves around the Bruce stuff.

Given the difficult nature of putting all this together with very few good sources, if anyone out there reads this and has any true, factual source material about this release I’d be happy to be pointed to it so I can make sure my stuff is accurate. I’m not really expecting much since few concrete leads turned up in my searches, but hey, never hurts to ask.