Today is Thanksgiving here in the States, and I remain thankful that long-out-of-print records from punk's and hardcore's past continue to get reissued. The number of reissue labels, be they Radio Raheem, Numero Group, Trust, or Supreme Echo (to name four of my favs), releasing high quality versions of classics from the 70s, 80s, and 90s just blows my mind, even though it makes sense that once some of us got some bread, we definitely would want to bring the likes of SSD back to life for a new generation.
There were a lot less of these back in the 90s; the scene just wasn't nearly as big back then. You could track down fanclub pressings on vinyl, which comparatively cost an arm and leg next to new releases. Or you could beg your local store to let you dig around in the back room. I remember pulling out a $100 bill, putting in a shopowner's hand at one point in my late teens, and saying, "I'm going to spend this somewhere; why don't you let me do it here on the really good records." It's how I got my Flipper 7"s, the Misfits LPs I later traded towards a car, the Minor Threat first press that a realtor tried to steal from me.
Collections on CD, while a great way to get everything together all at once, were pretty rare. So when I came across this for $15 back in 1997, I didn't care about the provenance. I just knew that most, if not all of this, was deep out of print, and even if I found original copies, I wasn't going to be able to afford 'em. It was an easy spend to pick up a compilation of:
- Neos - "Hassibah Gets The Martian Brain Squeeze"
- The Queer Pills - "The Depraved"
- The Clitboys - "We Don't Play The Game"
- Sick Pleasure - "Sick Pleasure"
- Necros - "I.Q. 32"
- The Fartz - "Because This Fucking World Stinks"
- United Mutation - "Fugitive Family"
- Really Red - "New Strings For Old Puppets"
...and I never regretted buying this. Alternative Tentacles would reissue Really Red's complete discography in 2015, and cover the Fartz' pre-reunion catalog in 1998. Supreme Echo's release of Neos recordings in 2021 was probably the best reissue I bought that year; same goes for Radio Raheem's reissue of United Mutation the previous year. As for the Clitboys, Necros, Sick Pleasure, and Queer Pills 7"s: they've yet to get legit reissues, 28+ years on. In each case, it feels like historical malpractice not to have done something by now, even if it's a simple Bandcamp lossless release. It's no different than letting a Phil Ochs recording, a Leadbelly session, a Mahalia Jackson live set be lost to the ages through indifference.
One day, I'll put out Volume 2. Swear to god.
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