When I was in high school around ”92-’93 I travelled to Boston with some older, cooler acquaintances to see some bands play at the Rat. I don’t remember who ws playing. I’m guessing Sick of it All or Sheer Terror? Anyway, what I do remember is before the show we went to visit some friends of my friends who lived in the dorms at Emerson college. They prepared me before the visit by explaining that these were two of the coolest kids in the Boston sXe hardcore scene and that they knew everybody who was anybody. I was nervous as I, of course, didn’t want to seem like an inexperienced hardcore dweeb, which is exactly what I was. The two things I remember from this visit are 1.) They had bunk beds and the smallest room in the entire world. I had fought for years to have my own free-standing bed and my own room and this was not how I thought cool college kids would be living and I was horrified to think that’s what my future held, and 2.) one of the kids proudly pulled out a 7″ record box and inside was like 27 copies of the same record: the Turning Point s/t 7″ on Hi-Impact from 1989. He explained to us that while he was still collecting other records, he had decided that he would never find a better record than the Turning Point 7″ and therefore he had decided to focus his financial energy on accumulating as many copies of the first pressing of the record as possible. Obviously I nodded approvingly in order to assure everyone I was on the same page as to how cool this was, but in my head I was thinking “Is this…selfish? What if he actually gets all of them and no one else has one? How much will this cost? Is he rich? If I got a copy and sold it to him, would he be my friend?” Shortly after this happened I told the story to someone working at record store and they told me, “That band sucks.” I decided that it was probably easier to think Turning Point sucked and not have to worry about not having that record than to worry about trying to figure out how to find and afford a copy. Of course I still wanted one, but I also wanted to tell people that I was “friends with a guy who has like, almost every single copy!” I kept telling the story, but switched the tone to, “Yeah, he’s trying to collect EVERY copy. So dumb, right?” I wasn’t really a record collector yet.
As I’ve mentioned plenty of times in the short history of this blog, Johan Kugelberg’s Top 100 DIY records list from Ugly Things magazine was a huge TURNING POINT for me as a music fan and collector. Not only did I learn so much from hunting down the records on that list but it led me into dozens of new directions musically and aesthetically when it came to looking for new things to check out. One record that isn’t on that list but absolutely could have come in at #101 is the sole release by UK band First Church of Napoleon Solo, the “Debbydid” 7″ on the Off the Beaten Track label from 1984. Every copy of this record (as far as I can tell) has a hand-painted sleeve using what looks like some kind of ink block or possibly a very poorly made stencil and a single printed title sticker on the opposite side. I found my first copy on eBay after having a “saved search” for years. I think I found another one after seeing it on a set sale list. It wasn’t in the Discogs database for years and when it finally appeared copies popped up now and then for usually less than £10. And I bought ALL of them. And each time I did I thought of the Turning Point guy. The main difference was, as far as I could tell no one seemed to be looking for this 7″ except for me. For the longest time I’ve bought cheap copies of random obscure records that I like just to give away to friends or trade, but up until about a year ago I never parted with even ONE copy of this record. I even turned down a few people who offered to buy one from me. I can rationalize that I’ve kept them all because every cover is unique and blah blah blah but….c’mon. Anyway, I have a whole stack of ’em. none are for sale, and here’s the Mutant Sounds guys telling you what it sounds like followed by a bunch of the covers from my collection. I have no idea how many were pressed, I don’t know if these guys did anything else aside from one song on a Belgian cassette compilation from 1983 under a different name……Enjoy!
