More benefits from the vinyl revival

While hanging around Montreal the last few days, I took a moment to leaf through the latest edition of Canadian music paper Exclaim! In this month’s Need to Know section is an article, “Back in Black: The Rebirth of Vinyl,” discussing the vinyl renaissance in North America I mentioned on here recently.

One of the main benefits of this, at least for someone like me who got into vinyl in the last few years, is that a number of record labels (indies and majors) and artists are re-issuing old, now out-of-print (OOP) records that fans might have missed out on previously.

Go into any record store and you will find a plethora of brand new re-issues among the burgeoning supply of new releases on vinyl.

Do you rue the fact you weren’t even born when The Clash released London Calling? Well, you can at least re-live the magic of putting the landmark double-LP on the turntable for the first time via a sparkling virgin 180-gram vinyl re-issue. Did you get into Nick Drake after you discovered Elliott Smith? Have no fear, Pink Moon is widely available these days via re-issue. Are you tired of playing your dad’s beat-up copy of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon? Don’t worry, you can pick up a copy of the 3oth anniversary deluxe edition at most record stores.

This leads me to a piece of news I came across today that I’m very excited about. Blackball Records, owned and operated by former Jawbreaker drummer Adam Pfahler, recently announced that it will be re-issuing Jawbreaker’s first album, Unfun, on vinyl to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the original release. This will be the first time the record’s been available on vinyl since 1992!

Now, I should point out that Jawbreaker is one of my favourite bands of all time and certainly one of the more influential punk bands in my life. Blake Schwartzenbach’s lyrics spoke to a confused but intellectually curious teenager in a way that many others didn’t. The band’s roots in hardcore punk were tempered by pop sensibilities that made the music accessible to many teenage punks who didn’t quite get into the relentless aural assault of Black Flag.

Indeed, Jawbreaker was the route for me into older strains of punk rock that neither eschewed nor revolted against melodies and pop hooks – bands such as the Buzzcocks, X and The Replacements (indeed, Blake reminds me a lot of Paul Westerberg).

Sadly, Jawbreaker was similarly influential for many people roughly around my age, meaning that tracking down their old OOP LPs via Ebay can be cost prohibitive to all but those of us who lived up to the intro of Lagwagon’s “Bye For Now” and became doctors or lawyers.

In recent years there has been a re-issue, via Blackball, of the band’s final album, Dear You (originally released by Geffen Records in 1995), and a limited re-pressing of their penultimate album, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, although it is nearly impossible to find at a reasonable price these days. The first two full lengths, Unfun and Bivouac, typically cost a fortune used, if you can find them.

The prospect of getting my hands on a new copy of Unfun, and a remastered version at that (the original recording released was poor, at best), has me salivating impatiently. March 10 can’t come soon enough.