Tags Matching: Fifteen

Storytime With m0nster: Choice of a New Generation.

By morgado | Published 04/08/2011

He’s baaaaaaaaaack…

Yes, another Fifteen record is for sale on the ‘bay (from seller adversewind), which means it’s time for another edition of Story Time With m0nster…

There’s no ado needed. Ladies, and gentlemen: m0nster_one.

as with my inaugural Fifteen entry, ‘Choice of a New Generation’ is one of my favorite pop-punk records of all time. released in 1993, it marks Fifteen’s 2nd (and final) LP on Lookout before departing for the short-lived Grass Records in 1994. ‘Choice’ is also notable for the disappearance of founding member and bassist, Jack Curran and the addition of the late Lucky Dog to the line-up.

i started touring with Fifteen when they were out supporting ‘Choice’ and interestingly enough, we didn’t have any copies of this LP to sell on the road. trying to get them from Lookout was totally impossible for some reason, so we’d buy whatever copies we could find from record stores and then resell them at shows for the same price. i swear, at the time, it probably made some kind of sense.

while exact pressing info will forever remain a mystery due to the completely nonexistent bookkeeping practices over at Lookout, i can say that it’s long out of print. Fifteen (as well as bands like Screeching Weasel, Avail, Green Day and Operation Ivy) pulled their back catalog from Lookout over unpaid royalties in the late 90′s and early 2000′s. as far as variations, i’ve never seen a copy on anything other than black vinyl and all of the numbering and etchings on the copies i’ve seen match the test press that i have.

aside from the music, my favorite thing about the ‘Choice’ LP is the ‘Guns n Roses’ shirt that Jeff Ott is wearing on the cover. on a dare, Jeff wore that shirt every single day for over two years. his girlfriend burned it while he was sleeping, forcing Jeff to go shirtless for most of the ‘Choice’ tour.

again, at the time, it probably made some kind of sense.

Storytime With m0nster: Extra Medium.

By morgado | Published 03/17/2011

I’m not going to be the one talking about this record being auctioned off by seller batfuk today. Instead, ex-porn star assisting, 108/Converge merch selling, Fruit Stripe Gum fortune owning, tranny fighting, full time Spring Breaking, and all around legendary legend m0nster_one will be handling this one, in a hopefully recurring segment that those of you who read the B9 board in the late 00′s will probably recognize, despite it’s history and pressing info oriented, less exotic form…

Ladies and gentlemen, storytime with m0nster:

i toured with Fifteen from 1993-1996 and spent a majority of that time living in Northern California with the various members of the band when we weren’t out on the road. i was actually there during the recording of this album in early 1995, assisted with the layout for the inserts and assembled countless copies of the LP when the vinyl arrived. nostalgia aside, this is a really interesting version of the ‘Extra Medium Kickball Star’ LP to see up on eBay for a number of reasons. the first being that this is ‘Rebel Alliance Records’ (Fifteen’s DIY label) only release. the intentions of everyone involved were admirable, but the reality of being a full-time touring band, assembling thousands of records and trying to keep up with mailorders didn’t end up being too practical. second, to the best of my recollection, there were only about 1000 of these pressed. while nobody kept track of how many were sold, i do know that a few hundred of these LP’s got damaged and wound up being used for BB gun target practice in our backyard, so i’d guess there are only about 600-700 of them floating around out there. third, doing the covers for these wound up being a total disaster. in the DIY spirit, we ordered blank LP jackets and made giant rubber stamps that we were going to use to put the design on the cover. no, seriously. we did about 50 of them before realizing that the ink was just sitting on top of the jackets and not drying. we ended up leaving them out in the sun for a few days until the ink finally hardened. it was a horrible mess and the prospect of doing 1000 records this way was not appealing in the least. the 2nd version of the cover involved having an 11″x11″ photocopy of the rubber stamp design made at Kinko’s and us attempting to glue them to the LP jackets. while substantially less messy and time consuming, it was still a failure. the blank LP covers had a coating on them that made it almost impossible for the glue and paper to stick together. once the glue dried, the covers would fall right off. as a last resort, we sent out the jackets to have them printed, which is what you see pictured in this eBay auction. again, no idea on how many of these are out there, but it’s easily below 500 or so. Sub-City re-released this LP a few years later and i’m assuming it is much easier to find. if you’re a die-hard Fifteen/Crimpshrine/Jeff Ott collector, it’d be a solid addition to your collection.

Fifteen Test.

By morgado | Published 02/08/2011

I got really psyched when I found this Fifteen test press up for sale from alwaysfunandgames, because I happen to be friends with one of the band’s ex-roadies. So I figured I’d hit him up, get a good story to go with this record…

I have no idea what that record is. I’ve never heard of it… they got back together in the late 90s and I never bothered to listen to anything they recorded.

Oh well. It was worth a shot.

More Vinyl BIN’s.

By morgado | Published 12/09/2010

Another batch of “VIN’s” from rasputin_music_rarities, and I once again remind you that a. these prices are totally random, and b. shipping is $9.55 for priority mail, be it ep or lp. But like I said before… holiday season. Wishing people well. Doing nice things, like showcasing auctions from sellers without a clue…

I know I’m trying to be nice by posting these, but if you’re gonna try to get that a BIN like that on a record like Minor Threat’s IME ep, shouldn’t you actually have more information on the record up than that? Maybe a picture of the actual vinyl? Especially when the cover has a giant crease down the middle?