Get the wish list below 900 by the new year (Check back Regularly) Part II

I've decided to start a new post for December as the November one was starting to fill up. Come back for regular updates as I try and attempt to get my wantlist down to 900 releases by the years end....

30th December 2014

There is nothing I can do now. The ability to get my wantlist down to 900 items by the year end is in the hands of fate. All I can do is watch the post coming in and hope that there are enough items to finish off the seven needed to make 900. The post doesn't get delivered at my house until about noon and today each hour in the morning was spent listening for any noise at the letterbox. My wife decided to take the dog for a walk at around 11am, it felt silly sitting in for the postman just in case he was early, so I went along. On the way back the postman was making his way down the street in front of us. I was tempted to hassle him as we slowly caught up with him and consequent lost him as he turned into an industrial complex of buildings.

I needn't have bothered, as as usual there was nothing in the post except spam mail from every holiday company we have ever booked with in the last twenty years. No post again, nothing off the wantlist and only one day left, one last post. There is no way that I'm getting seven items in the morning, I have missed the target!!!

Let us see if it will be any closer tomorrow.

29th December 2014

I wasn't sure if Royal Mail posted on a boxing day or not, I still don't know whether or not they do as there was no post. Neither was there any on Saturday. The days count away and I feel helpless to even try and accomplish anything. There was some hope today as there was a record fair about 15 miles away, which produced a single compilation album called The Beggars Banquet File, but later today I also found a Cocteau Twins test pressing that I had to add to my wantlist. So the wantlist is still at 907. There was nothing in the post again today and I have two days left. It's looking like a fail for the end of the year, which is really upsetting. Maybe everything will turn up tomorrow morning, I can only wait and see

25th December 2014

No post at home yesterday, on my birthday as well. Of course there's no post on Christmas day either. So the count stays at 907, even though I visited a record store in Chesterfield yesterday...and found nothing of course. Anything bought now online will not likely be posted and received before the year end, so it's down to what will get delivered from already purchased stuffies. There is a small hope on the horizon. There is a record fair on Monday and a really nice trader chappie that I passed my wantlist to, says there might be a couple of things for me when I see him there. I will keep my fingers and anything else crossed. This is going down to the wire. Enjoy your day, I will be back.....

23rd December 2014

Every time everything looks terrible, no deliveries at home or at work, suddenly everything turns up at once. I managed to find a few awful pop compilations that once again features that persistent single Pump Up The Volume. I also had the exciting opportunity to acquire an item that wasn't on my wantlist, mostly because it's as rare as rocking horse poo found with bits of hen's teeth in it. Today I had a test pressing of Dead Can Dance's album Aion, not the UK release, but the Italian release on Contempo. The standard Italian LP is rare enough, the test pressing will obviously be even more rare.

Work is now over until the new year, so no more post from my workplace, I am now relying on post to home. This is getting so very close. Wantlist = 907, days left = 8

17th December 2014

No delivery yesterday and none today. There are quite a few items on their way but then it is Christmas and the post slows to a crawl. I have 4 work delivery days left, and 12 post to home days left and a wantlist count of 912. Again I lost one from the list as I found another compilation that was now listed as released in 1991 and so was outside my ten year inclusion (don't get me started on the fact that actually its eleven years, starting in 1980 means that the inclusion of 1990 is actually the eleventh year, it's the Roman lack of zero's and the 1st Century all over again). I need one a day, which is do-able, but with the postage issues, is quite a task. I'm not giving up though...

15th December 2014

In the post today was a UK 12" of Xmal Deutschland's Incubus Succubus II. I can't believe that I didn't have this already, but there are the odd Uk releases still to get, though they are very few in number. I have the time to do this, I don't have many delivery days left though and I just can't find the stuff to buy. I will keep looking though....wantlist down to 913

13th December 2014

Yesterday morning I had a delivery of a cassette bought through ebay. The item is the Colourbox album called Colourbox. The ebay page showed a chrome cassette and a virgin label and catalogue number. This wasn't on my wantlist and I hadn't seen it before, so I was quite excited to get my hands on it. In the post though was the standard UK cassette which I already own that looks completely different to the photo shown and has a completely different catalogue number. I also won a French 7" single of Cocteau Twins Love Easy Tears single a few days ago, then got a message from the seller saying they can't find the item.

Ebay does get on my tits. The failure rate is appalling. It doesn't matter if I get an apology, money back etc, it just grates on me that people can't get a simple thing right. That's two items I could have added, one of which would have reduce my wantlist count.

BIG ARSE!!..oh well, count still 914

11th December 2014

After 2 months on likely the slowest ships on the Atlantic ocean, a package from Canada arrived. Land mail as opposed to airmail is about half the price and for a reason, it seems to take forever to arrive. When buying from Canada it's a must as the the postage costs can be a killer.

Inside was a M/A/R/R/S - Pump Up The Volume Canadian 7" single, Modern English - After The Snow Canadian vinyl album, a pop compilation vinyl LP called On Top and finally a Canadian CD version of the soundtrack to the film Pump Up The Volume. I found out that the CD was a club version. I had noticed these club versions popping up on CD releases in a few places and wondered what they were, until my wife reminded me about the 80's and 90's Brittania music club. This was a club a person could join by agreeing to buy so many CD's a year. The CDs were slightly cheaper than the ones to be found in the high street shop. Of course the club was making money out of a guaranteed per year quota from buyers that may not have bought that many in the year. The clubs were sometimes run by record labels and the CDs were sometimes made especially for the club market and slightly different to the high street shop versions. There was even doubt over the quality of the club versions and accusations of them being of lower quality because of their guaranteed sale. See this article from around 1994 about the audio quality conspiracy.

I was always envious of the music clubs, I could never afford them at the time and just drooled over the vast selection of music, although a lot of it was pop tat.

Another good haul today and I also noticed on discogs that I had two entries in my wantlist that were obviously the same and should have been merged together. That has reduced my wantlist down to 914.

10th December 2014

Today brought me Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares US CD of A Cathedral Concert. This was in my wantlist, but then realised today that this version was released in 1992 and therefore outside my collecting criteria. This is the nature of such a fluidic and dynamic wantlist that struggles to keep up. There was another version of this album that I also had on my wantlist, but I was fortunate enough to notice this time before I bought it that it also was from 1992. At least taking that version off my wantlist reduced the count a little.

I also received today a VHS video of the alternative collection series Indie Top...As you can see it was the Indie Top Video Take Two compilation. This was obtained for the inclusion of the Wolfgang Press track Raintime. My boss at work first asked if had a video cassette player, to which my answer was "Nope". He then asked what the point of having it was, wouldn't it just have been worthwhile having the empty case?

This is the funny side of such a collection. I suppose I'm being a completest. But at some point I may find the time to convert it to digital, although I wouldn't be surprised if it ain't on youtube already. It's a peice of history and a relevant one to the collection as well. To have it and preserve it is the whole point I suppose.

Wantlist now down to 918. Wow what a difference in just a couple of days

9th December 2014

Thursday nothing, Friday nothing, then the weekend, so no post. Then yesterday and today there was much rejoicing...yeah.
Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas - Japan CD
Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll - Canadian cassette
Cocteau Twins - Tiny Dynamine/ Echoes In A Shallow Bay - Canadian CD
Cocteau Twins - Victorialand - Canadian CD
Dead Can Dance - Serpents Egg - Canadian CD
Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares - Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares - Canadian CD
M/A/R/R/S - Pump Up The Volume - Spanish 12"

There was to be a US Promo version of Pump Up The Volume, but the seller sent the wrong item. It happened yet again, instead I got the standard US 12" which I already have. I'm starting to get quite the collection of releases that are duplicated. I feel another give away coming, although not Pump Up The Volume, I don't think anyone would take it off me. I also had an item on my wantlist that isn't 4AD related (there aren't many of them).

One item had to go onto the wantlist though. I found that there is a Canadian cassette version of Pump Up The Volume. But great progress has been made. The count is now down to 921 which I am very pleased and relieved about. The downside is that there is little in the pipeline at the moment and time is quick to pass.

3rd December 2014

Another package today filled with mixed blessings. A German pop compilation album was today's delivery, a release I needed because of the inclusion of MARRS Pump Up The Volume single. The rest of the compilation is pretty dire. But it would mean another notch off the never ending wantlist. Unfortunately I also found another cassette, this time a French single called Velouria by the Pixies. One down and one back up again. So the count stays at 928 for today

There are a few things in the pipeline, but not the amount I need to be getting for the end of the year.....

2nd December 2014

At last, a time to rejoice...I had post.

A French Colourbox album on Virgin and two Various artists records, both with MARRS single Pump Up The Volume on them, both Italian. That would have meant that I had 10 of the 12 versions of the Colourbox album, until I realised that there seems to be a Canadian cassette release that I hadn't previously known about. Bum!

Oh well, three ticked off and one added back on. That takes the current tally down to 928... in the right direction at least

1st December 2014

My wife is going to need room in the spare bedroom for studying, a room full up with records, cassetttes and CDs for selling to fund my 4ad collecting habit. The problem has always been finding the time to run the sales along with everything else. The time taken, finding stock, listing it and then selling it, packaging and posting it for very little return, has been better spent recently hunting for stuff to reach the 900 milestone. The need for room for my wife and the time that I need has meant that I have reluctantly decided to stop selling. That meant a trip down to second hand record shop on Langley Mill about 7 miles away with a car full of stock selling to a guy that really doesn't need a few hundred more pop items to add to the thousands and thousands that he already had.

While at the record store, of course I had to do a bit of shopping as well, even though I got practically nothing for all the stock I had accrued. I picked up a Wolfgang Press album, then realised when I got home that I already had it. I also picked up a great christmas album by a punk band called The Yobs, a record I recommend highly, especially at this time of year, you will never sing those christmas carols the same ever again.

There was one more album I bought which was an album I loved from my childhood and one that got my mind thinking about 4AD. I always wondered why 4AD released the Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares albums, which were Bulgarian folk songs recorded decades before. I could see the connection with Lisa Gerrard from Dead Can Dance. Her vocal style borrowed from many cultures. When I was young, I saw a BBC documentary about the Condor and the wildlife living in the Andes. It became very popular and spawned a chart topping single and album of the folk music of the people's of the Andes and their panpipe music. What I didn't realise until recently, was that the music was released by the Beggars Banquet label, an independent label similar to Rough Trade that used to part own 4AD. The album was by a group of musicians going by the name of Incantation and was very popular in 1982. It was buying the album today that made me realise how it likely paved the way for 4AD to release the Bulgarian folk music after seeing the success of the South American folk music. With success from one independent label releasing unusual folk music, it wouldn't have been that unusual for 4AD to do something similar a few years later.

Wantlist count at 930

Get the wish list below 900 by the new year (Check back Regularly)

28th November 2014

One package today and at last, a release actually on the existing wantlist. It was the German vinyl release of the Modern English album After The Snow. That leaves only another 13 versions of that album left to get my hands on.

That's the wantlist down to 930. My goodness that seems like a huge ask now to get down to 900 by the year's end. The goal post most certainly keeps moving and Betty's useless, she hasn't bought a single release for me yet!! Oh well, the search goes on....

27th November 2014

At the beginning of the day, the postman came and went and I was left empty handed. But then a courier turned up later in the day with quite a large box from the US with my name on it. Inside were two CD longboxes of the Pixies albums of Doolittle and Bossanova. Longboxes have an interesting history. They were introduced to help customers moved from the large packaging of vinyl to the smaller and more expensive CD. It also helped to display CDs in vinyl display areas and because of their bigger size helped to reduce shoplifting. Here is our dog Betty demonstrating the size of the 12" longbox

Here is a wiki on the longbox.

It seems, although most CDs were sold in longboxes, most customers saw them as throw away packaging like a plastic bag and threw them in the dustbin. Now they are quite sort after.

At last some items delivered. Problem is, these two release weren't on my wantlist as I wasn't sure if they existed. So the wantlist is still stuck at 931. This is not looking promising at all!

26th November 2014

I got really excited when a small parcel landed on my desk this morning, at last maybe the count can actually go down. It was not to be. I had forgotten the DVD called Sanctuary that I had bought a few days back. It's a documentary about Lisa Gerrard, which I am excited to get, but was hoping to hammer down the wantlist even in a small capacity. The wantlist stays at 931. I'm still struggling to find anything on ebay, but have found a couple of decently priced items on Discogs.

I did listen to The Sisters Of Mercy's album Floodland last night. It is funny how time changes one's perception of music. In the late eighties I really loved that album, but got sick of the worship it got a few years later, like it was some sort of goth must have. It was good, but not that good. On this listen I noticed how an EP's worth of ideas can be over stretched out to an albums length. The first two tracks Dominion and Mother Russia are one song without even a chord change, the album title track is used twice, the main single This Corrosion is mixed out about twice as long as it should have been and 1959 looks like a bolted on afterthought because there was 5 minutes left to make a full labum's worth. The album is ok and it did inspire a lot bands to go into territory they had not gone before, but nearly 30 years later it made little impact on me again. Not a patch on Clan of Xymox's Medusa.

25th November 2014

Nothing was delivered yesterday and nothing came today either. I'm running out of stuff that I can find on ebay again, it's as though I was just lucky the last couple of weeks and now the luck has dried out. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of items from my wantlist that are on ebay, they're just not reasonably priced especially when adding the postage on top.

I then noticed this morning that the album Sleeps With The Fishes by Pieter Nooten and Michael Brook has a Spanish vinyl version, a Japanese CD version and another UK version not previously listed. Therefore my wantlist has gone up, while my achievements have flatlined. Time is running out!

Wantlist = 931

22nd November 2014

Visited a small record fair this morning about ten miles from home. I was there to meet a vendor I had met at another record fair a month ago and said he may have some 4ad stock for me and would bring it with him. I emailed him my wantlist a couple of weeks ago and went to the fair with a smattering of hope. No luck once again though, he had been busy at work through the week (he's only a weekend music trader) and didn't have time before going to the fair to go through the huge build up of stock that he struggles to find his way through. Still, there's some hope that he still actually might have some interesting stock at some point for me in the future.

There were only about five vendors there, of which only one other had anything remotely alternative. I would have come away empty handed after two hours if it hadn't have been for finding a specially remastered version of The Sisters Of Mercy's Floodland album that shouted at me to take home. I think that album will be making the album listening night this coming Tuesday.

At least the wantlist count has stayed at 928 for a day, seeing as I haven't found anything as yet to add to it, thankfully.

21st November 2014

Two parcels have been delivered today. The first one is a magazine called Debut from 1984 in which each edition came with a a compilation LP included. The magazine is 12" x 12" and looks like a gatefold album with a thick booklet in the middle. The reason this magazine is the collecting list is because of the inclusion of a Colourbox track called Fast Dump (very likely a song about an emergency poo).

The second package was a US pressing of the Modern English album Ricochet Days also from 1984. That has moved my wantlist count down to....928. That would have been 2 down, except that the German compilation called Formel Eins Space Hits I found out today, has a cassette version not currently in the list. 2 down and then 1 up, I'm still yo-yo-ing. Oh well, there's a local record fair on tomorrow, let's see what that brings

20th November 2014

A couple of days ago I discovered a copy of Ultra Vivid Scene's 12" single of Mercy Seat on ebay. There's a  version with a green sleeve with a circular hole cut from the centre of the sleeve and another sleeve of the same release that has no hole cut but in grey. I have both of these, but the photo on ebay looked like a version that should not have existed, a green sleeve with no hole cut. I asked the vendor what colour the sleeve was, just in case the camera shot was not colour accurate (which can happen) and the answer came back a resounding GREEN. I had little to lose, it was only selling for a couple of pounds, so the risk was worth taking....

It wasn't green, it was grey, of course. Even my photo of it (above) comes out green. Oh well.
So you would think that my want list would be at the same number, but no, it's gone up by one. Today's count is 929 because of a fellow collector called berndhugo who has recently acquired Birthday Party's Junkyard album on a UK cassette, which many believed didn't exist. Berndhugo was good enough to send me some pictures and I added it to discogs, hence the extra release.

Let us see what tomorrow brings....humph!

19th November 2014

Dragged myself into work this morning, still feeling a little spaced out, that's man flu for you, nastiest disease in the world. I actually dropped three from my wish list today, as one release on discogs was added incorrectly and so was deleted, WooHoo

Waiting for at work was the Birthday Party album Junkyard, this time the New Zealand vinyl version and also a test pressing of Wolfgang Press' single King Of Soul.

Count is now down to 928. Some more beauties to get to me yet, but the purchases are starting to dry up. I need to find some more releases and pretty quick


17th November 2014

In typical fashion, when everything I purchase I have delivered to work, I haven't been into work today because I'm chocked up to the eyeballs with a cold. So no work, no pick up of deliveries and nothing to add to this blog as promised. Fate has a funny sense of humour doesn't it? Chances are, there are deliveries on my desk at work that I can't tell you about yet. Between the running nose, sneezes, coughs headache and sore throat, is a desperation to get back to work. There are some lovely purchases making it's way to me, let's just hope I can shake the sweats and get back to work....watch this space....a bit longer


14th November 2014

As promised, I'm here again. Today has been a typical day. I started of with a want list of 928 and although I have had a delivery today...the count now is....931. Today's post revealed a Birthday Party CD of the album Prayers On Fire.

All looked good. It looked like the UK release with the catalogue number CAD 104 CD, bought from ebay. The only give away that it wasn't the original 1988 release, was the matrix number near the centre of the CD itself that has GAD104CD on it. The GAD code was used by 4AD to re-release lots of albums in the 90's with. So any release with a GAD code is not an original. Buyers beware. Darn it! This morning I also found another three items not on my list and I had to reluctantly add them. It almost feels painful to find yet another release that I don't have listed in my wish list. Oh well, lets see what Monday brings

Throwing Muses - Dizzy

I will try and show all the versions of a release when I complete collecting them. I've decided to make an executive decision though and not hold out for matrices variations and test pressings. If I have or notice any of these, I think I will add them, but as we saw with the Bauhaus - Dark Entries, it gets to a point with matrix variations where you wonder if the development of yet more discoveries mean that collecting it never ends.

Now I have an awful confession to make. While I find most bands that signed to 4AD in the first decade of its existence brilliant, interesting, beautiful, inspiring and many other heart or mind activating words, throwing muses always left me a little cold. I have lived through a period of explosion in music and while still listening to new music in the late eighties and early nineties and also trying to catch up on three decades of already released music by that time, I made a conscious effort to not be swamped with an impossible task of listening to everything. I learned very early on in my musical exploration that some music reveals its greatest depth and life after tens of hours of repeated listening. Some music just gets better and better the more you listen to it. This means that the battle of getting the real meat out of a piece of music takes so much time that new discoveries have to be limited or picked carefully first from the ocean of music available. 4AD was always a pretty good bet for me, the label gave a kind of partial guarantee of satisfaction.

My introduction to 4AD was mostly through the Lonely Is An Eyesore compilation in 1987. On that compilation was a track by Throwing Muses called Counting Backwards. From all the amazing music on that album, the Throwing Muses track along with the Wolfgang Press and one of the Dead Can Dance tracks left me a little unsure as to whether I liked them or not. The Dead Can Dance and Wolfgang Press tracks just grew on me the more I listened to the compilation. The Throwing Muses track however, just didn't do anything for me to the point that I started to get annoyed by it getting in the way of the rest of the great songs. Because of that track, I never gave Throwing Muses a chance really.

Listening to Dizzy now, The Throwing Muses single from 1989, it still reminds me strongly of that track from the Lonely As An Eyesore compilation and still leaves me cold. Now I know.....this is sacriledges, I'm dissing a band from the sacred 4AD vaults. But this is only my personal opinion and I'm sure there are many, many 4AD fans that absolutely love Throwing Muses. A 4AD collection wouldn't be very complete if I decided to leave a band's releases out just because I didn't get their music.

So for those that do like the Throwing Muses 1989 single Dizzy, here is the complete list (so far) of all the versions of the single

(1) UK 12"
(2) US 12" Promo
(3) UK 10" Gatefold
(4) UK 7"
(5) US CD Promo
(6) UK CD

As far as I know, all these releases were all released in 1989.

(1) UK 12" - 4AD - BAD903

(2) US 12" Promo - Sire - PRO-A-3395

This US promo only sleeve used part of the sleeve design from both the Hunkpapa album and part of which can be faintly seen in the UK singles sleeves. Dizzy wasn't released to the general public as a single in the US, so I assume that the promo 12" and the US promo CD were used to promote the Hunkpapa album, which had the Dizzy single included.

(3) UK 10" - 4AD - BADD903 - Limited to 5000 copies

(4) UK 7" - 4AD - AD903

(5) US CD Promo - Sire - PRO-CD-3618

This CD Promo from the US has a grey back sleeve, but no front sleeve, with the single title and release code printed.

(6) UK CD - 4AD - BAD903CD

The full details of all these releases can be found Here

Listen Here

This is all I have on this release so far and, as far as I know, is everything released for this single. If I find anything else, I promise to add it to this page. There will no doubt be a test pressing for each vinyl release, but these will be hard to come by

Thanks for reading as always