This is another Saves The Day album that has no pressing info. It was pressed by Vagrant Records and finally went OOP just about a year ago, no more than two years ago, which is a really long time for a Saves The Day album. Aside from their two most recent albums, this is the cheapest of Saves The Day’s albums on ebay.
Just to show how many times this album has been re-pressed, I have a copy from the first and seventh pressings. The seventh pressing, which is the most recent, was released in 2022 and fell into Vagrant’s 10” plague. Lots of speculation as to why the label opted to go the 10” route, with my personal opinion for the reason being so they could skip the long lines and turnaround times at multiple pressing plants around the world.
Vagrant has definitely milked this album in recent years after letting it lay dormant in OOP vinyl purgatory for a decade. After the first press, which was released the same year the album was, 2001, the second press didn’t happen until 2011, which fell victim to Cobraside and their shady business practices. Thankfully Vagrant learned their lesson and has not worked with them since 2016. You can read more about the origins of Cobraside debacle from my personal experience here.
Pressing info for most of the pressings is either nonexistent or incomplete at best. I will preface this by saying I did not pay vigilant attention to most of the re-pressings because I do not own most of them. The first pressing, as aforementioned, was only done on black vinyl limited to an unknown amount. The second pressing, released in 2011 and part of Cobraside’s catalog, is the first to feature variants, five in total; 200 on yellow marble, 300 on clear blue, 600 on magenta and an unknown amount on black and clear green respectively. The yellow marble was a Smartpunk exclusive, back before closed up shop as an online store and re-emerged with a physical indie record store in Orlando, Florida that also has an online presence. Clear blue was a $hit Radio Cast exclusive and magenta was a $hit Topic exclusive. No idea where you could the black and clear green variants.
The third pressing, released in 2013, was also part of Cobraside’s catalog, and likely after facing backlash from their previous endeavors, they did not release any pressing info. Which is still shady in the long run as they continued to release variants. The third pressing was done on various marbled variants; blue, green, purple and grey respectively. For the fourth pressing, which apparently was released in 2013 as well; but who knows because this is also a Cobraside vampire, was done on clear vinyl limited to an unknown amount.
The fifth pressing, released in 2016, was still under Cobraside’s grip, was done on only one variant, which they farmed out to Newbury Comics as the lone exclusive retailer. So you can clearly see a pattern of Cobraside learning their lesson(s) by attempting to avoid as much backlasj as possible while still raking in as much money as possible. For this final Cobraside run they did only 400 copies on white.
Thankfully the sixth pressing was solely done by Vagrant. Though it was part of their 20th anniversary celebration. See a theme here? For whatever reason Vagrant only pressed on 900 copies. You think they’d do an even thousand. But at least they opted for 180 gram black vinyl.
So here we sit. At the seventh variant. Only some of the pressing info has been released. There is a Newbury Comics exclusive, which is limited to 750 copies on black/canary yellow vinyl. That is the official description on numbers from Newbury’s website. However, the hype sticker affixed to this variant has the color listed as custard & black vinyl. Not sure what happened here with the discrepancy. Especially since the finished product turned out neither canary yellow nor custard. And for the record (no pun intended) the Newbury exclusive is a swirl variant.
The only other variant to have pressing info released may have some confusion to it and be misleading. There may or may not be a UK/Euro variant, which just so happens to possibly be the same variant that is being sold via Vagrant’s official web store. The variant/color being sold in the UK and Europe is being distributed by Hassle Records, who say it’s limited to 1,000 copies on yellow/red splatter. And herein lies the confusion, thanks to both labels.
Vagrant only list their supposed exclusive variant as being on “heavy splatter.” Looking past my disdain for the term “heavy” when it comes to splatter variants, why can’t the label simply state the colors of the splatter. They have a mock up associated with their supposed exclusive variant, which happens to be a clear base with yellow and red splatter. Which also happens to be the same mock up that Hassle Records uses.
So is there actually a UK/Euro exclusive variant, or is the yellow/red splatter / “heavy” splatter variant one and the same? Without confirmation, it obviously leads to speculation. The different terminology used doesn’t help. And the fact Vagrant doesn’t list any pressing info for their supposed exclusive variant leads you to believe what is being sold by Hassle Records to be different to what Vagrant is selling in their web store. My guess, and this is only an educated guess on my part, is that Hassle Records received 1,000 copies of the splatter variant to sell. Which means there are obviously more than 1,000 total copies of the splatter variant floating around out there.
If that wasn’t enough, you can thank Discogs for creating their own confusion. That is the beauty of a user submitted database. One hand doesn’t necessarily know what the other is doing, despite the fact one should not contradict the other based on the databases’ own rules. Yet here we are.
The overall release page on Discogs say the seventh pressing has a variant on brown vinyl, yet there is no listing for a brown variant. There is however, a listing for a yellow w/ brown smoke variant. And without confirmation from the label, who ultimately hold all the answers, nobody will ever truly know.
To provide come clarity to this situation, who I own is likely the “brown” / “yellow w/ brown smoke” variant. Judge for yourself based on the photo gallery below. My own copy is definitely yellow; especially the first disc. But there is clearly zero brown smoke in it. The second disc however, is much darker by comparison. But is there any brown smoke? I would say no. If anything this variant is simply a yellow smoke variant in my opinion. Anything beyond that on lead to even more confusion. Because my copy clearly has tow drastically different discs; one is almost translucent with green wispy smoke elements, while the other is more opaque than translucent with elements of green and red wispy smoke.
To lend some more confusion and clarification to this variant; Discogs lists it as the indie store exclusive variant, but I received this variant and did NOT buy this from an indie record store. I bought it from Target of all places. But Target has most of their media orders fulfilled by an outside company; the largest media distributor of media in this country (maybe even the world). If buy a record and your package is shipped from Kentucky; it was fulfilled by this distributor despite whatever retailer you paid your money to.
This not the first time I received a supposed indie store exclusive variant when ordering from somewhere other than an indie record store. The common denominator in this circumstance is the distributor, which is likely the distributor who ships stock to indie record stores round the country when they place an order for their particular store(s). so for whatever reason, either shadiness or sitting on unsold/unallocated stock, they fulfill some and/or all outside orders with the supposed indie store exclusive variant.
Once again, pretty much everything would be easily clarified by Vagrant themselves. But communicating with them is like pulling teeth. I’ve rarely, if ever received a response from them, for whatever reason(s).
As I stated paragraphs ago, the seventh pressing was done as a double 10”. Which comes housed in a gatefold jacket. A dubious honor simply because Vagrant decided to press a double disc record. The gatefold has more substance than the one used for the Sound The Alarm double 10” pressing, which seemed like an afterthought in my opinion. The gatefold for Stay What You Are features elements from the insert included with all the single LP pressings. The insert included with it however, is a different story. One side has the credits printed on it, which mirrors the insert from the single LP pressings. The reverse side of the double 10” insert however, features literally scaled down pictures of the cover art and what is featured on the back of the jacket. So the insert for the double 10” pressing is an unnecessary afterthought. The jacket does have some embossed letters for whatever its worth.
Retail price on the seventh pressing, the double 10” pressing, is around $35. It’s definitely overpriced all things considered. But sadly that is the world we live in post pandemic. Unfortunately the bubble won’t seem to burst on vinyl. And I for one am being priced out of stuff. Not because I don’t have the money per say, but because I simply refuse to pay $50 for a double LP of a live recording money grab to round out an otherwise complete collection. Though sadly, there were 1,000 or so other idiots/flippers who disagreed. For the record (no pun intended) I paid under $20 for the seventh pressing.
Stitches and Grooves 