Piebald -A Christmas (Seven Inch) Adventure 7″

Piebald has been “broken up” for close to 10 years now. They’ve reunited a few times to play some one off shows and tour back in 2016. But for the most part they haven’t released new material since 2007’s Accidental Gentlemen. That is until now.

But it’s still not what you’re hoping for, thinking of, or expecting. It’s not quite straight up new Piebald songs. It’s a Christmas themed release. And while yes, there are original tunes on this 7”, it’s just not the same.

A Christmas (Seven Inch) Adventure is the title for this three song EP. It was pressed on two variants; silver limited to 300 copies and red limited to 700 copies. An odd choice to make the painfully obvious Christmas color the least rare of the two, but whatever. All copies come with the 7” in a printed dust sleeve, which has the lyrics printed on it. Instead of a traditional jacket, a fold out sleeve is utilized, which has a note from the band printed on the inside. On the back of the sleeve there is a space for each copy to be numbered, but its left blank for whatever reason. Seems like an oversight on the label’s (Photo Finish Records) part. No download card/code is included, which is lame, especially considering the cost of this 7”.

Retail price on this is $12 before shipping. And for the longest time there was no media mail option available on it until I brought it up to Hello Merch (the only place selling this). I believe the cheapest shipping option was around $7 before they offered media mail for $4 and change. This was the only 7” they were selling where media mail wasn’t an option, so it was an obvious glitch on their part. I bought this with another record, and by adding this 7” to that order the shipping rate did not go up. Would I have liked to buy this for less? Absolutely. But I doubt I’d ever buy anything else from Hello Merch (this was my first ever order with them), so I felt like this was the optimal time to buy it. Even if they slash prices on it by 50% in the future, I’d still pay over $10 for it. In the end $1 and change is not the end of the world.

 

Fakers – Personality Voices 7″

After Piebald broke up Travis Shettel kept himself busy. First he started his solo project, TS And The Past Haunts, which he released one EP and one full length album with. From there he formed a new band; Fakers. Now based in Los Angeles, Travis has enjoyed a fruitful post Piebald career. Piebald has done a reunion tour of sorts, but there has been no mention of the band fully getting back together to record new material. To date Fakers has released two EPs, Personality Voices and Sound The Alarmists, with only one of them seeing a physical release.

Personality Voices is a four song EP but the physical release of it, done as a 7″, only had room for two of the four songs, thanks in large part to the final track being four and half minutes long. So the first two songs off the EP made it on the 7″. “$600” is on the a-side while “Gold Room” is on the b-side. If you like Piebald you will dig Fakers. They’re a bit wacky, but it has Travis on vocals and their sound is not a huge departure from Piebald. Along with Travis, Fakers also features Cameron Dmytryk of Vanaprasta/Sun Drug, Benjamin Heywood of Summer Darling and brothers Joey and Andy Siara of The Henry Clay People.

The 7″ was released by Chain Letter Collective (run by band member Benjamin Heywood and his wife) in 2015, and it’s the labels first release. It was limited to 300 copies, all on black vinyl and all hand numbered. The band’s bandcamp page has incorrect info, or at least inaccurate info. Their bandcamp page says “edition of 230,” which is likely how many copies were available via bandcamp. It’s quite obvious there are 300 copies based on the hand numbering.

The numbering is done on the white paper dust sleeve rather than on the record’s sleeve like most records have. Not a big deal, it’s just odd. It just makes it so you have to keep that original dust sleeve no matter how dingy it gets over time. The record comes in a half fold sleeve printed o glossy paper. It’s not thin paper like you’d find with a printer, but it’s not quite card stock either. The 7″ is very affordable, around $5 before shipping. Oddly, there are several places to buy the 7″ from, all run/shipped by the label, but all with different shipping charges. If you want the cheapest route, buy it from the band’s bandcamp page and you’ll save $1 on shipping.

There may or may not be multiple pressings for this 7″. I’m only basing that on the fact that all the pictures I’ve seen on the 7″ has the hand numbering done in gold ink, likely done with a felt tip pen. While the copy I bought has the numbering in black ink done with a ballpoint pen.

Piebald – Accidental Gentlemen

More Piebald on vinyl is a good thing, but the bad thing about it is that Shit Radio Cast released it. If you read this blog enough you know my opinion on SRC. Piebald’s last album before breaking up, Accidental Gentlemen, was released by SRC on their “label” SRCvinyl. There were 500 copies pressed on gold vinyl. It comes housed in a standard jacket with a glossy finish. Also included is an insert that has the lyrics printed on one side with the liner notes/credits printed on the opposite. At this point every single Piebald album and EP has been released on vinyl,

Accidental Gentlemen was released at the same time as All Ears, All Eyes, All The Time. Both were licensed from Side One Dummy Records. I would have much rather preferred they pressed these two Piebald albums themselves instead of licensing them out to SRCvinyl. Or at the very least license them out to any other label/”label.” Side One would have charged far less these two albums than SRC and would still manage to keep the same quality in the releases.

Given the problems with the last batch of SRCvinyl releases (Far albums) they did a better job with these two Piebald albums. There are no mastering issues and no problems relating to the color/shade of vinyl nor the weight of the records. The only drawback is the cost, which was mentioned earlier. SRC charged $18 for Accidental Gentlemen, a single LP on regular weight vinyl. Considering a lot of double LP’s released these days cost around $20, charging $18 for a single LP regardless of whether it’s licensed or not, is inexcusable. Luckly I found a distro that carried this record, and had a sale going on to boot, so it was a win win for me. I didn’t have to give my money directly to Shit Radio Cast and I was able to pick up a record by one of my favorite bands for cheaper than what it cost from SRC.

 

Piebald – All Ears All Eyes All The Time

More Piebald on vinyl is a good thing, but the bad thing about it is that Shit Radio Cast released it. If you read this blog enough you know my opinion on SRC. Piebald’s second to last album before breaking up, All Ears, All Eyes, All The Time, was released by SRC on their “label” SRCvinyl. There were 500 copies pressed on coke bottle clear vinyl. It comes housed in a standard jacket with a matte finish. Also included is an insert that has the lyrics printed on one side with the liner notes/credits printed on the opposite.

All Ears, All Eyes, All The Time  was released at the same time as Accidental Gentlemen. Both were licensed from Side One Dummy Records. I would have much rather preferred they pressed these two Piebald albums themselves instead of licensing them out to SRCvinyl. Or at the very least license them out to any other label/”label.” Side One would have charged far less these two albums than SRC and would still manage to keep the same quality in the releases.

Given the problems with the last batch of SRCvinyl releases (Far albums) they did a better job with these two Piebald albums. There are no mastering issues and no problems relating to the color/shade of vinyl nor the weight of the records. The only drawback is the cost, which was mentioned earlier. SRC charged $18 for All Ears, All Eyes, All The Time, a single LP on regular weight vinyl. Considering a lot of double LP’s released these days cost around $20, charging $18 for a single LP regardless of whether it’s licensed or not, is inexcusable. Luckly I found a distro that carried this record, and had a sale going on to boot, so it was a win win for me. I didn’t have to give my money directly to Shit Radio Cast and I was able to pick up a record by one of my favorite bands for cheaper than what it cost from SRC.

 

V/A – Rise 200

To commemorate their 200^th release, Rise Records released a vinyl box set (a CD version was also released) featuring songs spanning their entire history. A song from every album in their entire catalog is not featured however, as only 50 songs are on the compilation. The 5-LP box set comes in a slip lid box, with each record being housed in a card stock dust sleeve. All of the dust sleeves are exactly the same and feature the logo artwork used on the box set lid on both side of the sleeve. An insert is included as well, which also features the Rise Records logo on one side with the compilation’s track listing on the other side.

There were two variants for this, clear vinyl limited to 200 copies and black vinyl limited to 800 copies. Rise was charging $50 before shipping, (shipping was expensive) for the box set, but you could get it for as little as $35 from other outlets if you were smart and bought it during holiday (Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, etc.) sales or used a coupon code. All in all this was an all around cheap and lazily put together release. If it wasn’t for the completist in me I would have skipped over it. At the time of release it was also the only way to get Anatomy Of A Ghost music on vinyl, even if it was only one song. Compared to Rise’s Dance Gavin Dance box set, this Rise 200 box set looks like utter crap.

TS & The Past Haunts – Gone And Goner

TS & The Past Haunts is a new band featuring the former frontman of Piebald, Travis Shettel. This new band sounds similar to Piebald mixed with a bit of Jack White’s various bands like The Raconteurs and White Stripes. if you’re a fan of Piebald, especially some of their later albums, you will enjoy TS & The Past Haunts. No Sleep Records released TS & The Past Haunts debut album, Gone And Goner, pressing it on four different variants/colors.

There is a tour pressing, which is limited to 200 copies on black vinyl and has a different cover than the regular pressing. These covers are all hand-numbered on the front. Copies for this tour press also feature blank center labels, as they were pressed as “advance test presses” to be sold on tour. Another big difference is that these copies do not come with a printed dust sleeve like the regular pressing does. The regular pressing is pressed on red vinyl limited to 500 copies and green vinyl limited to 300 copies. Red and green copies feature the album’s artwork instead of the special cover that comes with the tour pressing, and come with a printed dust sleeve that features the lyrics and liner notes. There is also a 2012 No Sleep Records Subscription variant, which is limited to 200 copies on white vinyl. These copies come in the same jacket as the red and green copies, but a letter pressed obi-strip/”wrap around” on brown paper is included for the subscription exclusive copies along with a special b-side center label. The only way to get these subscription copies was to subscribe to one of the several options that included either all vinyl releases (LP, 7″ and 10″) for 2012 or just every album on vinyl for No Sleep’s annual subscription.

Piebald – Vol. I-III

I patiently waited to get this set two days shy of a month, which is much longer than I should have waited to get this. It was well worth the wait though, as this is one of my favorite Record Store Day 2011 releases. This three album, three record set was released by Rise Records and features Piebald’s first three full length albums, all of which are out of print on their own. The three albums are; When Life Hands You Lemons, If it Weren’t For Venetian Blinds It Would Be Curtains For Us All, and We Are The Only Friends We Have. There were only 1,000 of these sets pressed all on colored vinyl, which is printed on the back of the jacket. Even though the total amount of the pressing is printed on the back of the jacket, each one is not individually numbered, which to me pretty much defeats the point of going to the trouble and cost to print that fact on the jacket at all.

The set is housed in a triple gatefold jacket, much like the deluxe edition of Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American, which was also released on Record Store Day. The pocket for each record includes liner notes, but not lyrics for every song. Rise did the CD release of these albums, in three volumes as well. I do not own the CD versions of this set, but I’m guessing the liner notes printed with this LP set are the same as the CD set. The cover art from the Cd versions are used with this LP set, and the cover is the cover art from the CD version of Volume I, with the title wording obviously different however. The art layout for this et is one of my favorite aspects of this set. The gatefold folds out to make full artwork of the monkeys, which is the classic three wise monkeys proverb “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”

The first record in the set is When Life Hands You Lemons, and it’s pressed on green vinyl. The shade is more like pea soup than a true green, and its marbled as well. The second record is Venetian Blinds, which is on clear blue vinyl and the third record is We Are The Only Friends We Have is on clear yellow vinyl. The color of each record corresponds to the color of the album artwork for each album and it’s CD release counterpart, except the shades do not match perfectly.

Even though this set was done very well, I have a huge problem with how Rise handled it. First, even though I was one of the first couple people on line, no more than 30 or 40 back (my local store is one of the busiest stores in the country on RSD) I did not get one. I have no idea when it was sold as in what number ahead of me in line the person was, but that is not the issue at hand. My store, which usually orders and gets in the most of every release out of all the participating stores in the country, could only get one copy of this set. After shopping at this store for close to 10 years now and being a regular customer I asked the owner later that week how they only got one when you got in almost 10 of the Jimmy Eat World record when that would be  a far more popular release? His response was along the lines of I ordered more and with our track record and location we usually have no problems getting stock for Record Store Day. This is the first release since Record Store Day started that we couldn’t get multiple copies of something in because our distributor didn’t get majority of the alloted stock in to ship out. That statement would later ring true after doing some simple digging. It turns out Rise was hoarding probably hundreds of these records to sell themselves on ebay. Combine that with however many copies were sent overseas and the number up for grabs in the U.S. dwindles further.

After striking out at my local store with this, the first time in three years I didn’t get something from my local store, I checked some of the many resources out there and found out Rise was selling this set on ebay for retail price, plus shipping, so I wasted no time and ordered one sitting in my car using my phone. I bought the listing April 16 and didn’t get it till today, May 14. All because whomever does mail order for Rise never sent it out. It took a few emails and the owner of the label getting involved to discover that simple fact, that a tracking number was never made for my purchase. That was the first thing wrong with how Rise handled this.

The second thing is a compound problem of sorts, think of it as a two-part essay question on a final exam. I mentioned above Rise held on to a lot of copies of this set to sell themselves. They actually did two rounds of sales for this set, the first round for retail price (which was $24.99) and for the second round they jacked up the price to $30. According to my ebay purchase history and the completed auctions search Rise sold 115 copies from that first round of ebay sales, and so far they have sold 34 copies for the inflated price and still have more 10 more copies up for sale, which would bring the total up to at least 44. The combined total would be at least 159 copies Rise held on to to sell for themselves, some for more of a profit. It could possibly be a nice, even, round number like 2o0 that Rise actually held on to to sell themselves. If Rise actually sent all of them out to their distributor I most likely could have bought one from my local store on Record Store Day and supported them instead of giving my money directly to a label that does bullshit like this.

The funniest thing is that in their auction for this set, they say “These are direct from the label at the best price. We’re trying to avoid you paying for a high price.” Oh really? You’re selling them for more than retail price and some auctions are selling, and even not selling for cheaper than you’re charging for these.

Piebald/Cave In – Split 7″

First let me start off by saying I have no idea what pressing my copy of this split is from. There are four pressing of this 7″ and it has been out of print for many years now. What complicates things about trying to determine what pressing a particular copy is from is that each of the four pressings was done on black. Only two out of the four pressing have multiple variants, and unfortunately my copy is on black. To my knowledge all pressings have the same artwork, jacket style and insert.

The pressing info is as follows; 1st press: 1,000 copies on black and 100 copies on white. 2nd press: 500 copies on black, 3rd press: 500 copies on black, 4th press: 100 copies on opaque pink.

Piebald/In Vain – Split 7″ (2nd Press, Regular & Handmade Cover)

Carrying on the tradition of Piebald 7″s with different jackets/artwork between pressings, this split with In Vain went through two pressings. It is long out of print and will most likely never be pressed again. The actual artwork for the two pressing is the same, the only difference is what color the jacket is.

The first press comes in a black jacket and was only pressed on one color; black, limited to 1,000 copies. The second press gets a bit confusing, as there is a cover that is black, but is different from the black cover from the first press. This jacket is incredibly rare. So rare in fact I have only seen it twice and know of only two people aside from myself who actually have a copy. There were only 37 of these covers made, with each one being hand-made/assembled and hand numbered.

The jacket is a typical tri-fold, but the silhouette of a person on the right is cut out of one panel, and makes the cover 3-D. The jacket folds out to reveal the insert, which is glued to the inside left panel. Real photographs of both bands are glued onto the back of the jacket. The record for this cover is also on black vinyl. I remember reading somewhere that these 37 copies were leftovers that had no jackets, so either the band or label decided to make these special covers. I also heard that it could have been the owner of a small indie record store somewhere in New England. I tend to believe it was the band or label though, it’s just I have not heard definitively which story is correct.

The regular cover for the second press is exactly the same as the regular cover from the first pressing, except it’s brown instead of black. It’s also pressed on black vinyl and was limited to 500 copies.

Piebald/Sevenpercentsolution – Split 7″

This is one of three splits that Piebald was featured on and it’s the only one I don’t have pressig info for. I’m pretty sure all copies were pressed on black vinyl, however.