I’m talking about that odd 4th press on positive force records / Revelation records, or better known as the “Batman stamp” or “Orange vinyl”. There were only 100 of these pressed, so good luck on hunting them down!
This rare version was pressed by Ray and Jordan of Revelation Records in order to trade for toys that they collected. Often the best way to get those rare Revelation records was to trade all sorts of collectable toys to them (Ask Marcus Andrews .. lucky git!) In a lot of the early releases Revelation records would put in hand made fliers asking people to trade toys for rare revelation records.
Here a just a couple of fliers I dug out:
This Can’t Close My Eyes version was created just purely to trade, if you didn’t have a toys that they wanted, you didn’t get the youth of today 7”. So what does the record look like? The A side of the record has a blue label like the 2nd press of the, “Can’t close my eyes” on positive force records, but the b-side as a blank label. Maybe Ray and Jordan had a bunch of labels left over from the previous positive force releases? On the b-side you will find a black batman stamp, this stamp was also stamped on paper dust sleeve and again on the front cover.
Over the years I have seen other early Revelation records releases with “Batman” and “superman” stamps on the dust sleeves; I believe that if you traded a toy to Rev they would stamp the dust sleeve, to maybe indicate that the record was obtained by trading toys rather than just buying it.
Revelation records also made some other things to trade for toys. They also made the “GI Joe” t-shirt to trade for toys. I have to honestly say I thing I would have rather kept the toy than the GI Joe t-shirt. I believe they made two versions of the GI Joe t-shirt, the version I have is well ... pretty hideous. I would love to see a picture of the other GI Joe t-shirt.
After a quick hunt on the Webb I think I found the GI Joe model used for the t-shirt above. I no expert when it comes to Toy’s!
Again if you are reading this post and you have some more fun facts or interesting information about the Rev trading records or GI Joe t-shirt, please let me know or just leave a comment.
Not all were for trade only. A few (don't know how many) were available for sale at Some and Venus Records. I paid $5.00 for mine (can't remember though which store I picked it up). Only a select few of us record whores were told about it and they were gone very fast.
ReplyDeleteYou know what? It may well be that I did the LAST trade for toys with Rev. I traded in 1996, which is a long time after the early colour vinyl pressings were made.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, I concur... I am lucky.
Thanks for piecing that story together. That pretty much covers it. Ray asked Kevin if we could press 100 of the Can't Close My Eyes 7" and he said sure. It was convenient because the guy that pressed Revelation's vinyl at that time also did the pressing for Positive Force (and Wishing Well, BYO and probably half the punk bands and labels around) so we just asked him to run them off. They were probably just out of the side B label so he asked us what to do and we told him to just use a blank. I can't remember if there were left over inserts and covers or if we had to make those.
ReplyDeleteAbout the photo shirt, I don't think we made those for trading. We probably sold them, but not too many because of the crappy photo print on the front. We were just starting out printing our own shirts back then and photos were tricky.