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vxn123 wrote: This is correct in 99% of ultra obscure LPs, EPs. I can verify that almost all great LPs, EPs have been made known either as bootlegs or official reissues. However, 7'' singles, cassette LPs or demos is a totally different case....there are quite impressive recordings that are not yet bootlegged, reissued or uploaded.....maybe these special recordings are few but they do exist...SIRATH cassette LP, and 7'' singles of TORA ORPHAN, HOT SHOT, SONIC RAGE are some of the best examples....

Sirath has been recently bootlegged too. Probably a greek owner (a "respectful" collector maybe??) has collaborated with the Big Bootleg-Boss himself (once again) to make a new generation of cassete bootlegs on CD. The bootleg CD contains replicas of the jacket that only an owner of the original could provide.

Khnud wrote:Quality is in the eyes (or in this case, ears) of the beholder, people.

Excellent point. There is NO RECORD that EVERYONE agrees about regarding its quality.

Collectors/underground fans have a funny habit of thinking some records are better than others due to weird things. For example, metal singles with picture sleeves are often thought of as 'better'/more collectible/more desirable than those without picture sleeves. Why? The sleeve doesn't affect the music. Same goes for 'cool' band names versus 'dumb' names, song titles, artwork, etc. We all claim that only the music should matter, but our purchasing/bidding habits don't always reflect that.

FAR EAST is, IMO, a great example. Why are we all so interested in hearing it? We've never heard snippets of it, and it's not even like we've had lots of folks come forward to say they think it's great. All we have to go on is a name, a pic sleeve, and some song titles. I really, really doubt that so many people would be interested in this record if the band were called STRUTZ, it was issued w/o a ps, and the song titles were 'drift away' and 'yeah!'.

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet.... but call it a butt-weed and it won't bring as much on ebay

Priamos wrote: Sirath has been recently bootlegged too. Probably a greek owner (a "respectful" collector maybe??) has collaborated with the Big Bootleg-Boss himself (once again) to make a new generation of cassete bootlegs on CD. The bootleg CD contains replicas of the jacket that only an owner of the original could provide.

My exact point on the other thread. Maybe the world of collectors isn't as rosy as most people would like to think. Of course the bad [insert_nationality] bootleggers are the ones who take all the blame always.

nightsblood wrote:FAR EAST is, IMO, a great example. Why are we all so interested in hearing it? We've never heard snippets of it, and it's not even like we've had lots of folks come forward to say they think it's great.

Because doomedplanet vouches it, and I trust his taste more than pretty much anyone I have ever encountered.

About the quality standards thing, agreed wholeheartedly. A lot of people hate Militia, I love them. I wouldn't pay 2-3k for an original, but I listen to the reissue regularly. There are a million examples of this, this is just the first one that popped into mind.

Also, Killen. I wouldn't pay more than $20 for that LP (well maybe a little more to re-sell/trade) but musically it doesn't grab me.

lunaboy wrote:TORA ORPHAN -> Top Class , HOT SHOT - One Good song one Shit , SONIC RAGE - Average stuff. Most of interested lads already hear how these 7" sounds.But there also another league of bands (As you mentioned from "Without MP3s" league)

EMERALD - High Roller
LIGHTNING STRIKES - Lightning Strikes
APPRENTESS - Headless Horseman
FAR EAST - Ripper Slasher

P.S Would be cool to see official 4 WAY SPLIT LP with all these 4 bands

Its all in the holders ears.

I think both Hotshot tracks a good, Sonic Rage has one good side and the other crap.
The same with lightning stikes. One side is GREAT the other is crap

But that is just me



HERE IS MY BIG QUESTION?!?!?!?!

Why dont folks talk so bad about UK singles?


To me 1/2 of the NWOBHM singles are crap or have one good side.
But the bands are all legends and everyone wants everything.

I think there are MORE GREAT USA 45's then in the UK by FAR.......
And if we talk Swedish Yes there are some GREAT ones BUT for the most part they are mellow AOR with LOTS of keys..

NWOBHM-singles are "collector-approved" and thus untouchable.

But if you ask some of my friends more than half are boring boogie rock.

Khnud wrote:NWOBHM-singles are "collector-approved" and thus untouchable.

But if you ask some of my friends more than half are boring boogie rock.

HAHAHA

COME ON THIS CAN'T BE!!!!





but yes very true

A-fucking-men
someone dared to utter the biggest truth ever
i see the prices some obscure UK/SE singles go for,i check them out on youtube and i fall in a pit of earshit ,90% saturday night fever 10% iron maiden played by mutilated imps
i realise not every US single is the Bible of metal either,but fuck,by the collectors definition of NWOBHM,i am sure by now Elton John and Frankie goes to Hollywood singles are post-NWOBHM holy grails

HAHAHAHHA please send me a nwobhm mutilated imp clip...

MassOfKthulu wrote: i see the prices some obscure UK/SE singles go for,i check them out on youtube and i fall in a pit of earshit ,90% saturday night fever 10% iron maiden played by mutilated imps

Agreed. IMO there are a handful of KILLER Swedish singles (220 Volt, Scratch, Hels, etc) but most are too lightweight for my tastes.

Agreed on nwobhm too- there are lots and LOTS of substandard, boogie, AOR, and other tripe mixed into that category.

US metal has it's fair share of AOR, glam, power-pop, etc mixed in, but there's plenty of tr00 Steel in there too.

So why are US singles criticized more? Good question. My theory is that it's an example of backlash to a new trend. NWOBHM and swedish singles are, as someone said, pretty well established in the minds of fans and collectors. But US singles are the new kid on the block. They're portrayed as 'the next big collecting front', or as DaN once hilariously (and accurately) put it, they're now what you get for the girl who has everything So we've seen interest- and thus prices- shoot up in the past several years. And what happens as soon as there's a new trend? An anti-trend faction quickly gets established. For everyone ready to anoint FAR EAST Greatest Band Evah without having heard a note, there's someone else ready to write FAR EAST off as some overhyped jerk-off obscurity that must suck simply because lots of people are willing to pay big bucks for it. So one group wants to grab the newest toy released so they can be the cool kid on the block, and the other group claims they're too cool to bother with the latest Flavor of the Month. And in the case of FAR EAST, neither side knows what the record sounds like :lol

Where this leads for US singles in the long-term depends, IMO, on how much exposure they receive. NWOBHM had the Metal Blade compilation and the Japanese boot series raise its visibility. The Swedish stuff had DaN's '707 Inches' to promote them to the uninformed. But currently the US singles are known to such a limited pool of people that they're easy for others to dismiss. If, however, they start to reach the ears of a wider audience, then people will realize that there are a lot of gems that are worth the bother (and the price) and the US singles will take place of pride beside UK and SWE releases.

I think John's book will be the first step, because it will show people how much stuff is out there. The next step will be for folks to get info on how rare each single is and how good each single is. Malc's book provided this kind of info for NWOBHM, and DaN's site provided this for FWOSHM. TMK John's book is not going to provide such info for US singles, and I can understand why- people bitch when you provide prices, and Good vs Bad is VERY subjective. So that info will have to be disseminated in some other form. Bootleg CD series? Dedicated blog? A second book formatted like Malc's? A new Coroo wing called '1,233 centimeters of American Metal 45s'? I dunno. I'll admit I've pondered such projects, but I think John's book must be the first step. Once it is released, then I might seriously contemplate doing one of the above, possibly as a collaboration with at least one other collector-fan of US singles.

Back to the question at hand....
There's also some stigma against singles in general. Many lack picture sleeves, and the price per song is relatively high. And some folks tend to gripe about a single if 1 side is weak, but IMO a single with 1 really good song is quite worthwhile. It's not like most albums are packed with killer songs, so I don't see the problem with a single that's got one good side and 1 not-sogood side. Sure, you'd like both songs to be great, but that's not always gonna be the case.

Sometime I'll have to sit down and compare lists of NWOBHM and US singles and see which side has more 'top' singles IMO. But that's for another time.

Glockose wrote:I think there are MORE GREAT USA 45's then in the UK by FAR.......
And if we talk Swedish Yes there are some GREAT ones BUT for the most part they are mellow AOR with LOTS of keys..

I'll vouch this. I haven't heard a lot of US singles but half of the very early NWOBHM ones are severely lacking in power. I have also stated my opinion about a lot of Swedish singles being the same way here but was bashed for it in the past. There are exceptions but there is a lot of crap to dig through to find the gems.

the answer is easy: lack of information for US singles. I am not that much into NWOBHM either, haven't bought the book about that genre, but still I know about Marquis De Sade, Hell, Triarchy, and much more....The movement is well documented. The US singles is still a new territory, and since most collectors do not have them, they reach very high prices. Thus, noone can afford multiple singles and gain enough information to have an overview about a whole scene. Surely, there are still many singles available to grab them for cheap, but most people don't have names to look for, so everybody searches for "private metal", get the same results and bid on the same items....
About the US singles, I have listened just to VERY few singles, so I cannot even comment....Surely I would pick them up for 5-10$ and listen to them to make an own picture, but not for those prices as I'm generally not a too big fan of that period....I surely do love Lord Ryur, Tora Orphan, Trooper, etc. but that's another time period.....

Well, if the collector`s world is about to go on to hunt for US singles now, chances are we the common mortals will get some Swedish or British 7"s for more reasonbale prices.

Herkus Monte wrote:Well, if the collector`s world is about to go on to hunt for US singles now, chances are we the common mortals will get some Swedish or British 7"s for more reasonbale prices.

(posted a reply earlier but it seems to have disappeared...?)

Lots of UK singles have come down in price in recent years. Only the bigger items- Stormchild, Tyrant, Big Daisy, Genghis Khan, etc- are still bringing the huge prices they did 5-10 years ago.

One thing that may be a factor with US singles is availability. I don't think that as many will turn up in quantity as we've seen with NWWOBHM. People started digging those up < 10 years after they were recorded. But it's been 25-30 years now, so a lot of US singles have been damaged or destroyed, and people have died or disappeared. Many of the ones currently being 'tracked' are only producing 6-10 copies, not boxes of copies.

This means if more folks do want to start collecting US singles, there may be a lot of hard-to-get items that end up being expensive. That in turn may sour some people on collecting them. There are, of course, many singles that will be more easily available, and many of them are quite good musically IMO. Rarity and Musical Quality don't correlate all that well. People sometimes yearn for the Big Rarities, but I'll take a killer $30 record over a sucky $300 record any day.