Albums that need reissued

Let's make our petitions for albums that really need to be saved from the hands of price-gouging collectors and dealers, and/or need to be released in a manner that will allow the people of today to actually hear them.

The first one that comes to mind for me is Surviving You, Always by Saccharine Trust (SST, 1984). Much of their other stuff has been reissued on CD, including the "Paganicons" EP, but Surviving is easily the best. To my knowledge, it has never been released on CD, and the LP is no longer in print.

What a waste, because this is one killer art-core record right up there with any Black Flag, Minutemen, Die Kreuzen, Flipper, etc. release. Complex, progressive jazz-influenced music with slashing, dissonant guitars, frantic melodic bass, tricky time signatures and frightening Biblical vocals. So many "math rock" bands of the recent age sound suspiciously like this record, but nowhere near as original or startling.

I'm surprised this record hasn't gotten more attention, and that it seems to have been brushed to the side in favor of other landmark early 80's US punk records. It may not be quite Zen Arcade, but it's right up there with Double Nickels (though not a 2xLP).

surviving you, always seems like it would be popular enough to warrant a reissue on any label other than sst. ginn seems to need a certain amount of guaranteed sales to start the presses, but somehow never enough to actually pay the bands.

one benefit of the recent age of piracy is that many obscure albums are getting much wider exposure than they have been through niche mp3 blogs and p2p. additionally, the value of the records that the dealers are trying to jack up are going down.

Agreed about SST. They certainly won't/shouldn't be the ones to re-release it, but I get the feeling Greg holds onto rights pretty viciously. Didn't I hear something about Husker Du trying to get Zen Arcade off of him?

File-sharing has been a serious boon in terms of rare music. I downloaded a couple mp3-versions somebody made of "Surviving" in order to burn it on a CD for my car, but the quality was quite terrible. The original LP sounds fantastic.

if you heard something about husker du, they would not be the first.

i know what you mean about having to suffer a lack of quality, but if you have no other choice you have to do what you have to do. kind of like what i did with konrad's evil album.

not to mention "chevrolet sings of driving safety and you"

for real about chevrolet sings of safe driving and you. i have never seen that for download at higher than 128kb/s.

Zoogz Rift

I was going to plead for No Trend's early output (s/t 7", Teen Love 12", Too Many Humans LP & When Death Won't Solve Your Problem comp.), but their bassist e-mailed me a couple days ago to tell me that the original members are currently discussing a reissue campaign.

This is very exciting - that stuff needs to be heard. Especially that first 7". They were called PiL meets Flipper; I think they've got their own approach, but that comparison is certainly apt if one wants an idea as to what they're in for.

Also Th' Inbred from 80's Morgantown WV, Sun Ra meets the Buzzcocks. I have a hand me down digital transfer of their complete discography from a tape of a record. They had 3 albums on toxic shock Family Affair, Reproduction, and Kissing Cousins. One had a parody of an Elvis record for cover art.