Thursday 18 September 2008

DESCENDENTS - RIDE THE WILD EP


Yup the first release by the Descendents and without Milo on vocals which is a bit strange but hey this record is 28 yrs old! I got this from a local record store for £2 which again is an absolute bargain because it is a true 1st press. How do I know this you may ask, well after a bit of research I found that the first press was on Orca Records (Named after a fishing boat that one of the band members owned and fished in) and the reissue was on Orca/Pinsicato Records which was released in 1985. Its funny how for years you can scour the globe/web for great deals on rare records and not find a thing then all of a sudden some guy sells his entire collection and you find it when cash is tight or you least expect it! I guess thats the real beauty of collecting, finding something like this that is hard to find but very cheap to buy. Its a strange record that doesn't really give an indication of the path that the band would take, one side is slightly punk and the other full on surf!!

*Update* (From Lecky)

I've been trying to figure out what is going on with the Descendents 7" pressings for a while now, I've asked a lot of people but I can't get a definitive answer. First the FACTS. The cover of the first press makes no mention of any record company, it's just identical on both sides.The cover of the re-press has the Pinsicato address and "an ORCA production" on the back.The second press came out in the mid 80's, I bought a second press in 1989 from a guy called Martin who lived with me and Sean in Belmont who had it from new, it has the same centre labels as your copy on your blog (I'll explain the differences in a moment). I traded for my first press in 1992 with guy called John Abram from L.A. who said he had it since the early 80's. I trust him to have told the truth as I traded UK punk for US hardcore with him over a four year period and I never had anything from him that wasn't genuine. It has different centre labels to your copy.The differences in the centre labels are this. One of them has the same Font/Logo as the front of the sleeve(but it's a bit more bold than on the cover), the other one has the later Font/Logo which is on all their LP records. The easiest way to spot the differnce is to look at the letter "C".Both of the pressings use the same pressing tool and the vinyl is identical in every way.I have seen both of these versions of the first press sell on ebay in the last couple of years and no-one has made any note about the centre labels. Now my THEORY I think that the TRUE first pressing is the same as mine, as the Font/Logo on the sleeve match the centre labels.I also think the version you have is a second press vinyl in a first press sleeve, there are probably many copies like this (I don't think the sleeve has been faked, which would be realy easy to do, otherwise you would have had to pay a lot more for it if someone was deliberately trying to make it look like a first press). There was probably a print over-run on the 1st press sleeves and a pressing over-run on the second press vinyl, seeing as this wasn't a sought after record in the mid 80's they would have just put the extra sleeves and vinyl together to be able to sell them without printing extra sleeves. People only seem to differentiate the first and second pressings of this via the cover and totally overlook the centre labels, which I find strange given the way most other collectible records are much more closely scrutinised.

So there you have it, I now own a Descendents - Ride The Wild ep that has a first press cover and a second press vinyl. Thanks to Ian Leck (record collector and chief analyst extraordinaire!)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just wanna check something out, send me a photo of the centre label so I can see the Descendents logo.
I have a 1st press and a 2nd press on Pinsicato/Orca.

Lins87 said...

Click on the actual photo for a closer view of the logo on that first pic. I can still send you it if need be.

joel said...

not to throw a spanner in the works... but there is a ride the wild 7" on ebay at the moment, which has a newer cover (because it mentions in the description that it was released on pacific records) but it has the logo described in this blog as the 'first pressing'