The first two punk rock bands I ever heard were the Sex Pistols and 999. This was back when I was in 7th grade, which was a long time ago. Those two bands opened up a whole new world for me and forever changed my life. I was especially taken with the Sex Pistols, and would buy everything I came across by them. Granted they only really released one proper album, but I bought all the collections, singles, live albums, etc. For a long time I had more Sex Pistols records in my collection than any other band. This was later totally eclipsed by The Damned, but that is a story for another day.
In 1984, Chaos Records from the UK released this two song 12″ that contained demo versions of Sex Pistols songs recorded by Dave Goodman. I found a copy of this at JR’s Music Shop in Yorktown mall on one of my weekly visits there to buy records (they had a really good punk selection at the time). Despite what seemed like a hefty price tag for a 2-song record, I didn’t hesitate to buy it. It was an import so that helped justify the 7 dollar price tag in my mind, or at least was what I told myself to make me feel better about shelling out what was then a whole lot of money to me.
When I brought it home and opened it up, I discovered that it was on green vinyl. I thought that was pretty cool and a nice surprise and I proceeded to play it repeatedly. I told a couple friends of mine who were also into punk rock about the record and soon after one of them bought it and told me his copy came on a different color of vinyl (I beleive it was blue). I remember even at that young age thinking “dammit, I want that color too”, something that still plagues me to this day.
It turned out that it came more than two different colors, it came on seven! Back then I never got around to picking up any more copies to get the other colors because there was so many other records to buy. I eventually found a place that was selling them all about 10 years ago and bought all the ones I was missing to complete the set. The rainbow of colors is as follows…
Green vinyl,
pink vinyl,
red vinyl,
white vinyl,
yellow vinyl,
blue vinyl,
and clear vinyl.
A note of complete record nerd interest, all the sleeves and labels were the same and have the catalog number of EXPORT 1 with the exception of the blue vinyl, whose labels say CARTEL 1 instead (the sleeve is the same as the others). I don’t know why that particular variation had the different labels. I am pretty sure blue is the color my friend back then bought so it would have been released at the same time.
The music on this 12″ has appeared on countless other demos collections and CDs over the years as the Pistols stuff has been reissued and repackaged more times than even The Damned’s early recordings. Chaos Records also released a 7″ of this with a different b-side and different cover art.
do you know anything about a Promo Never Mind LP which has stickers saying it’s not for resale and that it includes “Submission”? any info you have would be great. I just came across a copy of my father’s in pretty good condition.
Thanks,
Chuck