This is easily one of my favorite records in the later days of punk, not to mention one of my most favorite “newer” bands. Yeah, they broke up like a decade ago, but compared to most of the stuff I’m into, Jawbreaker is a lot newer than most of the scope of my punk collecting/upbringing.
The record came out in 1990 on the somewhat unknown Shredder Records, which was run by Mel C, one hell of a nice guy. Before this album, Mel had released a couple of singles, two of which being compilations called The World’s in Shreds. He used to send me records to review in Spontaneous Combustion and that was how I got into this band.
The album sold very well, and the band became quite popular and eventually signed to a major label and then fell apart. During the course of this record’s existence, there were 4 distinct variations of it.
The first pressing was of 1000 on colored vinyl There was 800 on blue vinyl…
and 200 on clear vinyl, which nearly all were given to the band to sell on a tour (which is how I got mine).
It was then pressed on black vinyl, which must have been run at the same time as the colored ones because the black ones were also the ones sent out as promos.
Later it was reissued, again on black vinyl, this time with the colors reversed on the cover.
The test pressing had no cover and plain white labels.
All the copies came with an insert. Every version except the clear one had this white insert inside.
The clear vinyl copies had a blue insert inside.
After all that, Shredder stopped doing the vinyl (and eventually the label for that matter) and released the album on a CD which came in both a jewel case (early pressings) and a digipak (current ones).
I’m not sure how many total there were of the black ones, but I’m guessing it is a few thousand.
Great detail work on a great record on a great and often-overlooked label (I always loved those Parasites records).
One detail: you are wrong that “every copy” except blue vinyl had a white insert. Some came on green paper. My copy of Unfun is a promo copy, hence I assume part of the first run on black vinyl, with a nice two-sided 8 1/2 x 11 xerox starting “Dear Journalist” and sent by Mel in his capacity as “Promotions Director” (ha).
If you click on the URL link, you can see a quick digital photo I took of it.