10 Year Anniversary

Ten years ago today, I came up with the idea to start a blog to document the new vinyl that I was adding to my collection. I'd gotten into record collecting the previous year, and it completely consumed me. It was all that I could think about, and I would spend hours online searching eBay and checking messageboard posts, just to look at pictures of records. I figured that writing a blog about what I was buying would be a nice simple way to kill some time.

Over the years things exploded. This blog ended up being not only a way to burn some time on my obsession...it provided fuel to stoke those flames higher. Within a few years, I met dudes online that were doing the same kind of blogs, and it inspired me to step up my game. I had to take better photos, I had to write better, I needed to buy better records...and I needed to buy more of them, effectively doubling my post counts from 58 in 2008, to 116 in 2009. When I started the blog, $30 was crazy money for me to spend on a record...these days, $30 doesn't even make me pause to think about it. Shit got serious, and escalated quickly.

So here we are, ten years later, and first thing that I did this morning was bounce around on eBay and the discogs marketplace, wringing my hands over the decision of which record I should buy next. Ten years on and 1,242 posts later, and the obsession is still going strong.

For this ten year anniversary, I wanted to post something special. I spent weeks going over some big ticket possibilities that I wanted to chase down for this milestone. Some of them didn't work out, and in the end I figured that the Overkill 10 year anniversary live record, Wrecking Your Neck, would fit the theme perfectly.

Released in 1995, when vinyl was considered a dying format, this live album was only pressed on wax in Germany, so trying to track down a copy can be a bit of work. I found a few available on eBay, but none of them were in great condition. I'm sure that the minimalist packaging doesn't help, and the copies that I'd seen had plenty of ringwear. There was a copy on discogs, that was listed as "Like new. Collector's copy.", and while the price was a bit higher, I didn't mind spending the extra money to get the best.

My favorite part of this live record is that I'm really not that familiar with the majority of the songs on here. I know the first four Overkill albums, from Feel the Fire through The Years of Decay, like the back of my hand...but the few albums after that haven't seen a lot of action for me. With this live set full of songs from Horrorscope, I Hear Black, and W.F.O., this is a cool snapshot of Overkill ten years into their run...and twenty years later, it is awesome that they are still going strong. I wonder how many more years I can keep this blog going...