Caroline Quickness

I didn't bother checking out the Quickness album from Bad Brains until last year... 36 years after its release. The Punk Note edition of those Bad Brains records looked so good that it pushed me to finally listen to Quickness, with hopes that I'd like it and I could buy another one of those great looking covers. The marketing scheme worked, and I ended up grabbing one.

I was thinking that the Punk Note pressing was probably all that I needed for Quickness. It looked great, and the version of Don't Blow Bubbles was made into an instrumental, so I was all set with only having that version, right? Wrong. As soon as I pulled the record from the sleeve and saw those Caroline labels, I needed to have it. You can blame We're Not In This Alone... I think that was my exposure to those Caroline labels, and seeing them here, I was like yes give me more of that.

You'll still find me reaching for Rock For Light and I Against I 9 times out of 10, but Quickness is still a fun listen.

Original Brains

When I was looking through the list of Tim's old records that were available, I noticed an original PVC pressing of Rock For Light from Bad Brains. I had intially wanted a copy of this, but in the end I ended up going with the gold vinyl pressing from Caroline because it looked so good. Once I had the colored vinyl, I gave up on the dream of an original pressing... but having it served up to me from Tim's collection, I knew that it was finally time to buy one.

When I had originally settled on the gold vinyl Rock For Light, someone along the way told me that I should still get the PVC pressing because it sounds so much better. I'm not a big audiophile, and hardly pay attention to the sound of a record... people complain about how Bold's Speak Out sounds and honestly I've never noticed... but I was curious to hear the difference here with Rock For Light. Yeah, the PVC version definitely sounds better. Not that I'll notice when I'm listening to the record, unless I'm really paying attention, but the PVC songs do sound more clear here.

This edition didn't come with an insert, so maybe it isn't a true first press, but it is close enough for me. Very happy to have this in my collection.

Both editions side by side with the different track listing for the two versions.

Quick Redness

Sometimes I get stuck with an older band. I'll discover them and fall in love with one record, and that will be all that I want to listen to from them. Either it is because I'll find that one record to be so perfect and I won't want to ruin that feeling by checking out anything else from them, or I will have heard something negative about their later records and I'll just avoid them blindly. With Bad Brains, for the longest time all I cared about was Rock For Light and in recent years, I've come to really appreciate I Against I... but still I figured that was as far as I'd go with my Bad Brains journey.

Last year, I picked up the Punk Note pressing of I Against I and it looked so good that I wanted to collect more from this Bad Brains reissue series. The one for Quickness looked so good, that I started thinking that maybe I should finally give it a chance... and when Ralf mentioned in his post for this record that the version here for Don't Blow Bubbles was an instrumental, that made it more attractive because I am not a homophobe and I'm not gonna fuck with that song.

Waiting until 2025 to give Quickness a chance may have been a bad idea. While not as great as Rock For Light or I Against I, this is still a pretty fucking rad record.

Bad Brains Blue Note

I never really paid much attention to Bad Brains beyond Rock For Light. Sure, I'd listened to I Against I, and I appreciated it enough to spin it once a year, but it wasn't an album that I listened to that closely or spent much time with. A few years ago, however, I Against I started to catch my ear more and more... then last year, I really became hooked on the title track, and I listened the fuck out of that song. Of course that obsession eventually bled over to the full album, and suddenly I found myself really wanting to chase down a copy. When Ralf started posting colored vinyl versions of the album earlier this year, it only fueled my desire to track down a copy... but then I got side tracked by a rad looking reissue.

The cover design here pays tribute to those iconic Blue Note jazz records, with the tinted photography and clean bold text. These "Punk Note" versions look fucking sharp for the Bad Brains reissues and make me want to finally listen to Quickness to see if I want to bother chasing down more of these. Collector mentality is going to make me listen to records that I'd never given much thought to, isn't it?

Because I'm an idiot, I can't remember who messaged me about this reissue of I Against I being available. If it was you, let me know. Either way, as soon as I saw this great looking cover art and colored vinyl, I was all over it. Discogs has this listed as "coke bottle clear" vinyl, but this copy looks more clear with some blue swirled lightly into it. Is this the same thing?

How Gold Can Punk Get

It took me the longest time to finally check out Bad Brains' Rock For Light album. My introduction to the band was through the Attitude CD that In-Effect released back in '89. There was no internet in those days, so my information on the band and their discography was really limited. When I discovered that the Bad Brains had another album called Rock For Light, I checked the packaging and saw the song list...what the hell...I already knew some of these songs. I was not spending my hard earned money on an album where I already knew some of the songs already. I was an idiot.

Around 20 years later, with the help of the internet and illegal downloads, I finally jumped in to check out that Rock For Light album that I was initially so quick to dismiss...and now, after sitting with these songs for 7 years, I'm finally getting around to grabbing a copy of the vinyl. I might be slow, but I do get there eventually.

When it came time to chase down the vinyl, originally I had the original PVC pressing in my sights. My motto recently seems to have been, "If it ain't an original press, it ain't shit", and that's where I started with Rock For Light, but sometimes shit is hard, yo.

Tracking down the PVC pressing turned out to be rather stressful for me. Copies were either too beat up for my tastes, had an ugly promo cut corner, were missing the insert, or just cost more than I was willing to dive in for. After following eBay and discogs for a while, I finally just couldn't take it anymore. I threw up my hands in defeat and decided to make a run at the pressing that looked the best...the Caroline pressing on gold from '91.

Feels great to finally have this classic in the collection.