...Countless Trips

Earlier this year, I had a test press of the self titled Three Penny Opera record land in my lap. Getting my hands on that album had me revisiting the entire 3PO catalog, and I'd forgotten just how great this band was. It had been a while since I'd given this band much of my time, but I suddenly couldn't get enough of them and I was listening to them daily. I was only missing one of their records from the collection, so of course I needed to get on it immediately.

Three Penny Opera released their first album, ...Countless Trips From Here To There, back in 1998 on the Spectra Sonic Sound label. The label was run by Shawn Scallen, who was a photographer and I remember seeing his name attached to photos of a few great Canadian bands at the time like Shotmaker and Sparkmarker (who named a 7 inch after him). Well, apparently Shawn still has some of the old Spectra Sonic stock laying around, and I was able to grab this album from him on Discogs.

Man, I can't get over just how great this record is. It is funny how you can forget about a record for years, and then suddenly become obsessed with it. Right now, I can't get enough of this thing.

Three Penny Test

After buying a couple of records from Chris, it took him a little while for him to mail them out. It's cool...I was in no rush, but he mentioned dropping in an extra record as a gift. I wasn't expecting too much, so I was quite surprised when the package arrived and it included an additional test press. This one was for Troubleman Unlimited #34, the self titled Three Penny Opera album.

When Chris announced that he was selling some records to help pay off some bills due to financial issues as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, I took a quick look at what he had listed in his collection on Discogs. One of the records that caught my eye was the Three Penny Opera test pressing. I almost asked him about it and made an offer, but at the end of the day, I figured that I'd already spent too much on records recently...so it was a nice surprise to find that he tossed it in for nothing.

The funny thing was that I didn't even own a regular pressing of Three Penny Opera's second album. It felt wrong to only own the test press in a simple dust sleeve, so I set out to correct the issue right quick and I scooped one off eBay.

Three Penny Opera were from the late 90's and was Matt Deline's band after Shotmaker broke up. With Matt's vocals and the band's quirky 90's emo sound, there are obvious comparisons to his previous band, but I don't know...Three Penny Opera is less chaotic and has a bit of a smoother sound that I like a bit more at times. Both bands were just so damn good.

Test press and regular press!