Record Store Day

Fucked Up's history with vinyl is long and celebrated (by us). Every time we do an interview, one of the first questions (still) is about the amount of 7"'s we've done (more than 35). We created the band out of a devotion to collecting rare punk aesthetics. Damian and Jonah still finesse their record collections like sports cars. While some of us have moved on to an extent (my Sunday so far: Chelsea vs Arsenal, Fiorentina vs Roma, Penguins vs Capitals, Canadiens vs Bruins, Saints vs Colts), Fucked Up and Records will probably also be somewhat entangled.

Record stores are a big part of why we are a band at all. When we were all younger kids, we used to treat the few cool record stores in Toronto like they were libraries. We all started our record collections at Full Blast, started to go to Rotate This when we could tolerate "non-punk" records being in the same room as Assuck 12"'s, all started working at Who's Emma a while later, and finally started going to Ric's Collectibles in the near-suburbs when we got too jaded to deal with the back rooms and behind the counter areas where the rare stuff had started to migrate. We started to make friends and enemies on the scene in attempts to score stuff. You'd call up your friend if you found something they were looking for, and you'd try to fill up your bag if there was stuff you knew someone who had punked you was looking for. On boxing day you'd see everyone you knew on the bus trying to get to every store in the city looking for stuff half off.

Record collecting is already so close to those dismal and dark solitary pleasures, the secret obsession you keep in your basement away from your visitors, if you ever get any. When that documentary "Vinyl" came out, we all got shocked a bit. Collection records can easily turn into a depressing lonely quest. It's record stores that help to legitimize it as somewhat of a social activity. Even though its kind of like having an AA meeting at a liqour store, at least in a store you're out an about, the owner is your friend, you'll maybe get a deal. Better that than going through the 19th page on your "kbd" ebay search at 4 in the morning on a Saturday.

Somehow we've never participated in Record Store Day before. We've done lots of instores all over the world, and have had to stop at stores to shop in probably every record store in the free world. This year we decided to do something special for RSD, because we think it's important. This April you'll be able to leave your house and go to a record store and get this cool record. We decided to use our 7" as a tribute to a bunch of cool stores in the US. Ten stores will each be featured with their own cover artwork, using pictures that they sent in to us. The 7" is just gonna be the two daytrotter songs from couple tracks, plus one that isn't on the CD ("Crooked Head"). Here are the 11 covers (there's a generic one), have fun trying to find them all: