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Hi and thanks for reading. It's been a minute since I wrote. I was out sick for a bit, and then Daniel got sick too. I'm not writing about any new releases this week unfortunately, cos I haven't spent much time with any of them yet. I have been really looking forward to the DEEF reissue on General Speech, and also the new NIGHTFEEDER 7" that we got in stock recently. I've only had time to spin those just once each, so today I am writing about MALIN HEADS. At the risk of sounding like a poser, I will be writing unashamedly. I don't really know much German hardcore/punk. I can name maybe like a dozen bands. I'm pretty sure MALIN HEADS was my introduction. I discovered them while on tour with my old band with Jeff. We were at Arrow's Aim in Gainesville, and that's where I picked up a copy of their first EP Probegepogt Aus Spandau. As I was flipping through a 7" bin, I passed over it cos I had no idea what it was. As I passed it, Jeff asked If knew it and also informed me it ripped. Obviously, I bought it. I will pick up almost anything a friend suggests to me in that context. I never really thought about it until now, but this type of thing happens often when I got to record shops with friends, where someone is flipping and another is kinda looking over their shoulder and there is conversation about what dank shit is floating around in the bins, know what I'm talking about? Haha. Anyway, from there I checked out the other bands on Pogar (the label who originally released that MALIN HEADS EP). Somewhere in there I heard more shit like VORKRIEGSPHASE, UPRIGHT CITIZENS, SLIME, and THE BUTTOCKS. I know SLIME and BUTTOCKS are pretty early bands. A close friend of mine living in Germany told me about SLIME after we toured Europe a few years ago. It's funny, I was just talking to some friends the other day about "ACAB." I know this acronym is wildly popular now… and it's possible some young punks don't know what band my friends and I associate this slogan with. I mean obviously ACAB was not invented by a band, but I always thought 4 SKINS was the first band to do a song called ACAB. I'm pretty sure that came out in 1982, right? Well fuckin' hell, SLIME released a track called ACAB in 1981! I had no idea. If someone knows anything earlier please let me know. Or maybe I am wildly mistaken, and 4 SKINS had been playing it live before SLIME.
Getting back to MALINHEADS, their first EP is such a banger. Their second EP entitled Medical Fame followed a few years later in 1986 and I think its also an excellent record. The sound is noticeably different though. They have another release the followed that, but to be honest I don't even remember what it sounds like. Their first EP was reissued, and I am not sure why Medical Fame was not. For many years that reissue I held me over until one day I was able to land an original copy of Probegepogt Aus Spandau. I guess when I say original, I mean an 80s pressing. The cover of the record I had gotten was not the first press according to Discogs. And as of late, some pretentious asshole added a new version that he has, and of course he states THIS is the first press, haha. I knew there was a different cover for the "first press," but I have always wondered if there was actually two different pressings or just some different versions of the cover. I was actually chatting with a German friend, and he sent me a photo of his copy that he got in the 80's. It's yet another different version than what is listed on Discogs.
There was a record shop called Vinyl Boogie in West Germany, and they seemed to have distributed all the Pogar stuff. I was actually just poking around Discogs, and it seems the owner of Vinyl Boogie was also the same person who operated Pogar Records. Interesting. I wish I knew more. I'm not sure how true this is, but one guy told me he was there at Vinyl Boogie when the MALINHEADS records arrived, and they quickly threw together the covers of the "first press" cos they didn't have anything prepared. I'm not sure if he meant only those very early copies (which seem to be few, and printed on colored paper,) or if he meant they made an entire run of covers with the same design printed on regular white paper. According to Discogs, the was a repress the same year as the original. On this sleeve, they took the back cover photo from the first press, and that became the front cover of the repress. I just wonder if there really were two pressings, and/or how many copies exist of each cover. That leads me to why I really decided to write about this today, haha. I've shared this cover from my staff photo on Instagram before, but I didn't get any info on it. I've searched the internet to the best of my ability, and never came up with shit. I did see an old Ebay listing where a copy sold with this same cover, but a part of me wonders if this was by chance the same copy that eventually ended up in my hands? I bought this copy just a few years ago from a German record shop. What this is, is the repress sleeve, but for some reason MALINHEADS is not printed across the front. What the fuck? I have endless questions, and I am out of time, haha. Sorry my write-up this week seems directionless and really in the end I am just hoping someone will reply and let me know some info on this record! Haha. Cheers and thanks for reading.