putting the j in jjosh

[UPDATE 2018 – Well, a lot of the links below don’t work any more, but check out comment #2, seven years later a copy shows up in the UK! Amazing. Also, I never did write that guy and see what the deal was 7 years ago in Germany. But still great that this post comes up in the first 10 on google when searching the record. I’m going to see if we have digital versions of these songs anywhere, I will post here if we do.]

This is weird. I was going to write a story about Raygun Theatre — the band I played with in college — and googled it to see if I could get a picture of the band or something for this post. I was going to write a reminiscence about the time we played a show and were getting paid something liked $2 and this irritated us so much that we did an extended version of one of the songs where we played the last two chords for 10 minutes. We timed it, and just did those same two chords, over and over and over. It was trance-like, and funny at first, and then weird, and then I kind of got into it. The band I’m in now pretty much only plays one note, so it was sort of foreshadowing.

After that show, our lead guitarist Mike Lyxx wrote a song about that whole experience called “Fuck You All” which was a pretty great song. We recorded it with a slew of other songs over a weekend recording with Rob (from the band Eggs) in Arlington, VA. Then we pressed 300 (I think) records, Jack (lead singer/songwriter) screen-printed the covers on paper and we laboriously glued them to all the record covers. I still have a couple of the records, but most have been given away at this point.

So I’m googling “Raygun Theatre” and I’m seeing some gig posters from college which I now remember having found before and being kind of amazed that they were online. And then a couple of hits down there’s a link to a German Ebay auction that just ended Dec 28, 2010 for one of the records! It was sold from Paris, and it went for $60?! Wha?

How did it end up in Paris?

Why is someone trying to sell it now?

Why is someone else paying $60 for it?

And there’s no real info listed either, just “genre: punk” and “label: LS1” which is actually wrong, it’s supposed to be SL1, which stood for Senior Lounge, referring to some kind of lounge that Jack had in his high school where only the seniors could hang out. Did you ever hear of such a thing?

Also, this auction claims that the record is in its original shrink wrap?! What the what?

I would love to know the story behind this record. The auction has some great pictures of the record (added below). If it sold for not much money, I would think it was maybe just some vinyl collector who thought “hey, let’s check this out”, but it’s $60…granted, that’s not a ton, but it’s enough that maybe you’d want to have an idea of what you were getting? Or maybe not? I’m tempted to write the winner and see what the story is. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do! Let’s see what the deal is!

Ah no, a little look further reveals that it didn’t sell for $60, that’s what the starting bid was, and he didn’t get any takers. It’s since been relisted for $45, nuts, we’re losing value! Well, I think I’ll still write that guy and ask where he got the record, what the deal is, etc.