Liner Notes: Pigs Suck double 7-inch

Welcome to the fourth edition of Liner Notes, a feature in which I will talk about the production design, packaging, and process of buying a particular record. I am building a collection of vinyl. The look and feel of the record is important to me, otherwise I would be satisfied to have all my music solely in a digital format. People do not buy records because it is convenient. They take up a lot of space, they are fragile and they get dusty. Record collectors do not mind these drawbacks so much because of what we get in return: big artwork, full liner notes and the tangibility of vinyl.

I spent hours combing through the bins at Jerry's Records in Pittsburgh earlier this year. The majority of the store's collection is old, used vinyl. It is not the place to go for shrinkwrapped records by new bands. If you like sifting through an endless garage of LPs, this is the spot. This place feels like one big garage plus a couple offshoot areas, all filled with genre after genre of music. Classic rock, reggae, jazz, soundtracks.

There was not a section for punk, but I dug this out of one of the 7-inch bins. "Hardcore 2X7" Comp" definitely popped out at me, as well as the title. Two 7-inches, eight bands, 13 songs. I was not familiar with any of the bands beforehand. I wanted to give this one a try since the art definitely indicated the music would be in my wheelhouse. I have discovered many cool bands by picking up a random 7-inch. The back cover has a similarly blurby design, using the bands' logos instead of plain type. There are also blurbs about pig behavior and one blurb about Clean Plate Records and its founders.

I was curious to know when this record was released. It does not say anywhere in the liner notes. I knew nothing about the bands or the label, so there was no help there. The back cover indicates that this is the first release from Clean Plate Records, which is from Amherst, Massachusetts. On the picture of a pig on the back cover, there is this note: "8th Pressing 500 The Kids Love It!" This stirred my curiosity to find out more about this release. Discogs and Wikipedia both say the record came out in 1995. Two decades later, let's take a look at the bands.

Quincy Punx, F.Y.P. and Oppressed Logic are still kicking. Capitalist Casualties were active as recently as 2012 but I cannot find anything to say they are still playing today. Spazz, Terminal Disgust, Mankind? and Masskontroll appear to be done. As for Clean Plate Records, the label is still around but is not very active. Check out their bandcamp page. All the bands on Pigs Suck are worth listening to. Stream my favorite song from the comp below. Here is "Paradise Lost" by Mankind?: