Fear Of Smell

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Here’s one that got stuck in cyberspace hell (aka my Inbox – or to riff on a Mens Recovery Project idea, a men’s room). This one was sent in way back in March. Fuck. As a bonus for waiting all that time it’s #100. It looks quite like it might’ve been hit with a shit stain. Here’s the story from the owner, Josh Baker:

Just picked this up at Smash! Records in Washington, DC. The owner played me the Rich Oliver track and I was sold.

Not only a consumer with fine taste, the store didn’t even play the best track, by Sam & Joe.

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Found a few stragglers in the e-mail. Sorry about that… spam and the tonne of e-mail I get on a daily basis, guess these slipped. My loss of time, is your gain. Love the ode to the Rolling Stones, or just a giant tongue. You decide.

Here’s what Greh had to say about it:

Submitting one that the record shop I work at is selling on eBay. We had it on the wall for a while and though no one bought, plenty looked at it.

This one bears a resemblance to: Variation#82, Variation #6, maybe Variation #22 and Variation #29. Also, if your record store is selling one, link to your store as well. People who collect records want to know!

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A submission via HRPS board (if you know, you know).  As posted there:

My roomates. I found this in Amoeba back in 2003 while on tour in Cali. I already had a copy and my roomate found an Ottawa/Jihad lp he didn’t really care about, so we swapped.

So, sorry about the lack of posts, these seemingly have dried up. I might have a couple in the hopper, but I’ll have to dig through the e-mail. So if you have one, send it on over.

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This submission comes courtesy of Shivaun – here’s what was said:

Awesome project and really cool blog. I love looking through all the different cover variations. Mine is a pretty tame fingerpainted one with some wacky text organization. I got this from a set sale on a message board a couple years ago for like $15.

Seems like this pattern has struck before – some similarities in the other painted ones for sure. If you’re interested in pursuing this avenue of painting please refer to these examples: Variation #77, Variation #72, Variation #16 or Variation#31.

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I haven’t been keeping up with ebay at all, which is totally due to the fact I have zero cash. Anyways, a dim rememberence that I should check it out once in a while, has yielded this gem. It could be a yeti eating a hot dog dropped from the sky, or perhaps a volcano exploding. It’s currently on ebay here if you have a hole burning in your pocket with the $350 buy it now offer on the table. I would be an asshole and offer 1/10th of the price, but well I guess I’m not that much of an ass. Either way, great cover, good restart to the blog.  This cover has similarities between it and #24, #16 and #10.

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Here’s the second of the set that belong to Mark Grady and his girlfriend. This one’s Mark’s and has the Vermiform sticker with the Cooper Station address on it, which is before Sam and co. moved to Richmond and even later California. Here’s what Mark had to say about this:

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This cover comes courtesy of Mark Grady/Twistworthy, who put out several great records on Twistworthy Records and used to be the guy who I’d bother at Sound Exchange in Austin Texas during the years of 1997 and 1998. Here’s what he had to say about this platter:

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Here’s one from long-time record and tape trader Dobek Ohashi – who found this copy in his library of records,  posted about it on Livewire and sent me a copy of the pictures. Considering this is #88 I had hoped for some nazi-regalia encrusted version for maximum irony. Not to say that I’d sympathize with nazis – the exact opposite in fact – I hate nazis.  Instead I get the youth-crew sanitized version of what 88 could indicate (the year 1988, which I suppose points to Youth of Today’s popularity, rather than the nazi’s insistence that the eight letter of the alphabet is something important).

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“Typical Fear of Smell purchaser”

“Mommy bought it for me for x-mas & I hate it boo-hoo”

So does that mean that Leo Ferrandino, Fear of Smell collector extrordinaire, is Bill Clinton? Quite possibly. Either way, this one resides in Leo’s collection who bought it recently and thought enough of the blog to send it in. Clearly this has a connection to Variation #25, although I wouldn’t have recognized the younger Clinton had Leo not pointed it out.

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Another cover, similar in form to Variation #32.

Here’s what Brad Wallace had to say about it:

Here’s another copy for your blog. Pretty sure I traded for this copy with my friend around 97/98. Don’t remember what record I traded but I kind of think it was some other comp that I felt was musically inferior, but he needed for some sort of collection completion.