A selection of records from 1985 - 1990 with accompanying reviews, ads, and ephemera.Picking up where the first book in the series left off. This volume offers an in-depth looking into various records and surrounding ephemera from 1985-1990. Giving an insight into the time of those releases. If you enjoyed the first two books you will love this one.Clocking in at 180 pages, this is their biggest release yet.All images have been sourced and scanned direct from the original sources. No internet jpgs.Our take: I picked up the first Record Aficionado book several years ago and tried to bring some in for Sorry State, but they weren’t doing wholesale. Thankfully, that has changed, and we got copies of Volume 2 (which focuses on Revelation Records) and this third volume, which covers hardcore punk from the US between 1985 and 1990. The book’s intro states that the goal of the Record Aficionado series is to “contextualize (the records covered) in an artful way,” and that’s precisely what it does. For each of the records the book covers, you get a detailed image of the front cover, some pressing details, and a smattering of scans of other documents, including lyric sheets, promo materials, advertisements, vintage zine reviews, and other ephemera. The zine reviews are my favorite part of the book; zines back in the 80s were so mean! It seems like half of the reviews in the book are negative, which is funny since most of the records in the book are punk canon at this point. There is also a section containing vintage ads for many of the stores and distributors that sold these records back in the day, which is also awesome to see and is an under-documented part of the underground punk network. Interestingly, unlike a lot of recent books that treat punk rock as (high?) art, rather than reproducing everything as closely to the originals as possible, Record Aficionado filters all of this original material through its own aesthetic, including the print job, which is black and white with a single green spot color. I love that Record Aficionado doesn’t try be encyclopedic or comprehensive… it’s just a smattering of cool shit that will lead you down various rabbit holes to other cool shit.
