Snake America Fifty One
Snake is a bi-weekly email covering salable goods. This week, some information on the Floorpunch 7" on gold vinyl that was briefly on eBay this week.
eBay: Floorpunch "Division One Champs" on gold vinyl, numbered #4 out of 88, sold(1): A completed auction that's been taken down with the item no longer available for sale. The auction was for the most limited pressing variation of the best American hardcore single since 1991. Floorpunch, from New Jersey's shore, released this a year after their demonstration cassette in 1995, the year they formed. In My Blood Records. a New Jersey label run by their friend Brett Beach, put the album out and Beach numbered the gold-colored singles. (Pressing info is a bit confusing: the 7" is In My Blood 1 and the demo is No. 5.) A couple of the same songs from the demo.
The auction seller is Geoff D'Agostino, who lives in South River, N.J., comes from Sayreville and once sang a Negative Approach cover with Floorpunch at a show in 1997 while wearing a Supertouch "Get Down" design longsleeve. (It was a very rare T-shirt that existed more in legend than reality until the band reprinted it a few years ago(2).) He runs TDT Screenprinting--contact is 1-888-TDT-EDGE--in South River, N.J. He goes by that nickname himself. TDT, named after the first letter of the last names of the three founders, is celebrating its 20-year anniversary this year. It split the Highland Park space with the record store Charles Maggio, who sang for Rorschach, and Tony Rettman, who wrote the great NYHC book, opened, Sound on Sound. Only about 30-40% of TDT's current business comes from printing T-shirts for bands. Geoff told me he was selling the record because it was a double--he had another copy--and he wanted to see what he could get for it, "out of morbid curiosity." The record, a low number 4 originally belonged to Chris Zusi, who played guitar in Floorpunch and who sold it to Geoff so he could buy a new guitar.(3)
My old roommate Nick P bought this version in early 2005 for a $500 Buy It Now, which seemed high at the time, but not to me, though I was broke, and not for him, since he had the money. The record, like most good records that are also collectible, has fetched higher and higher prices on eBay with each listing. The auction above was pulled with an $810.00 price tag but Geoff sold it for $2,300. Per collectorsfrenzy.com, no record (that isn't a 78 and which didn't end on a Sunday) in March sold for more on eBay. Two years and a month ago a copy of the 7" on gold vinyl sold for $1580. Earlier copies sold for less.
I asked Mark Porter, the band's singer, about the sell price. When the auction was listed he said he'd win it but that story didn't happen. The winning bidder is from California and has a feedback rating in the low three digits. Geoff told me who it was but I don't want to lay him or her out like that. TDT said that winner also bought a test press of the first Mouthpiece 7" off him for another $300--"it's a $3-to-400 record." Mark had this to say:
The FP on gold was never meant to get this out of control. Brett Beach was/is an avid record collector and wanted to do something fun with the press. It was more of a "friends" press for our close friends and those familiar faces who supported us at our shows. Originally, 90 pressed on gold vinyl. We chose the gold vinyl because we all loved the way the "Together" wax looked [Revelation Records' New York City Hardcore 1987: Together compilation, second press had 100 on gold - Snake]. I guess as a nod to the golden era of straight edge hardcore(4), we made it known that there'd be 88 pressed and the rest would get buried in the sand at The Shore. The truth was I have the other two, which remain un-numbered. I kept one copy and Dave Sausage has the other. I sold it to him at This Is Hardcore [fest] in 2012. Five copies went to each band member, and a lot were given to friends. The rest were handed out at two shows in particular, one in Middlesex and at the church in Philadelphia . I don't even think we played either of those shows, we just went to get the record out(5). Not long after the trading frenzy began, Brett Beach attempted to get a registry together. Many have since been accounted for, but some copies have been lost to natural disaster (Gerry D!!(6)), and other owners, I guess, chose to remain anonymous. One thing I do know is that most of the O.G. owners sold their copies, and every time one pops up on eBay for more money I'll get a random text from one of them cursing their decision to sell it earlier. Some copies remained with their O.G. owners and to them I say respect. I still have three copies, 87, 88 and (?). One for each of my kids. I do think it's pretty rad some crappy record I was a part of can fetch so much money. $2,300--are you fucking kidding me?
The rumor most people I grew up with held on to was Floorpunch pressed 100 records on gold with the remaining 12 thrown into the Atlantic Ocean by the band. In the past 10 years I've heard that rumor stretch the to the dozen going into the ocean together before the band went to Atlantic City together. That rumor was stretched to specify Saturday as the day of the week. That iteration fed into the last Floorpunch song on their full length album which is about patronizing various New Jersey casinos as a group of friends. Turns out we were way off.
There's a theory a friend of mine has on the topic of what makes a hardcore band good that I've always liked. Hardcore music, it states, is by definition bad. It's not Beethoven. So good songs alone don't suffice in making a band succeed. A good hardcore band is less a vehicle for capable songwriting than it is a collection of the four or five loudest characters in the room. The music is almost an afterthought. I highlight this relevant passage from Keleffa Sanneh's article, "United Blood," in the March 9 issue of the New Yorker:
Dito Montiel, a guitarist for the band Major Conflict (and now a film director), tells Rettman that he didn’t think of himself as a musician. “In all honesty, I didn’t really like playing music,” he says. “I just liked the chaos. I just loved being there.”
No one had picked up on that writing about hardcore before this article(6). Songs and stories... mostly stories. My favorite Floorpunch story before starting on this was about how Porter, who worked at the World Trade Center satellite towers as a floor trader, decided to play hooky on 9/11 and go to Atlantic City. Cell service was down that day ... the combination living out your band's lyrics by skipping work on a Tuesday made me regard the decision as legendary as it was correct.
The truth was different. Porter indeed worked at Ground Zero and indeed didn't come in on 9/11 but he called in sick, having gone to a late Yankees game the night before, the one where Clemens was going for 20(7). The legend that the band threw 12 gold records into the Atlantic is a better one than burying two. Who needs legends, though? Keeping a record per kid speaks for itself. It turns out the gold-record registry has been online for almost a decade. Beach's website scrapes back to 2007 and it's now up on another. There are legends and there are stories. Some have been left out. If there's a legend here, it's not about 90 gold records but about something else.
Thanks for reading. The beat returns next week.
Snake
(1) To be honest, I'm disappointed this item ended early since I don't like to comment on ended items unless it's a schtick email with a lot of them. I also don't like writing about hardcore music in this email since I think it's exclusionary. Not all music is for everyone, but we all have to sit somewhere or wear sneakers. We all need credenzas. Although: the genre's better records stand on their own. And the people and what they did work as stories.
(2) The story was that they printed a couple dozen but few remain. It's either because Mark Ryan, the band's singer, went on tour with Burn, another band, and he didn't pay his storage space and they disappeared, or that his building super took them and when he came back from tour everyone in the neighborhood (Williamsburg) was walking around wearing Burn Crew shirts. Burn Crew shirts are an even bigger mystery. This was around 1990.
(3) More from Geoff: "They gave me a record and I gave Chris $5 for another, thinking, 'Wouldn't 'it be funny if these were worth money one day?' I'd rather trade the records, but kids who want a Floorpunch on gold probably don't have the old punk records--Misfits "Earth AD" on green, a Koro 7"--that I want. ... I'd have let the auction ride, but when I sold a Silver Sleeve, the high offer I got was $1,500 and I didn't take it and it ended up selling for $1,250 to the same kid." Geoff also said he bought one of his gold singles from Bill Punch, Floorpunch's other guitarist. He traded one Floorpunch on gold for a Misfits single and another for Agnostic Front's "United Blood," two records that now sell for less money than a gold Floorpunch.
(4) One year later.
(5) I asked like 10 people and no one remembers who played those shows. Brett and Geoff both confirm Floorpunch didn't play in Middlesex. Many of the MCYC kids--not sure what County in New Jersey Youth Crew--got copies.
(6) The story was that someone, Gerry D, got a gold record, but then his basement flooded and all his record covers were ruined, so Gerry has an alternate cover. The records were fine, though.
(6) This is to the author and publication's immense credit. I was curious if Mr. Sanneh wound up at Floorpunch shows when they were around, since he's around that age. He hit every note in his article and is a man of taste, so it's not out of the realm of possibility. My friend Ned asked him whether he did. He said:
Floorpunch was (just slightly) after my time -- by that point, when it came to hardcore, I was more interested in stuff like this. (Though in retrospect, of course, I can hear what I was missing...) (7) I can say with reasonable authority that the Yankees take as long as possible to call rainouts. I have no direct confirmation with the club, of course, but having worked in a baseball capacity for five years, my experience was that obvious home games worthy of being postponed for weather wouldn't be called until around 11 PM. Reports would come back that the concessions had been serving beer the whole time. I can't speak to whether they did this in 2001. I haven't kept up with the sport but it's fair, though, to call it a feature of the new stadium.