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LOT 002
Brand New Gay Scene

Format: 10-inch black vinyl, hand stamped with 10" x 10" booklet

Band(s):
This Aint Vegas (Sunderland), Bilge Pump (Leeds), Kill Yourself (Leeds), John Holmes (Leeds), The Wow (Stoke), Eighty Six (Leeds), Buzzkill (Leeds) J*R (Doncaster/Leeds),

Release date:
Sept 2002

Run: 300 copies

Notes:
'What is often left out in accounts of something as potentially business-like as doing a record label are the seemingly inconsequential conversations or details that can inform the direction of the endeavour. One of these off-the-cuff remarks that shaped what OBA became was from some Cops and Robbers character who at a gig who praised us for putting out a record because 'someone really needs to document what's going on'. Although there'd been plenty of record labels in the LS6 area a few years ago and labels that catered for the punk scene - Subjugation, Flat Earth, Bombed Out and so on –it seemed that the gigs that we were attending and organising mostly played host to bands who had little recorded output. So to re-frame what we were doing as an archiving process – or even a public service - gave it a slightly different feel we hadn't had the audacity to previously consider. Certainly we weren't putting out records under any delusion that it could turn into a money-maker or a business. Perhaps you could say we were doing it mostly out of self-interest but not in a profit-motivated way. These encouraging comments that we received, though, may have had some influence on our decision to make the next record a compilation.

The record – somewhat regrettably entitled 'Brand New Gay Scene' after a drunken joke I made to Dave Allen from Voorhees - featured the then incredibly young This Aint Vegas from Sunderland, to old Leeds stalwarts Bilge Pump and John Holmes, The Wow from Stoke, Buzzkill, J*R and, unsurprisingly, our own bands Kill Yourself and Eighty Six. In this sense it was a record of the wider scene than just Leeds but, as most of the bands played regularly at the gigs we organised, it also celebrated the activity in LS6 at the time.

Again we wanted a fairly extravagant package that built on the comic-book packaging of the first record. Matt Dale from J*R was, and no doubt still is, and excellent photographer and had plenty of non-digital snaps of both the bands and of everyday scenes around Leeds that we asked Ben Whittington of Buzzkill to layout using his creative design skills. The result was a 12-page booklet which we wanted printing at 10” x 10” to house the 10” record with a front cover drawn by Keeby of a cat with a massive dong. Although we used a cheap and ethical printers – Footprinters in Chapeltown Leeds who also print Cops and Robbers as well as tons of radical pamphlets, posters etc – the cost per unit was pretty extortionate for this one and I’ve no idea how we afforded to put it out. Regardless, it was eventually was released around Autumn time 2002.

We pressed 300 again, reasoning that it would be better to shift them all and we had no real distribution through a third company. People either had to buy the records from the bands themselves or at a couple of shops in Leeds (Out of Step, Jumbo) with whom we would do sale or return.'

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