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Today’s guest blogger is Jon Westbrook from sunny (Southern) California. You may remember him from Knife Fight, or some bands he doesn’t want you to interview him about. In his words, “I don’t speak Spanish, so I don’t have anything interesting to tell you”. He’s also a purveyor of very fine vinyl platters.

I’m sure a lot of you saw this posted over at the livewire records message board, but cc’s on vacation this week and I’m working crazy hours these days (tax season….ok, I’m too lazy to scour ebay every hour in the hopes that some badass platters turn up, but honestly…tax season). Looks like we have the start of a whole collection being sold right now. Hopefully the seller didn’t blow his ebay load on this first batch though, because there’s some pretty good ones up there. Always better to build the hype if you want serious money for your goods. The most likely winner of the bunch will be the Antidote “Thou Shalt Not Kill” EP. I can’t imagine anyone not knowing this EP by now, but in case you’re a n00b, it’s a definite top 5 USHC ep, and in most cases top 2 (Negative Approach is better). Only 500 made, backups by JJ, feat members of M.O.I., yadda yadda yadda. Other gems include an original SSDecontrol “The Kids Will Have Their Say,” FU’s “Kill For Christ,” Rest In Pieces “My Rage,” and the ever popular XChorusX LP. The majority of this collection is in the straight edge vein (80’s and 90’s). And seeing that the seller is from Italy, maybe we’ll get lucky and get some Wretched, Underage, and Bloody Riot records next go around (here’s to hoping). But if there’s one thing to learn when it comes to record collecting for the person who’s serious about owning the best of the best, consider this anecdote: For many of my teenage years and into the early 20’s, I used to curse my parent’s names for waiting 8 years to have children. I thought paying $50 for a record was absurd, and thought “if only I was 5 years older, I could have paid “absurd” prices by 1989’s standards.” But a wise man once told me “if you have the money, just buy it because it’ll be worth more than that in a few years.” Just think about how dumb I’d feel now if I had passed on paying $75 for that Antidote EP in ‘97…