The OG Earache album 'hype' stickers on LPs

Question: Hello from Athens guys!

I am a sick vinyl collector since the tender age of 11 (I used to visit the old metal record stores with my dad back in the day)

The original earache LP's had -most of them as I can remember- the infamous promotional stickers on the cover, which I had the lousy habit back then to peel off as they where spoiling the artwork! Any chance for us old earache-ers to get a pdf file or a posting/scan of these great old stickers? All my original vinyls are in top condition but my buddies hassle me for taking of the stickers... I should have known better. Thanx a lot! From: artmutt26@yahoo.gr


Answer: Yes, nearly every release on this label in the early days had some promotional sticker on the front.Dude, if you could remove the hype stickers from the old original LPs you were doing well, cos they had such crappy glue that if you tried to peel em off, half the sleeve came with it. (no shrink wrap in those bygone days, bro)

The music on the LP should be the most important thing, but I guess the stickerhas importance because it's the main thing which ebayers and serious OG grinders look for now, as there have been a few reprintings over the years, minus the sticker.

Collectors nowadays know not to mess with any old record too much so most of the OG copies I have seen around -most do still have the sticker attached. If you removed the stickers from them at the time, then I don't blame you, because they could be annoying to read them. Mostly they were designed to entice the casual browser in the store to take the plunge and make the purchase, and sheer bragging was my chosen method to do it.

By the way I don't reckon there is any point in asking for the pdfs or scans of the stickers in order to somehow print them out fresh and stick them to your records to make em appear OG. Sorry dude, that in my opinion is naff and bogus, and true collectors can spot a fake a mile away.

In case you are interested in what you threw away, here's a few from my own collection, I grabbed some vinyls and took snaps quickly. Also heres the never released colour artworks for Scum and FETO picture discs. We had the warped idea that printing original plain black and white art on the picture disc would not represent good value, and so to make the FETO Pic disc stand out, we thought a colour version might be better, and this is the art used on the picture disc release of FETO. Luckily this stupid idea was not used for Scum, and the coloured-in art version of that album has never been used, thankfully.