Our weekly column "White Whale Vinyl" spotlights the most sought-after rare vinyl in the heavy-music universe. Shop for vinyl, including a selection of limited-edition Revolver-exclusive variants, via our store.
With a tiny discography of rousing hardcore anthems and a family tree that includes youth crew titans Warzone, Judge and Youth of Today — not to mention post-hardcore favorites Quicksand — NYC hardcore troupe Gorilla Biscuits are the stuff of legend. Thanks to a couple of notorious pressing errors, so is their debut EP.
When Revelation Records released the band's first seven-inch in 1988, the label included a trade list with each copy of the single: "We will trade any Revelation 7" record on the list for large, OLD (60's, early 70's) G.I. Joe figures or accessories, Old Batman, Robin or Villain figures, or Batman Nostalgia from the 60's."
In exchange, Revelation offered copies of the now-massive hardcore label's first four releases: the Warzone 7-inch "on color or first press," the New York City Hardcore 1987 compilation on gold vinyl, the Sick of It All 7-inch on red vinyl and, of course, the Gorilla Biscuits 7-inch on banana yellow vinyl. The latter was the second pressing of the GB single — the first appeared on plain black vinyl — and there are at least two unintended variations that now fetch huge sums.
The first is known as the "Warzone B-side" mispress, on which one of the labels from the Warzone 7-inch was used on the B-side of the Gorilla Biscuits 7-inch. Adding variation on top of variation, some of these singles feature the band name in purple lettering on the sleeve, while others have the band name in red.
Revelation explains these phenomena on their website: "Towards the end of the pressing they ran out of both sleeves and B-side labels. Which ran out first can be debated, but 50-90 have the Warzone B-side label and can be found with either purple lettering sleeves or red lettering sleeves."
As of this writing, these rare mispresses go for anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 apiece and were the most expensive records sold on Discogs in November 2016 and June 2019.
The second, rarer and way more expensive version is the cream or "off-white" vinyl variation, a pressing plant mistake that Revelation explains this way: "The only plausible explination [sic] for these would be that when the white and yellow vinyl was mixed to create the banana yellow color, a few copies were made before the vinyl was fully mixed." While the label acknowledges that at least two of these off-white whales exist, Discogs claims there may be as many as 25. Either way, one sold for nearly six grand — $5,952.38, to be exact — in March of 2018.
And to think you could've got one for a lousy G.I. Joe figure back in 1988.
