My record collection
#155: On Fire | 30

In October 2019 Galaxie 500’s masterpiece On Fire reached 30 years of age. At the beginning of May that year I came up with a half-arsed plan to commemorate this - over the next few months, and mainly because of other people - that half-arsed idea turned into On Fire | 30.

On Fire | 30

The original idea was to create a fanzine, with a piece of art to represent each song on the album - I suggested a pretty loose definition of art to try and encourage participation and there was a little interest although not as much as I’d hoped. However Miguel got in touch shortly after my call for contributions and suggested that we expand this to include an album with bands doing cover versions of each track. So, the short turn-around to produce a fanzine became a short turn-around to produce a fanzine and an album.

My first thought was to release the music on a cassette as it would have been cheaper and a little more quirky, but eventually opted for CD as something more useful (who actually regularly uses cassettes these days?) and, I was hoping, cheaper to post although this may not have been the case.

The whole thing wouldn’t have happened but for the contributions of lots of people but most importantly these three:

• On Fire | 30 wouldn’t have had music without Miguel, he rounded up most of the artists including a couple of coups in Britta for one track, and Robert Scott (of The Bats) for another!
• John designed the beautiful artwork on the book and disc, and prepped it all for printing.
• Hannah did a fine job of coralling everything, arranging for the book printing and the cd pressing. She also came round and stuffed envelopes when it came to sending things out.

Contributors were “paid” in copies of the finished article.

On Fire | 30 was released in two formats - a deluxe edition that included the booklet with badges, photos, postcards and the disc - I also randomly included horrendous, messy, limited-edition lino-cut print, and a standard edition CD only for folk who just wanted the music - this turned out to be a mistake since nobody wanted just the CD - I still have a few kicking around, I sometimes leave them at gigs just to get rid of a few!

The copies with booklets however sold out fairly quickly, so here is a PDF of the booklet.

I hosted a listening party on Twitter on release day, although suspect it was just me listening - here’s what I tweeted.

You can still listen to and buy (for pay what you want) the album on Bandcamp or buy the CD, although shipping costs are ridiculous at the moment so maybe get in touch with me if you want to negotiate a trade or a deal!

• Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/157
• Artist: Various
• Title: On Fire | 30
• Notes:
• Packaging: CD packaged to look like a single!
• Format: CD/booklet
• Buy ‘On Fire | 30’ on Bandcamp