Ten signed copies

Here is a rule almost nobody knows about. Of every Punishment Park release, exactly ten copies exist with the signatures of all the members on them. Not roughly ten. Ten. I can guarantee it, because I was the guitarist in the band from start to finish, and I am the one who made sure we signed everything, ten copies of each release, no more. As far as I know there are no other copies out there carrying every member’s signature. Just these ten of each.

Five of each sit in the band archive, and they will sit there for all time. The rest will be sold, eventually. There is one standing exception: we want Rockheim to have the chance at a complete signed collection, if they want one.

That rule covers a strange little shelf of records. The debut album came out on our own pressing in August 1991, 1,200 CDs in a year when everyone still swore by vinyl. Ten of those 1,200 are signed by all of us.

The same album came out on vinyl in the Czech Republic in 1994, 666 copies on black vinyl. The covers were not ready when the records had to be picked up, so part of that pressing was sold with no cover at all in Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany on the 1994 tour. There were two Polish cassette editions too, one of about a thousand copies and one of only a few hundred with a home-made black-and-white cover. Ten of each, signed.

It covers the album the German label sat on for years, which finally came out in 2000 as 250 copies of white ten-inch vinyl. It covers the Blendwerk cassette from 1995, 500 copies that sold out fast. It covers the Sweetie EP, 250 copies on red vinyl. Small numbers everywhere, and inside every small number, a smaller one: ten.

The point was never to be precious about our autographs. When we toured Eastern Europe in 1994, pirate copies of our first albums were everywhere, and we treated that as free promotion and were happy about it. In Belchatow in Poland people sat in the town centre with ghetto blasters playing our two first albums at full volume off pirated tapes, and fans came over and wanted their pirate cassettes signed. We signed them. It was a fine day.

Signatures even worked as border currency once. At the Polish border in 2003 a customs officer recognised who we were and announced, straight-faced, that he had to charge us a toll: signed CDs for himself, his colleague and their wives, and then we could pass. That was a deal we could live with.

So our signatures are scattered across half of Europe and a good part of China, on tickets, posters, pirate tapes and t-shirts. That is exactly why the ten complete sets matter. Anything can carry one or two of our names. Only ten copies of each release carry all of them, and I know where every one of them is.