In my mailbox today was a 7” vinyl promo copy of the song “Public Enemy #1” by Public Enemy. Released in 1987, this is the first single that they distributed as a group. White label demo copies such as these were usually the first batch off the press and were sent to radio stations, DJs, media outlets, etc.
Did they only make 500 of these? 5,000? 10,000? Probably no way to know, but the fact that this is one of the first Public Enemy vinyl singles ever pressed is amazing to me. I don’t know why promo copies aren’t a bigger thing in the vinyl world.

Once again, another great music group despite being short-lived with only starting their journey in music in 1965 with a quick break up in 1968. They had a very short reunion in 1971 to make their album People Like Us but broke up that same year just after the album was released.
They produced five albums with their time together and had 6 of their 17 singles make it on the Billboard Top 10 selling 40 million records worldwide! Their most popular song is definitely California Dreamin’ which has over 1 billion streams alone on Spotify!
With with all that being said, this card definitely has a place in my collection for being somewhat of a hard card to find seeing that I’m a pretty avid collector of Dutch Gum cards, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a copy of this card before.
❗️Plenty more posts to come. ❗️

As I’ve posted about earlier, I collect sealed music singles that are either personally meaningful or artistically timeless. Both of these are subjective, of course, and many will probably disagree with my judgment on the latter. Either way, here are some highlights from my growing collection.
My favorite one is “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind, which I feel perfectly captures the simultaneous optimism and cynicism of the 1990s. It meets what I call the ‘Voyager Test’: A song I could provide to a future generation or alien species that epitomizes an era of American culture. Bonus points if the cover includes a KMart sticker.