Stiffs, Inc.-Nix Nought Nothing (1995)

 

Artist: Stiffs, Inc.

Title: Nix Nought Nothing

Label: Onion/American

Format: CD

Cat #: 9 14527-2

Year of Release: 1995

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1995 slipcase promo

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 8/13/25

Sell Price: $4.00

Discogs Last Sold: 1/9/21 VG+/generic $1.61

Low: $1.61

Median: $2.81

Average: $2.81

High: $4.00

Current low price: $15.88

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 2

Have/Want: 4/2

Where Sold: San Francisco, CA

Time it took to sell: 15  years

Where and When Bought: got as promo

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B

Sad To See It Go: No

Stiffs, Inc were a "Continental band" (the NYC club) that made it to the "big time."  This meant they got Rick Rubin level distribution on the short lived (1994-6) Onion imprint headed by Johan Kugelberg.  Onion was mostly responsible for pilfering the Ohio bands of Datapanik like V3 and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments into the major label chain.  Did they sell any better?  Who knows.  I was shocked when this slipcase promo I've had gathering dust for 30 years suddenly sold for $4.  In the history of Discogs only one other sold back in 2021 for $1.61.  This is why I list everything and let the market sort it out.  You really never know what sells and why.  The next cheapest promo copy of this is now going for over $15, so maybe there is some prospecting going on.  It never got reissued since 1995.

The thing about Nix Nought Nothing was every time I heard something from it, I liked it.  Enough to warrant me to give it airplay back in 1995 when I was still doing overnight radio.  I don't know if I ever pulled it later in the 90's once it went into archive rotation. When you are pulling 30 or 40 archive titles a show on a weekly basis you may very well decide one day in 2003 or 2017 that you will pull the record you liked back in 1995 for a 4:15am spin. There were no "hits" on this, so it's a different kind of pull.  You got yer hits, yer things you liked peripherally, the things you never paid attention to but are curious and the things you completely ignored but maybe you had a conversation about it all going into a hastily made pile 30 minutes before airtime.  This was a "liked peripherally" title.   

I have no recollection of the follow-up in 1997 even though I was still doing air.  To me Stiffs, Inc sound like a Buzzcocks knockoff with a little more emphasis on garage punk guitar.  Having never seen the band live, I was curious as to why there kept being references to "Goth."  Photos have the singer wearing white facepaint like the singer in The Adicts, but you can't tell that by listening to the music.  Even the "Goth" lyrical content got completely lost on me as just another blur of indecipherable lyrics with an occasional Buzzcocks sounding chorus.  Worth having the slipcase promo copy for free, not worth tracking down a copy with the packaging in the dollar bin.  I'm sure there were many floating around in the mid 90's.

Pleasant enough.