Within hardcore music vinyl collector circles, there are very few records as coveted as Judge's Chung King Can Suck It.
The folklore around the album is the stuff of NYHC legend, but the story begins in 1989 when Judge tracked what was supposed to be their debut LP, Bringin' It Down. The sessions at Chung King Studios (named after the Chinese restaurant the studio shared the building with) just outside of NYC's Chinatown district didn't go well, due to the limited budget's call for late night sessions with a cast of rotating interns manning the recording consoles.
"For the most part, we recorded at Don Fury's studio, but all the bigger pro bands went to Chung King," Judge drummer Sam Siegler told me in a No Echo 2018 interview. "You know, when you're in a band, you want to grow and you want to do what 'they' do and that kind of thing. Slayer recorded at Chung King. The Beastie Boys and Danzig both recorded at Chung King. So, yeah, we wanted to do it, too."
Siegler and the other guys in Judge weren't happy with the results of the LP sessions, to put it lightly. "We didn't really have a producer. We didn't even have an engineer with a vision that got the sound we wanted. They kind of left us there to our own devices and we didn't know what the hell we were doing, so we made this record, and it's just kind of not great."
In the end, Revelation Records co-founder Jordan Cooper gave Judge more money to travel to Normandy Sound in Rhode Island to re-cut the album. But Cooper decided to press 100 copies of the scrapped sessions on white vinyl and call it Chung King Can Suck It. "It was fucking genius but there was no thinking that it was going to be so rare and that one day it would sell for $9,000," Siegler said of Cooper's move.
That brings us to today. In celebration of the 200th release from Revelation Records, the seminal hardcore label is releasing a remastered edition of Chung King Can Suck It by Mike Kalajian with updated packaging containing some never-before-seen photos by Jeffrey Ladd and a reversed-out version of the OG white album cover.
The new and improved version of Chung King Can Suck It —which also includes two unreleased songs, “I’m Holding On” and “No Apologies"— hit streaming outlets today:
Any question of the voracious demand for copies of the original LPs can be answered by a quick look at Discogs where recent transactions show Chung King Can Suck It selling for up to $8000. When I spoke with Siegler about the record, I asked him if he still held any copies in his personal vinyl collection. "I think the band got like 5 copies each and then Jordan just kind of gave them to people. I don't own any copies of the record right now. I think I gave a copy to my friend Max. The rest I've sold.
"I have all sorts of cool hardcore records from back then, but I had a flood in my basement and I lost some of them. Stuff like the BOLD 7" on clear vinyl, and some other gems, I lost in that flood. That coupled with the fact that I was going to have a baby, I decided to purge some of those records. I didn't need doubles and triples, test pressings, or whatever. I kinda wish I still had a 'Chung King Can Suck It' but I sold my last copy for a lot of money a few years ago. I think I sold it for $3000, but I hear it goes for something like $9000 these days?"
Closing out my Chung King discussion with Siegler, he remembered a funny story about it: "I sold one copy on eBay, but I didn't know what I was doing. I think the person bidding didn't believe that it was actually me, so I had to send him a picture of me holding it. It was a kid in Switzerland.
"I also had a friend who I helped sell a copy for. I remember for that one, the kid wanted to meet in NYC and I thought it might be a set up [laughs]. 'I'm going to get jumped for a record,' I thought. We ended up meeting at this public place and it was all good. He was one of the owners of [NYC hip-hop store] Fat Beats and he told me he was a hardcore collector and that he wanted to put the 'Chung King' copy in his safe."
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The vinyl release of Chung King Can Suck It is available for pre-order through Revelation Records with a release date of December 13th, and the album can be streamed in full here.
Vinyl pressing info:
1000 x Translucent Light Blue
700 x Bone / Purple Marble (Retail Exclusive)
250 x Coke Bottle Clear Black Marble (RevHQ Exclusive)
300 x Pineapple (Generation Records / Coretex)
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