Heats Live At Showbox 1979 (Black) vinyl is one of two variants of a limited edition double live album from The Heats, pressed to only 500 total copies across lavender and black vinyl editions, documenting a 1979 performance at Seattle’s Showbox venue.
Heats Live At Showbox 1979 (Black) vinyl: The Heats and Seattle Power Pop
The Heats emerged from Seattle during the late seventies power pop wave, a band that operated at the intersection of punk energy and melodic songwriting in the manner that defined the best of that movement. The Showbox was the venue where Seattle’s emerging new wave and punk scene found its footing, and a 1979 performance there documents a specific moment in that city’s musical history before the scene’s character became fixed in the public imagination. The Heats’ catalog has never received the sustained critical attention it deserves from outside the Pacific Northwest.
New Label, Limited Pressing
NW Power Pop and Punk is a new label dedicated specifically to the Northwest power pop and punk catalog. That focus is itself significant: building a label around a specific regional and stylistic legacy rather than casting a wide net suggests that the people behind it have a clear sense of what they are trying to preserve and for whom. 500 total copies split between lavender and black means 300 black vinyl copies in this variant. The double live format gives the full performance room to breathe without compression or editing.
Live At The Showbox 1979: The Tracklist
The set opens with Do You Wanna Dance, moves through I Don’t She Don’t Mind, Let’s All Smoke, My Baby Lied, Pull The Wool, and continues from there. The tracklist reflects a band that had developed a live set with genuine momentum and the craft that makes power pop compelling when performed by people who actually understand why the form works and what it requires from performers.
The physical format matters for a record like this. Whether on LP or CD, the experience of holding the object and engaging with the liner notes adds a dimension that streaming cannot replicate. That is especially true for catalog releases like this one, where the context, the pressing history, and the label story are all part of understanding what you are actually listening to and why it was worth preserving.
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