The Leaving Trains — Fuck

• Artist: The Leaving Trains
• Title: Fuck
• Year: 1987
• Format: Vinyl 12 in.
• Rating (1-10): 6
• Owner: Tracy
• Acquired: 1987 – Promo at Mother’s Records
• Keeper: Maybe

I apologize. And with that out the way let’s talk about the only record I have by The Leaving Trains that I didn’t buy. This one must have been a promo we got when I worked at a chain record store in a shopping mall. You can see from the last pic that the label, SST, ran a display contest. “Win a Plane Trip to a Trains Show.” I guess back in 1987 that would have motivated some folks, but there is no way a chain store in the mall was going cover a wall with record cover reprints, or “flats” as they were called, of an album titled Fuck that just happened to have “FUCK” printed big and bold on the front.

A couple decades later a title like that seems more like a cheap attention-getting gimmick than it did to me at the time. It might work now, but I’m pretty certain this did nothing to help them sell records then. It’s not my favorite of the three LT records I have, but there are some great garage-punk-rock, body-moving songs on this album.

Are The Leaving Trains still making music? I can’t tell.