u/heartagramcracka

I don’t mean valuable or desirable, just genuine rarity.

Some people might say something like 666 Ways To Love, but if you’ve been around long enough then you’ve seen dozens of copies go up for sale over the years, so I don’t consider that rare. Same goes for the HER version of Razorblade Romance. Way too many copies being bought and sold for it to qualify. Desirable? Yes. Rare? Not really.

Others might say the demo tapes, but even those have changed hands before.

I’m trying to narrow it down to the one thing that is almost impossible to find and no one ever sells if they have it, but we also have solid proof of its legitimacy and existence, as well a collector actually owning it rather than being something that just the band members themselves might have because it was something that was never properly released or found its way out into the wild.

The Kafferi tapes don’t count, and neither does the tape that the Razorblade Romance demos were ripped from, if they indeed came from a cassette. I’ll throw the Monitor Mixes CD in there as well as far as being disqualified.

All that being said, what do you think is the rarest item that one could possibly own?

EDIT: I’ll go ahead and toss my vote into the ring, although it’s kind of a lame one. There’s a Heartkiller promo with an exclusive "Guitars Down" version of the song that I’ve only seen maybe one person have, and the song itself hasn’t been released onto the internet yet, at least not to my knowledge. It’s just kind of interesting to me that we have all of this other rare stuff, yet that track remains elusive still after all of these years. The difference is probably barely even noticeable, but we have countless other promo versions of songs readily available except for this particular one, so I feel like that attests to something.

​Do you guys mind if I join?

I’m Rake Yohn, the mustard guy, for those who may be unfamiliar.

Moderator edit: This is legit, folks! Ask away!

Rake edit: Well, guys, it’s been almost an hour now and I need to get going. I’m new to this and there were so many questions that I wasn’t sure where to begin, so I apologize if I didn’t get to yours. I’ll try and do this again soon! Woodeewoo.

I find it interesting that they’re specifically labeled as "Ville Valo Demos" on the Mika Jussila list. Everything else on there just says HIM. My memory is a bit fuzzy now that I’m an old man, but I remember something about Ville playing some new tracks on acoustic guitar at a dildo release party for Stefan Lindfors in late 2004 or thereabouts. Those songs were supposedly Under The Rose, Have No Fear, and The Face Of God - all of which appear on the list (and later, Dark Light, except for Have No Fear) with a date of October 1st, 2004. This performance also helped fuel the "is Ville dumping the band and going solo?" rumors.

I just find it weird that Ville would go to the studio by himself to record those demos instead of bringing the rest of the guys with him like usual, if that’s what the case was. Surely there was a "proper" demo session with everyone else involved at some point that we’re just not privy to, considering how big of a deal their new record deal and American debut was.

Venus also appears on the demo list, however, which I’m assuming refers to Venus (In Our Blood). I recall something about Ville saying that it wound up as a bonus track on Dark Light along with The Cage because it was a song that he wrote that wasn’t very HIM-like, or something to that effect. In that sense, could it be possible that Ville was actually gearing up to do a solo album in the near or distant future after all, but then wound up reworking and using those tracks for HIM instead? I’m sure that he was always writing and recording stuff, especially back in those days, but these demos in particular just seem like such an anomaly from the everything else that we know of. Granted, we don’t really know a whole ton.

Either way, I’d love to get my hands on those songs and hear what they sound like. Here’s to hoping that they see the (dark) light of day sometime!

IYKYK.

Casting my morals aside and putting myself into the shoes of the perpetrator, the very first thing that I would’ve done is copy whatever was on those hard drives to my computer, but nothing that could be attributed to the incident has ever leaked, at least not to my knowledge. Maybe it wasn’t a targeted attack, and instead just a random act of impulsivity and stupidity, but has anyone ever heard any rumblings about someone having something that perhaps they shouldn’t have?

Back in 2004, a user called MMH (who I believe was a Canadian music reviewer in some sort of capacity) leaked Too Happy To Be Alive on the Bam Margera Message Boards. Technically, it was a dude who went by the name of Rod who shared it with everyone, but semantics aside I always assumed that it was someone in the band Eighteen Visions that had gotten their hands on them and then, for whatever reason, sent that out in an email to him. It took another decade or so for the rest of the songs to become publicly available, but who was the one who finally gave them up after all those years? Does anyone know the backstory behind those leaks?

If I were to send Robux to someone that I’m not currently friends with, would they just automatically show up in their account afterwards, or is there something that they have to do on their end in order to retrieve them?

Does the account that I’m sending to need to be age verified and/or have some sort of subscription service in order to receive my gift?

Thanks in advance!