After last year’s reissue of Energy on cassette to mark its 35th anniversary, Tapehead City and Hellcat Records return with a follow-up—this time with the long-overdue cassette debut of Hectic, Operation Ivy’s first EP. Originally released in 1988 on Lookout Records, Hectic has never been officially available on tape until now.
The new edition is limited to 1,000 copies and will feature a UV printed cassette shell, along with a 9-panel j-card that includes all original artwork and lyrics. Pre-orders go live on May 16th, with the official release set for May 30th, 2025.
This follows last year’s reissue of Energy, which landed on cassette for the first time in decades, officially licensed from Hellcat/Epitaph and released to coincide with the 35th anniversary of both the album and the band’s final show. That drop included remastered audio on high-quality RTM tape and came in two shell variants: a black-and-white 2-tone version and a UV edition featuring direct album artwork. It also marked the first time the tape included Jesse Michaels’ original hand-drawn lyric sheet, which never made it into the 1989 release.
Charlie Kaplan of Tapehead City, who led both projects, noted last year: “Me and my friends grew playing in bands that would always cover Rancid and Opivy. These songs have been a part of me for so long. Working on this project was so much fun and such an honor. I really hope the fans are happy with the tapes. I think they came out great.”
The Energy reissue dropped on May 28th, 2024—exactly 35 years after its release and the band’s final show in 1989, which also happened to be Green Day’s first-ever live performance as the opening act.
Operation Ivy’s short run—active from 1987 to 1989—has left a lasting mark on punk and ska scenes, and both releases aim to document that legacy in physical form, decades after the fact. The new Hectic tape is now part of that preservation effort.
Pre-orders and additional info for both releases are available here.
