The Amity Affliction lead vocalist Joel Birch has auctioned off the band’s gold and silver ARIA records to raise funds in order to move house.
Birch posted photos of the gold and silver records, awarded to the band for their 2012 album ‘Chasing Ghosts’ and 2014’s ‘Let The Ocean Take Me’ respectively, to his Facebook page on Thursday (July 1), writing that he would select the “highest bidder”.
Scores of fans commented asking Birch to keep the “priceless” items, with one even offering $5,000 for him to keep them.
In a later post, Birch confirmed that he had sold the records, revealing that he decided to sell them because he was moving house. “The money is going towards the costs associated with a hyper-inflated rental market due to Covid,” he wrote.
Birch also took pains to reassure fans that he was “not destitute”, calling on them not to crowdfund for him using GoFundMe. “It’s just that in this day and age with a family of five the costs to move house are quite extensive, especially when you have lived in the same place for four years,” he wrote.
“Thank you thank you thank you, but please, I am ok (financially), I promise.”
Hey everyone, the records are sold, thank you 🙂 I didn't sell them to buy a camera by the way, we have to move house…
Posted by Joel Birch on Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Birch appears to have taken down the photos of the records he shared earlier today, and the initial Facebook post in which he mused on selling them in the first place.
In one now-removed post, Birch had already dismissed the suggestion of a crowdfunding campaign, referencing a previous instance in which he initiated a Kickstarter campaign to purchase a camera.
“People could only chip in $20 and they would receive a photo and it was eaten up by the music media acting as though I was asking for a free camera, so I’m gonna pass on that idea,” he wrote.
“I need the money unfortunately, and they’re just collecting dust.”
The Amity Affliction were recently forced to postpone their planned July shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide to February 2022 due to reinstituted COVID restrictions.
“We’re sure you’re sick of it, we certainly are, and to have to put shows on hold actually hurts emotionally at this point. We have done this now for coming up on two decades, and so to have lost our outlet in this period has been devastating,” the band wrote on social media a week ago.
“The continuing apathy shown to the arts industry as a whole completely takes away our means to give you what you deserve.”
The Amity Affliction released their last studio album ‘Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them’ in February of last year. They recently appeared on ABC’s The Set, joining forces with Peking Duk and Jesswar for a cover of AC/DC’s ‘TNT’.