Sea Hags - demo (1986)

Oh boy.  A few nights ago I mentioned this was going to be a comparatively atypical week on these pages, and I can't think of anything I've shared in a long time that goes against the Wilfully Obscure grain quite like this 'lil nugget.  You see, back in 1988 I was knee-deep in Guns 'n' Roses hysteria just as much as any other pubescent teen lad.  Yet unlike many of my peers, even back then I was keeping my ear to the ground for interesting new talent that was being scooped up in the sleaze-rock sweepstakes post-Appetite for Destruction's colossal ascent.  Some of those now defunct, greaseball coattail riders included Little Caesar, Johnny Crash (my personal favorite), Junkyard, and perhaps most key among them, Dangerous Toys.  And oh yeah, a little old band that (unfortunately) couldn't from San Francisco dubbed the Sea Hags.

In fact, the Hags 1989 self tilted debut hoisted the Axl & Slash flag so damn high they were able to corral Appetite producer Mike Clink to man the boards for 'em.  Not only was I an early adopter of these guys, it damn near felt like I was the Sea Hags only adopter, at least in my small corner of the world.  Truth be told the Sea Hags record couldn't touch Appetite or for that matter the Illusion albums, but it did contain a handful of bona-fide slammers, specifically "Half the Way Valley" and "Too Much T-Bone."  Nonetheless I was intrigued, and as recently as last year I continued to scour the web for the any remaining vitals to be had on the Sea Hags.  An mp3-only release, Live at CD Studios 1987 surfaced on Amazon downloads, and other digital purveyors, essentially a compilation of demos containing several songs that didn't materialize on the album.  However this year I had stumbled upon something even more vintage, an original demo cassette of six songs committed to tape in November of '85.  Recorded as a trio (as opposed to the quartet that eked out that one album for Chrysalis), this rather revealing reel exhibiting a significantly different sounding Sea Hags - slower, rawer, and smoldering, with a lot more grime and grind in tow than Mike Clink could have ever hoped to exude out of them.  This entry may go over the heads of a lot of my readership, but for those of you with any familiarity and/or appreciation of the Hags, this tape is a fascinating curio of their nascent steps, including three songs that didn't make it past the demo stage.  BTW, the Sea Hags album has been reissued and can be found here.

01. Ridin' Out
02. Bunk Bed Creek
03. Doghouse
04. Back to the Grind
05. Think About It
06. To the Sea

Hear