Welcome to night one. Collectors of all stripes are always searching for "grails," so to speak, few and far between as they may be. At any given moment there's no shortage of vinyl and aluminum on my ever expanding want list. Pricy as those tricky titles may be, most of the records and CDs I need to fill in the gaps are out there so long as I'm willing to pony up the cabbage. Cassettes, on the other hand, particularly original demo tapes and cassette-only albums are typically much scarcer - in some cases limited to a few hundred, dozen or even just a handful copies. But on these rare reels often sit under-released music that never made it past the demo phase, and thusly even the swankest, most audiophile-coveted turntables and component CD players will be of no use whatsoever in playing them back. Here are three unearthed chestnuts, from my teaming shoe and storage boxes.
There's precious little in the W/O permanent collection representing
Mike Viola and/or his crew
The Candy Butchers, given that the vast majority of his catalog is officially available from all the usual suspects. The four song
Don't Break My Fall, though technically
not a demo, is however of particular scarcity, especially the vinyl incarnation - so image my delight when I spotted a sealed copy of the cassette version at the now sadly defunct In Your Ear Records in Boston a few years ago. So far as I can tell
Don't Break... was the first in a long line of recordings to bear Mike's namesake, and while he and the accompanying three-piece
Snap may have looked like reformed metalheads, power pop was pulsing through his veins as far back as the mid-80s when this EP reared it's precious obscure head. The primo title cut finds our protagonist already finagling with the hook-addled panache of Rundgren and Costello. As for the remaining numbers, even the frivolously dubbed "I Don't Wanna Die a Pizza Maker" drops a few hints at the quantum strides he would muster in the ensuing decades. If you're new to Mr. Viola, I recommend starting with the Candy Butchers 2003 magnum opus,
Hang on Mike.Mike Viola & Snap - Don't Break My Fall (1987, RPM)
01. Don't Break My Fall
02. Rainbows
03. I Don't Wanna Die a Pizza Maker
04. Room For One More
Overwhelming Colorfast may have made your acquaintance on these pages, when I got this whole ball o' wax rolling upon
sharing their delightful
Sourdough ep (1995) along with a preceding '92 single. This San Fran-area treat put their howling, blustery Husker Du indebted noise to pasture by the turn of the millennium, leaving us with three highly consistent albums alongside considerably more petite but powerful releases like this self-titled cartridge circa 1990. I only came into possession of it relatively recently, but I can imagine the excitement of what it must have been like hearing this right before O.C. had a national presence - raw, amped-to-the-hilt, yet engagingly melodic. It's punk pop enhanced with the deftness and dexterity of classic rock minus the beer gut. The originals are pretty remarkable, but so is their fairly straightforward reading of "She Said, She Said." This one is a real treat if you took a liking to their 1992
debut LP, also self-titled.
The Overwhelming Colorfast - tape (1990, Two Car Garage)
01. Yap!
02. Forest
03. Try
04. The Pink & the Red
05. Yup!
06. She Said, She Said
07. Veil
08. Fearless
Last but not least, here's a band I've already sung my praises about (heck, I've technically
shared 2/3 of this ages ago) but as the saying goes, it bears repeating.
Shufflepuck made waves in L.A.'s indie circuit in the Clinton-era and happened to be near and dear friends to their slightly more visible cohorts, Weezer. Sonically, Shufflepuck were in the same wheelhouse, yet the Adam Orth helmed-quartet wielded an even crunchier guitar heft and a more concussive modus operandi. The absolutely blistering "Where the Hell is She," a par-excellence underdog paean bearing a FAT, intoxicating power chord is just as effective as any damn AC/DC riff these ears have encountered. And much like early Weez, the 'pucks quality control was on a 'blue album' level, not yielding a nanosecond of filler. The band recorded an album intended for release on Interscope in '96, but the long and short of it all is that it was shelved...until this year.
Finally brought to market as a privately pressed and extremely limited
vinyl LP, it's finally seeing the light of day physically and
digitally. Two songs from the cassette I'm offering here tonight made the migration to Shufflepuck's
Album, but the third number, "Naked With No Covers On" is very much exclusive to this tape and thoroughly worth your while. Enjoy!
Shufflepuck - tape (1994)
01. Where the Hell is She
02. Fool Like Me
03. Naked With No Covers On
1 comment:
Thank you, and happy Hanukkah.
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