Huge thanks to Mark Murray for sending this over to me after I posted the other demo a couple of weeks ago. This is an earlier demo with only 2 members. Very cool. Now I wish I had seen these guys back in the 80s/90s
From the collection of Mark Murray.
Here is a short one for you today. Man, I loved the Bottle Rockets. Only got to see them play a couple times- once in 1994, once in 1995. Chicken Truck consisted of the 4 core members of the Bottle Rockets and were active from 1986-1989… then they changed their name and the rest is history.
I don’t think that this song made it onto any official Bottle Rockets releases, but they used to play it live back in the 90s.
My favorite part of this one is being to finally decipher some of the lyrics with the lyric sheet.
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: Nakamichi Dragon and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card
Here is yet another demo from Dan Pettit’s collection, from Bethesda, Maryland’s band At Wit’s End. Good stuff- this sounds like something that could have been released by Dischord back in the 80s. I hear a lot of Dag Nasty influence here. The image here is the cassette J-card; it folds out into an 8.5×11 lyric sheet!
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: Nakamichi Dragon and M-Audio audiophile 2498 card
After mowing through some old emails last night, I finally ran across the one that Dan Pettit sent me about these tapes. Apparently, FKB was Bronx Style Bob’s first band. This sounds comparable to the other funk/metal bands coming out of NYC at the time- Living Colour, 24/7 Spyz, etc. Here is a transfer from the original demo. Enjoy.
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: Nakamichi Dragon and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card
Here’s a special one today. I have mentioned before that I troll Ebay for any interesting live or demo tapes, since I don’t have enough to do around here. This one popped up with a $25 buy it now and I jumped on it. It’s not on discogs, not on Youtube, no sales history on Ebay. I think it might be pretty rare. It has 5 songs- 3 of them (The Plank, Impossible, The Bus) made it to the first album. Deep in the Ground was a B-side to The Enemy 7″, and Sacred appears to be unreleased in any form.
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment Used: Nakamichi Dragon and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card
So here is something that will either be incredibly rare and uncirculated or a boring retread. You tell me which- I don’t keep up with bootlegging activities.
Back in the 80s, Op Ivy were working on recording their album with Radley Hirsch, Gilman’s first sound engineer and architect of the sound system you all heard Op Ivy, Green Day, Rancid and Jawbreaker play through at 924 Gilman. It was in place until the mid 90s, and the mains are sitting here in my studio.
Radley would give us tapes with recent Gilman shows he thought we’d like, then tack on other cool stuff. This cool 10min clip was at the end of that Asexuals tape I posted yesterday. There are a bunch of other Op Ivy tapes that were traded out and I suspect were the source of some bootlegs..
Recorded by: Radley Hirsch
Equipment used: His Studio
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: Nakamichi Dragon and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card
From anonymous’ collection
Here’s one for Grant Hudson and anyone else who loves Harm Farm. This tape seems to be pretty rare- no sales history on discogs and it’s not on YT. It’s pretty lo-fi compared to their 2 albums on Alias Records, and this has quite a few songs that were not on either album.
My favorite song is “I Like Your Spots”, which seems to be an ode to cows and I think it is sung my Morgan. Forward to 15:37 if you are interested in that one.
From Anonymous’ collection (he saw it about 1 second before I did at one of the Gilman record swaps in the early 90s)
Recorded by: Cam Gotto (I think- damn that writing is small)
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: Nakamichi Dragon and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card
Here’s another uncirculated House of Freaks video from the 80s. This is an in-store at a record store, and they must have been playing LOUD for the camera audio to distort like that. Damn.
If you have never heard the band, I encourage you to check out their second album called Tantilla on Rhino Records.
Received in trade from mysterious “Josh” without a last name when I lived in L.A.
Recorded by: ?
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Transfer Equipment: JVC HR-S9900U and Canopus ADVC300
OK, here is a repost of the musicalifornia from last week. It took a week to repost because I learned that the Youtube trimming algorithm sucks. I had to chop off EIGHT minutes (the firehose and janes addiction videos) to get it to take.
Here is the last Musicalifornia episode (Episode 13, 1988) that I have. These were a blast to see and share. We did discover through sharing these, that The Pandoras’ Karen Basset is married to the gentleman who produced this series. He has been digitizing his Beta SP masters! Maybe the rest of these episodes will see the light of day sometime.
The Los Lobos- Cinco de Mayo footage on this one is GOLD. Wish it was longer. The Concrete Blonde live footage is well done, too.
Thanks to Erik Flannigan for sending these my way, to Mike Ziegler for the transfer, and to Rick Gershon for holding onto the VHS tape for all these years.
Transfer from 1st gen VHS preproduction master
Here is the last Musicalifornia episode (Episode 13, 1988) that I have. These were a blast to see and share. We did discover through sharing these, that The Pandoras’ Karen Basset is married to the gentleman who produced this series. He has been digitizing his Beta SP masters! Maybe the rest of these episodes will see the light of day sometime.
The Los Lobos- Cinco de Mayo footage on this one is GOLD. Wish it was longer. The Concrete Blonde live footage is well done, too.
Thanks to Erik Flannigan for sending these my way, and to Rick Gershon for holding onto the VHS tape for all these years.
Transfer from 1st gen VHS preproduction master
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Sacramento Music Archive, a 501(c)3 organization