Krays - The Victor Lee EP (1996)

We really have no idea about this. The Squid Mail label seems vaguely familiar - and we know Brennan Hart played on one of the Jeff Kushner solo tapes. But beyond that, we got naught.

And we're too lazy to make stuff up tonight.

Big Gulp - Shine (1992)

KC Armstrong of Push sent us a tape that's a marginal Calgary release. We'll let you interpret our usage of marginal on this one, based on the following explanation.

Big Gulp evolved out of one of the more criminally underlooked/forgotten bands in these parts, the Vindicators, as well as a band that we've been trying pretty hard to track down, the Li-150's. We're not sure what happened between the great garage rock of the Vindicators and this, but as Daaren Boreham puts it neatly in Beatroute, the Li-150's "morphed into Jane's Addiction (big gulp)."

We always thought the "big gulp" comment was a sort of onomatopoeia, but apparently it's the result of a sloppy editor (we here at the CCPS have the hihest editorial standards). The fact that this tape didn't come with a j-card is saved by this long-forgotten page on the interweb, which tells us that while Big Gulp formed in Calgary, this tape was recorded by the band after they moved to Vancouver. Still, we're going to call this a Calgary release.

(Thanks to Conrad Montana for hooking us up with the cover art on this one!)

'Cause we been caught stealing, once...

Various - Hellride to a Bloodbath (1996)

Now's probably as good a time as any to slip this one in, having just posted some early FD, Rabbit Has Groin and Staasi Quartet. This is the second Bloodbath compilation (wow, we've mastered the art of the obvious, haven't we?), which only came out on CD (as far as we know - we keep discovering cases where this isn't true - but this one, we're mostly sure of).

Update: We got the tape! Hot damn! 

We've heard from almost all of these bands already - the only band who is MIA in our quest right now is Wedge, who we know released a 7" on Sloth - but we're still hoping there's a tape of theirs out there somewhere.

Ye Olde Tracke Listing is:

Staasi Quartet: Suite Moody Smooth
Forbidden Dimension: Meat Is Meat
Placebo: Bicycle Safety
Also Known As: Incomplete
Rosco Pecoe: I Guess I'm Just A Loser
Rabbit Has Brain: Pussy Juice
Wicked Swimming Dog: Why Are You Gone
Bent On Barbi: Love Black Lies
25 Cent Peep Show: Marjorie's Arteries
Wedge: Civic
Staasi Quartet: Popsicles Are Guided Missles
Rabbit Has Brain: How Does It Work?
Rosco Pecoe: V.C.R.
Also Known As: N.S.F.
Placebo: Bobib
25 Cent Peep Show: Transfixing Hypnosis Reptilian Subdued
Wedge: Latex
Bent On Barbi: 3
Forbidden Dimension: All Black And Hairy
Wicked Swimming Dog: Afterwards She...
Stassi Quartet: Cozy

Ah, we'd forgotten Bent on Barbi. Not one of our favourites, but it's still of interest to us here at the CCPS.

But then, a lot of (often trivial) things interest us.

Staasi Quartet - Untitled

So, while yesterday's Staasi Quartet cassette was probably a somewhat official release, we're not sure about this one. It comes to us on an unlabelled C-60 tape, so we're guessing as to its origins, date and song titles.

But what we're not guessing about is this: while the tape we posted yesterday gives us a link to the Primrods, this one gives us a link to McClure's post-Primrods exploits with the Summerlad. This rolls back some of the 90's indie rock touches and is fairly heavy on the krautrock and shoegazer influences, which is a-okay by us, believe you me. The vocals via chorus pedal/flanger/whatever help to seal the connection to the Summerlad.

Speaking of the Summerlad, we have to put a plug in for their CD release show, in about a week at Broken City. We'll be there, hosting a drunken Primrods sing-along somewhere in the back (or in the alley, if/when we get kicked out).

Staasi Quartet - Staasi Quartet

Last week, our pal Chris Zimmel (of Airship One and Massive Ferguson) mailed us a few tapes he had stashed away in his Edmontonian fortress. This is the first, and it's something we've been chasing after for a while. Staasi Quartet was note really a quartet - we have conflicting reports as to the membership, ranging from two people to more than forty. We know for sure that two of the folks were Ron Choe and Garrett McClure.

Of course, we're pretty transparent about things we like. You already know we like the Primrods (just a bit past the point of obsession), so pre-P7 Garrett McClure has been a strong point of interest for us. This tape hasn't disappointed us; it hasn't left the tape deck much over the past week.

We'd only previously managed to get hold of Staasi Quartet via the Hellride to a Bloodbath compilation, and this tape is quite different than the noisy guitar rock attack of Hellride's tracks. While much of this is richly steeped in early-90's indie rock (traces of Stereolab, Yo La Tengo and Sebadoh pervade), it's the first track that repeatedly blows our minds. "Available at Christmas in Hardcover Only" is basically a prototype of "Plans For Palmyra," from the Primrods' split 7" with Tristan Psionic and their tragically, criminally unreleased (*cough*) Geffen CD.

We still have no idea what the lyrics are, but we don't care.

Forbidden Dimension - Sin Gallery (1993)

We ended up talking tapes at Broken City last night (in between the flying fists - for future shows, we would like to request that idiots not attend rock shows when we are. With the CCPS present, there's enough idiocy for everyone, and less punching), and our friend Casey Lewis leans over and says (we're paraphrasing here, as we were a bit traumatized by the above mentioned flying fists and can't quire remember the what he said exactly), "I just told someone about your site, she's looking for a copy of Sin Gallery, I told her you'll have it."

"But, Good Sir!" We said, "We cannot post that! It was only released on compact disc, the medium of the devil!"

"No, it came out on tape," Casey insisted, "and it's out of print now."

Well, we've done a bit of research, and of course Casey is correct (as you've figured out by now, we are very rarely right about anything). It looks like Sin Gallery, which is technically considered FD's first full-length recording, was put out by the sadly departed Cargo records on both vinyl and cassette. We managed to confirm this visually via a facebook photo of someone's tape collection, which includes Sin Gallery (alongside both Roky Erickson AND Roxette).

At this point, Forbidden Dimension was Jackson Phibes, Lars Bonfire, and Larry Van Halen. Or, if you prefer, Tom Bagley, another guy, and a drum machine. It's good stuff, still one of our favourites from these guys.

However, all we have is the CD (which is lovingly stored in out collection alongside both Foreigner and Dan Fogelberg), so we're cheating a bit and using that as our source for today's post. To make up for that, we're going to point you to this FD Fanzine site for the lyrics and all of your sing-along pleasures (you'll find this especially useful for the horror-folk of "In the Pines").

Get it here.

Update! Huge thanks to Eric Peterson for generously donating a copy of the tape for our archives. We're thrilled to have this in the collection!

2022 update! We just got a copy of the reissue of this tape from the good folks at Wasted Wax Records. They've also done the good (?) work of putting out a vinyl edition of this masterpiece, which you'll probably want to grab from them.

THEexceptionsCDN - THEexceptionsCDN (1997)

We think we're getting towards the bottom of the pile of tapes we borrowed from CJSW. At least, we're getting towards the end of the list of ones that (a) have a j-card and/or (b) we know anything about. We suspect today's tape is somewhat related to this post, and out ears certainly think there's probably more than a slight chance to this.

But, as always, we're not certain.

New Internationalists - CJSW Demos 1992-97

We've pulled together three demo tapes from the New Internationalists into one collection here, partly to show how much a band can change over time (especially with changes in membership) and partly because we're quite lazy.

The first few songs on here fit the same style as the tape we featured yesterday; our Musical Analogue Expert wants to compare these guys to Hunters and Collectors without the horn section. We're still trying to figure out how we ended up with a position called a Musical Analogue Expert. We think he's referring to the anthemic, big music sound they put out. Anyhow, we found a bio of frontman Bruce Callow that indicates he split town and headed to Costa Rica, where he's been since. After the first tape, the style of this changes radically - ending in pretty uninteresting blues rock (to us - but then, we've never like the blues). We were overly-quick in returning the tapes we borrowed from CJSW back to Myke Atkinson; we neglected to make any notes of who the members were for the final two tapes.

The same bio of Bruce Callow indicates that the New Internationalists reunited sometime after 2003, and put out a CD.

But, again, we don't really care about CDs here.

New Internationalists - New Internationalists (1991)

We're struggling through some uncertainty here (as is often the case here at the CCPS). We know Bruce Callow of the 21 Hundredz went on to form the New Internationalists, but we have no idea who else was involved in this.

So we'll leave it at that.

Update! Thanks to one of our operatives, who tells us that the other two members of the band were Karl Harter (bass) and Jeff Evans (drums). This tape was also (allegedly) produced by Paul Baker, who is notable for having worked with Rock and Hyde. Which, we note, perhaps isn't very notable.

21 Hundredz - Demo

We're heading back into some of our great finds from the CJSW archive with today's post (and, if we can stay focused, for the next short while). We've heard from the 21 Hundredz thanks to our pals over at Golden Rock and their posts of the Tones and Calgary Compelation LPs. Two of the tracks on this 3-song demo are from those records, leading us to guess the year on this is between 1986 and 1988.

We're having a hard time tracking down details about this band, including membership. A bit of sleuthing tells us that Bruce Callow and a guy named V. Jed Deluca were part of this band, and we have reason to believe that Lori Kennedy played drums for these guys prior to being in Same Difference. A guy named David London may have been the front man. There's a lot we're guessing at, based on some heavy Googling/drinking tonight. The magic of a Google cache yields this:

This band released two singles and produced 4 videos one of which was in Much Music's rotation in 1984.They performed at the Montreal New Music Festival in 1987. The band also won Calgary radio station KIK FM's band contest in 1989 with the winning single being written and produced by Jed.

Wow. KIK FM. How many of you remember Humble Howard... and were at a taping of Switchback in the early-80s?

We were!