After we stopped rolling tape for the interview I drank another beer and James mentioned that he had a few cassette tapes from old Vegas hardcore bands. I flipped!
Turns out he has a few live FSP recordings plus some other random demos. He let me borrow a few and here's the result of my digitilizing. Hope I earned my wings with this audio engineering feat. People are ripping cassette demos half assed all over the internet/blog world with records skipping and the whole bit so hopefully this digital copy will do the source material justice.
Speaking of which... the source material as you can imagine is pretty bad. If you are unfamiliar with Fuck Shit Piss then do not start here! Download the Call Me Paranoid Demo which has it's own issues but is still eminently better quality than this tape.
When looking through his tapes we found one that had Foghat written on it and scratched out, then Thompson Twins scratched out, then Tears For Fears scratched out and then it said FSP.
I didn't digitize that one. Instead I digitized the tape that is pictured above. Sure the label says FUCK SHIT PISS 1985-86, but on closer inspection you'll notice this is a Prince and the Revolution tape. It's copyrighted 1985 so I'm pretty sure this was the album that has Raspberry Beret. If you start to hear that song bleeding over in the mix then you'll know why. I didn't detect that after listening to it a few times. If you hear it then start dancing motherfucker.
Something tells me you might not listen to this more than once anyway unless you're a diehard FuckShitPiss fan. But I wouldn't be surprised if some of you do just that. I've never heard some of these songs before most notably FSP on Everything.
I didn't know the names of quite a few songs. If you know the song titles fess up and I'll change them here. This was my first attempt at digitizing from a cassette. Being that it's a rehearsal I've grouped songs together within tracks. It's hardcore so the songs go by fast anyway.
James nailed it in the interview, these guys really did have a jazzy style. Super catchy. The songs I left untitled are the songs I've never heard before. It's funny how straight up poppy those songs come off. The hardcore sound is still there but they were really broad in terms of style. At that time most hardcore bands were just furious energy but these guys definitely had their share of hooks.
The run down is as follows to the best of my knowledge: drums: Mike Fouts, Vocals: Danny Breedon, Bass: Johnny Bangs, Guitar: Kevin. As usual any gaps you can fill in will help the history books. Not sure when this tape was recorded either. I'm assuming 85-86. No other date is evident on the tape itself.
A word of warning- the tape started in the middle of a song and ended in the middle of a song. Also, when I digitized them I might have mixed up the order. If you got a better copy get in touch. While you're at it how about sending me more stickers, graphics, and photos if you got em? Jeez is this blog turning into an FSP blog or what?
Download the first two FSP demos and most of the songs featured here by clicking here!
Otherwise download this rehearsal tape by clicking the individual links below.
1. Unknown Song (starts awkwardly, that's how the tape was)
2. Fuck Shit Piss on Everything
3. another unknown song
4. hey another song I'm unfamiliar with
5. Call Me Paranoid
6. Creepy Crawl
7. Disagree
8. Frequency
9. Living the American Dream
10. another unknown song
Chad I was Danny's girlfriend ( the singer ) and I just wanted to let you know you did a great job of describing their sound. In fact I.ve never heard it sound so correct! They did have a jazzy sound in there? Keep up the good working your writing is in my opinion perfect.
ReplyDeleteAgain this is Judy O'Hara, I wrote the comment about being Danny's girlfriend from FSP. Well somehow daniel galusha's name was posted insstead of mine. Well actually I couldn't figure out how to post it properly I guess.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouraging words Judy! It means a lot to me. Just when you're wondering if it's worth it people will come along to tell you that it is worth it. Thank you again.
ReplyDeleteYou have our only copy of that rehearsal , if it was not for you, we might have lost some of those songs forever , we are using your recording for our next band rehearsal , Thanks Chad ...Fuck Shit Piss on Everything ...Johnny Bangs ...
ReplyDeleteChad I can give you some insight to the first track. It was 3 songs, I Want a War, Nuclear leukemia and Combat zone. And yes you would hear somewhat of a Jazzy feel in some of the songs as My background was Jazz. hope this helps fill some gaps.
ReplyDeleteJeff D