Records That Never Saw The Light of Day (Part 1)
Being in bands for so long I’ve met a lot of people over the years that own their own record labels. On a few occasions the conversation has come up about a release their label had planned that never panned out. It happens all the time. Bands break up, people get sued, ideas get forgotten for whatever reason etc. I figured it would be pretty interesting to ask a bunch of these people the same question and hopefully get some interesting stories. So I sent this email out and got some pretty cool responses. I hope all you music nerds like me will get a kick out of this. Enjoy!
Tony Foresta
What is the most interesting release that your label had planned that never saw the light of day?
Chris Dodge- Slap a Ham Records
Slap A Ham had a compilation planned of all brutal bands doing TV theme songs. It was tentatively titled “Kill Your Television”. I had a picture of Bush Sr. puking on the Japanese prime minister, so I was going to have the cover of the comp be that pic on a TV screen. There were several bands who actually recorded for it…. 13 (“Fat Albert”), Lack Of Interest (“Bonanza”), and I even got a GG Allin track (“Partridge Family”). The GG track was pretty crappy though. He was in jail at the time, so he had a friend on the outside piece something together. It was basically the Partidge Family harpsichord intro, and then it launched into 5 minutes of noisy experimental sludge with GG talking over it about killing & raping. I think I may have gotten a Brutal Truth track as well. I had asked bands like Crossed Out, MITB, and Rupture to contribute, too. I forget who else was supposed to be on the comp. I do remember that MITB was planning on doing the “Good Times” theme. It was supposed to be an LP, but not that many bands actually recorded their tracks. So I planned on doing a 7″ by default, but the quality of the tracks that I did receive was pretty hit & miss. Half of them were experimental and didn’t represent what the bands really sounded like, and frankly, just weren’t very good. I seem to recall only the 13 & Lack Of Interest tracks were good, but it was hardly a “comp” with only two bands. Eventually the idea was scrapped. I feel bad for the bands who actually spent the time & effort to record, but if it had seen the light of day with the material I had, it would have been even more embarrassing if it had been released.
Jake Bannon- Deathwish Records
The Asps: A metallic band that F. Sean Martin, Nate Newton, and myself talked about doing. I think we started writing once, then just ended up watching “Apocalypse Now Redux” and “Band Of Brothers” for a weekend. I still want to write music with F. Sean, as he is amazing.
“Virgin”: A project between Converge and Cave In members, playing together as one band. Though the guys started recording songs together, the project never fully materialized. Since then a majority of the song ideas have been absorbed by both Converge and Cave In on various albums.
Gordon Conrad- Relapse Records
In the early 90s, Relapse then Relapse and Nuclear Blast America under one roof – was planning to put together a Doors tribute compilation of heavy death metal and grindcore bands covering/ mangling Doors tracks. Many of the tracks were scheduled to be reinterpreting the songs, and thus have significant changes in arrangements, possibly vocals, etc. The Doors representatives simply wouldnt approve the reinterpretations of the songs, stopping the project in its tracks, but not before some of the bands (Amorphis, etc) had recorded their versions. The world absolutely missed out on the brilliance of Anal Cunt covering Hello, I Love you and Pungent Stench doing Back Door Man.
Attached is a fax from ’92/’92 sent to Pyogenesis letting them know which bands had reserved which tracks.
Bryon Lippencott – Kiss Of Death Records
Somehow up to this point we have followed through with most of our strange ideas thus far but I really wanted to release a die-cut 7-inch that was a flesh colored hand with a middle finger sticking up… we also talked about shocker shaped vinyl, but this was the late nineties.
Digby Pearson- Earache Records
Earache’s done our share of crazy releases, ..but a funny thing I always wanted to try was a double-groove cut on a vinyl, where two songs are cut side by side. So when the needle is placed on the record, depending on which groove it hits, it plays one song or another. The cutting engineer would always talk me out of it, cos of the cost of wastage of the acetates if the grooves of each cut touched.He told me it might take 5-6 attempts to make perfect, so I never did it.
One thing I’m so HAPPY we never made is 5.1 surround sound DVD-Audio .In 2000 or so, labels seriously considered this the next big audio format, Metallica had one, Motorhead even had one out.We made advanced plans to try it on lots of old classic earache titles, but I got cold feet, luckily. Turns out the future was MP3 anyway, not SACD/DVD-A.
Andy Low – Robotic Empire
Robo 036 – Hassan I Sabbah – Discography CD never happened cause a well-known-mastering-engineer-who-I’d-prefer-to-remain-nameless ERASED the master ADAT that I sent him that had all of the band’s self-recorded material on it. So the only available versions remaining were on crappy home-dubbed cassette tapes they’d dumpster-dived or something, so basically all the non-studio recordings (3/4ths of the release) sounded like ass.
Var Thelin- No Idea Records
I wanted to press the PANTHRO UK UNITED 13 album as a 13″ record. I decided not to, as no distributor would be able to handle a record that did not fit into its 12″ shipping boxes, haha! That and the plant still has never actually made a 13″ record, despite claims of being able to do so… for the last 13 years? I did have a rad idea that went along with it to. Check it out: the FIRST PRESSING is a 13″. The outer inch on each side has one song NOT on the regular album. The RE-PRESS is a 12″, minus the two “outer” songs. Pretty cool, huh?
PANTHRO recently became active again, after a 10-year hiatus. Maybe we have another shot at this idiotic idea?
Justin Pearson- Three One G
there are a couple…
“beating off”…three one g community drum battle (a comp of sick drummers playing solo)
“granizo el nuevo amanecer” (a skrewdriver cover album performed acoustic and in spanish by salvador galloegos and jung sing)
Curtis Grimstead- Rorschach Records
Best Friends Day 7 Comp
Asked bands to do all covers about Friendship songs. Apeshit recorded the Fragglerock friendship song and EYC recorded the theme song from Friends
Also the Brainworms/The Catalyst and Pink Razors records were not suppose to come out on Rorschach originally but ended up coming out that way and are both the top selling releases on the label.
Part 2 coming soon!
