[NOTE: I’m glad to say that since putting this post up here, I’ve made with Ed Box of the band who I obviously checked with regarding reposting the old music. I quote, “That’s fine with me.” Thanks, Ed!]
I don’t have any cover art for this one as I confess I never owned an original copy. As such, the recording’s pretty poor as well. This is the best I could get when I copied it from a friend (apologies to the band… by the time I got into them I don’t think copies of the demo could be bought anyway), and there’s at least one “warped” bit where the tape I was copying from slipped.
Regardless, it’s a good set of songs despite the poorer sound quality.
Incidentally, I found Ed Box (guitars/vocals) online yesterday though his web page looks a bit out of date. I did drop him a line, but I guess we’ll see if I get a reply. The timeline on his page makes for interesting reading, and it seems like a major reason for the band packing things in was – essentially – big business turning away from rock/metal.
Given that this was around the time that the Monsters of Rock festival gave its last hurrah (before being resurrected more recently as ), and when Bruce Dickinson left Maiden who couldn’t even sell out mid-sized venues, you can see why a new band would have trouble getting signed. This despite regularly featuring in “best unsigned band” competitions, doing Radio 1 sessions and so forth.
Shame.
All tracks (c) XLR8R and ed with permission
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- Old Band of the Day: XLR8R (moshville.co.uk)
The cover was Calvin and Hobbes dancing to records on the 78rpm cassette version. Damn fine they were too – saw them live a couple of times and ed every damn word again after over 25 years.
Yeah, same here – dug the tape out when I wrote this feature and I was astounded that I still knew all the words. Just the wrong time for them to try to break through, and a crying shame they didn’t make it.