A vintage demo-tape mix tape
Digging up the stories behind some one- and no-hit wonders
It’s Friday! In the spirit of keepin’ it light for the weekend, here’s a digital mixtape, built from audio pulled from archive.org’s Demo Tape and Rough Audio Draft Collection:
Demo Tapes are recordings (once on cassette or reel to reel, although CDs and digital files have taken their place) created by artists who are working on example versions of their songs and audio, often with the intention of sharing with bandmates, or providing to managers and contributors for potential choices for final release. They range from unique initial versions of later popular songs, to never-otherwise-recorded efforts, saved once on one tape.
Where possible, I sought out “where are they now?” info, but some mysteries will stay mysteries.
Picks were chosen for the interesting backstory as well as musical quality. But the genres richochet all over the map. If have choosy ears: you’re been warned!
Tina Robin
Robin’s cover of “My Way,” will never top Valerie Sassyfrass’ barn burner version, but it’s absolutely the best track on Four Feet Ten Inches of Dynamite.
These days, probably only a small slice of pepole, mostly folks who wore crinoline skirts or saddle shoes to prom, remember Ms. Robin. Without knowing she was a huge star in her day, listening to the pastel, Moog-riffic backing tracks clash with her huge, gorgeous voice and unsual phrasing was an exercise in total confusion. It sounded out of step with history, out of step with its own time. Who was this woman?
Born Harriet Ostrowsky, Robin performed under the name Harriet Kay until she adopted her final stage name in 1957, as the (apparently) copyeditor-less Park City News reported:
Little Miss Robin — her press agent likes to call here T-N-Tina, but she's more like a Roman candle — first cracked through fame as a quiz show winner. She took home $30,100 on “Hold that Note,” a now-defunct musical quiz. And, more important, she was herd (sic) singing on the show and signed by Coral Records. Now she's getting to be a big star, what with appearances on Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen, etc. all lised (sic) up. But lots of things have happened to her. There's not much left of the five-and-ten-cent store clerk who first wrote into the show. She has a new name; even before “Hold that Note” — she didn't like her old one, so she applied to the program as Tina Robin. Her hair, once a wicked platinum blonde, is now just a semi-provocative honey blonde. Her voice has been trained, the range increased. She had to lost (sic) 10 pounds. She has a whole new wardrobe. And her face has been altered somewhat to correct a deviated septum and remove some tiny moles...all this in less than six months. For a 19-year-old girl, that means practically a new life.
Robin scored a minor hit with “Play It Again” in 1961, eventually going on to a career as “a popular singer and comedian on the condo circuit in Broward County,” according to this 1996 obituary in the Florida Sun-Sentinel.
When Robin recorded this demo in the late 1980s, she was no longer the itty bitty blonde bombshell with the voice like a sonic boom. But she hadn’t yet become the august entertainer smashing the condo circuit. She was seeking a new niche … and we’re glad she eventually found it.
Romona Sweeney
“Home-recorded 90s acoustic folk by Ramona Sweeney, who I cannot find any info on,” Archive.org says. “The first 2 songs are pretty, sunny tracks, and the third is fast and rockabilly-esque,” YouTuber Mei Clover writes. “I cannot find anything about this artist at all. Home recorded folk tune, poor quality, but really great! From a 3 track demo.”
Searches by yours truly also turned up nothing. We know a woman named Romona Sweeney picked up a guitar in the early 1990s and sang into a large, chunky black tape recorder, like a grunge-era Connie Converse. Did she record it to get a gig at a coffee shop? Did she record it for a crush? For the eccentric executive of a small folk-music record label? Maybe her grandma wanted a copy? All we have are the tunes. And maybe that’s all we need.
Dead Center
While doing a search for “The Mysterious Song (Like the Wind)” on eBay (that song needs its own post, by the way!), some so-and-so accidentally discovered the progenitor of pop-punk and emo rap in the form of Dead Center’s 1986 demo tape.
“It is not the music we were looking for,” they write, though allow that it’s pretty OK to listen to, at least musically. Which gave them a mission: “Unfortunately, the tape was recorded on a cheap Walmart tape recorder, and has multiple glaring issues in terms of quality. This is not a massive improvement, but it is far more listenable, and should fix issues playing the song through mono speakers (such as those on phones). Also features cover art in the download this time. This also still has a few issues I could not fix (no stereo, some wow and flutter). I wonder if we could get a better recording of this some day?”
Fritz Gruppa
This YouTube clip sounds — to my ears anyway — like a surf-punk version of St. Louis’ Raymilland, with a little bit of Kinks thrown in. Not a surprise; Amsterdam-based Fritz Gruppa formed around the same time (late 70s/early 80s), and was impacted by the same transitional musical tastes of the era. Some New Wave. Some 70s rock, including Bowie. The lineup included singer/drummer Richard Menger; drummer/vocalist Jan Mom; guitarist Rob Berndsen; bassist Paul Oosterbaan; and guitarist Joop Posthumus, the only guy in the band with a truly New-Wavy name.
Here’s some more info from Dutch Wikipedia, rendered into mangled English by Google Translate, about how things went south after their initial success in the early 1980s:
Mutations occurred in the line-up: Richard Menger was “fired” after a conflict with Jan Mom, Dicky Wals stepped down to focus on a solo career. Ernst-Jan Braakman joined as a new bass player and Paul Oosterbaan became the band’s singer. Guppa performed in Paradiso, the Vondelpark, at the opening of the then renovated theater Odeon, in De Weltschmerz, De Bajes (now Max Euweplein) and numerous other venues in and around the capital. Under the influence of Braakman, the band's sound changed with influences from The Police, David Bowie, Level 42 and Powerplay.
Gradually, the wear and tear set in. From a fresh, alienating musical formation, Fritz Guppa became more of a pop band and the stretch went out. Due to the lack of management, the performances decreased and eventually, in 1985, the band ceased to exist. Jan Mom and Paul Oosterbaan continued in the party band De Grasparkieten of the now deceased Luc Taekema. Rob Berndsen then played in the Beatles cover band The Bottles with singer and guitarist Aart de Ruig (deceased August 27, 2008), singer-bassist Sander de Ruig and drummer Remy Luttikhuizen, after which he played with Ernst-Jan Braakman, Tom Boeken and Daniel Leitao Ramos in the rock band Basta. Mom eventually went into journalism and Oosterbaan moved to Spain.
You can hear their whole demo here, including interviews in Dutch, followed by tracks sung in English.
Hutchinson Persons
Saving the weirdest and most interesting entry for last, we’ll now talk about this two-track demo featuring the original version and a remix of Hutchinson Persons’ “Jungled Out (Deep in the Jungle).” The archive.org audio is glitchy, so the best way to listen to this track is via the YouTube clip above (unless you enjoy glitchy; some of us do). As you can hear, it’s pretty standard synth-pop stuff — maybe a reach toward a New-wavier Morris Day vibe that ends up sounding like what you’d hear blasting out of a boom box at a Jazzercise class at the Y, circa 1987.
Persons is described by several sources — including the New York Times and the BBC — as a musician, even though the only surviving scrap of his catalog is “Jungled Out.” He’s much better known as the founder of Street News, the first newspaper written and distributed by the homeless. Street News spawned similar publications all over the world, many of which are still being printed. He gets big points for that.
But as the New York Times reported in the spring of 1990, mere months after Street News began publishing, Persons was in trouble with both the AG’s office and the Better Business Bureau, not to mention his staff and a lot of the street vendors selling the paper. He was accused of grossly mismanaging funds and generally acting like an ass and a dictator. Eventually, he was forced to step down, briefly experiencing a bit of a bounceback in 1991.
In an August, 1991 article about Persons, Newsday columnist Ellis Hennican wrote that after a “tumble from sainthood,” Persons was back at it, “working to solidfy his latest New Age incarnation: that of self-promoting philospher-king. Take a look at the current issue of his help-the-homeless paper ($1, in subway cars everywhere). The paper is packed with so much Hutchinson Persons, it's a wonder the poor homeless can squeeze in at all. On the cover is a full-color photograph of Hutchinson Persons, gazing off into the middle distance in standard guru pose. The accompanying text — ‘Human Morality (Or How To Make Decisions as a Human Being)’ — is, of course, by Hutchinson Persons. So, by my count, are 31 other articles in the 28-page tabloid. And that doesn't even count the Hutchinson Persons ‘Moral Flow Chart’ — a jumble of boxes and arrows to answer every imaginable question, laid out across page 2.”
All those vigorous self-promotion efforts came to naught, it seems. All I could find on Persons’ current activities is that he’s now a member of the ISO. But his co-publisher for a time, Wendy Oxenhorn, who left Street News when things started to go sideways with the bookkeeping, is very findable. That’s because she ran The Jazz Foundation of America for a couple of decades, and stepped in to make sure New Orleans musicians could find work after Katrina.
As always, with all things music, you can start in New York —but all roads eventually lead back to the magic city of New Orleans.
You do. Yikes. There’s this other one, involving a rodent-that’s a whole beignet bakery. After all these years—dedededededodah…
The unanswered question remains. What happened to Joop Posthumous?