If trends and interests and habits and all that sort of bullshit moves in cycles, I guess I’m presently going through the second phase of voraciously listening to a bunch of stuff that’s borderline unlistenable. And loving it. Let me explain…
If you were a tape trader back in the 80s, you’ll remember scoring N th generation copies of demos, rehearsal and live shows from a shitload of the world’s metal bands. This was back when, if you wanted a copy of Possessed’s Death Metal demo or R.A.V.A.G.E.’s (Atheist before they were Atheist) On We Slay demo, you had to either write the band directly or get a trader friend (or “Penbanger” as Metal Forces magazine called ’em) to make you a copy. Either way, you had to spend a fair amount of time testing your luck and waiting by the mailbox. If you were lucky, your fellow rivet head had a copy, a double cassette deck and as much free time as yourself. Or, the band in question wasn’t sold out of the item you sought and you caught them before they sunk to copying their masterpiece onto those shitty lightweight cassettes that were used to store PET computer data on and the sound quality was a step above marginal.
If you were brave enough to request recordings of live shows, lordy only knew how many times down the chain the copy that Death Angel live at Ruthie’s Inn tape was. And nine times out of ten, any rehearsal tape you requested from your trading pals were recorded using a boom box, not a multi-track recorder. You know the old equation: boom box recording + multi-generation copies = hellish fun for your ears. But the thing was that no matter how shitty the demo, live, rehearsal tape of whoever I was digging on at the time, I would listen repeatedly and religiously. Y’see, extreme music wasn’t always as readily available as it is today and if being able to experience Holy Terror or Exhorder meant listening to hissy, shitty sounding recordings, then bitch, goddamn that’s what we had to do.
I grew out of that phase many moons ago and until recently, figured it was never coming back. Until I discovered www.lockjaw-yappy.blogspot.com. Now, there are a fuck-ton of blogs out there that make available any and everything you could possibly imagine, but I stumbled upon this little gem first and huge portions of it uncannily resembled my mountainous tape collection from back in the 80s and early 90s; a collection I’ve mostly recorded over or just plain got rid of over the years. Tons and tons of rarities make up this site’s content – everything from the pant-load of Nasty Savage and Slayer live and rehearsal recordings to demos by the unheralded likes of Moriorr, Castle Blood and Infernal – and that’s just the first page of posts. Their post archive goes back to 2007 and content as far back as the mid-70s! Some of the older posts and content have taken a hit, as material was linked and made available via the recently shuttered Megaupload, but there’s still easily a few weeks worth of time wasting to be had here. And I’d beg you very kindly to not ask me to explain why I’m downloading old Mordred demos and Sweet Savage EPs as well as live Sacrifice and Slayer shows from the 80s that sound like old Mordred demos and Sweet Savage EPs and live Sacrifice and Slayer shows from the 80s onto my iPod. Somethings are better left unexplained. Although, this might help you to understand.
