Steve Espinola--Cassette-ography

To my ongoing delight, I still get requests for cassettes I sold or gave away in the 1980's or 1990's, usually accompanied by questions about the tracks' availability on CD. This is a list of almost every cassette I produced in runs of copies, and the current CD equivilent, if any exists. Which is the best I can do at justifying the following narcissistic exercise. If I had the time or energy for pretentions of dignity, I'd write this in the third person and pretend it was someone else's scholarly research. That's how some of my friends do it, and it looks better that way, for sure.

As a general note, CD versions of items found on cassettes B though G have all cassette-machine based edits cleaned up and improved (especially on live tracks) .

A. The Awesome Possums, etc.
(recorded 1980-2, compiled spring 1982)

My first songs with lyrics, some co-written with the other Possum, Tim Fisher. These songs were featured on our high school radio show, "Everything and the Kitchen Sink," on WYAJ in Sudbury, Massachusetts. I played piano and Tim played a metal garbage can as a drum. We consistently claimed that the Possums were not us, but a once-famous band on the comeback trail, giving us exclusive access to their new songs. Every week a member of the band would die in a freak accident during a "live" performance (stabbed with french bread, carried off by a pterodactyl, etc). It was sort of like "This Is Spinal Tap," three years early, but ennacted by high-voiced 14 year-olds who didn't know what they were doing.
Most of these songs were written and recorded in ten minutes. The results are pretty inept, maybe in a good way. Track A2 was later re-recorded with a real band and got some airplay on WBCN. (see Angelfish.) "Madman's Rock" got an honorable mention in a Dr. Demento novelty song contest, for which we won a t-shirt and a Devo album. A few other songs were featured on the show after this was compiled, including an early, even longer version of "The Castle Song."

These recordings are entirely out-of-print.


B. Steve Espinola's Songs
(Compiled 1984 & 1985)

Only 20 to 30 copies of this were distributed. I almost didn't list this one, but it appears copies have been tape tree'd. While there are a few earlier variations, the most common lineup is:

C. Steve Espinola's Songs (1981-1987) A.K.A Angelfish
(Recorded summer 1982-March 1987. Compiled some time in 1987.)

This is a reworked, far more common update of cassette B.
It is very similar to the Angelfish CD in content and front cover art.
It was intended as a late Christmas present for a guy named Eugene Langner, but I held onto it instead and started making copies of it for shows. I never saw Gene again, and I owe him a Christmas present. I think he's a lawyer now.
Most or all copies include the "Brown's Response" as a hidden track on side 2 of the cassette. It can be found by flipping the cassette right after playing "Hopeful Applicant."

Differences:

• After "Dennis' Song," side 1 ends with a jarringly loud tape loop from the not-yet-performed-or-recorded "Lovesick Puppydog", repeated 4 times. (This may be missing from early copies.)
• Some early copies may include an alternate, early 1987 live version of "You Are a Slime" (from the same show as "She'll Never Know," featuring Kelly Kiyomi Caulk).
• "You Are A Slime" does not include a spoken intro on the cassette.
• Some copies append one-to-three unlisted tracks to Side 2:
  --Fall For You (as found on Stuck/Shards of Love, minus the spoken intro found on the CD)
  --Lovesick Puppydog (rough live 1988 Steve and Dwight version with bagpipes (by Andrew Kinsey), dog bark tape loop, and several people performing a "cup dance" in the same rhythm as the tape loop. Out of print.
  --Just Can't Get Over You (as found on Stuck/Shards of Love, but in an alternate mix. Also found on item E, below. )
  
• The cassette's credits list the names of everyone who sang in the massive backup choruses on a couple songs. On the advice of my typesetter, post-1992 cassettes and the current CD omit this, which I now regret.
  

Sometime between 1990 and 1993, side two was scrapped and replaced with "Mostly Live 1987-1989" (see item E.) These copies have several inserts printed on different colored papers.

D. Two Guys and a Doorknob by Steve And Dwight
(Recorded 1982-1988. Compiled summer 1988.)

Compilation of solo and duo recordings of Steve Espinola and Do (Dwight) Peterson.
Intended as a gift for our summer camp friend Gillian, who never played the whole thing because we sent it anonymously and unintentionally spooked her, so she tossed out her copy. But Do ended up making and distributing lots of copies of it.

Tracks A3, A5, A9, A12, A13, A15, A16, B2, B4, B6, B8, B10, B12, and B15 are available on Angelfish.
Tracks A1 and A7 are on Angelfish in alternate mixes (A7 has a vocal flub, corrected on Angelfish.)
The rest of the tracks are currently out of print.
(There is an earlier, informal limited-run compilation of Steve and Dwight recordings, probably from around 1985. It's pretty obscure, hasn't been tape-tree'd much if at all, and I can't even find my copy.)


E. Mostly Live (1987-1989)
(Recorded 1987-1989. Compiled 1989 or 1990?)

This was never available on its own. It acted as a B-side to later copies of "Angelfish" as well as the "Stuck" cassette. I'm not sure which pairing came first, but they may have coexisted in certain years. As it contains most of my major "Stuck" songs in live versions, I may have intended it as a replacement for the sessions before Do salvaged the project. On the other hand, "Stuck" was an upsetting enough personal and creative experience--and I had such little perspective on it--that I may have wanted to avoid the recordings, or offer alternative performances, even after the project was salvaged. Over time I grew to appreciate "Stuck" much more, but I'm no longer certain of the chronology.

1. You Are A Slime (w/ Do Peterson, May 27, 1989) ["Slow" live version, different from Angelfish.]
2. Just Can't Get Over You ("studio," w/ the Semitones, May 1988)
3. Don't Sneeze At Love ("studio," w/ sax & drums, August 1988)
4. Watching Clouds Roll By (w/ Do Peterson, February 1989)
5. Fall For You (March 14, 1988)
6. Stillwaters (sic) (w/ Steve Borick, May 11, 1989)
7. Train From Kansas City (Shangri-Las cover) (w/ Kelly Caulk and Do Peterson, April 10, 1988)
8. You Were Ridiculous, You Were Sublime (w/ Alex Wolf & Steve Borick, May 11, 1989)
9. I Am The Michael Dukakis of Popular Music (w/ Do Peterson, May 27, 1989)
10. She'll Never Know (w/ Kelly Kiyomi Caulk, early 1987)
11. What Are You Thinking? (w/ Cello Wrapped Heads, April 24, 1989)
12. You're Talking a Good Game [unlisted "surprise" track] ("studio," w/ Andrew Rohn, summer 1989)

Track 10 is available on the Angelfish CD, and on cassette items C & D.
Track 2 is on Stuck/Shards of Love in a different edit/mix.
Tracks 3, 5 and 11 are available on the Stuck/Shards of Love CD.
(Tracks 2 and 5 also appear on some later copies of cassette item C, unlisted. Track 5 on cassette never has the spoken intro found on the CD.)
Tracks 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12 are out of print, though most of the songs are available in alternate performances.
Track 9 is a live version of an unfinished "Stuck" recording. Its dated, depressing and self-involved subject matter dooms it to permanent obscurity.

F. Stuck (1989-90)
(Recorded in January 1989 in Oberlin, OH, and mixed by Do sometime in late 1989-early 1990.)

The "offical" album is the first 9 songs of the Stuck/Shards of Love CD. However, practically every copy out there, cassette and CD, includes "Big Bass String" attached to the end, which is a Do Peterson/Alex Wolf collaboration from a couple months later. The cassettes I distributed also included the following bonus tracks, also found on item G, below:

11. Lovesick Puppydog (1989-90 Cello Wrapped Heads recording, available on Stuck/Shards of Love)
12. Fool in Love (performance as found on Life-o-phobia, but in a noisier early mix lacking some overdubs

A few copies may have been distributed with Do's provisional title, "Cold Days With Fred."

G. Give Me Your Money (a.k.a. Love Songs While Running Away)
(Recorded summer 1988-May 1993. Released May 1993.)

A green-covered cassette featuring pictures of my cat guarding the newly-invented 19-string Electric Tennis Racket. Assembled hastily in 4 days before my 1993 college reunion so that

1) I'd have something to sell to pay for the trip, and
2) I could compensate for my feeling that I hadn't finished anything since college. It contained a chunk of the not-yet-finished Life-o-phobia album, some unfinished summer 1988 recordings with new vocals, and some brand new May 1993 recordings, mostly of songs written in 1988. Some of the songs written in 1988 were on the agenda for the "Stuck" album, but went unrecorded or unfinished when we fell behind our (unrealistic?) schedule.

It was designed to have no recordings overlap with the "Mostly Live" cassette side, though a few songs appear in both places in different performances.

I finished mixing it directly to cassette, monitoring only in headphones (bad idea), while the airport cab waited outside, and it shows. It is very sloppy. Nonetheless, it became my standard cassette for the next chunk of time.

Tracks 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16 are available on the Stuck/Shards of Love CD.
Tracks 3, 4, 7, 13, 14, 15 are on the Life-o-phobia CD.
Track 1, which is four overdubbed tracks of my cat walking on my piano, chasing a sausage, is out-of-print (both the multitrack and master tape were partially erased in separate accidents).
Track 5 is Life-o-phobia's "Fool in Love," but the early lo-fi mix, missing overdubs. Out-of-print.
The intro to Track 9 is nearly a semitone off, due to poor tape transferring/editing. This is fixed on the CD.
Track 12 is available on Stuck/Shards of Love, but only in its 1988 mix, which included much better vocals, no clavinet bass, and unfortunate, accidental vocal panning. The 1993 version is out-of-print.
Track 14 is the second half of the "reprise" on the Life-o-phobia CD (track 23 on most copies of the latter).
Track 15 includes out-of-print introductory "serious" narration before each section, recorded directly to the master cassette.
Track 16 may "skip" at the end longer than on the CD, until the cassette runs out.
Track 7 to 8 is a great transition that is lost by having the songs on two separate CDs.
Side 1 ends with "serious" narration explaining how to turn the cassette over. (It's a much shorter side.)
Side 2 was intended to be Side 1, but the new mixes were so rough that I changed my mind at the last minute.

H. Life-o-phobia by The Lookalikes (USA)
(Recorded late 1989-August 1993 in Seattle, WA. Partially rewritten, overdubbed and remixed summer-fall 1995 in Brooklyn, NY, by Steve, through phone conferences and letters with Alex. Released April or May 1996.)

The only one of these cassettes to be mastered in a recording studio and duplicated in a professional duplicating house. It is identical to the first 23 tracks of the Life-o-phobia CD. At least 400 copies were produced; possibly a couple hundred more. Some liner notes were designed to disguise the length of time the project took to complete, and to defend the (actually rather minimal) rough edges of the recordings, both of which were sources of insecurity for me. The advent of "lo-fi" as a genre has rendered these concerns absurd. What was barely acceptable in 1996 was hip by 2001, and is standard practice now.

Differences:

• The cassette contains only one hidden track, track 23 on most CD copies: the "U Can't Touch This"/"Gravy Blubber Spam" reprise. The CD contains two additional hidden tracks, "Reel 101" (a lo-fi funk instrumental which had gone missing when assembling the cassette), and an outtake of Alex and Steve trying to sing "Don't touch dead people" for several minutes. (On some CD copies, this track is hidden before track 1. More recent versions are edited slightly to remove some unbecoming rudeness. The length of gaps between bonus tracks has been changed innumerable times on different CD runs.)
• "You Don't Get to Have Fun" is mastered louder on the cassette. (Jarringly loud.)
• Packaging: the cassette cover, designed by Eric Thompson, had different personal ads behind Alex and Steve's heads. Every single copy of the cassette came with a unique personal ad "fortune cookie fortune" clipped out of a copy of The Stranger newspaper. (The CD, as a replacement and labor-saver, includes some of our favorites on the label.) The A-side labels were torquoise and the B-side labels were magenta.

There are also a few cassettes copies out there of two bands I took part in: The Cello Wrapped Heads (1989, mixed 1990) and Hard Love (1989-1992 or so). But that's a topic for another day.

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